I had written (here: http://kaleemaziz.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=545) about VPs and their extra expected dedication/commitment to their company/role/job. The job in itself does not start and end with their authorities and pay, but in terms of "earning" that decisively (i.e., in ways other can see) make the company succeed.

For some VPs, the role starts with "I" rather than "earn it" (through proving to others, and gaining their respect/followership) - talk about babysit baby with ego, or immature morons. (If you come to Silicon Valley and flash your MIT/hardwork, little will happen till you show you made your company succeed. Of course, unless you cheat yourself into the job - which AIG must've given its executives some valuable skills at!)

So goes the story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25desantis.html?em=&pagewanted=all

"I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money."

You sound like there was good money and bad money at AIG, and bad money never touched you. Somehow you've figured out a way to separate milk and water.

"I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds."

Excuse me, "political winds"?! You are an EVP, you want someone to breakdown "political winds" for you to the level of "pissed off public"?! As an EVP take ownership that agreeing to $1 salary and all bonus was your (only yours) strategic mistake. Blaming Liddy, your education, your parents, the politicians, the public, etc., isn't the issue. As an EVP, you should've been able to pinpoint the reason for your problem within a fraction of a second. That's what you are being paid for as an EVP - i.e., making decisive and as-close-to-correct-as-possible decisions (even when supplied with insufficient or misleading information) with speed and creating a following/alignment to its resolution in such a way that multiple problems are solved by your one move.

"We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house."

Huh - I want to be your plumber who promises fixing your pipes, works for 12 hours a day for a month, and ends up stopping any water in any faucet in your house. Per your logic, you'll still pay my company because I did some work. Results are the yardstick, mister. In your case, end-to-end results - you did your part of the job (of selling the units) - but the final race hasn't been run, the results are not out that all damage is undone, and/or the product is not complete for use by the consumer. What you are calling "results" or "profits" or "right to pay" is only a portion of the task - yet the task itself is not complete.

"Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you."

This situation you are in has a bigger picture. It is far more than between you and Liddy - this is round two between AIG and the public. After what your company has done to the public, should public feel honored to pay your contract through our funds?!
o Round #1 your company cheated us and didn't care where we ended up laying,
o and then you got dumped by your own team mates,
o and then you tried to jump ship but changed your mind and didn't,
o and in round #2 public screwed your company with you and Liddy in it - gave your company money to spend, but denied you the right to fill your pockets.
In all, for someone from MIT, what went around came around - however, your story's starting point is starting where your pain started. I would want to see how well you did at MIT and what the jack you did making responsible decisions at AIG. If I didn't read that right, you were an EVP, right?!

"So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree."

There you've answered it! World is fine and dandy as long as you've made money through the company and saved up - giving you the luxury to be a snob while and after the job. "Profit sharing" for you must be full of profits, and when it comes to "loss sharing" you should have the luxurious opportunity to jump ship. That's what you call fair. Now, again, you are responsible for making decisions for people around you - and for customers?! With this maturity, how again did you say you got this job?! Makes me wonder if there are more of your kind in AIG - in which case the bail out was a bigger mistake than having trusted you enough to let your company bankrupt so many of the public/corporations.

"On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients."

Did you think - or have you been in the practice of "thinking" practically/analytically - before you went public with your letter? Here's a befitting response for you:

"As soon as I finish paying the post-medical insurance but nonetheless significant medical bills for my husband's recent surgery, and recalculate our budget, factoring in the 10% involuntary pay cut together with increased state income taxes, I will turn my attention to an extravagant display of empathy for Mr. De Santis' post-tax $742,000 plight. Woe is he. — deranieri, San Diego"

You might say hardships are not a measure of business value as a response to "deranieri" above. I'll tell you, that's exactly my point to you.

If you are not a written-word person, but a picture person, hope you'll take the hint:


- Kaleem Aziz.

Product Manager:

A Product Manager's role is to create sustainable and profitable monetization.

Where
* "sustainable" refers to the following attributes: repeatable, unique differentiated strengths, difficult to copy, and those that add enough value to customer the pain points of customers that they are willing to pay a price to have the product.

For example, your product would not be sustainable:
- if what your product does is easy/simple to do, then the customer would do it themselves rather than pay for your product.
- if it wasn't repeatable, then a charlatan or copycat could make one time profits too by cheating or selling knock-offs.

* "profitable" refers to producing/creating it with far fewer means than the rewards over the entire term of funding; so there's enough to go around for the salaries and benefits of all those involved in the making of the product, for the payment of the materials/tools/space required, for the taxes and for the giving back to the community.

Sustainable profitable monetization implicitly means it is not enough that the Product Manager wins the battles/politics - he must win the war in the market.

In essence, Product Manager has to see that his product is (or will be) profitable to the extent paying for the salaries and benefits of all involved (not to mention his/her salary+benefits+"bonuses"); although he/she doesn't directly manage the employees who make the product, but only aligns them through their managers.

VP:

General's/VP's job is to make his side win, using Foot Soldiers who just want to be on [or, will switch to] whichever side is winning.

Since holding the job title doesn't define the mentality of the person - so it's completely possible the General/VP has the Foot Soldier's mentality to running the company (and switching sides), and some Foot Soldiers having a General's/VP's mentality of riding the tough times through - even if it means till the end.

CEO:

A CEOs role is creating a sustainable and economical/profitable organization using a complex people matching game. The people matching game is explained here: http://kaleemaziz.com/v-web/b2/index.php?p=313. Point being, the CEO needs to match the needs of the financier(s)/VCs/shareholders to make profits, with the needs of workers and managers to get a salary+benefits+bonuses and the needs of customers willing to pay for a product/service that eliminates their inconveniences/pains/struggles.

- Kaleem Aziz.

The mousepad I have been using for a few years says some profound things:



Sources on the internet:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3233/2434474032_f0fb1a45e0_o.jpg
or
http://chrisrussell.net/images/HP-rules-of-the-garage.pdf

- Kaleem Aziz.

There's a pattern emerging to the kind of expectations industry has about Product Managers; and also what the industry is formed off when it comes to existing Product Management teams that are interviewing the new batches. I'm focusing on recent timeline in a very localized geography to show that Product Management here may be stark different from how else it is outside of here. If it is similar to the below description everywhere else, then BINGO!, that'd be a huge coincidence in the patterns (although not accidental!).

1. Product Manager is the lowest entry point job for techies entering into business side of the organization. Program Managers in some companies manage/own distinct product features and have customer visibility, but in many companies Program Managers are just one promotion step up from Project Managers - essentially not requiring an MBA degree, but a certificate course like PMI being sufficient.



2. Approximately 85% of Product Managers (i.e., a sure majority) in the current industry do not have an MBA degree, even from a non-reputed school. How they got to be a Product Manager is a mystery, esp. if they were in a core development team that didn't meet the customer. While you get interviewed by them, there's a clear indication that they generally have clear communication skills but extremely poor (and sometimes almost laughable) business sense. If you have a business experience or a keen sense of what makes profits/sales, you can see through these people's bluff - even as they try to mask their inability to answer business advantage with self-confident chatter.



3. Many seasoned software engineers with anywhere from 5-20 years of experience as a Software Engineer, Developer or Architect have a difficult time getting into Product Management roles, even after clearing an MBA coursework from a reputed school. #2 is a reason, but a smaller reason. The bigger reason is the "domain expertise" (aka., technical skill) that is key for a technology product manager, which not every other Developer seems to have developed as a course of their career. The next big reason is that "techies" are geeky and unfriendly to customers - what with the uneasiness in being around people, the winding scrutinizing conversations on technical details and set beliefs in "analytical absolutes" as basis for logic which is contrary to how customers consuming the technology often times are. Going by the "learned" standards of these technically accomplished people, customers would be foolish nincompoops - and they'd make sure they let the customers candidly know that. Hence, the reluctance in letting the long-time developers into the vicinity of valued paying customers.



4. Approximately 60% of Directors of Product Management and Strategy as well as VPs of Products Strategy do not have an MBA degree. They may have had done coursework at community colleges and specialized training/coaching by the company to enhance their managerial/leadership skills; but most likely they learned what they learned by experiences in the field and being the best of the lot in investing/volunteering their efforts for the company for little cost to the company. They tend to operate their department by self-confidence in their past (aka., gut feelings of an experienced veteran), commanding ownership over the respect subordinates offer for their title and past success, and most importantly, the greater visibility/vision the kind of information at their level offers them. They've risen by sticking with a company through its highs and lows - with the highs happening because of them, and in the lows they taking the place of people who leave for greener pastures.



5. There are typically 4-6 phases of interviews.
   
   
   1. The first and second phases are phone screens. First one typically by the recruiter to get a better understanding of your skills and number of years of experience at it. He/she is probably making notes of your strengths and accomplishments, to lobby for you - their interest being the fat comission they upon if you are hired through them. They don't love you for your skills, but are sweet spoken and want to see you make it into the position on your own.
   
   
   
   2. The second phone screen is by the recruiting manager - usually the Director of Product Management or a Senior Product Manager who is moving on to a different group/product or offloading a product to a peer or subordinate. This will be your future boss at the company. His questions are usually about your contributions/achievements at your current company, reason why you are leaving, assessing your technical strength and ascertaining your customer-facing presence of mind as well as communication skills. As a part of the communication skills, you may be asked to submit a sample of your writing - a written document that you had authored at your company or school.
   
   
   
   3. The third phase is to bring you in for face-to-face round of interviews. You may have to bring in a form and NDA signed that the recruiter had mailed you previously. Typical interviewers are your future boss, the peer Product Managers you'll work with, Director of Sales, VP of Products/Strategy, Product Marketing Manager, Engineering Director/Manager and Product's Architect. Presence of Architect signifies some special things though. He/she is the founder/father of the product and holds a special place in the company. You've practically to prove chemistry - as if it is a date to impress. Steer away from technical depths, but stay at market level abstraction - because going to deep into the details will set red flags in the Architect's mind about him losing his importance/job. Market level abstraction still has to be accurate and data driven, because a successful Architect of this kind has himself been a part-time Product Manager while they are hunting for one by interviewing the likes of you. Sometimes, the Engineering Director or Manager would've been the part-time Product Manager. Some of these folks are lousy at business presence and loath easy user interfaces and presentable attire - but send the right kind of vibes into customers who send their Architects in to work peer-to-peer with these Architects. Among architect-to-architect conversations, at one sales phase, one architect is able to excite the other in terms of the product capability and, thereby, resulting in sales - which makes them a market success besides a technology-guru that they already are. Some of these architects/managers are, on the other hand, very keen with their professionalism and ability to converse at various levels of a customer organization.
   
   
   
   4. The next phase is that of doing a powerpoint presentation to a bunch of product managers, sales manager, engineering manager and architect. The topic is generally a technical topic (rather than Iraq war), and you are evaluated on the quality of the presentation and the way you handle the questions. Here's the real test of how well you understand a technology, its ability to create value, and its ability to form a sale-able/profitable product. You'll justify yourself by doing the following things in your presentation:
      
      
      1. Clearly and succinctly state the purpose and end result up front. So if you are going to say that a particular method is going to financially beat a competitor at its own game, you have to say that towards the starting. The attempt of saying it towards the end with a "ta-da! here's a great twist in the ending!" will fail for various reasons - primarily because they'll heckle you on purpose at the beginning of the presentation itself, and get to hear the end if you push it (at which point they'll feel that you pushed them beyond where they said "STOP").
      
      
      
      2. Discuss both pros and cons on each topic on a single slide (each). Often times when you are discussing the pros, they'll heckle you with questions about the cons. Hence, the recommendation to list both pros and cons alongside each other.
      
      
      
      3. Use data to clear doubts about "proportionality". If you claim one attribute over the other, people's imaginations run wild and drag the possibilities to the extremes at each end. If you clarify (in words) the proportion not being one extreme they think it to be, they'll drag the concept to the other extreme possibility and give you a hard time.
      
      
      
      4. Feel free to go back and forth on the slides as per the questions. However, if you ever find that your next slide answers the very question they ask on this slide, proudly point out your flow of slides being natural.
      
      
      
      5. If you have the option, don't pick a topic that they are strong in (or are strongly biased in). For example, they may be strong in a particular medical device process, and dipping from your past experience, you may think your insights (either to what you did right or what they are doing wrong) would impress them beyond bounds - but due to general agreement/consensus in their methods (over those of other known methods - some practiced by their competition) they'll find you illiterate, illogical, unreasonable and even demeaning to their sentiments.
      
      
      
      6. If you have the option, stay away from your favorite patented ideas, published articles, business plans and peer-reviewed works. Their criticism of your work (as perceived by you) - as a part of their questioning process - will make you more and more defensive of your idea. If your idea is a unique/radical approach to how things are done today - their debate may even discourage/dissuade you (e.g., that they tried it themselves without success, take you down the rabbit hole so deep that the debate turns into clarifying their misconceptions, etc.). If your idea is quite understandable and do-able as the next step in their progression, they will use the tip and they do not hire you for it.
      
      
      
      7. Keep a stash of lesser heard bright ideas that you can expense as free gifts to impress your interviewers. Pure conversational bright spots will not sway their mind as much as being able to engage them in a useful/interesting discussion that gives-and-takes respect.
      
      
      
      8. Similarly, keep a stash of interesting questions you could ask them. Asking intelligent questions about their work makes them feel you care about their challenges and will bond them with you.
   
   
   
   5. The final phases are usually done to weed out close competition with you - essentially when they are unable to make up their mind between you and another (couple) folks they interviewed. Sometimes it is done because a key interviewer was on vacation. This phase also has some closing ceremonies and turning in some details that will result in you background (criminal/moral) check, drug testing, references check, and in some cases your financial/credit standing.



6. Clear communication is a key requirement that may make-or-break the deal. Use short concise sentences in your answers. Form the sentence in your head first. Then relay them out in you speech. Your job will be one of being able to give consistent "direction" to various people, without contradicting yourself.



7. Another key question is the reason why you'll be leaving your current job. Any sign you give of wanting not to travel, citing personal restrictions, willing to slow down in life, wanting to be too ambitious, etc., are quickly seen negatively. The hiring managers seem to want a very strong reason for leaving your current job, so they'll not lose you for a silly reason themselves. Product Management is about ownership in thick and thin of the product life cycle - and they want dedication to the product/company.



8. Few companies are giving stock options - an attraction in previous years that used to keep you interested in company's profitability over several years of vesting. This change has likely happened because of how Sarbanes-Oxley requires stock options to be expensed - but that's a guess. In this case, Product Manager job these days is no different from a Software Engineer job.



9. 50-500 Software Engineers may be hired in the same company that hires 4 to 12 Product Managers. This has several implications for Product Managers:
   
   
   1. Once you fail in the interview with a particular mid-sized or large-cap company, you'd have failed in all other opportunities that company is offering.
   
   
   2. You'll end up meeting these same guys in trade-shows, conferences, etc., from time to time. Unlike while being a Software Engineer/Architect/Project Manager (esp. inward facing one), you'll see how small the business world is.
   
