Keeping Things in Perspective

I don't know who wrote this but a friend sent it to me some years ago. I figured it was worth posting here :)

Keeping Things in Perspective

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna.

The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied that it only took a little while. The American then asked why didn't he stay out longer and catch more fish. The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs.

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor."

The American scoffed, "I am a Stanford MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?" To which the American replied, "15-20 years."

"But what then, senor?" said the Mexican.

The American laughed and said: "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."

"Millions, senor? Then what?"

The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

Al Gore: New Thinking on Climate Change

I'm posting this a few weeks after it was published but, in case you haven't see it yet, make sure you take a look at the speech Al Gore gave at a TED conference in March:

In Al Gore's brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" -- the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement -- to set it right. Gore's stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates' climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

Having just taken a course on sustainable development I know what Gore is talking about -- i.e. about how things are worse than we thought they'd be -- and it's getting scarier as time goes by but not much seems to be happening at the global level to fix this problem.

Which is the point of the presentation: unless we collectively raise a ruckus about this issue, not much is going to happen. The speech is American-centric, of course, but is nonetheless very inspiring.

And I'm Done!

And I'm done with my MBA. Actually, I was done on Friday but I took it easy over the weekend :)

This now concludes 20 months of hard work, late nights, early mornings, essays, individual assignments, syndicate assignments, case studies, class discussions, research, and exams. During this period I met a lot of great people who taught me a lot of different things. I also formally learnt a heck of a lot about many different subjects. Specifically, I took these courses during my four study terms:

  1. World of Management

  2. Data & Decisions

  3. Managing Processes

  4. Accounting for Managers

  5. Financial Management

  6. Corporate Finance

  7. Managerial Economics

  8. Economics and Public Policy

  9. Business Strategy

  10. Corporate Strategy

  11. Implementation of Strategy

  12. Managing People for High Performance *

  13. Leadership & Change

  14. Negotiations *

  15. Marketing

  16. Brand Management

  17. Consumer Behaviour

  18. E-Commerce *

  19. Information Strategy

  20. Business & Sustainable Development (half subject)

  21. Strategic Management of Intellectual Property (half subject)


Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Actually, it really was.

And now it winds to a close. All that's left is my graduation on the 17th and then I can officially say that, yes, I am an MBA from Melbourne Business School, thank you very much :)

Now to find a job so I can start my next adventure...

Speaking of jobs, by the way, I received the nicest job application rejection phone call today. It was from the job I mentioned a few weeks earlier (the one I was most excited about) and, though I'm terribly disappointed that I didn't get it, I understand that the company needed to choose the best person for the role who, in this case, was unfortunately not me. Still, out of the 200 applications they received I was one of the four people they interviewed and that's a really good feeling. Oh well. Next time, then.

- - - - - - - - - -

* I received commendations from the Dean for my participation and academic achievement in these subjects. Woo hoo! :)

Thinking of Switching to Gmail and IMAP

I am seriously considering moving all my e-mail -- including years of archives currently stored in my laptop and managed by Thunderbird -- to Gmail and, from then on, using IMAP to access it.

Right now I POP all my e-mail to my laptop. In the new setup, I'll POP all my e-mail to Gmail and will then use either its web or IMAP interface (via Thunderbird) to access all my mail. [I wrote about this in a lot more detail on my personal blog.]

I like the idea of cloud computing and the ability to access my calendar and all of my e-mail regardless of where I am and what e-mail client, browser, or mobile phone device I'm using. Of course, actually doing this will take a lot of time since I have over 2GB of e-mail archives to upload...but I suppose it'll be worth it in the end.

Here's hoping everything goes well (as it is so far).

Living a Dangerously Unhealthy Life

To follow on from the Death by Blogging post I wrote earlier, read Jason Calacanis' post on What the New Your Times' "Death by Blogging" Story Got Right. It's long, but it's worth a read.

He writes:

The New York Times sees the common thread amongst these folks as blogging, but that's a superficial assessment. The truth is the common thread amongst these four individuals--and it's kind of shocking the New York Times missed this--is they were all entrepreneurs.

