My team experience

I realized that I can dance when I was in high school. From that point on, I have been dancing for almost six years. I never received any professional training, most of the stuff I learned was from the internet. After I got to college, it was the first time that I was drafted to a dance team. During that period of time, I finally how much I need to improve myself to be one of the team member and perform.
The structure of the team is a dual authority. Executive director would be the highest authority, then it splits down to two most important part in a dance team: assistant director and artistic director. Assistant director in charge of all the execution of orders that was given by the director and the liaison between the director and crew member. Artistic director is the one who in charge all the rehearsal, choreography and training the crew member to enhance fundamental skills. This structure is very effective because it is well covered in a dance team. Also, it is very easy to restructure to adapt to different situation. This structure helped to divide the burden to two sections: assistant director can enforce orders from the director, artistic director can share the load of choreographing and training crew member. All these is to keep the director from micromanaging. Because the team is not very big, so efficiency would not be effected gradually.
Dancers are easy. We do not dance for money, although it would be wonderful if we do. The reason that we dedicate time and other important aspect in dancing because we want to dance, we want to perform, we want to make the audience happy. Every semester, we have a big event that is either held in a club on campus or in Chicago. Every time we deliver a great performance in a rather short period of time. When preparing for a event like this, all team member would contribute to help. Music, one of the most important aspect that is in a dance, would be edited by some skilled team member. In order to be more efficient, people who are skilled would be call in for help to promote the showcase. Rest of the dancers would have to wait to training orders. This is fairly like Katzenbach's "high performance team are of a manageable size"and "high-performance team develop the right mix of expertise."   We do what we could do to help the team, but we do it in way that keeps everything structured. However, of all the aspect that was mentioned previously that could build a high-performance team, the essential key to the success is all the team member has the one true common goal, that is to bring the best performance to make the audience happy.

Opportunity Cost

The first time that I know of opportunity cost was when I took microeconomics. The theory is mostly about what I have given up for the choice i made. I remember I this part very specifically because my instructor told us how local stores try to lower their opportunity cost by doing advertising.
Just like transaction cost, opportunity cost lies everywhere in our life. I love music very much, which lead to my other passion, headphones. I own 4 pairs of headphones, 3 of them are rather cheap, only one particularly very expensive which I treat very carefully. I'm telling about this expensive one is because the way I got it is very interesting. The particular brand of the headphone is not sold in any retail store, so I have to buy it online. Fortunately the price is always shaky of this brand but this also means the price can easily go up anytime and I have no idea when is the price is going to be the lowest and whether is it going to be stable to a price. I didn't do anything for the first two weeks because I want to see how much is it going to change. When I checked the price one day and its 60% off, I told myself I cannot wait any longer because I know the price could go back up any day and I wanted that headphone for a long time. After I pressed checked out, I felt so relief because I knew I got  a good deal off.
Unfortunately, the next day I wanted see how much I really saved and there it is, 70% off! It's not like I didn't get a good deal off, it was like torture because all I have to do is wait one more day for the greatest deal. I did learn opportunity cost in from the hard way of my own experience. Opportunity is everywhere in our daily life, what we do not know is how long this opportunity will be or is there better opportunity coming in the future. For business professionals, one of the most important aspect in their job is to be aware of the changes in stock market. Prices in stock market changes by the second, if they cannot find the right timing to purchase or sale, a significant amount of capital might be lost.

Transaction Cost

  In our daily life, transaction costs lays everywhere. Just like relation of headquarters and boots on the ground, HQ makes decision for the entire army, boots on the ground needs to follow orders. Unfortunately, situations in a war zone changes every second, and for different unit have different circumstance that orders might not apply. Through all these message giving and receiving is where transaction cost lays.
  Efficiency is the key factor in the modern economics. With technology development, information are spread less than seconds, but transaction cost still lays everywhere. There are some reasons for this matter. First, different situations might need different approach. Take Walmart for example, as the head of retailing stores, Walmart cares greatly on its supply efficiency. They monitor their inventory to decide how much supply they needed for their daily business. These decisions does not comes from their main company, they come from their own local office in order to adjust for situations.
  Second, there is a might be a misrepresent in information. In 1958, a movement was took place in China called the Great Leap Forward. This movement was originally Mao's idea to catch with American economy. Due to the pressure that was coming from the central government, local government had to give fake numbers in order to please the central government. This cost the country's economy moving back wards. The transaction cost in this is that the hard pressure gives the wrong number that caused a misinterpret and a bad decision making. These situation could also occur in our modern day lives. Company wants to get their numbers up so they give the pressure down to their local agencies. If the local agencies give wrong numbers and the headquarter used it to make a decision, transaction cost would end up in a huge capital loss, or worse.
  The third reason is that there are uncertainty and complexity in society that transaction cannot be ignored. For instance, when you buy insurance, different situation might be have different quotes. Insurance for a 2 door car are more than a 4 door car; an driver who has a license for many years pays less insurance than a driver who just got a license. Many area have all these kind of issues because their is no objective way to set up a credit to let others believe, only through subjective materials to make gain credit. Sales man set up their credit by talking with customers because in order to make a sale in a short period of time, the only thing that can set up a credit is through words. Transaction cost in such business is critical, so companies are trying their everything to promote their sales. Advertising and other methods are being used in this area.
  Transaction cost are tightly connected with our lives. Governments, companies, universities are dealing with transaction cost as long as its operating. To lower transaction cost by using advanced technology is not enough. Different approach needs to be put in practice by management in order to lower the transaction cost as much as possible.

A bio sketch of Dale Jorgenson

  Dale Jorgenson was born in May 7, 1933. He is a professor in Harvard University and also served as the chairman of Department of Economics. Dale Jorgenson's work in the theory on the growth of a dual economy and his development of estimation methods for rational distributed lags were widely recognized. 

   Dale Jorgenson's research includes information technology and economic growth, energy and the environment, tax policy and investment behavior, and applied econometrics. In 2013, Dale associated with other famous economists, designed environmental taxes to improve economic performance and enhance environmental quality. Jorgenson also led to the  establishment of the World KLEMS Initiative at Harvard in 2010. This establishment helped to provide international comparisons of productivity at the industry level.