   
   
   3. You'll have to manage multiple bosses and keep diverse people happy, as well as earn the respect of diverse set of people. Get into the habit of passing on freebies and getting them (decent) gifts from your most recent vacations. Don't be cheap in the gifts, parties, clothes you wear and the accessories you carry - because it is all part of the package to handle "visibility".
   
   
   
   4. Failure costs dearly, including being sacked. Product Managers are one of the first ones to go in troubled times or when your product doesn't succeed as calculated (by you) at the time of its conception.
   
   
   
   5. Networking into the company's existing Product Managers is a good way of getting your resume seen by people who make decisions on that role. Infact, you have a fatter chance because referral from within the team is valued even more so than it is for Development jobs.



10. Last, but not the least, many times competitors interview "Product Manager wannabes" to statistically mint the breadth of ideas into their company for free. That this is done with Product Management jobs is now becoming an openly known industry side-trick, at least in Silicon Valley.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Forty to fifty grand later, when you thought you were paying that to an easy transition into business world, your boat is rocked by folks telling you "MBA is not valued that much these days - you need to prove yourself". Indeed, it was being told to you all along by mentors, network channels and the school's course work that you need to prove yourself -- but that coursework, the newborn at home, the "keep the job" defensive life during an MBA, the long commute, the spouse's challenges at job, the new house with high mortgage payment (for a low interest rate opportunity), etc., kept you away from even attempting what you thought they were saying. Searching for that new job, or preparing for it (in as many ways as sending out resumes, following up, screening offers, studying for interviews, get phone/travel time to get interviewed, getting screened on prospective jobs, remorse/mourning upon losing that "would-have-been-cool-job" also while regretting the time/effort spent hunting for it, threat of your company guessing you were looking for one, risk of losing a grade/attendance/team-favorability in MBA, etc.), was such a remote possibility then -- but now it strikes you in the full color of how stuck/screwed/fucked you are! No matter how right your priorities were then, they strike you as wrong now.

From the market standpoint, getting the MBA degree will not transform your valuable-ness overnight. They'll still link it up to what you've been doing at work. They might give you an opportunity, but they'll consider that risky and they'll consider that they are giving you an opportunity while they can just as well have hired a professional who has been-there-done-that.

Tips for recent techie MBAs:

Here are some thoughts that may work in battling this situation:

• In the resume, write about what "you did" in terms of the role you played, even if your position itself was a developer/architect.


• Tell your company, "I lack these customer/marketing/managerial skills you mention that are needed for this job, and without you giving me an opportunity, how'll I get them? All I am asking for is to give me a chance."


• Question at each point "What's the money I am making for the company?" and "What's the value I am adding for the customer?" before you pity/challenge "Why am I being paid what I am being paid?". Know that there's a link between your job-retention/salary and the performance/role you provide for the company. They grow, then you grow. It is difficult to ask that they pay before they grow due to you. The latter would be gambling and few businesses like that - unless you show you are promising in some other way.


• Find those managers/executives that have a soft-corner, favorability or obligation to you over a period that you stayed at the company. Encash those favors (aka., "network equity") now.


• Promise something that is beneficial to the folks that hold the power to create/fill the job of your dreams -- and, of course, work on delivering it. Otherwise it'll not hold their attention/interest/motivation.


• Don't give too much weightage to the short-term incidents -- concentrate on year long growth patterns, and invest lot of effort in the job by getting out of comfort zone where there's money to be saved/made for your organization.


• Seek opportunities outside the company to know what the rest of the world values. If the rest of the world holds better jobs or growth opportunities than current job, or vice versa -- you will get a better answer to what you should be focusing your time/effort on doing and negotiating.

Book on the topic:

The former CEO of a company that was acquired in Web 2.0 space and an MBA alumnus from Carnegie Mellon university gave this book as a gift to me recently, and recommends it in making the job transition at various levels:
http://www.ritesite.com/Main/aboutBook.cfm

I am still reading it, and so far I think it is useful to read. It always helps if we know how positions are opened at those levels, and what are the basic motivations recruiters and recruiting managers have at the time of hiring.

My advice: You ultimately need 1 job, so build up the resistance to being demotivated by the 99 others! Finding a job is like finding your place in this world, and it is not supposed to be easy.

School's career center:

Can a school's career center be of help in this matter? I think, anything seemingly simple can be a huge help! Even advice that tells you what you'll be faced with when you step out of the MBA program. Network discussions on this topic between alumni and students are immensely valuable in shaping the community going forward.

When the school helps its recent alumni, it helps itself when it needs donations from a "richer" and more successful alumni. I think even in this matter we should seek the MBA way -- to "plug any inefficiency in the markets". Finding fault with our system (without denying our strengths) shouldn't be construed as lack of patriotism/loyalty towards the school -- but instead must be seen as a desire for improvement. While the thought is right, I think the approach to solve the issue must be improvised to where it guarantees results.

My take: Work with the school on issues/feedback you have. Fill their surveys that seek feedback, as that's the surest way of giving your school your collective input. What can work better than telling the school when the school itself asks for it? On the other hand, a few of our own fuming on the side doesn't create the same confidence in a solution that "collective data" on our preferences does.

Before interfacing with the school, generate (through brainstorming) ideas that will work for everyone, as against those that suit a few of us. Again networks can help setup focussed discussions, or better still propagation of polls to address the preferences on this topic without all the e-mails back-and-forth.

With respect to taking ownership of issues, consider the next point as one way.

GSAC:

Related to making a difference, if you want to lead change while still on SCU's school campus for next year, consider joining GSAC. Contact either myself of any other GSAC member with your interest, as school is honoring recommendations by current GSAC members.

Approaching the school as a GSAC member that represents other students may work better -- than trying to create consensus among diverse students and then petitioning the school for change. I suppose that's because, through GSAC, you are speaking directly to school's administration that welcomes ideas for change.

- Kaleem Aziz.

In a negotiation, often times in terms of "the end goal", there is one right way that is gainful for all parties concerned. Win-win negotiations is a way to get closest to this right way -- and the time spent in those attempts (e.g., BATNA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BATNA) is a way to identify that optimized decision for both parties.

Having said that, since the perfect "right" way is a theoretical/hypothetical point that often cannot be stated or reached; it just boils down to applying it as a simple fact that: one party is more right than the other. However, current management courses around the world teach how to win the argument or having it your way by using several techniques (behavioral, psychological). In essence, to put it the harsh way, they help you win the argument and have it your way even in a "Desert Survival game", where your winning may result in the death of the entire team (yourself included). Even in win-win negotiations, the consideration is not given whether the item in discussion is sensitive enough that the other party will not negotiate on the table (avoidance). For example, even in rationally evaluated cases your BATNA may tell you that you should negotiate, and theirs may say it is not worth it for them. However, often times it is an immeasurable/intangible emotional/religious/personal factor that causes avoidance. But the net result is that with avoidance win-win strategy loses -- because win-win relies heavily on information about the other party (in comparison to your own) and participation/effort. In this manner, management-centric courses may try to treat the symptom and not the disease.

The case I make w.r.t negotiation and/or conflict resolution is the "economics" of it. Once you can employ economics of it to find the most economical outcome, you become more towards being "right' (i.e., closer to the perfect "right" way). Also, using economics you can do diplomacy (i.e., all forms of negotiations and conflict resolution efforts) as well as war (i.e., conflict itself). A special branch of economics (aka., Game Theory and its derivatives) deals with competitive games (conflict), and have since then been extended to collaborative games (multiple person scenarios where everyone wins). The complexity quickly increases with the increase in these number of players, factors and end goals; and in being able to find the "one right" economic outcome. Hence, consultants are hired by top companies like Cisco to do their negotiations and negotiated contracts -- as well as to study their partners and competitors. Once you've done these studies, you are in a better position to negotiate. This organizational team that is rich in this information can then be tied with the corporate strategy team creating great strategies that are economically aligned and "successful in the market". Win-lose or win-win then become a short-term goal vs. long-term goal strategy. Smaller organizations and individuals, however, can't afford these consulting services (nor can sometimes understand what they do!). Also, there are not enough "market data resources" and "tools" available to construct your own models for these things -- both within the company as well as for dealing with the external competitive/partner landscape. This situation is unlike how such data/tools are available for marketing and product strategy.

With my interest piqued in such aspects, I am looking forward to this course being offered at SCU by a great economic professor:

ECON 430 - Negotiation, Business Strategy, and Game Theory

General techniques for analyzing business conflict and cooperation problems. Emphasis on the negotiation process from analytical and behavioral perspectives. The manager as mediator and arbitrator. Use of game theory to conduct strategic analysis internal and external to the firm. Applications to agenda construction, voting procedures, labor negotiation, agency contracting, pricing policy, timing of new product introduction.

If not, may be someone could recommend a Stanford course I could take on "social and behavioral economics" and "game theory" that ties well into the constructs/applications of "utility theory" and "social welfare function".

In the end, I'd would love the world to have ended up with developing a simple market solution that makes multi-party collaborative games scalable to thousands or millions of users; with costs lowered such that anyone can afford them (say, like a cell-phone) -- without needing a "personal Wharton/Stanford/MIT consultant" for each individual and/or small company that can't afford it today. With such a thing, the world can become a more unified place, with several social evils of injustice, poverty, poor leadership and war being marginalized (if not entirely eliminated) to corners where the tool is not available.

May be a problem for Google to solve?

- Kaleem Aziz.

In terms of concrete value, this course may not handout a lesson or framework. It just shows different colors of business, and the different colorations we each give to the domain of business (as business people making decisions within this world). It is a trip to discover/analyze the psychology of speakers, and to ponder what may have made them successful.

Not all speakers are great in presenting or in the amount of success they've seen in the market -- they are just different. Some of them seem to have a SCU-culture inclination that draws them here (be it either to recruit bright students or to give back). Like most management classes, if one loves quant/data/analytics it leaves you hollow, i.e., it almost sounds amateur/trivial common sense (if not b.s); or stirs a lot of questions without providing concrete answers.

Although it may turn out to be puffy and flowery talk that doesn't stick, on the other hand it may help you integrate the lessons from various management, finance, sales, operations and innovation subjects into a single approach. For example, "a single approach" with respect to priorities in business decision making, even if as flavors of executive personalities.

My personal pleasure was in presenting a business idea of "Measuring Intangibles" as a part of the assignments, since it happened to be already on the lines of integrating all lessons taught in MBA coursework into sort-of "one over-spanning system of thinking". In the process, I was able to "see/explain" why the findings of the book we read matched the real world, specifically, in terms of economic concepts.

See:
The Challenge of Measuring Intangibles
Starting up a business around Measuring Intangibles

- Kaleem Aziz.

The question to do their MBA at either SCU or Berkeley props up on the SCU networks occassionally, considering both are located in Silicon Valley and offer part-time/executive MBA programs. And the answers are never simple, coherent and without their self-contradicting aspects. So, in this blog, I'll attempt to analyze why and how to go about making this decision.

Sometimes, simple things like not being able to get into Berkeley help one make up their mind, but that's the simple solution. If I learnt anything, I'd advise you to attempt one application at one time, since each application is unique and requires full attention. Those silly essays about yourself are important for the school, although chances are the reader is eventually going to have to just skim them (no matter how passionately you've written them!). Your selling point is to provide a great story (re: you) for them to read.

Now coming to actually deliberately deciding which is more applicable for you; know that several years ago I was in this position. Hence, I'll do something different from the kind of help I got then.

The advice I got, and was right on many counts, was to first find out what I wanted to do in life. Well, I had a hazy picture of what an MBA does before joining it -- and I was really asking what do MBAs do after they finish? It turns out MBAs do a lot of different things when they come out -- the combinations are mind boggling (engineering manager, finance manager, product manager, various industries, changing career completely, etc., etc.). It was really a circular dependency at that level -- in that, you can't answer the second till you knew the first, but you were seeking the second to know the first!

Then the advice differed depending upon who I spoke to. The very thing one said was "the way to go" was negated by another -- and I was like "you guys are confusing me more than I initially was!".

Here's what I have found out at the end of the tunnel years later upon completing my MBA. But consider my inputs just one sample among many inputs -- and that'll be the way to put yourself in many folks' position to make up your mind.

There are two to three key parts to the equation on academics and education that people use very interchangeably. If you focus on them, you'll be able to distill your decisions through the noise and overwhelmingly different opinions -- and be able to discern what apply to you and how importantly.

a) Your Career (promotion, bonus, stocks, etc.)
b) Your Family (savings, health, stage in life, etc.)
c) Period or Time or Duration in consideration (aka., short-term vs. long-term)

For example, if you build your "world box" around career-heavy factors, you'll have to spend that extra effort/money trying to get into Berkeley and leverage network connections that are considered premium in the industry. In my opinion, Berkeley's MBA program is not hyped up -- hype can't carry on hype, only results do. And they have very good results in the market, which is undeniable. It may just not be applicable to some of our criteria. What I mean is that a BMW is a BMW (i.e., "looks like one and drives like one") whether we choose to drive one, or instead choose to drive a Toyota for our personal reasons (which may be ingrained in assessment of superior value to ourself). So also, if your short-term has a commute problem, a new born baby at home, limited cash to spend and/or a bad/difficult/unsupportive boss -- then you are going to have to watch that short-term risks/threats closer than your long-term. That's when folks' who have unlimited cash or an ability to an additional loan don't see your problems -- even as they [and you yourself] very well know the long-term gain can't be denied when you come out of Berkeley (all other things remaining constant). For everything said, you could almost create an Excel sheet on those 3 parameters above, give them your importance, and then factor in any new advice people have given you.

It seems to me the advice people give is based on a rosy picture of places they've not been to -- hence, I've seen Berkeley students rave about SCU. Even as, at SCU, I've spent a sizable number of quarters telling myself that a professor is either spewing b.s or is cutting off the sessions with the "bare basics" -- myself being completely dissatisfied with the course in question. Suprisingly, some of those courses had gotten strong reviews from other SCU students. Finally, nothing was more depressing than seeing a professor be extremely poor on the subject and students having no clue in going gaga about his/her amicable/simple/anything nature. One obvious explanation for that was easy MBA course and easy "good" grade was an important thing for some; and poor content as the excuse didn't cut it for the others. In sampling these mindsets, I've learnt that people at SCU, like at any other MBA program, are operating in two broad categories w.r.t the above parameters. Once you've put them in that box, you know their bias and their motivation; and whether you are sharing a box with them on that issue. However, to give the story a proper ending, when I reached the final quarter, and things started coming together in the "advanced classes" -- I saw my peers in new light. I must say, we have some of the brightest people and very great enterprenuerial ideas that could potentially be great successes in the industry. I agree there's no shortage of good ideas these days; the problem that stands out is whether we can execute them with the SCU network's reach, say, like Stanford grads can/do.

Most of our decision-making thoughts on this issue, or any other for that matter, are linear -- in that we are considering one or two of the three matters. When we are thinking of short-term family issues, we switch off (or instinctively play down) on the implications of long-term career issues. However, in reality these aspects are terribly interconnected with each other -- and some of those interconnections are better understood as you go through the MBA. This transforms you and your needs/perspectives -- and you want to do/be a different thing even as you are doing your MBA! Given this complexity, how do you decide?