The Times would have been better off blaming entrepreneurship over blogging. Of course, there are tons of healthy entrepreneurs out there who are not dying, and a certain number of men between 35-60 die from stress on a regular basis, so the story's premise is flawed from the start.

...

... however there is one thing the New York Times did get right: the human species inability to deal with stress.

I know where Calacanis is coming from because I've been there myself.

Back in 2005-06 I went through a really difficult period in my life: my mother had just died (less than three months after we discovered the cancer), I was having a hard time at work (one of my colleagues had left and I was stuck doing his job which, at the time, was way over my head), I was working evenings and weekends on a second job (finances were an issue and I enjoyed the second job much more than the first), and I hadn't gotten the scholarship I needed for my MBA (though I did, thankfully, get it in the subsequent round). All this coupled with a mostly unhealthy lifestyle (specifically, no regular exercise) and very little drumming (which is a great stress reliever) left me burnt-out and bordering on depression.

Interestingly, it was the hard time I was having at work that prompted me to go for an MBA in the first place so at least one good thing came out of all this!

Things have changed since then (life is simpler when you're a student anyway; especially when you're on an international student's budget!) and I like to think I've learnt a few valuable lessons on how not to live along the way. Ironically enough, the MBA has taught me a lot about how to live a more balanced life as well [1]. And now the jobs I'm applying to and the life my wife and I intend to lead are both going to be of the more balanced kind. And though I do enjoy (yes, actually enjoy) the occasional 60 hour work week, I know that it should be a deadline-approaching exception to the norm.

So thanks, Jason, for that blog post. I needed it to remind myself about what is important in life. Others need to hear that kind of advice as well. Let's just hope everyone listens.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[1] I learnt this primarily through some teachers and one of my career counsellors. A heartfelt thanks, then, to Gavin Lister, Amanda Sinclair, John Onto, and Brian Gibbs.

MBA, Job Application & Work Update

Yesterday was a tough day:

  • My Brand Management final exam (on Wal-Mart) was due.
  • My Corporate Strategy syndicate had to make a presentation (on Bertelsmann).
  • I had tonnes of reading to do for Corporate Strategy (a case on the Foster Group) and Business and Sustainable Development (on social sustainability and the Bottom-of-Pyramid concept).

The next couple of weeks (yes, I have just two weeks to go!) are going to be tough too. I have:

  • One case analysis (for Corporate Strategy) and one critical analysis (for BSD) to write and hand in.
  • Two big assignments (for BSD and Strategic Management of Intellectual Property) to write up and hand in.
  • One big syndicate assignment (for Corporate Strategy) to work on, write up, and hand in.
  • Two exams to prepare for and then sit (for SMIP and BSD).

On the job front:

  • I've applied to three jobs -- two in internal communications (with an intranet focus) and one in external communications (with a social media focus).
  • I've received one rejection -- one of the internal communications ones -- and hope to hear from the other two either this week or next week.
  • I have two more jobs to apply to -- both in online strategy (one of which is really exciting) -- and I should get those done by tomorrow evening.

Meanwhile, my work at MBS is keeping me busy too:

  • I have to finish writing a major section of the training materials (for the new portal we're deploying across the school) by this evening. That needs to get reviewed and approved by Friday.
  • I'll probably start conducting the actual trainings (mostly one-to-one since I'm pretty much done with the group trainings) for that next week.
  • I've already sat with one of the departments and worked through their online communications strategy. On Friday I need to sit with them and actually start implementing that on the portal.
Yes, life is busy and exciting...and quite a lot of fun, actually (which, really, is the important part).

2 MBS Profs Selected for Aus2020 Summit

Two Melbourne Business School (MBS) professors -- Ian Harper and Joshua Gans -- were among the 1,000 delegates selected to attend the Australia 2020 Summit to be held in Canberra later on this month.

They'll be on the Productivity Agenda - educations, skills, training, science, and innovation panel for which the attendees list, according to Gans, "looks like a pretty typical economics conference". I presume that's a good thing.

Running/Working in a Startup

Jason Calacanis wrote a really good post called How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips). And, while I don't agree with him on all of his tips -- like "Buy Macintosh computers" or "[ask for 10-30% off] from each of your vendors every 6-9 months" -- it's a really good list.

