Title: azTeen Magazine
Length: 9:03
Synopsis: azTeen Magazine is a newly created publication in the Arizona market. It is written by teenagers for teenagers. The video features company staff who discuss their managerial roles at azTeen and how the four functions of management—planning, organizing, leading, and controlling—are executed in an informal environment.
Classroom Application: Instructors will find this video helpful when discussing the roles of management in an organization. The managers interviewed at azTeen Magazine do not categorize their duties into interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles, but it may be interesting to have students perform that task. Discussion Question 1 applies here.
This video is also useful when presenting an overview of the four functions of management. Discussion Question 1 applies to the planning function; Discussion Question 2 applies to the organizing function; Discussion Question 3 applies to the controlling function; and Discussion Question 4 applies to the leading function. Instructors may wish to engage students in a discussion of how execution of these four functions will change should the company grow in size.
Discussion Questions:
1. Describe the many roles of the azTeen management staff as discussed by Deb Rochford, Michelle Burgess, and Veronica Sherbina in the video.
Answer: Deb Rochford is the founder and publisher of azTeen Magazine. She is in charge of the overall management of the company, of the hiring and firing of staff, and of the magazine sales. Michelle Burgess, the editor in chief, is responsible for editing, hiring the teen staff, performing outreach services to schools, and organizing occasional events for their teen market. Veronica Sherbina is the associate creative director. She manages photography and design, holds meetings to determine the future look of the magazine, and manages production deadlines to ensure on-time delivery of the final product.
2. What overall characteristics are important to azTeen Magazine when hiring teenaged interns?
Answer: According to editor-in-chief Michelle Burgess, a teenaged intern must fit in with the company culture, which she describes as laidback and fun. Because she hires three interns at one time, they must be able to work well together and with the rest of the magazine team.
Burgess says she does not hire interns interested in editorial work because, too often, they are interested only in writing and not in managing the overall business. Instead, she hires interns interested in public relations and believes they are better at event planning and meeting deadlines. While quality writing is important to the overall magazine, she believes dedication to follow-through and meeting deadlines is more important.
3. What standards are used at azTeen Magazine in order to measure organizational performance?
Answer: Publisher Deb Rochford measures employee performance by monitoring the magazine’s timeliness, its attractiveness, its readability, and its appeal to the teenaged target market. She also says knows she is doing her best job when she is able to sell enough advertisements to pay for the magazine and to make money for the company. Editor-in-chief Michelle Burgiss measures performance by staying attuned to the feedback the magazine and its advertisers receive following each issue. If the feedback is light, she knows that the magazine didn’t deliver the teen “buzz” necessary to produce a successful magazine and changes need to be made.
4. What leadership characteristics are valued by the magazine’s staff?
Answer: Rochford believes she is a respected leader because she is funny, respectful, appreciative, and mellow (or she’d make her staff crazy). Sherbina appreciates that the other leaders balance out her creative side with their business-mindedness. She likes that they act as mentors to her and encourage her to be her best self. Finally, Burgiss believes the staff at azTeen Magazine is successful because Rochford is the kind of leader that empowers everyone and trusts in their abilities.
Quiz:
1. What sparked the initial idea for azTeen Magazine?
a. An unpublished niece who could not find a job after graduation.
b. A Saturday morning television show aimed at teenagers.
c. An editorial in a high school newspaper.
d. A mother unhappy with the risqué magazines her teen was reading.
Answer: a
Explanation: Publisher Deb Rochford’s niece graduated from college, but could not find a job because she had not had been published yet. After Rochford noticed the stacks of magazines her own daughter read every weekend, the idea for azTeen Magazine began to form in her mind.
2. After Rochford came up with the idea of creating a teen magazine, her next step was creating a formal business plan.
a. True
b. False
Answer: b
Explanation: Rochford says she did not create a formal business plan when creating azTeen Magazine. Instead, she wrote down all of her ideas in a three-ring binder and talked to many business leaders with publishing experience. She performed six months of research and talked to as many people as she could before launching the magazine.
3. Associate creative director Veronica Sherbina says she has trouble with one of her managerial tasks. Which one is it?
a. Meeting publication deadlines.
b. Overseeing visuals for the magazine.
c. Delegating tasks to teen photographers.
d. Holding meetings.
Answer: c
Explanation: Several times in the video, Sherbina mentions that she has trouble delegating to her teen photographers because they rarely have the experience needed to provide magazine-quality photos.
4. azTeen Magazine’s first print run was 3,000 copies. How many copies do they print now?
a. 3,000
b. 10,000
c. 24,000
d. 142,000
Answer: c
Explanation: The magazine’s readership has grown over 300% in the last three years. The initial print run was 3,000 copies. Their latest print run was 24,000 copies.
5. How many hits does the azTeen Magazine website currently get per month?
a. 1,500
b. 3,000
c. 24,000
d. 52,000
Answer: d
Explanation: According to Rochford, the magazine’s readership has grown over 300% in the last three years. The website now tracks 52,000 hits per month.
Copyright ?2011 Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Prentice Hall