I've taken this approach/answer: go in with an open mind to learn, keep asking these questions, and keep the possibilities open. Something strikes you as important/genuine, explore it first. There's nothing wrong in changing the course later, say, because your situation changed. If you can't think far enough ahead, try your best to plan and then pick a fork in the road from there on to go as rationally as you can. If you were wrong, you'll know how to recognize it (and what people meant when they spoke of it) as a part of your "unique experience". To enrich/balance/round this "experience", diversity is invaluable; even if you plan on staying within your domain. Some successful folks go the place where they can find more of a diversity, say, to challenge their current values and subsequently improve themselves. That's where you get fresh ideas and abilities to get into places others who stay within your domain can't.

Most importantly, assimilate the new facets, and let yourself "evolve" into something better at each step.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Gerry Lemberg is a VC and GSAC member who tries to educate his entrepreneurs. Here are some of his very insightful and knowledgeable articles on writing business plans for VC's eyes. Other articles are available only by subscription from his VC sites.

http://www.wirelessmatch.co.uk/information_for_companies/company_registration/executive_summary_%5Fthe_most_important_document_you_will_ever_write.phtml
http://www.sacredcowdung.com/archives/2006/03/planning_fundin.html

- Kaleem Aziz.

When you start the task of making the cake, a few people are willing to help. They claim it's not as fun as doing the other things they could in the meantime.

When the cake is ready, smells and appears appealing, however, irrespective of what they had done while the cake was being made, they want in for a piece of it.

Similarly, while starting a company, everyone you need to do the task shies away -- as if you are begging them to do you a favor. However, when you prove the model, and there's enough money for everyone to pay their mortgages, everyone wants to see how they can join-in the party to have the fun with the green.

Lesson: Everyone wants to see the proof of what's in it for them.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Someone asked that question in our group. It caused a very interesting discussion, and we went through some brilliant perspectives. My thoughts, just to give an alternate perspective, follow ...

What do you want to do with MBA:

It is extremely difficult to give one answer to this question for numerous reasons. But here are the few that I have found:

1. it is a personal matter, i.e., varies from person to person


2. people change right while doing the MBA and identify that there's something else they'd want to do with this degree


3. some don't like how MBA is being served as "one solution fit all", plus the time bandwidth issues they have, and often consider leaving (even if they don't)

When I had posed this question to MBAs several years ago, they wouldn't answer what I could do with it. I felt they evaded it or were not coherent enough. That feeling is typical, considering they were saying between the lines: "This is not a question you ask others. This is a question you ask yourself."

Much of the MBA, even if it is served as "here are all the answers you ever wanted", is about "knowing yourself". What one does with that new found ability is entirely upto each person -- some unleash themselves as ME Inc., some utilize their deeper wisdom to act towards results rather than speak about it, and some others make a switch in career that is so radical that they are humbled into being in a learning mode (as against mentoring mode) in their careers.

A focus on value creates dynamics that are unpredictable for each person -- for example, one dynamic is that of people coming to an MBA with a picture in their mind about how it will all be. Instead they find that they are not able to execute on their idea, and headout of the MBA to start a business right away. A few of them succeed too. (A colleague sent me this article that talks about dropping out from MBA: http://www.businessweek.com/print/bschools/content/apr2006/bs20060420_9021_bs001.htm?chan=bs). Some others use that picture in their mind of the "perfect MBA" to play down what's being taught to them at school -- you'll see several persons like that too. But then, that's not to say MBA coursework is perfect, either. Many others sincerely want only to be promoted to a manager or director in the same organization they work at, or simply want to be able to make better investments with their money (e.g., VCs, etc.).

Although entreprenuership is a cool concept, not all MBAs seem inclined to make their lives go through that. All of this points to the very personal nature of things.

Net, MBA is just a tool, and it can be applied in many ways. How you apply, you'll see, is upto each person. Some MBAs had told me that no matter how profound my MBA experience, they found that MBA only gives you the "vocabulary"; there's so much more to learn in the business world with that vocabulary. Infact, for success at executive levels, you need a core domain knowledge of the industry you are operating in than an MBA degree -- that goes to tell that importance of the degree itself must be tempered to the understanding of the domain you have. (Yet many business persons contradict this by saying: being in business profession like finance, accounting, etc., has helped them to move from one company to another in very diverse domains.)

Worth of SCU (LSB) MBA:

Many people join MBA also considering they'll be a CEO a few years after they come out of it. CEO is a dream role many MBA/business people want. Similarly, I had come to SCU (Leavey School of Business) hoping to be able to found a very large company -- simply fascinated by large scale problems. Sometime through the coursework, I detected that the leadership and management courses at SCU are aimed at making you middle-managers or suited for lower executive levels. Although I am still not sure if it is completely true, the entire positioning of SCU appears to be geared to deliver large number of middle-managers/executives to big companies like Cisco, HP, Intel, EMC, Sony, etc; alongside a few chance self-driven entreprenuers. One thought I've received in response is that rising to higher levels happens through crossing the middle-manager stage. True, but in Silicon Valley, we break that custom too by creating revolutionary business organizations. On those lines, recently, a speaker in our IDIS 612 class hoped one of us could do the equivalent of what Google has done for Stanford -- but I don't know if that is possible with so many factors playing into placing SCU grads into "comparatively lower" executive/managerial positions after MBA. But it is evident, we do need a string of more spectacular startup [IPO or acquisition] successes to shake things up for us - although, only time will tell, eventually.

Strategizing coursework:

The hardwork of the working students is admirable, but paying for school fees and extras plays into employer's needs too. Their employees with an MBA mindset help them out, and if it's at a cost of training, they are usually willing to -- hopefully if they can be guaranteed some direct benefit out of it too. On the other hand, it is one employment benefit they offer that helps them hire smarter talent than their competitors can afford.

Now, if you are hardworking and have demonstrated industry/domain experience, try to get your coursework (and networking!) planned strategically for maximum value. I DO NOT recommend taking professors who (a) just teach you what's known in textbook and cases, (b) explain the course material better than the textbook, or (c) try to answer all situations for everyone. Instead concentrate on professor's who provide (a) rigorous passionate business concepts, (b) make you think about it on your own or inspire you (sometimes for life!), and (c) are not hesitant in revealing profound connections they have made in decades of their career, so we can benefit from what they didn't know at their times. On those lines, I personally recommend the courses by following professors at SCU: Chris Paisley, Naren Agrawal, Linda Kamas and Dennis Moberg. It is possible other professors also meet these criteria -- and other alumni/students are continuously helping us find such professors for our gain.

Strategizing networking:

A colleague brought up an important point. "Is there dilution of quality and value as a result of people getting their companies to pay for their education?"

Look at schools that are ranked below us, and you'll see that they admit anyone who wants an MBA. If you join such an MBA program, even after being hardworking and practical, you'll get a network of people who have joined to pay for a degree -- again, with them possibly funded by employers at times for the same reasons. Their lack of business passion and sense of achievement will continue to drag you down when you want to execute in a business role. Look at schools that are ranked above us, and you'll see that they have stricter selection criteria and tougher coursework -- shaping them to be better leaders in their domains, as well as providing them with diverse classmates who are passionate and rigorous in their course work. Their network will enable them to execute on demanding goals in the industry (e.g., VCs with deep pockets, angel investors in almost every domain, access to executive level contacts throughout the world, etc.). With average network contacts, you can only go so far -- and the school's business model reflects (unfairly) on your ability (although you may personally be capable of lot more - leadership wise). I am not faulting a school -- as numerous more educated people are a better thing than a select few having the privilege to study, but quality may not be the cream in comparison to top schools. (As one goes on this line of analysis, you'll find each school offer a vision/mission of their own - in essence, having a "personality" of their own.)

I believe that the only solution to such a predicament is to realize that many of us are cutting corners into the MBA program, and to make the best of what can be done. I propose strengthening our network ties and aligning the community to better execution in the industry (i.e., create examples of success). Instead of the ability to use one contact with deep connections or $$$ like top schools attempt, huddle into groups that can harness the same effect. Ultimately there has to be a deeper passion for business, a belonging as a group, and a sincere willingness to let go of the "I" to a greater extent, in order to conquer bigger hurdles than "one person" can by himself/herself.

I don't know all the right ways, but where we tend to be a crowd with [individually] one agenda each we want to impose on others; we could instead continue into being people who use "shared agendas of the larger SCU community" to successfully fuel our own individual agendas at work-n-life. And then give back some to empower yet another cycle of the process.

I think I've said a lot there, but the point is: given our collective situation, find power in togetherness and in alignment in our acts of giving-n-taking -- because alone you'll only do so much.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Here are some thoughts on why leaders (or CEOs) are not plug-n-play:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=5361&t=leadership&iss=y

Not all managers are equally suited to all business situations. The strategic skills required to control costs in the face of fierce price competition are not the same as those required to improve the top line in a rapidly growing business or balance investment against cash flow to survive in a highly cyclical business.

Domain experience at high level of abstraction (w.r.t scale) is as important as, if not more important than, managerial experience.

While a leader that lacks the ability to listen is a pain to manage, and put up with; if all a leader does is hear and listen from his experts, and doesn't have the ability to make a decision (i.e., doesn't know the urgency of "why" he should be making one), all we'd need was experts and no leader. That is, a transperant leader who doesn't have any power of his own would suffice. So, a leader must have a strong say, and a backing by some power and authority invested in his capabilities.

On the other hand, if the leader knows management of people, but in a domain different from the one he is currently leading, he'll use the tricks and techniques of one domain onto the people with challenges of the other. For example, a person who has managed people in art industry would not be able to manage people in engineering industry -- as he has to deal with hardcore professionals who don't appreciate art like pressures and art like differentiation. Whether that's good or detriment to itself depends upon the factors in question, but one manager with a different mindset cannot successfully change the world in another domain.

This reminded me of the article on CFO.com that I had blogged a while earlier on CFO's challenges:

You're Not CFO Material
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,8874|BS,00.html?f=options

A prospective CFO also needs to dig into the company’s core competencies, says ImmunoSite’s Vennare, who demands that his finance chief understands the company’s business and financial model, not to mention its relationship with the capital markets. “If the CFO is still learning about my business, the learning curve is already too long,” notes Vennare. He adds that a candidate hoping to join the C-level should be more of a teacher than a student. “If I wanted a CFO who was just good at finance,” quips Vennare, “I would have hired a graduate student with good marks in finance.”

In essence, a leader needs to know the waters he will be operating in as much as the ship he'll be commanding. At these times, leaders who can adapt to changing environments successfully offer the best brain-value to the profession.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Leadership courses pump up the attributes of the leader more than the values, results and net economic value add they provided. Typical examples are:

• "leaders have a charismatic personality"
• "leaders give a sense of urgency"
• "leaders point to a 3rd party or outside threat"
• "leaders set a global benchmark"
• "leaders demonstrate a purpose or a core value"
• "leaders convince [their followers] their claim to a vision of long-term", etc.

How about, for once, considering that the leaders that succeeded actually meant it, rather than acted it out? I mean, read the examples above again, and ask yourself: don't they give you a sense that those attributes can be faked? Now consider:

• "leaders have demonstrated results that convince people of their ability to decide for them"
• "people tend to get convinced that a leader is indeed good for them"
• "people actually [willingly] subordinate their control in the hands of the leader"
• "people trust a leader to provide them a better direction, whether they've themselves done the right thing or not"
• "people don't want to know everything, they want to just have everything, and leader only succeeds by filling the gap successfully"
• "leaders not only have the attributes to convince people, they have the attributes to not break their trust by delivering the promised results in return for the tiny parts their followers turnaround as part of their promise"
• "leaders deal with the inventory of people like sheperds deal with the livestock of sheep that wants to graze freely and happily while sheperd deals with the strategy for the wolf and finding safe lands with lush greenery - say, in exchange for wool"
• "leaders really believe they can do it, they earnestly want to do it, and most of all spend a great deal of time questioning and cross-examining themselves about their relationship to everything else that goes around them"
• "leaders tend to take the blame and give the credit to their people's efforts, because they feel that way - not because it is a great PR technique that can win hearts", etc.

This topic was sponsored by the inefficiency of management literature and analysis that seems to approach the problem "rationally", "statistically" and "logically" -- but analyze only the skin or periphery of the issue. They touch the "attributes of the leader" in vacuum, but leave out the "connection of the leader to everything else". Specifically, "a leader is passionate" is an attribute that leaves out the reasons why he/she believes in those values, how strongly, how much of it is driven to what other people consider "value", how their passionate disposition "connects" with others, and how their consistency provides clear path of alignment for others. Superfluously, the former kind of literature describes the problem as if it is the description of the phenomenon, without describing how deeply people are affected by such a situation. While technically right, it is as helpful as describing waves accurately; when it is actually a situation of flood. The core problem is glazed around because they don't see a marker or a pointer, and any amount of deduction would be construed as unproven myth rather than a cause-n-effect "connection" -- a "causation" that if considered rigorously can be proved, as well as re-used over-and-over again, almost like the laws of physics.

See also Economics of Leadership.

- Kaleem Aziz.

A little background, to start off. International business has many more challenges than just business fundamentals. The problems are numerous from price gouging, corruption, contradictory laws, inability to access premium fuel rates, problems in execution due to difference in delivery w.r.t promises, simple difference in perception on how to value "time", etc. As US businesses start working with rest of the world in the name of exports, imports or out-sourcing; there'll be several of these factors the business community will need to deal with globally.

This is one reason why I think any MBA syllabus' decision not to compare-n-contrast US Law with diverse International Law practices is an incorrect choice -- you can sometimes appreciate right/good only when you know how wrong/bad affects you. Same goes for US Accounting vs. International aspects of the same. Contrasting US Law, US Accounting, etc., with international practices either gives you appreciation of US business aspects, or provides food for thought on how our business environment can be further improved. Although some MBA courses drop the international part of business problems, as a part of SCU community, one can continue to learn about these issues lifelong. A few other SCU networks to engage in such diversity include: SCU IBN, SCU SAMBAN and SCU CABC.

To some extent, you'll play with fire, mess with drugs, be a jerk in relationships, or speed in your car if you haven't understood how/why it can be hurtful. Once hurt, you tend to be more careful. On the flip side, if you were never hurt and were kept away by "parental guidance", you'll not know why it is wrong in a new-age -- you'll just carry forward that it's "bad", "evil" or "wrong" without re-considering it. Such reliance on unquestioned biases creates resistance to exploration and change in a new age within a new environment where those challenges may simply not exist! See also: Humans learn only from Mistakes, Humanity from Disasters.

Reservation (or quota) in India is a "politically charged" topic. Read some info on this practice here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India

While we are at it, another interesting, but contrasting, scenario is that of students/workers in France protesting on CPE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrat_premi%C3%A8re_embauche

MERITOCRACY

Without taking any side, but using only the business (or economic) bias, my view from my hill is that it is a market inefficiency. The key question to consider is: Is hiring (or firing) in the schools and business organizations based on merit? It seems, the bottom line of many of these issues is "merit".