His basic point is: Don't focus on "stuff" that is needlessly expensive or will take you away from the work you've set out to do. For example, "Outsource accounting and HR", "Use Google hosted email", and "Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs". Focus instead on people since your money is better spent on them. That is, let your people work when they want to, where they want to, in the way they want to and throw in some perks that make the work environment really cool. For example, get them all second monitors and get "an expensive, automatic espresso machine".

Working in a Startup

As you'll read in Calacanis' post, there were some complaints about tip #11 which said "Fire people who are not workaholics...".  This happened mainly because he didn't clearly explain what he was trying to say and so people naturally assumed that he meant the worst. What he meant, of course, was that you should fire (or, better yet, not hire) people who are not passionate about their work and are not willing to work hard because, really, you can't run a proper startup with people who are there work in a nice, cushy job. 'Cushy job' and 'startup' simply do not go together.

I say that from experience because I've worked in startups for most of my life and have found that (a) as a startup-oriented employee you don't get true job satisfaction and (b) as a startup owner/manager you can't run a startup properly until and unless everyone there is passionate about the work that they're doing. And if you're not willing or are not wanting to work odd hours or weekends, or do all sort of tasks that were never part of your  original job description, then maybe the startup life isn't for you.

To give you an example, my job as General Manager (Islamabad) and SAT/GRE/GMAT teacher at The Princeton Review, Pakistan was really hard. I did GM work during normal working hours and my teaching work after 3pm for the SAT courses, 6pm for the GRE/GMAT courses, and on weekends for all of the courses. And if it hadn't been for semi-flexible working hours, almost complete freedom in how I ran the place, a office-purchased laptop, and so on -- basically, a 2004 Pakistani version of the perks that Calacanis talks about in his post --  working there would have been a lot less rewarding. (Of course, it helps that I love teaching and it appears to be something that I am good at.)

Now, I don't know what kind of job I'm going to doing six months from now but what I do know is that, if I end up working for a startup, I had darn well better be willing to put in the 'hard yards' (as the say here) to my job done. And if I'm not willing to do that, then I shouldn't have applied for that job in the first place. And, in that respect, Calacanis hit the nail on the head: fire the people who aren't willing to do that. At the end of the day, it really is that simple.

Taking Notes

[Note: Cross-posted from my personal blog]

I take a lot of notes. And I mean a lot of notes. I take notes for things like:

  • Planning out a report, paper, or essay
  • Brainstorming a website, business strategy problem, or a computer program/algorithm
  • Taking notes during a class lecture or conference
  • Even making a shopping list or a list of things to do

I like to think I take good notes and, since I'm a bit of a perfectionist (some would say I'm obsessive), over the years I have actively refined my note-taking technique. Here's how I take notes these days.

Note-Taking Tools

I start by making sure that I have good note-taking tools. These days I take notes with a mechanical pencil with 0.5 or 0.7mm 2B lead (i.e. softer but darker than the typical HB or #2 pencil; see Wikipedia entry on the pencil for details on gradation) on white, good quality, narrow-lined file paper. I also use a good quality eraser.

I use a pencil and eraser because I like clear and neat notes and diagrams (i.e. dark lines and no cross-outs). I use file paper because that gives me more flexibility in terms of storing, organizing, moving, and re-writing notes within subject-indexed, tab-separated file folders ('binders' for Americans).

May I geek out a bit? These days I'm using a Faber Castel Grip Matic pencil, the 2B lead that came with it, and a Staedtler Rasoplast eraser. The pencil's pretty old now so I need to buy a new one. I generally prefer Staedtler over Faber Castel -- I've been using the former's pens, pencils, lead, and erasers for about 16 years now -- but I haven't been able to find the right products in Australia so far. I guess I need to look harder. Oh, and Pilot and Uni products are good too; particularly the Uni SA-S fine ballpoint pen which I have been using exclusively for about 3 years now.