Merit based human resources face two primary challenges: (a) merit based hiring practices, and (b) merit based retention. Both of these are difficult -- when merit based hiring fails, you have incapable or unwilling employees in your organizations; whereas when merit based retention (or lay-offs or "firing") fail, you have incompetent employees stagnating the organization and providing almost like a "breeding ground" for other kinds of incompetence. Going on those lines, if an entire nation doesn't have enough competency in a particular field, it sometimes becomes necessary to still aim for merit and performance instead of protectionistic job retention policies for citizens. The net essence is that economics is not run by a race or belief, but by action and work -- and a policy of "let the best guy win" to a job may be more stressful in finding and retaining the job, but plays out its benefits in giving back the best kind of products and services (aka., economic progress in terms of higher life style). See also how Progress Quotient can be employed to differentiate personal attributes with values that give a meaningful exchange/connection with others (and that also have a context of how good they are to the rest of humanity).

BUT, IS MERIT FAIR?

Choosing by merit means some people who are best at a task/trade win, while several others lose. Is it fair for these people to get a job, and the others to be without one -- in the name of merit? Where's the fairness in that?

To make these things simple, consider two jobs in your family. One of cooking food and one of sailing the family yatch/boat. If the family says, "Hey, we haven't asked this son of ours if he wants to do it, nor have we ascertained if he can do it; but just to be fair, let's give him our cooking chores. We know that our eldest daughter cooks the best food and loves cooking, but still." And when dinner is served, you'd be foolish to expect as good food as your experienced and willing daughter. Now being the best at cooking, you say, "Let me be partial to our daughter's honned skills [in cooking]. In the matter of sailing the yatch/boat, she's the natural choice because I love her cooking. She'll not fail me like that son of mine." You take away the control from the son and give it to your daughter. When need arises, you'll end up regretting having left your seasoned sailor son behind -- with a great cook unable to steer your yatch/boat.

The lesson? No, not that daughters should cook and sons should sail your boats -- let anyone who is best at something (in terms of skills/capabilities) and loves doing it (in that he/she is willing/passionate about it) lead your way in that domain. If you are concerned about fairness to others, reconsider if good healthy food and safe sailing are on your priorities or not as well!

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES" AND "LAND OF ALMS"/"LAND OF CONCESSIONS"

In a land of opportunities, those who "lose" can try their luck at diversity of "other" jobs. If they fail to be the best at one, they can either try the next best company or try an entirely different field. (Of course, they are not beheaded for not being the best. See also: If ‘might’ is not right, why should Meritocracy be?) But all this time they themselves don't decide what they are best at, others tell them if they think they are. (If one is asked what they are good at, would they stop at claiming/thinking themselves being good at everything, unless they knew you'd evaluate them on it?) Working this way creates a distillation process of the best folks moving up, and the rest settling into the next best roles, and so on as time goes by. Picture this as a natural form of convection of values -- based on relevant criteria of merit in that domain. It lets the best people in their fields help us lead the helm in their domains.

In the land of alms, you are given a job as a gift or concession, thereby, playing down the fact that there's a responsibility to be fulfilled and a responsibility to best value/quality to the whole. It is not about cheapest labor or closest cousin that helps you churn out best results , instead it is the value to price ratio that others see in your work. Under the fairness measured by a "land of alms" law, you may then be given a wife as a gift too, thereby, playing down the importance of love and individual decision-making. Besides, such a system turns the people into objects and furniture. Fairness on these lines brings all people to the same level (i.e., to share a common level of "misery"), thereby keeping the entire society at a stagnated level.

I think it would be sad if everyone was brought down to the common denominator, with no exclusivity based on how much more they do for everyone else. I believe in collaboration and equality too -- but not without some scope of responsibility to fulfill the promise, ownership based on sustainability, liability to proven slacking, and rewards for exceeding the call of duty. Hence, the arguments of equal salary, equal rank and equality based merely on presence (either "attendance" or "warm body" physical presence) are actually unfair; while the arguments based on "exclusive degrees of freedom" as a reward for actions, goals accomplished and fruitful/heroic results [alongside an equal opportunity to gain those without any other bias other than merit to the society] are fair and sane. See also: Evaluating Performance in a Meritocracy.

Equality surely cannot mean everyone has a right to their Ferrari no matter what they do; instead it means that they have the right to their opportunity to earn it meritoriously -- by responsibly serving others.

You'll see that the same people that failed to succeed in a "land of alms" style community succeed in the "land of opportunities" run community -- and vice versa. That's because the hardworkers are suppressed in the "land of alms" to bring them to the common equal misery of others, and the slackers are suppressed in the "land of opportunities" to bring them to the common equal opportunity available to others (by merit). We then see why the so-called "losers" in one paradigm, who were constrained by the system of their land, succeed in another. To verify this in reality, you see lots of immigrants succeed in the western countries, and lot of westerners succeed in communities that almost compete in free-loading or slacking (along that culture's terms of "fairness"). Note that while one of those value systems creates a sense of time as a valuable resource, the other creates a sense of self-gratification no matter what one does (or doesn't) with their time, resources and opportunities.

- Kaleem Aziz.

The following are the notes I took during a talk.

The 10 Principles of "People First, Profits Follow" by Rita Bailey.


1. Melt the "ice" in service -- Are you being serviced or served? People can see/feel how they are being catered and treated in customer service.


2. Live the brand message -- Are your brand messages outward facing cute messages to customers, or do you internally connect with them as your principles?


3. ACES -- Attract, Connect, Educate, Support.


4. Leadership -- Do with people, not to people.


5. Create the environment -- Is there encouragement for people to be themselves, and scope to bring the best out of themselves on their own, freely?


6. Create the people experience -- Do people believe in it based on their experience with you? Or is it an empty slogan.


7. Do more with less -- Good deeds don't necessarily have to be expensive gifts. They can just be timely, thoughtful and original presents that mean something to that person.


8. Manage for the future -- Ever wonder why "change management" is needed, and why it is so costly? Instead manage problems before they become big. p.s. reminder that small changes ahead of time work better.


9. Celebrate - Don't just celebrate tasks, achievements and victories at work; but also personal things, family victories and personal milestones that mean something to that person.


10. Fun - Fun cannot be manufactured -- it is a more individual thing that must be delivered not as a general gift but as a present that means something to that person.

Compare these with the Do's and Don'ts for "Managing Your Staff in a Time of Change" from the fat book "Business: The Ultimate Resource":

For Motivating Your Staff in a Time of Change

DO

* Recognize that you don't have all the answers.
* Take time to find out what makes others tick and show genuine caring.
* Lead, encourage, and guide staff - don't force them.
* Tell your staff what you think.

DON'T

* Don't make assumptions about what drives others.
* Don't assume others are like you.
* Don't force people into things that are supposedly good for them.
* Don't neglect the need for inspiration.
* Don't delegate work - delegate responsibility!

p.s. Besides inspirational value, one reason these end up on my blog is because they either prove or reinforce the key findings of my work.

- Kaleem Aziz.

It shows that if I can manage to not sleep through my class, no matter how tired or sleepy I am, I can manage to learn something of value after all. With regards to there being any science of innovation, and any methodology of being able to manage it whatsoever, here are a few relevant concepts.

Course Concept #1: STAR model

STAR model is a typology, not a theory. It has five components that are listed around the edges of a 5-star; namely, people, infrastructure, structure, technology and context. The people aspect deals with management issues like motivation, recognition, etc. The infrastructure aspect deals with policies and procedures in place. The structure aspect deals with the hierarchy of formal authority, as in an org-chart. The technology aspect deals with the tools adopted to make employees effective. The context aspect deals with strategy and planning.

Course Concept #2: User Innovation

Users can be a source of innovation, besides being the end-customer. By having a need to be fulfilled, the users will usually attempt giving feedback to the organization that provides them the products or services, or leave them to use a competitor’s more satisfactory product. Engaging users in helping us create the right products requires the user to be motivated to work with us through sufficient incentives. These incentives can be rewards, cash back, prizes, lucky draws, etc. An incentive for them to reveal can be generated by providing recognition of their contribution, monetary awards, etc. Such user-led innovations can help create better products in the market, especially compared to competitors that limit user interaction with themselves.

Course Concept #3: Individual Determinants of Creativity

This concept tries to answer the question: “What characteristics in an individual are signs of creativity?”. It identifies the first characteristic as knowledge in the specific domain or task area. It identifies that besides the depth of knowledge in a field, the individual must be capable of extending and progressing the field with his skills of critical thinking and reasoning. In other words, he must not only be able to understand the concept but be capable of extending it. Having had these capabilities, he must have an inner passionate desire to pursue solutions for hitherto unsolved problems. It is additionally proposed that this passion can be stimulated by external motivational factors.

Course Concept #4: Innovation Steps

Innovation happens in unpredictable ways, much like random accidents. Defining a process for innovation is difficult, as it may fail to happen because of the process – while occasionally it happens despite the process. However, there seem to be four steps for continuous innovation. The first step is to innovate, i.e., to do something new. The second step is to validate that the innovation is worth the effort, executable, and valuable. The third step is to manage it to produce results in a predictable process. The fourth step proliferate the successful process throughout the organization and beyond. The next step is to start again at the first step and do it all over again with a new innovation.

Course Concept #5: When is Virtual Virtuous Framework

The framework allows an organization to determine when going virtual is safe and beneficial, versus when it is not. For a given decision to be made about outsourcing an aspect of its business, it must first consider if the innovation is autonomous or systemic. The framework, then, maps the choices organization must make by considering its capabilities for the task: are these tasks done outside vs. a special custom setup. The latter may require investments to build in from the ground-up. It is virtuous to go virtual, based on this framework, if innovation is autonomous and capabilities exist outside. Alternatively, it is not recommended to go virtual if innovation is systemic and capabilities require custom work. For the other two options, namely, autonomous innovation with custom workmanship and systemic innovation with existing external services, the framework suggests either in-house or allying with caution.

Course Concept #6: Structural Pendulum

The concept of Structural Pendulum illustrates that an organization’s structure swings alternately as degrees of being more “Centralized” to being more “Decentralized”, and vice versa. If an organization has taken steps to make its structure decentralized, the internal dynamics of the organization make it difficult to control the various autonomous departments. This realization causes it to seek more control and suggest a more centralized approach to control/regulate the decentralization. However, when the structure shows that the excessive centralization is choking research and innovation in its products and processes, it then attempts a decentralized structure to restore the innovative trends. This continuous organizational restructuring in opposite directions, to seek balance, shows a pendulum like behavior.

Course Concept #7: Return on Geographical Location

The concept of Return on Location is associated with how certain locations are considered to be more safe/lucrative for investment over others. For instance, it considers the “One-Hour Rule” several VCs in the past followed – by which they would consider investment opportunities within an hour drive from their current location. Another aspect of ROL deals with any corporation’s decision making regarding co-location of its employees or assets. The concept of Return on Geographical Location shows that “Realized ROL” is not only a function of the “objective benefits and costs”, but also that of “ability to manage from afar”. This ability (to manage from afar) comprises of experience with (a) the industry, (b) communication/workflow tools, and (c) principals in this business.

Course Concept #8: External Partnership Model

In external partnership model, there’s no in-house R&D department, but research comes from external sources, that may be located far away from the business organization’s operational headquarters. The advantages with this model are the low direct costs and access to R&D from open markets. The disadvantages are that differentiation is difficult and intellectual capital within the organization is limited. [Alliance location that was most relevant to my "project company" was the External Partnership model.]

Course Concept #9: Streams of Innovation

Short-term success may depend upon a unique product that is high in demand, and one in which the competition hasn’t caught up. But long-term success depends on the ability to manage different kinds of innovations over time, to lead a range of innovations that must be simultaneously developed within the firm. We call these fundamentally different kinds of innovation “innovation streams”. Managers can build organizations that encourage incremental, architectural (innovation that restructures existing technology), and discontinuous innovation simultaneously. While incremental innovation can be managed within the existing organization; architectural and discontinuous innovation must be coupled with more radical organizational change.

Course Concept #10: Platform Approach to Managing Innovation

A platform approach allows companies to re-use components in a process, benefit from rearranging its processes to allow saving on common resources (viz., materials and talent); thereby producing more variety for low cost, as well as efficiently mass produce. It is also a way to mass customization enabling high volume production that is tailored to meet the preferences of individual customers. The modularization/componentization allows highly differentiated products to be delivered to the market without consuming excessive resources. Platform approach can share the following common entities: components, processes, knowledge, people and relationships.

Course Concept #11: Technology Features

Technology features is a course concept that allows one to measure a technology on an XY-axis based scale. On the Y-axis is the relevance of the product feature to the actual need of the customer. The increasing scale of the Y-axis measures how “core” the feature is to the original need of the customer; whereas the decreasing scale measures how “tangential” the feature is. Core features change the overall nature of the technology; whereas tangential features are not the defining features of it (and may be optional). On the X-axis is the ability to objectively and tangibly measure the feature. The increasing scale of the X-axis measure how “abstract” (e.g., cool, pleasing, etc) the feature is to the customer; whereas the decreasing scale measures how “concrete” (e.g., dimensions, weight, color, etc) the feature is. Concrete features can be described objectively, whereas abstract features are more vague or indirect.

Course Concept #12: Adaptive Structuration

Teams with different domain background use the same information technology with different perceptions about its role and utility. Different teams do not have the same idea about how the same tool can be applied to their activities. Even as the technology gets adopted, it may get used in different contexts as one goes from one group to another.

See: http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Organizational%20Communication/AST_theory.doc/
" ... theory to study the interaction of groups and organizations with information technology, and called it Adaptive Structuration Theory. AST criticizes the technocentric view of technology use and emphasizes the social aspects. Groups and organizations using information technology for their work dynamically create perceptions about the role and utility of the technology, and how it can be applied to their activities. These perceptions can vary widely across groups. These perceptions influence the way how technology is used and hence mediate its impact on group outcomes."

Course Concept #13: Brainstorming Rules

Teams that follow certain brainstorming characteristics seem to generate lot of successful ideas. They are given an objective that is the final customer’s need. Through numerous questions, the objective is refined to be clear in its goals (without considering the method of implementation). Then they try to generate lots of ideas without any judgement of their validity or utility. They collect these ideas without trying to go into details right away. Then team members try to work on solutions on their own. When they meet again, they try to use their individual ideas in conjunction with that of others. They try not to hold on to their idea as their personal idea, but as groups’ idea during this process. Finally all the inputs are coalesced into one final product to meet the goal.

Course Concept #14: Salience or Urgency

Salience or urgency refers to the relative importance, relevance or direness of some aspect of the task over others. In any team configuration, there are roles of greater shortage, scarcity or specialty. This member salience and the urgency of getting their tacit information must go hand in hand for high team performance. The structure or role of team members may bind them, sometimes because they assume others have the same limitations that they have. Use of certain technologies in processes can free these bindings, however, it can also create newer forms of limitations.