Note Organization

I organize my notes rather thoroughly: listing on each page the date, subject, page number, and, if in a meeting, the names of the participants in that meeting. To organize the notes themselves I use a series of headings and nested bullet points. Here's an example:

Note Taking 1

 

More recently I've started to take notes on my laptop. For that I use Microsoft Word with 12pt Georgia font and the same sets of headings and series of nested bulleted lists as I do on paper (except that those are now defined as MS Word Styles so they look a little different). This is what my electronic notes look like:

image

 

The Actual Notes

Then come the actual notes themselves. Since I write a lot, I've had to develop my own, mostly intuitive, shorthand to write things down quickly. For example: "this func. says nothing abt. price lvl.; dep. only on tech, labour & capital." Since I type quickly, I write full-ish sentences when typing notes, though. They may not be entirely grammatically correct, but I don't usually abbreviate words.

In the actual note-taking I try to write down as much as I can while still listening to the lecture/discussion, not missing anything going on (even at a deeper level), and participating in the discussion as well. It's not easy but I've been doing it for years so I'm used to it by now. Taking notes this way gives me a pretty accurate recording of what went on during the class (since that's what I developed my note-taking for) and, even if something isn't quite clear to me at that time, I can usually follow the logic and work it out later.

At the end of every note-taking session (e.g. at the end of every class) I try to review the notes to make sure I haven't missed anything. Then, usually while preparing for an assignment or just before an exam, I do one of two things. I either extract what is important from my notes (and in parallel from lecture slides and assigned readings) by re-writing them on a new sheet of paper or on my laptop. That is, I take notes of my notes. If not that, I make an index in which I identify what I've written and on which page that topic is located. The former helps me prepare for closed book exams and assignments. The latter helps me get ready for open book exams and meetings during which I might need to refer to my notes.

I don't follow any specific note-taking system like the Cornell system that the good folk at Student Tablet PC use [1], though that sounds like a really good methodology. Nor is my system as elaborate as Tim Ferriss' (via Kevin C. Tofel). I am interested in getting into mind maps like James Kendrick, but my note-taking style has always worked well for me so I haven't yet found a reason to change.

I do, however, use a mind map-type construction for breaking down complex problems. But, since I'm a stickler for writing things neatly, I use lists instead of diagrams. For example:

Board Notes 1

 

And that's about it. Oh, one last thing: storage. Since I have craploads on notes, I generally have a crapload of file folders to store all my notes in as well. And since I've been using, for the most part, the same system for about ten years now, my old notes still come in handy every now and then. The only problem is: I can't take all my old notes with me.

All of that,
I gue
ss, goes some way to demonstrate why the obsessive note-taker in me wants so desperately to get a tablet PC. I mean, seriously, how could I not want to get the ultimate note-taking tool? But, since I can't afford one now, I am so looking forward to getting one later and then scanning all my MBA notes into it so that they're ready for use any where, any time. In fact, I'm getting all excited just thinking about it now! Yes. I am a geek. I wrote a whole blog post on note-taking (with pictures and all), didn't I? :)

[1] The Student Tablet PC website has a whole category on note-taking. 

Dream Internship?

Now if only I could have found an internship like this:

Company Name: I Can Has Cheezburger?
City: Seattle
State: Washington

We are looking for upbeat, smart and happy interns to help put moar cheez on the burgers — so to speak. The intern will work on our social marketing, help fulfill t-shirt sales, answer emails from totally random people, bathe Happy Cat (j/k!) and fill in where needed.

Requirements:

* Deep and wide-ranging understanding of popular culture (TV, intertubes, geek, movies, music, games, anime, news…)

* Awsumness. 0.00012 or higher on the Chuck Norris scale.

Please send your resume to:
icanhascheezburger@gmail.com

Word of Mouth on the Web

It's funny how sometimes you just don't connect things. I read about Word of Mouth on the Web (WOMOW) some months ago on Rave About It's Local/Focal blog. It was only today, however, that I discovered that WOMOW was founded and is run by one of my classmates at MBS, Fiona Adler.

WOMOW is "a platform for word-of-mouth information so that recommendations can be stored and accessed to help people find the best local businesses." That is, it's a place where you can find & rate local businesses and give & receive advice from members about local businesses.

I've discovered this service at a particularly good point in my life because my study term is just about finish (one and a half weeks to go!) after which my wife and I will have about three weeks of vacation (she's also on her summer break). We were going to spend this time exploring Melbourne and its surrounds -- have monthly tram card, will travel! -- and WOMOW is the perfect resource for doing that effectively.

For example, we haven't explored Fitzroy as much as we would have liked to. WOMOW will help us plan our explorations better by giving us a list of places that we shouldn't miss and a list of places that we can do without. And if we visit a place that isn't already listed there, well then we'll just create a new listing for it and everyone will be better off.

Ah, I like this whole Web 2.0 stuff (much as I hate the term "Web 2.0" itself).

P.S. How do you pronounce WOMOW, I wonder. Is it Woe-Mao, Woe-Moe, Whommo, or something else entirely? :)  I guess I'll have to ask.

Predicting Voting Behaviour

With the Australian federal election a few days away, all eyes seem to be on (among other things) daily opinion polls.

To generate data for those polls, people are asked "Who would you be most likely to vote for if an election were held this Saturday?". Chris Lloyd, one of our professors at MBS, argues that there is a lost opportunity in asking this question because "binary data gives much less information than continuous data – roughly 5-10 times less information." As a result, he argues, these opinion polls don't capture the swing vote, even though that's where all the action is. I agree with him completely and wish they would get all that extra data for us. However, I have three theories as to why they don't do a more comprehensive survey.

The first is the obvious one (though a guess on my part): the economics aren't worth it. That is, the comprehensive poll will cost too much because it'll both take longer and will be more complicated to execute.

The second is the less obvious one: it'll add too much uncertainty into our lives (or, put another way, it'll give us too much information). Because these votes are swing votes, they'd change much too often for the general public's liking. If the numbers jumped up or down by, say, 5% every other day, the polls would be perceived as being overly sensitive and voters as being overly fickle. Eventually, because the polls would seem almost erratic, the public would lose interest in them (they would seem less relevant as accurate gauges of solid public opinion), the media would stop buying them from polling agencies, and everyone would lose money. Yes, this reason comes down to money as well.

The third is the least obvious one: people would prefer not to know (or, put another way, too little uncertainty isn't fun, either). Because, if they did know (with a reasonable amount of accuracy) who was going to win beforehand, it would make the actual voting on the election day much less exciting. And, in the same way that no one wants a boring, predictable sports tournament final, no one seems to want a boring election day either.

At the end of the day, though, people have to vote with their feet and not with their survey responses. And that little bit of uncertainty -- that "anything can still happen" feeling -- keeps people interested and much, much more motivated. Both of which, ultimately, lead to a better election process and a better execution of a democracy because everyone will have been interested in it and everyone will have participated in it.

The Home Stretch

I've had a brutal couple of weeks, with classes six days a week (for which there's plenty of reading to be done), at least one assignment due every week, and many syndicate meetings to plan, prepare for, and attend. Now, fortunately, (to borrow a phrase from the baseball lexicon) we're on the home stretch, with only two more weeks of classes and then one week of exams to go.

I'm also down to two assignments that are still due: a Leadership & Change assignment due this Friday (23rd) and an Implementation of Strategy assignment due next Wednesday (28th). Both are excellent assignments but both require quite a bit of work.

The L&C assignment, for example, is to write an essay about our personal leadership challenge: the one that we all identified in the first week of the course and have since been working on. That may sound simple but, if you've been through the course, you'll know that it isn't. It's also supposed to be 3,000 words long (not including the bibliography and appendices) so it's to a really comprehensive essay as well.

The IoS assignment, meanwhile, is to write a case (complete with teaching note) about a real strategy implementation that, preferably, at least one member of our syndicate is closely connected with (e.g. this happened/is happening in a company that this person worked/is working for). That, as you might imaging, is again quite challenging. It's one thing to read a case and learn from it, it's quite another to write a case and then write what should be learnt from it! It is quite a lot of fun, though.

Still, with only two assignments, three weeks, and four final exams [1] to go before the start of the summer break, I can't help but feel a little exhilarated. The home stretch is, after all, exciting. No less brutal, of course, but still exciting. In the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind of way.

[1] L&C doesn't have a final exam. The leadership challenge essay is our final exam. And it should be: it's worth 40% of our grade!