Course Concept #15: Transactive Memory

Transactive memory refers to the concept of external sources of knowledge. Individuals recognize and utilize two sources of knowledge: internal knowledge base of their own experiences, and links to external knowledge base of people (or KM tools) that can get them to what they internally do not know. Organizations that rely on not only the training skills to their employees but also keep them informed about who their best point of contact is for each domain fare better than organizations that don’t.

See:
http://digilander.libero.it/linguaggiodelcorpo/flirt11/
"Transactive memory theory is based on the idea that individual members can serve as external memory aids to each other (Wegner, 1987). Members are able to benefit from each other’s knowledge and expertise if they develop a good, shared understanding of who knows what in the group/unit. A transactive memory system is built on the distinction between internal and external memory encoding. Often, individuals encode new knowledge internally, in their own memory. However, even more often individuals encode or use knowledge encoded externally (in diaries, in books, or even in other people’s memory). In these cases, the individual internally encodes the label (subject) of the knowledge as well as its location but not the knowledge itself.

Transactive memory systems are built on this view of individuals playing the role of external memory for other individuals who – in turn – encode meta-memories (i.e. memories about the memories of others). Wegner (1995) proposes that two types of meta-memories are maintained in people’s minds – information about the subjects of knowledge of each member (i.e. areas of expertise) and information about the locations of the knowledge. Knowledge is encoded, stored, and retrieved from the collective memory through various transactions between individuals, based on their meta-memories.

Findings of both field and laboratory research indicate that transactive memory can serve as a facilitator of group performance, where groups whose members are aware of the knowledge and expertise of other group members perform better than groups whose members do not possess such knowledge. Transactive memory systems enable groups to better utilize the knowledge that their members possess, and to reach higher levels of performance than they would have reached without such a system (for a review, see Moreland & Argote, 2003).

Members of small groups, who are co-located, can initially use surface information to infer rough estimates of “who knows what” (Wegner, 1986), and can then reach greater accuracy in the attribution of expertise to other group members through common experiences (Moreland, Argote & Krishnan, 1998 ), such as group training (Liang, Moreland & Argote, 1995), and group discussion (Rulke & Rao, 2000). "

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wegner/pdfs/Wegner,Erber,&Raymond1991.pdf
"Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." -- Samuel Johnson.

Course Concept #16: Negotiating Change

Before an organization steps into a change management, a round of negotiations help the stake-holders understand the objectives, the process and clarify the angles to this process. While negotiating finer aspects of the process implementation are discussed verbally and prepares each party for the change, as well as helps them understand the ingredients of change and the true implications of that change. The process of negotiation helps parties involved understand how close or different their perceptions of it are from the actual process – say, with respect to “ease of use” or “usefulness”. Also the discussion helps build a “commitment” and “ownership” to seeing the change through in the way they understood or agreed to at the negotiation stage.

Course Concept #17: Range of Knowledge Management Systems

There are unique dimensions to understanding and applying knowledge management systems. It can be characterized based on content type, input type or accrual type. Within the content type, the scale leads from information to knowledge to person who holds the knowledge. For input type, the scale grows from active to passive style of interaction. And for the accrual type, the scale changes from proactive to embedded system. These three types are seen as three orthogonal dimensions in the categorization of “range of knowledge management systems”.

Course Concept #18: Back of the Boat to Front of the Boat

People play roles in their teams and develop their intuitions about what works and what they need to stay away from for their own good. They then assume intuitively that what applies to them should apply to everyone else. These intuitions stall the process changes. Although it is efficient in short-term to have well-defined roles that each person does all the time to become an expert in; over the long-term it breeds an unwillingness to consider the challenges of other roles and the importance of the changes proposed by others if they intuitively sound wrong from their background. These are “structural holes” that a third person can integrate and add value.

For "Structural Holes" see:
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/ronald.burt/research/SHGI.pdf
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/ronald.burt/research/SHNC.pdf
http://connectedness.blogspot.com

I see this concept of "Structural Holes" to be kinda like small scale Information Asymmetry according to this:
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/BURSTR.html

Course Concept #19: Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are groups of people (like merchant guilds of age-old times) who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. They communicate through a shared vocabulary that may be more cryptic or surreptitious than the normal spoken language for people outside the community of practice. A common motivation is for the members to learn from experiences of others; or to find mentoring in a relatively new project, domain or task they plan on taking.

See:
http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj40-4.html
http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~kimble/teaching/mis/Communities_of_Practice.html
http://www.eccop.com/blogs/public/archives/000102.html

Course Concept #20: Total Value of the Job

From the traditional pay model of creating stock options as a part of recognition programs, cash compensation, and benefits/perquisites the companies are shifting to a new approach. They are creating total rewards out of recognition programs, cash compensation, and long-term financial stability. The long-term financial stability is further factored on retirement, benefits, perquisites and equity. The new pay paradigm is a more rich compensation environment in terms of diversity – i.e., a diverse landscape where you consider variety of vehicles.

- Kaleem Aziz.

What is LinkedIn? If pictures or animation works for you, here's a tour that shows what it is:
https://www.linkedin.com/static?key=tour_flash

If that didn't work for you, LinkedIn is a trusted business networking environment -- one that doesn't take "trust" lightly even if it is online (where instinctively many do, hiding behind their keyboards). At LinkedIn you control your networking options, and people democratically help you succeed through their connections you didn't know could help you.

A fellow SCU MBA and a good friend has been jotting down his notes on his LinkedIn experiences. His evangelizing LinkedIn and our LinkedIn group has caused the SCU MBAs membership in our group to double in the last two quarters. These results have primarily been his single-handed effort, advice and lobbying that simply works. Read his thoughts here:
http://linkedin-notes.blogspot.com/

"... it’s better to build your network before you need it rather than when you need it. People are much more likely to help you in your time of need if you were available for them before you needed help."

Where there's taking, a certain amount of giving is to be expected. So if you are weak hearted when it comes to giving (i.e., in order to get something in return downline), your network "equity" may be limited to the creation of your account, or to the pity of any altruists out there. On the other hand, if you love helping, ironically, help comes without asking for it -- in the form of recommendations from friends for your connection, your services and their opportunities for you. Once you are on LinkedIn, you can control your options pretty much anyway you desire -- the results are upto your personal values and how they are percieved by your network (viz., friends, partners, colleagues, mentors, or whoever else they may be).

Some networkers sometimes look surprised, "Why didn't they say my network results are a function of my efforts and behavior? I had thought I join this website and business opportunities flow to me!" Sorry, network can't be bought as a commodity, only the seat can be bought -- rest is what you do with your time there.

Wanted to caution that you network at your own responsibility, and risk. Gaining anything takes a long-term of building trust, and losing everything takes moments -- moreso in a democratic social setup that is well-connected. Your actions tell others both your abilities as well as your short-comings -- and the network merely acts as a large mirror responding to YOU. Even if the network community is mistaken, their interpretation of you matters more than your perspective -- that may be unfortunate, but that's just the way social life is currently. No point warring it, unless people want to listen to it of their own accord/interest.

If I have failed in explaining it well enough for you, I must tell "Unfortunately, no one can be told what LinkedIn is. You have to see it for yourself." (paraphrasing The Matrix movie)

- Kaleem Aziz.

In my class, when my professor asked for any thoughts challenging or supporting the "When Virtual is Virtuous" paper, I wasn't carrying with me the contradictions I had found while reading some two-or-three papers side-by-side. Even if I had brought any of them up, it was granted that the debate was going to run into the point the professor had mentioned already: that those findings are far from being predictable like the laws of gravity in physics.

On another note, one that is very specific to the domain I work in, a technology called Web Services can help business collaborate at greater levels. Although ISPs and VPNs also help organizations collaborate through agreed upon protocols, Web Services allows scaling this a notch up by creating standards for each vertical market. Technicalities aside, the point is that potential capability exists for companies to start working on merging their computer networks and producing value of unprecedented levels -- yet what technology provides/caters is being negated by the people dynamics. As was discussed in class w.r.t outsourcing (in the context of "when virtual is virtuous"), companies don't trust each other enough to open their systems for trade. The "technical" collaboration must follow the "human" trust -- which is being quoted by some thought leaders of this technology as a bigger problem (than developing software products to solve the problem). I often point out this irony (jokingly) -- if we ever blamed that data entry to computers as a required process was slowing us down, it is now that era where our human differences are slowing down computers from connecting our world.

Another side aspect to this multi-organization collaboration/negotiation/contract exercises is the concept of open source. While much of the research concentrates on the "organization" (because organizations are key entities that buy the results of research), fewer works, if any, concentrate on multi-organizational, non-organizational or anti-organizational dynamic. Infact, without being able to measure the financial implications and profits, one may just be lost on being able to define the "economic value" generated (or not) from these other organization setups (viz., multi-organizations, non-organizations or anti-organizations).

Although I loosely define or explore the terms, the obvious intentions are to mean:
multi-organizations = a conglomerate of organizations in different degrees of collaboration/symbiosis
non-organizations = individuals locked into a common set of values creating and backing a product, without functioning as typical organizations (e.g., open source, select non-profits)
anti-organizations = individuals contributing individually as volunteers, consultants, etc., multiple of whose ideas when combined generate a new paradigm (e.g., CoP); even as their common motive is not to have a formal heirarchy and profit motive

- Kaleem Aziz.

Just got off reading an article called "When is Virtual Virtuous". Although the article is directed more at outsourcing and going virtual, it's 2x2 matrix explanation does hold some great insight for partnership. For example, my main job is as a software engineer (which is my core speciality), yet I need to do my lawn. If I find a guy of comparable software skills as mine, I can have him do my job when I am busy -- but soon he'll replace me at the job. So, I think twice about replacing my day job with a new temp guy. Instead if I am busy and need to get my lawn mowed, I can hire a temp to get one task done while I take overtime at my core specialities. I think the matrix/table of the "When is Virtual Virtuous" provides such similarities for making decisions for organizations that are trying to find partnerships -- to cover their primary core speciality with their own brain/KM, and to get accessory help from others which will let their time/resources be freed up to do more in their domain.

From legal part of the business, partnerships were taught to be very delicate or fragile. The cons of a bad partnership are well-known to everyone -- they do to businesses what divorce does to marriage (infact, this analogy/contrast was brought in by a student and the professor for MGMT 505). To avoid huge problems in the aftermath, companies (a) write-up very heavily scrutinized contracts (hiring specialists, at times, to do this) that is aimed at protecting themselves (much like a pre-nuptial before wedding!), and (b) keep a watch on the leadership changes/strategies of the partners. Once locked in, a potentially questionable move by a partner (with the new knowledge) can send "red flags" all over the place bringing their motives into question, as well as cause serious litigation law suites to prove which part of the contract they had "breached" (in doing so). At such times, and at times when the leadership in the partners' company changes, the contracts are either re-evaluated or sometimes re-written, and occassionally nullified (e.g., by settling to an amount). Some of the logic of how VCs think is very valuable in this matter -- e.g., how they are evaluating the CEOs' and founders' actions all the time, rather than the business plan alone.

As a subject in OMIS, called Just-In-Time manufacturing, one of the most stressed points was the concept of these contracts being written such that the smaller/weaker company doesn't feel like it is being dictated to nor that it is being given a raw deal or being ripped off. If that feeling persists, (a) either the partner(s) have a wrong notion of their value in the market (a huge problem why small companies don't enter/stay in a lucrative partnership/offer, and repent later) OR (b) they "know" they can get better returns out of partnership with someone else who will treat them more fairly. So, really, the idea is to convince the partners that (a) you'll partner with them in thick-and-thin (training them to prove your fairness, as well as paying them for losses they made on your account -- so as to share the pain) and that (b) they'll not be able to find a better partner in the market based on what their competitors are offering. In order to be able to offer your partners a deal that will make them "stay with you" rather than with your competitors, the business must be an efficient model -- so your savings/profits can be shared with the partners and keep them happy. Examples of DELL, Wal*Mart, Cisco, etc., are often given in cases to show how large scale collaboration is orchestrated.

MGMT 501 showed two concepts of Negotiation. One in which the bigger company "dictates" the contract conditions, and another in which the bigger company negotiates for a more stable win-win outcome (considering several options of trade-offs in reaching a settlement).

The point of the various subjects has been this (as a summary): your partners are always on the look out for the best value for themselves; so give them the proof/reason why partnership with you is a win for them (over any other option available in the market) -- while matching an equal or better win for yourself strategically through them.

However, many times, companies headed by two different leaders, and bound by changing market conditions, have different goals, strategies and situations that motivate or threaten them. It takes a lot to convince partners not to misunderstand their own size/value, and to convince partners not to break off with the new training/knowledge they've gained through the partnership.

One of the key things that is missing, and I am very inquisitive about, is the collective dynamics of the net value generated by these companies and their partners combined. In all of the above subjects, only the strategy of one company (and its assessment of value/threat) is discussed -- whereas I am interested in topics where the net value of what was gained and/or lost can be ascertained. It seems Game Theory has solutions to derive "win-win negotiations" as well as net value derived out of competitive and collaborative models -- so I may not understand even a fraction of what's there to consider on this matter. (I'll learn Game Theory in ECON 430.)

- Kaleem Aziz.

A quick re-visit of key ideas for maintaining a large MBA network using low cost online tools (e.g., Yahoogroups, LinkedIn, etc):

1. "An outward facing network, on the other hand, is like a recreational vehicle – heading out for unexplored territories, and camping at each topic only as long as it remains interesting and unexplored."



2. "Means of one and the needs of other must match to get a perfect seal/bond for a strong network phenomenon – that’s the forumla."



3. "Numerous members of a network are not 100% satisfied – heck, even 60% satisfied – yet they stay because they are not thoroughly dissatisfied, and because they can put up with something tiny to get something useful accrued a while later."



4. "Posting a message to entire network is like talking to no one, but instead like putting a “Missing Cat (Reward)” poster on a neighborhood pole. Real talk, chatter, gossip, exchange, and transactions happen when someone contacts in return."

Extracted from the rather long-winded "How-to form a network on Yahoogroups.".

p.s. Talking about long-winded (with the logic of exceptions in others' logic, elimination of contradictions in each sentence, etc.), I sometimes wonder if "Core Dump" would be a better name than "Theory of Everything"!

- Kaleem Aziz.

Google has a fascination with puzzles, or a fascination with finding and working with Einsteins (excuse the plural!).

Google has been advertising that it has as much to do with puzzles -- in seeking its future employees -- as it has in searching the internet. Makes me think Google is really searching for people and their souls, through finding stuff they search for when they lose themselves in the pace of their lives.

Most of their puzzles, however, are mathematical in nature. Look for example at Google US Puzzle Championship, and don't shy away from the answers.

It also seems Google is seeking people by sending them coded signals via posters -- which when they decode find a website that accepts their resume!



Lastly, I found this Google interview question very interesting:
http://www.tkachenko.com/blog/archives/000322.html

Answer is pretty interesting:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LookandSaySequence.html

If you still did not understand, start reading the numbers and words together to form the full sequence -- as mentioned at the website above:

"1, one 1, two 1s, one 2 one 1," etc.

The ultimate game or puzzle is in finding most capable people that are willing to align themselves to the servitude of the largest whole. Be it Microsoft, Google, intellectualize or any other group -- whether they love each other or not, if they can work together in alignment, they'd automatically be a great group/team to learn the secrets of life from.

- Kaleem Aziz.

A good blogger can choose to make revenue off of not charging its readers but charging its advertisers. Of course, the blogger is sacrificing his white space (or his page space) for the advertisement itself -- when advertisements outgrow content, user-base gets disinterested and vice-versa.

Generating revenue based on web-traffic is a poor model (even Yahoo! crumbled under it and therefore it modified its business model), but sometimes any revenue is preferred over no revenue.

"Information is cheap, unless you build a brand around it."

We run currently on an economy that doesn't reward information, unless you build a brand/reputation/credibility around it and sell T-shirts, reports, books, or something based on it. Free information however doesn't translate to free value -- so try to use it to build relationships/partnerships where work can be done or goods can be exchanged. (Ultimately, that's the only long-term strategy -- because when competition is hot, only cost-effective answers/solutions will remain. If a competitor can allow blogging of same quality for free -- say due to being internally funded by an IBM or a Microsoft -- the small-scale or short-term thinkers will be wiped out eventually.)

This is also on the lines of creating business differentiation. If it is too easy a business model, too many competitors will immediately jump in, and continue to jump in, until that is no longer a viable/profitable business model. One needs to do something others cannot copy easily in order to build a sustainable business on it.

- Kaleem Aziz.

I had a few thoughts on working with capable and, importantly, willing folks. A lawyer, a VC (who has been there, done that), a professor in the domain of operations, and a hand picked management team ... these are services for which I'd be having partners. Having said that, what holds them is their willingness to work on their tasks, and what value working with me holds for them. It seems like there's no substitute for that.

Bill-rating these services for the masses, without the connect to the individual needs is professing yet another opinion to the myriad one has already gotten (from friends, foes, psychics, parents, etc.). Also, experience in one domain doesn't really translate very well into another. One needs a dedicated person whose heart is in the domain and wants to work with you.

One of the firms that did bill-rating the key services, understandably, could not bear the cost of the lawyer and advisor on the board without a partnership. The lawyer was allowed (by contract agreement) to get outside cases, so she could make up for lost revenue. The advisor moved into being the chairman of more than one company, thereby dividing his attention -- plus my bet was he was too concerned in diversifying his risks within the companies he was as a board member of.

To me, I've seen this fail so many times, I am of the mind not to try bill-rate based services for these key business activities. Without (a) capability within the domain, and (b) a motivation to have a share of the profits rather than a flat fee; this is too difficult to orchestrate. I'd like to tie their rewards up to the end goal, rather than permit them to advise and charge a fee. For someone like Ziad and Gerry, without them funding the entire organization as a VC, depending upon the industry a 5% to 10% partnership in the proceeds and a role on the company's board would be better than shelling out a thousand dollar per hour.

Come to software industry, the margins are higher on everything you touch, so VCs should be able to charge a higher premium on starting/mentoring software ventures. My estimate would be that $5000 per hour would we trump-change many companies will be willing to pay without blinking an eyelid.

A partnership in one or few such high margin firms sure increases your risk, but if you choose your bets well, you could find yourself funding a Google. The inefficiencies I identify in this sector, that can be turned into value for both large corporations as well as the end customer, are phenomenal. Plus, going big is the game in this area.

Sometimes the companies are rightly valued higher than Bull dozer renting (e.g. Caterpillar) and Boeing manufacturing businesses, because of the brain equity in this sector. Well, sometimes they are not -- we've all made that mistake.

If one aims for the heart -- i.e., aims for value -- hi-tech domain knowledge and hi-tech industries can deliver a lot more bang-for-the-buck as well as creation of wealth. For those who don't have the knack, it has been the crumbs and regrets -- but even today there are more billion dollar companies in software than in any other field/domain.

Consolidation to top 5 software companies is still an open game (unlike in grocery business) -- and consolidation cannot happen as long as innovation in technology (for value of course) doesn't become a grocery item.

- Kaleem Aziz.

These articles, whether true in analysis or not, tell a story I did not know. First, I hear India is doing a lot better now than it was last decade; but the following article sums up my gut feel about the whole thing:

http://www.wpherald.com/print.php?StoryID=20050425-101151-8755r

The study, conducted by India's Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in April, revealed Indian outsourcers are beginning to lose ground to countries such as China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico and Canada.

The group argued Indian companies are "not adopting a medium-long-term sustainable strategy to continuously innovate and add value to processes and provide an end-to-end solution to global clients."

The chamber is not alone in reaching that conclusion.

The international research group Gartner, Inc., also argued India will lose its market share of international outsourcing operations from 80 percent to 55 percent by 2007.

"India's share will be whittled by a number of countries, which together will account for a 45-percent share of the offshore BPO market by 2007," said Gartner, referring to business process outsourcing.

It said countries such as Ghana, South Africa, Mauritius, Fiji, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand as well as China have better strategies to attract and retain call center businesses.

Having been through the boom, I know how good inflation makes you feel. In essence, you feel you've added value even on an unproductive day. Those are false feelings, and they wear out when the inflation bubble is burst. It transitions into the stark reality of measuring up the value you've added at the end of the day.

While I have believed that outsourcing was creating livelihoods for Indians, who I envy are wearing designer jeans that many Americans and Europeans don't, and who are made fun of in my circles for being "false Americans" when you try to get customer service phone on one of your 24x7 call centers. The names Nikki, Joe, Erik, and Sandy come to mind. Here's a story of Sandy seen from the other side -- of how they themselves are not happy with "the act".

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/india-04e.html

And it's this working at nights that requires adjusting the biological clock and social practices to a different time, which is turning out to be a major cause for health-related and social problems.

Take the instance of Delhi-based college dropout Sandeep Jain, who was ecstatic when he received a job offer for $150 a month two years ago from a leading Delhi-based call center. This was the chance the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pink Floyd fan was waiting for.

"For the first time, I was made to feel that I was useful and that somebody appreciated my knowledge of English movies and my passion for Western music," he said.

A year later, Sandy, as he called himself for his overseas clients, switched to another call center, which offered him double the money and a training trip to the United States. The training trip was really the carrot for Sandy who had by then begun to tire of the tedium of a help desk job.

But the trip was significant since he could now finally prove to his conservative mother that he too was off to the United States like his "cousins in software."

But unlike his cousins in software, he soon begun to exhibit behavioral and physiological changes. He had lost 12 pounds in seven months, was smoking over 10 cigarettes a day and drank till he passed out every Friday.

"I am done with it (the back-office job)," he said before giving up his call-center job last December and joining a night college.

"I had lost touch with my relatives. I used to get home at four in the morning and when I woke up, my family was out at work and it was just TV or computer games for me."

"It was also the monotony of work and boredom that sometimes made me feel suicidal," Sandy said.

...

"You talk like an American, behave like one, but you are not one. It's almost like a trap."

Makes me think, if an employee doesn't understand or share the sense of value he/she is providing, it can be very sad way to work through the day (or the night, in this case). The sense of having been productive, to a certain cause or to achieve value that sticks, makes you want to work -- in essence, the opportunity to excel and the possibility of recognition that will stay are extreme drivers of why people work. To not have that in the heart, yet to do it for money, I believe, there's a problem right there.

Besides being hollow, it shows to me the importance of "costs of objects" put ahead of the "drivers of the economy"; and a feeling that these objects are being driven by a few against the needs of the people who are also the drivers of the economy.

To me, economically, there's no optimal substitute for work being done in a way that is aligned
(a) to deliver to satisfaction to the individual(s) doing it as well as
(b) to deliver value to the individual(s) receiving it.

I've consistently shown that economy has its core in:
o human behavior,
o values its individuals hold,
o how capable as well as willing/passionate these individuals are to make their individual economy, and
o some means that others identify can be matched or aligned to the whole.

With regards to people vs objects of an economy, I rank people as more economically important:
"People are the drivers of the Economy, resources are the objects of the Economy, and money is one possible medium for the Economy."

- Kaleem Aziz.

The problem with current business culture is that we think too linear or straight line as in the domain we specialize in. We are unable to balance several factors into one model. Anyone who can do that is termed a leader. No one has a way to verify the mindset of a leader, and most businessmen can only "copy the leader on his peripheral values" -- causing aberrations in validating if one is truly a leader or an immitator or one-time performer. In essence, we just have no way to identifying or validating a leader -- there are just numerous versions/stories of it.

In my discussions with financial folks locally, I've seen some to be so into equations that are really a straight line approach. Equations tell us one or two variables at most. What really happens is multi-dimensional and simultaneous in those multiple dimensions. An equation gets you the correct technical/financial value holding something or the other constant, but doesn't take into account several things that have changed. The real approach to use would be to build models e.g., viable models and scenarios. But currently the computing expense and cost associated with such talent make small businesses unable to seek such benefit. I plan to develop a system that brings the benefits of large enterprise computing to small businesses -- a business model like DELL or Wal*Mart itself.

Chapter 10 - The Basics of Capital Budgeting: Evaluating Cash Flows in the book Financial Management, Theory and Practice, by Eugene F. Brigham & Michael C. Ehrhanrdt goes into this problem, cautions about it and also cites some of the examples I did above:

The different measures provide different types of information to decision makers. Since it is easy to calculate all of them, all should be considered in the decision process. For any specific decision, more weight might be given to one measure than another, but it would be foolish to ignore the information provided by any of the methods.

Just as it would be foolish to ignore these capital budgeting methods, it would also be foolish to make decisions based solely on them. One cannot know at Time 0 the exact cost of future capital, or the exact future cash flows. These inputs are simply estimates, and if they turn out to be incorrect, then so will be the calculated NPVs and IRRs. Thus, quantitative methods provide valuable information, but they should not be used as the sole criteria for accept/reject decisions in the capital budgeting process. Rather, managers should use quantitative methods in the decision-making process but also consider the likelihood that actual results will differ from the forecasts. Qualitative factors, such as the chances of a tax increase, or a war, or a major product liability suit, should also be considered. In summary, quantitative methods such as NPV and IRR should be considered as an aid to informed decisions but not as a substitute for sound managerial judgement.

In this same vein, managers should ask sharp questions about any project that has a large NPV, a high IRR, or a high PI. In a perfectly competitive economy, there would be no positive NPV projects -- all companies would have the same opportunities, and competition would quickly eliminate any positive NPV. Therefore, positive NPV projects must be predicated on some imperfection in the marketplace, and managers should be able to identify the imperfection and explain why it will persist before accepting that a project will really have a positive NPV. Valid explanations might include patents or proprietary technology, which is how pharmaceutical and software firms create positive NPV projects. Aventis's Allegra^® allergy medicine and Microsoft Window's XP^® operating system are examples. Companies can also create positive NPV by being the first entrant into a new market or by creating new products that meet some previously unidentified consumer needs. The Post-it^® notes invented by 3M are an example. Similarily, Dell developed procedures for direct sales of microcomputers, and in the process created projects with enormous NPV. Also, companies such as Southwest Airlines have managed to train and motivate their workers better than their competitors, and this has led to positive NPV projects. In all of these cases, the companies developed some source of competitive advantage, and that advantage resulted in positive NPV projects.

W.r.t communication, there's a lot of information and data in the business world today. But instead of it being absorbed and benefitted from, it tends to overwhelm and be misunderstood. This is a problem not of producing information, it is a problem of consuming and digesting what is available. Interpretation of the same information is a bigger problem in business culture today than is the need for publishing more.

So, the answer to me is that we don't need more understanding of the details/equations piece-by-piece, we instead need more understanding of the whole model -- and ability to leverage solutions, communications, standards and interpretations off of that. The only problem is that most holistic solutions are considered philosophy today -- not mathematics. It is in the mind of the leader, often not as shared values of his people.

Currently we have means to have equations as information, while those who don't know such information will remain unable to help themselves and at a disadvantage. I think we can collectively do better -- we can model interpretations, and in comparison get much further. Besides being more complete and faster, they are more closer to how we think and understand.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Here's an article that I believe talks of using Behavioral Finance to its own detriment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/business/yourmoney/10beha.html?ex=1270785600&en=28e78de60230e087&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Traditional finance theory tells us markets are efficient and rational," said Silvio Tarca, one of the managers of the Morgan funds. "Behavioral finance tells us that human psychology affects investment decisions. Irrational behavior gives rise to market inefficiencies, and our investment process tries to capitalize on those inefficiencies."

...

The theory "is quite useful for investors looking for an organizing framework to explain how mispricings occur and for a framework to exploit those mispricings," Mr. Ptak said. "I think they're onto something, absolutely."

What they may be onto are the systematic mistakes that even exceptionally knowledgeable people like Wall Street analysts are prone to make. Mr. Tarca points to studies showing, for instance, that analysts tend to make far more earnings revisions of the companies they cover in the second half of a fiscal year than in the first.

...

"Academic arguments don't travel well," Professor Shiller said. "People are much more likely to put their faith in a rich man or woman with a yacht and a mansion."

The tone of the article is essentially that it is okay to benefit from inefficiencies, and under the explanation that it will teach inefficient entities to straighten up. While a powerful tool, like all other powerful tools, misunderstanding Behavioral Finance can lead us to, what I call, Economic Volcanoes (viz., painful and macro).

Irrationality is not bound by limits, like rationality is. Rationality itself is defined in terms of values that are important to the beholder -- so one person's rational is another person's irrational. Irrationality itself is in asking for something opposite to our doing -- and given that as the assumption, really what it leads us to is a consequence where people don't want to lose even if they themselves made the mistake. This leads from one thing to another driven by people to win/succeed/survive no-matter-what, until people break laid out contracts just to keep the survival of their corporation or their individual gains at so large a scale that it will become a fact of life. Logically, you can't fine or imprison everyone -- otherwise, the only democracy you'll be needing is one in the prisons. One reason why majority is always politically/socially right, even if they are technically wrong. I digress.

Had money been the measure for everything "good" as perceived by most number of people, we could have considered ourselves to reaching a boundary condition where inefficiency is measured by money well. However, today's definition of money and currency is bound by several things it is unable to measure -- and in the process may consider "inefficient" anything it can't measure. This brings us to any evaluation of an entity by monetary gain alone much like a robot-led race evaluating us as inefficient and therefore inconsequential or our downfall as acceptable loss. This brings us to a very thin line between unethical conduct and profit motive.

Behavioral Finance tells us what people want, and that they want their goodwill despite how they act to get it. And that the difference between their goodwill and what they do to get it is their own values/mindsets. Using Behavioral Finance in the above manner endangers people to further think world capitalizes on their mistakes.

Instead of using Behavioral Finance as a means to eliminate inefficiencies brutally (viz., gladiator fight of elimination of weaker entities), it is important to "empower" them with valuable knowledge so they have the opportunity not to get into such situations (viz., competitive environment of letting mistakes shape the opportunities for the entity). It is done by aligning value as seen by these entities to be more with the price of commodities and their investment opportunities; rather than capitalizing on few entities mistakes they are bound to make due to the construct of the system in place.

Interesting topics to read on this are works pertaining to:
(1) Psychology of Leadership
(2) Economics of Information Asymmetry (or Bounded Rationality)
(3) Managing Diversity (or Managing Ignorance)
(4) Change Management (for large corporations)

#2 shows that the asymmetry exists because there's too much information and no one is listening to what it says. I believe no one is listening because (a) there's just too much of it, (b) too less is validated, (c) it doesn't connect to their livelihood, and (d) it's just not simple anymore. Last but not the least, most academics take information asymmetry as a fact, rather than a problem that has a solution.

They are partially right because Change Management is costly even in an organizational setting and, if ever, rarely do adults "change" their habits. But there are low cost techniques to align incentives with the value people deliver -- and people do change if the incentives are right for them. One can then use the incentives to align an entity's responses to be inline with that of the whole. Doing so would be tapping inefficiency of "irrationality" at the roots using Behavioral Finance and advanced Economics, rather than cosmetically as discussed in the above article.

My point is that "irrationality" Economics (or Finance) is not simple and will quickly lead from "efficiency fad" into something worse than the efficiency it temporarily provided -- simply because people don't want to lose even if it is due to their own doing. Our currencies currently do not track this important dynamic. The solution is to "empower them with value" in terms of valuable tools or valuable education instead.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Chapter 1 of Financial Management, Theory and Practice, by Eugene F. Brigham & Michael C. Ehrhanrdt goes over an overview of why MBA is needed, and then why Finance is needed in MBA. It goes (and I quote):

The MBA, Finance, and Your Career

To be successful, a company must meet its first goal -- identifying, creating, and delivering highly valued products and services to its customers. This requires that it possess all three of the key attributes -- good leaders, good managers, and a good work force. Therefore, it's not surprising that most of your MBA courses are directly related to these attributes. For example, courses in economics, communication, strategy organizational behavior, and human resources should prepare you for a leadership role and enable you to effectively manage your company's work force. Other courses, such as marketing, operations management, and information technology, increase your knowledge of specific disciplines, enabling you to develop the efficient business processes and strong external relationships your company needs. Portions of this finance course will address raising the capital your company needs to implement its plans. In particular, this finance course will enable you to forecast your company's funding requirements and then describe strategies for acquiring the necessary capital. In short, your MBA courses will give you the skills you need to help a company achieve its first goal -- producing goods and services that customers want.

Recall, though, that its not enough just to have highly valued products and satisfied customers. Successful companies must also meet their second goal, which is generating enough cash to compensate the investors who provided the necessary capital. To help accomplish this second goal, you must be able to evaluate any proposal, whether it relates to marketing, production, strategy, or any other area, and implement only projects that add value for your investors. For this, you must have expertise in finance, no matter your major. Thus, finance is a critical part of an MBA education, and it will help you throughout your career.

You give not only to customers, but those that enable you to deliver to customers -- namely, your employees, partners and investors. As I had mentioned earlier:
"Business is an art of using people to pleasing themselves with their opportunities and pleasing others with their results."

When done ethically, business is the art of giving -- at least, it is the art of giving more than the amount of taking we do. Corporate offices then become our church/temple/mosque, managers become priests, top executives become sages, business itself becomes a progressive religion, and folks like Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, etc., become prophets.
"Business is faith in work."

P.S. It is a different matter that one could consider religion itself to be a form of (viral marketing or network marketing) business.

- Kaleem Aziz.

If one has to start a new order of things, one has to think not only as a business person but as a "person" -- assimilating the whole with the best. Here are my few dear sites:

CFO Project
CIO
CFO
Knowledge@Wharton
PBS
League of MBA Bloggers
MIT OpenCourseWare
Finance Yahoo!
McKinsey Quarterly
HBS Working Knowledge
Yale Global Online

For thinking scientifically and technologically, you need lateral thoughts and intellectual space. I find them here:
ScientificAmerican
California State Parks
Ecademy
Links at my blog (my personal organizer with "carry-forward thinking process")



- Kaleem Aziz.

The logic behind this is very simple, but attachment to money instead of value skews it out for many of us in asking "Why would anyone do that?!":
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1563&L2=5&L3=5&srid=27&gp=0

When Microsoft announced, in July 2004, that it would tap its legendary cash reserves to return some $60 billion to shareholders, analysts immediately began scrambling to understand what the move might say about the software giant's strategy, its growth prospects, and the maturation of the entire high-technology sector.

For John Connors, Microsoft's chief financial officer, however, the decision to pay a onetime special dividend amounting to about $30 billion and to buy back as much as $30 billion of the company's own shares over the next four years was merely the latest in a series of financial moves that have positioned it at the cutting edge of financial innovation in the high-tech industry. In 2002 Connors helped reconfigure Microsoft's financial-reporting processes around seven clearly defined business units, each with its own CFO and profit-and-loss statement, to offer investors a greater degree of organizational stability and transparency. The following year, the company surprised many people by announcing that it would stop compensating employees with stock options and would instead issue stock awards.

Connors believes that this combination of initiatives has helped build a stronger value culture at Microsoft while permitting management to focus on performance in the company's increasingly diverse business lines. In an interview at Microsoft's headquarters, in Redmond, Washington, he talked with McKinsey's Bertil Chappuis and Tim Koller about the thinking behind Microsoft's finance moves, the company's plans for growth, and the role of finance in the next era at Microsoft.

Economies are built on value (which in turn are based on values of the individuals in it), not on currency, yet it beats us time after time (or so it seems!):
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/article_page.aspx?ar=1545&L2=7&L3=8&srid=27&gp=0

Mexico's fears are not unique. China's economic surge and its entry into the World Trade Organization have sparked alarm across the developing world. In middle-income countries such as Brazil, Poland, Portugal, and South Korea, a rising standard of living makes their position as low-wage producers and exporters increasingly tenuous.

Rather than fixating on jobs lost to China, these countries should remember a fact of economic life: no place can remain the world's low-cost producer forever—even China will lose that title one day. Instead of trying to defend low-wage assembly jobs, Mexico and other middle-income countries should focus on creating jobs that add higher value. Only if more productive companies with higher-value-added activities replace less productive ones can middle-income economies continue down the development path. Even so, being part of the global economy requires these countries, like Lewis Carroll's Alice in Through the Looking Glass, to do a lot of running just to stay in the same place. Unfortunately, for too many of them the focus on China—and, more broadly, political rhetoric against globalization—are blocking reform efforts.

Yet another stab at time based accounting, whereas it must be more like "phenomenon-based accounting" based on what factors changed in each slice of time. But then focusing on time slices per activity is better than focusing on time slices alone, so I like it better than the former alternative, but dislike it compared to "Empowerment Model" or "Network Model" of accounting for Individual Economies:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=4587&t=finance

Activity-based costing, ABC, would seem to be an accurate way for managers to assign costs to the customers and products that use a department's services. But real-world use has shown ABC loses power in large-scale operations, and can be difficult to implement and maintain. In their HBR article, excerpted here, authors Kaplan and Anderson suggest the process be simplified through an approach they call "time-driven ABC." Here's an overview.

And then when too many things change, it all becomes too hazy -- and we fall back to our instincts in the name of Philosophy or Statistics. May be we will fall back to Psychics analyzing our business model someday soon -- unless we bring some sense into the relationship between "values" of the leadership and the associated "value" they deliver:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1125.cfm

He adds that although it’s a given that technological assets can determine the progress of an individual, a company or even a nation, the decision to embrace or to reject technology is itself deeply affected by abstract ideas that are embedded in an individual’s (or a nation’s) general life philosophy.

The trial-and-error of being exhalted sometimes for your services, and then kicked-in-the-butt by competition or the customer some other times, seem to be the cycles by which few organizations "learn" to be societal. Had we had a framework of what money is and what Economics mean, you'd then see that money is tied to human behavior and needs -- rather than the resources in the system. Societal perspective would then be present from the start -- rather than as a consequence.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4573&t=leadership

Organizational learning
Organizations' learning pathways are complex and iterative. Companies can make great strides in one area only to take a few steps backward when a new demand is made of them. Nevertheless, as they move along the learning curve, companies almost invariably go through the following five stages.

That's why I am pushing for Value Systems -- or any other Altruism based Economic system -- because we can eventually save millions, nay billions, of lives in one stroke of correction (even though the brush we will need to use will have to be very broad).

Values and value don't have to be two different paths -- there's nothing in money that makes them two different entities. There's everything in how we act and react that makes money deviate from value.

The disparity between price and value is our creation; and we need to enlighten values into others to see that values are those that create value ... otherwise, what's the sense left in values after all?

My take is that money itself should be the medium to do good -- i.e., if you invest it, good "should" happen. Instead, we have money investing that can be good and can be harmful ... whereas the definition of money is exactly that which we give to it. (Tells us a lot about ourselves as a humanity, actually.)

- Kaleem Aziz.

Valuation of a technology business, especially of the innovative kind, has no benchmarks today. So people are resorting to "philosophy" or "art" as a method; or settling down with not doing anything that can't be "statistically" proven. Statistics being an advanced form of philosophy at best -- either historical data based or survey based, it comes down to the same thing; you see what you want to see!

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1125.cfm

He adds that although it’s a given that technological assets can determine the progress of an individual, a company or even a nation, the decision to embrace or to reject technology is itself deeply affected by abstract ideas that are embedded in an individual’s (or a nation’s) general life philosophy.

Look at Microsoft, Amazon, DELL and Wal*Mart. Following people's demand directly yields a billion dollar gaint -- simple equation.

Innovation happens in core teams that have a cause or passion they are chasing or seeking. Microsoft may be a 290 billion dollar company for outsiders, but inside it is a bunch of startups that are being backed by a single core vision of business strategy of MBAs from top business schools.

Yet companies do one of the following:
o look to technology guru (who typically thinks technology leadership will sell automatically)
o look to finance guru (who typically know to control costs and kill innovation)
o look to marketing guru (who research market demand based on historical data, the best surveys they can form and not based on understanding themselves -- as they are humans too -- i.e., what part of their life does a particular need take up)
o look to micro-economists (who track money spent and not the need fulfilled)

Therefore, this logistic is left out to philosophy or art -- instead of to a system that can track "philosophy" or "art" (or the advanced philosophy we called "statistics") better. Value Systems can solve it and that's where I am headed -- to root out philosophy, art and statistics at its own game.

- Kaleem Aziz.

W.r.t the following comment by a fellow networker about not wanting to invest in "breakthrough technologies":

"Give me a business investment proposition with a well thought through product (any product, any sector) an identified market, preferably global, an industry that is thoroughly understood, a defined and executable route to market that will lead to a defendable market share with a team who are connected and can execute."

One could add "... whether it is technology or not".

The key issue being it be a solution that fulfills a need -- whether it is a technology or not. It only highlights to me how misunderstood technology is.

Technology is not either-or. It isn't "Technology vs. Marketing" or "Technology vs. Economy" -- it is what combinations of "Technology plus Marketing" or "Technology plus Economy" are more efficient than what we currently have.

Technology merely fulfills the need for speed by businesses. You don't want speed or don't know how to speed your business -- that's a problem you can ignore and refuse to change. However, that's where the challenge is being picked up by Microsoft, Amazon, Wal*Mart and DELL -- in finding synergistic markets of efficient delivery. Can it be done without technology? Theoritically yes, but at snails pace in comparison. It is this inefficiency that you should target technology prowess with -- not just create features that you are convinced will-sell-no-matter-what.

VCs typically want an exit strategy and money focus, instead of understanding the business model and believing in it. That's where Microsoft funds numerous startups internally while one succeeds enough to make their other "Financial experiments" profitable thousand fold.

Money is tied to passion and capability of "a core team" that can pull it off -- yet most large enterprises with the exception of Microsoft, DELL, Wal*Mart, Google and Amazon try to cause innovation enterprise wide (in normal everyday employees) without any alignment to business value. (What's missing in innovating enterprise-wide is the passion, the capability, and the alignment of those values with the larger whole -- making innovation evaporate into free space, or worse the reason of conflict with "my solution is better than yours!".)

Blinded in seeing value only in Finance concepts (short-term yearly or monthly revenue) and Marketing research (statistical and survey based), many companies have totally missed the actual opporuntity to satisfy a need. However, blinded by Technological Toys, companies have done same. It's about time we realize it is not "an either-or" equation -- you need all of them in the right proportion customized as a recipe for your business (think: if it is not customized, what differentiation are you creating by following the norms?).

My thought: If you are going to follow the proven principles only -- you can't be doing anything different to warranty a change (or a billion dollar business).

- Kaleem Aziz.

The Definitive Study of Entrepreneurship in 2004 was an interesting read:
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/research/a/study2004_p.htm (launches pop-ups)
http://www.gemconsortium.org/category_list.asp?cid=163

Entrepreneurs themselves provide 65.8 percent of the start-up capital; hence others, principally informal investors, provide the remaining 34.2 percent. An overwhelming 88 percent of America's 500 fastest growing private companies never received financing from business angels. In contrast, 33 percent of the same 500 companies raised start-up capital 'by tapping the assets of family and friends'.

William D Bygrave, Frederic C Hamilton Professor for Free Enterprise, Babson College and lead researcher of the GEM Financing Report said, "Entrepreneurs seeking capital to start a business must first use their own savings, then turn to family members, next friends, work colleagues, and neighbours and finally strangers for informal investment. They should forget about formal venture capital."

...

Key Findings from the GEM Financing Report

Informal investors and entrepreneurs

Self-funding by entrepreneurs and funding from informal investors (family, friends, colleagues, neighbours and strangers) are the lifeblood of an entrepreneurial society. Informal investors are first and foremost close family relatives of the entrepreneurs (49.4%). Friends and neighbours provide 26.4 percent of informal investment, followed by other relatives (9.4%), work colleagues (7.9%), and strangers (6.9%).

Entrepreneurs should look to themselves or seek other entrepreneurs for funding. Aside from providing 65.8 percent of the start-up capital for their own companies they are four times as likely as non-entrepreneurs to be informal investors in another entrepreneur's business. Entrepreneurs are wasting valuable time by prematurely seeking seed capital from business angels and even from formal venture capitalists - searches that come up empty-handed almost every time.

Informal investors supply more than the external capital needs of entrepreneurs. The average informal investment is $24,202 - more than the average amount of external financing necessary ($18,678 ).

Entrepreneurs' ambitions, countries of origin and type of businesses will determine how much capital they need. For all GEM nations, the average capital needed to start a business is $53,673. More is needed for an opportunity-pulled venture ($58,179 for venture created from opportunity) than a necessity-pushed one ($24,467 for venture started where options for work are absent or poor). Start-ups in the business-services sector also require more funding than those in the consumer-oriented sector.

Gender matters when it comes to capital. Businesses started by men require more than those started by women ($65,010 vs. $33,201), partially because women start more consumer-oriented businesses that need less initial capital.

Entrepreneurs are overly optimistic about their ROIs. 51 percent of informal investors expect a negative or zero return and only 22 percent expect a return of 100 percent or more; in contrast, only 13 percent of entrepreneurs expect a negative or zero return but 53 percent expect a return of 100 percent or more.

Venture capital and entrepreneurs

By far the rarest source of capital for nascent entrepreneurs is classic venture capital. So rare is it, that even in the US, which has more than two-thirds of the total venture capital in the entire world (74% VC among G7 nations in 2003), far fewer than one in ten thousand new ventures receive their initial financing from VC firms. US companies received $8.1 million VC funding compared to an average of $1.2 million per company in other G7 nations in 2003.

Advantage in the global market place? US companies own it. High-level VC funding accelerates the commercialization of their new products and services; and eventual initial public offerings in the stock markets. Ninety-one percent of VC invested in the US finances high technology companies, in contrast to only 29 percent in other G7 nations.

There is an upward trend in VC backing of superstar companies. Recent VC backing of IPOs combined with Google's spectacular IPO in the third quarter of 2004 has boosted the confidence of the venture capital industry. In 2005, industry leaders predict a new cycle of VC spending with more money targeted to seed, start-up, and early-stage businesses.

- Kaleem Aziz.

We take things for granted as we grow, and don't ask simple questions. We make up our answers and tend to get on to more "important" things -- like concentrating on the way it is done rather than finding a new way. Bose's story reminds us that when grown ups question as much as a child does, we can actually build companies around the new idea:

Better Living Through Curiosity
This year, the renowned acoustics innovators at the Bose Corporation unveiled the product of an intensive 24-year research effort code-named Project Sound: an outrageously inventive car suspension system. Welcome to the iconoclastic world of Amar Bose.
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/bown/2004/autotech/article/0,22221,750663,00.html

In 1966, encouraged by his years of late-night acoustics research suggesting that the role of reflected sound had been overlooked, Bose introduced a speaker that used multiple small loudspeakers to take advantage of the fact that 80 to 90 percent of sound from a speaker radiates backward. The system did away with woofers and tweeters and incorporated an active equalizer. To work correctly, the speakers had to be placed in the corners of the room.

“To the hi-fi world, it was blasphemy,” Bose says. “They sounded great, but people had their preconceptions, and the reasoning behind our speakers was too hard to explain.”

The first speakers were a flop. But Bose’s reputation grew with the introduction of the second-generation Bose 901 speakers, followed by the 301 speakers and the Wave Radio, which the company introduced after 14 years of R&D. In 1978, on a flight from Zurich, Bose hit on the idea for noise-canceling headphones—and managed to work out the essential equations by the time he landed. And in 1982, drawn by the possibilities for high-quality audio in cars, he teamed up with ACDelco to develop custom-configured sound systems for particular models.

As the company grew, Bose kept looking outward, excited by the opportunities he saw all around him. His son, Vanu, remembers driving in a rainstorm with his father, who squinted through a windshield streaked by poorly performing wipers. “Most people would just complain about how the wipers don’t work right,” Vanu says, “but he was analyzing why they didn’t work and thinking out loud about how to make them better. A few weeks later I saw on his desk a patent application for a new design for windshield wipers. It was only later that I realized that not everyone is always looking for ways to do things better.”

I totally agree, disruptive innovations (i.e., doing it the first time) is the most difficult part -- if you are not beheaded for it (in the name of blasphemy), you are at least humiliated and ridiculed.

But hidden in there is a blessing for the innovator. No one wants to take up the same path he has taken, until it is too late for them. Look at examples of the two richest men in the world.

I'll start with the second richest. Roughly the story of Warren Buffet is that he was mentored by a professor who believed in value based evaluations of companies; while rest of the world practiced price/cost based ones.

Bill Gates did not have a formal MBA education -- but followed much of his strategy from Henry Ford's techniques (of course, improvising where Ford had failed). Both Henry Ford and Bill Gates were laughed at, until it was too late, when they turned the tables around and showed it already works. The improvization Bill Gates made is that of going as close to legally allowed techniques in competition to ward off large-scale hostility -- whereas Henry Ford's idea was copied by GM et al at much larger scale, taking away Henry Ford's thunder.

Enterprenuers/Innovators vs. MBAs

Notice another thing Bose says in the above article w.r.t an average MBA (do read it both ways in them perceiving him, and him perceiving them):

As an MIT professor and as CEO of the eponymous company that he built from scratch, Bose has made breakthroughs in an astonishingly broad range of disciplines, including acoustics, aviation, defense, even nuclear physics. At times, he says, he has risked the entire company in pursuit of a particular idea. “I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs,” he tells me.“But I never went into business to make money. I went into business so that I could do interesting things that hadn’t been done before.” (emphasis added)

Couple that comment about MBAs with that of what was recently published about Eddie Lampert and Warren Buffet:

The Next Warren Buffett?
Financier Eddie Lampert turned once-bankrupt Kmart into a $3 billion cash cow. Will he build it into a new Berkshire Hathaway?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_47/b3909001_mz001.htm

Lampert has carefully studied Buffett for years. He started reading and rereading Buffett's writings while working at Goldman after college. He would analyze Buffett's investments, he says, by "reverse engineering" deals, such as his purchase of insurance company GEICO. Lampert went back and read GEICO's annual reports in the couple of years preceding Buffett's initial investment in the 1970s. "Putting myself in his shoes at that time, could I understand why he made the investments?" says Lampert. "That was part of my learning process." In 1989 he flew out to Omaha and met Buffett for 90 minutes, peppering him with questions about his investing philosophy.

Like the Sage of Omaha, Lampert targets mature and easily understandable businesses that have strong cash flows. Both focus on a company's ability to generate large amounts of cash over the long haul, so neither is particularly fazed by sharp ups and downs in profits and stock prices. In fact, says ESL President William C. Crowley, "Lampert would rather earn a bumpy 15% [return] than a flat 12%." And just as Buffett progressed from minority stakes, where his influence isn't guaranteed, to majority stakes, where he has control, Lampert is currently following the same path. Kmart marks his first majority play, and Lampert says it is the type of investment he plans for the future. "In a control position, our ability to create value goes up exponentially," he explains.

1. Why is it that those who turn down MBA's conventional techniques come to be some of the richest people in the world?

2. How can we "connect" the diverse learnings in an MBA into one "economically optimal" decision-making system for business development?

3. What's the difference between price (or cost) that MBA's are taught and value that successful enterprenuers follow?

All of these are secrets that will help us create societal businesses -- the largest global businesses known to mankind today. It is very inspiring -- yet very practical, and my pursuit is in finding these before the fact, rather than how most of our world finds it after the fact. Like Eddie Lampert, I am studying in detail a lot of leaders in business and politics, including most influential persons world has ever known as prophets or freedom fighters (e.g., Gandhi).

P.S: In the coming quarters, I would like to give a presentation at school on how this is possible and provide a relationship between "value" and professional success. Also, I would like to compare economies historically as well as internationally to provide linkages. I would like to present it primarily to get feedback for my edification.

- Kaleem Aziz.

A fellow networker commented:

Perfect paranoia

One of the smartest things I heard in Silicon Valley was the following:
"Entrepreneurs spend the first couple of years hiding their ideas from everyone in fear of having them stolen. Once they start to look for investment, they spend the next couple of years telling their ideas to anyone who will listen."

Ideas are nothing - execution is everything.

I agree, and extend it to mean something like product is nothing, process is everything. The reasoning is essentially that anyone can reverse engineer your product, but to reverse engineer your process requires equally capable leaders and team members.

Creating barriers to entry is vital if your business stays ahead from the competition. If trade secret or patents does it, I think the innovator is wise to hide it. Ideas are what hold up Intel, Microsoft and Coca Cola -- they're in the habit of suing their competitors for infringement regularly for this purpose that no one develops on their hardwork for free.

- Kaleem Aziz.

At the time of innovation, no one knows whether there is a market for it or not -- they only know they have a bright idea (that they believe will sell because it is so bright/innovative). The idea is then poliferated through deliberate channels, which requires organizational work and VC funding.

Most VCs backoff within a year or two when they don't see revenue (they're in for the quick buck). The innovative company is then either required to play to the VC's tune or play it out of the playground they initially started in. This may look ill-conceived from the outside, but it happens mainly because the learning curve or innovation curve is different from what you wrote it would be in your business plan (after all predicting and forecasting is not a science -- and may be for good reason ).

Instead I am suggesting that market study be a part of the innovation to a greater extent now, than it has been in Silicon Valley in the past few years. I may be off when it comes to VCs elsewhere, so do enlighten me.

I liked this paragraph from a fellow networker valuable in how these educated guesses are executed:

It's purely negotiation that determines the valuation. Of course, being intelligent players, Promoters and VCs agree on a value that both feel would benefit them. It's all speculation at this stage, as no one knows for sure whether all the spreadsheet calculations would all be for real. Each factors in risk as he/she perceives it.

Take a look at the S-curve of innovation in the graphs in this article:
http://www.safehaven.com/article-71.htm

The question may be the timeline. I've often seen that it is not disruptive innovation that sinks the boat -- because you can only say it was disruptive after the fact, you can say you were bankrupt after the fact, you can say you failed after the fact, and you can say you are in a recession after the fact. Ahead of the fact -- you go in it because you believe it has value and you believe market will see its value once they get the time to know it.

The S-curve denotes (after the fact) how people learned to create and use the product, and how well the company protected its patented processes during that time (to channelize its revenue to itself, rather than to its competitors). Suppose the company was approved and took VC funding of 7 million dollars, to prove itself in a period of 2 years. But in reality, say the S-curve takes 5 years to reach "growth" stage -- then the company has burned through almost 7 million dollars, and they still don't see the "expected" paybacks. VCs get nervous and start pulling out; while the company itself starts shedding skins and strategic assets/patents. That's the path many innovative companies melt-down -- wrong understanding of the S-curve.

(It can also be argued that the company should've developed a business plan of shorter duration for a streaming revenue model, paid back VCs and funded themselves. But it is not in the company's hand to make this decision, while competitors are also preparing to start feeding in the market. So many companies cannot make the decision to cautiously feed slowly and be left with nothing to capitalize on.)

With respect to how you can study a market that doesn't exist, I'm working on a theory which I'll unviel in the next 6 months. (After that I'll run it by a few local professors and some more professors from Stanford. Then I'll start building a team/product/process around building this "product" which has a huge potential to individual and group decision making.) There are ways you can analyze a non-existent market, and very simple and measurable, but not many have tried that. Currently the tools are statistical analysis of demand data of comparable products -- and it often gives the wrong picture for specific reasons; my solution will not be a pancea, but several thousands times faster and much more accurate. The beauty of my solution is that it "aggregates", unlike how statistical data will not.

Over the next few years, I'll try to validate it as a businessman trying to make a profitable solution out of it. (Of course, I'll keep trying till it succeeds.)

- Kaleem Aziz.

What MBA really does for you is that it brings known business wisdom from different corners of the world and business domains to you. This makes it both intense and life-changing at the sametime.

However, being an MBA itself doesn't unfortunately always translate into someone who has absorbed the teachings at school. You have to know that world is your classroom, and really be open to receiving any kind of lessons to be absorbed by you.

Most people instead go to MBA with their personal opinions, refusing to take a meaning or connotation that can't be absorbed in their values, or hearing only what they want to hear while leaving out the rest. To get the best out of an MBA coursework, go instead to adjust your values with the new learnings coming your way -- certainly remembering that it is easier said than done.

Do read the blog and comments under Essence of being MBA. For a running-commentary of experiences of current MBA students around the world (you get great insights by listening to their experiences), do visit: MBA League.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Knowledge@Wharton had a few great articles this time.

On merging good reputation and visibility with advertisement of your brand, here's how it is done. Be popular and reputed, and then say something that helps sell your plans.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1109.cfm

It is difficult to separate the success of the Virgin brand from the flamboyant man behind that brand. Branson says he wouldn't have it any other way. He travels the world weekly, reinforcing his good-natured, visible, jet-setting, billionaire reputation as a reflection of the companies he owns. "Generally speaking, I think being a high-profile person has its advantages," he says. "Advertising costs enormous amounts of money these days. I just announced in India that I was setting up a domestic airline, and we ended up getting on the front pages of the newspaper. The costs of that in advertising terms would have been considerable." Visibility is good, says Branson, "as long as you're not in the headlines for the wrong reasons."

Women in Business: Report from the Trenches
You Are your Brand: Defining a Personal Leadership Style
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1097&specialId=26

Travelocity CEO Michelle Peluso's personal brand focuses on passion and love for the job. "I can't do things unless I love them. I work extremely hard, so I believe you must have fun on the job to make that worth it." The work-as-passion approach makes success self-fulfilling as a leader, Peluso added. "I believe in having fun always. It's selfish; if my team is fired up, then Travelocity will succeed."

Xerox's chief marketing officer Diane McGarry, by contrast, said she had never considered her career in terms of a personal brand, but characterized her leadership style as being inclusive and decisive, with good listening at the top of her list of important personal qualities. As a leadership guide, McGarry told the audience, "Go buy a copy of Jim Collins' book Good to Great. It reminds us how important it is to get the right people on the bus and get them in the right seats - then to motivate them to do what they do best," she said.

...

The four panelists all agreed that informal networks were as important as formal networking or mentoring groups. According to McGarry, success at a big company such as Xerox requires an understanding of the many layers of office politics as well as the confidence to put your best ideas forward. "You have to know which people you need to get your ideas in front of in order to get those ideas advanced. Every time you make a move in a big company, you expand your network of people who are in your corner," she said. Peluso agreed. "Pick the five or 10 people you most admire and offer to take them to lunch to seek their advice. People genuinely want to go out of their way to help you succeed if you ask for their help."

Shukla added that while you should always be building your personal network through informal means, there were organizations such as the Washington, D.C.-based Women's High Tech Coalition and the Bay Area-based Forum for Women Entrepreneurs that had been invaluable to her as a business professional in the high-tech field. "Keep in touch with these organizations so they can help you raise your profile," she advised.

...

My advice is this: Anything that happens to force you to do serious, painful self-examination is a good thing. Remember that it's not about banking or consulting, it's about you - what you have accomplished, finding out what you love. In the end, you could get married, you could get divorced, your company could dissolve. Regardless, you have to know who you are and what makes you go.

...

The value of relationships shines in crisis situations. Have a really high bar for the people you surround yourself with, then work like crazy and have a ball. Otherwise, what's the point?

...

You want to know how to get noticed? Take on the riskiest projects. I turned around the business losing the most money at Progressive and you can bet I got noticed. Now I have such a network inside the company that I can get anything done. Also, keep in touch with all the smartest alumni of your company. They will become your competitors, your future employees, your future bosses. Stay friends with smart people. It will be worth it.

Ralph Shrader's Leadership Test: Is Anybody Following?
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1103.cfm

He also said that he had tried to build his leadership style around the examples of such enduring leaders as Mahatma Gandhi. "Gandhi said that the most important thing for any leader is to have followers. It's profound but simple. Leading is different from managing. Leaders are not self-created. Leaders are acknowledged by others. The only thing that really matters is, when you look back, [whether] anybody is following."

Winning that acknowledgement requires building trust through predictable decisions. "The most important thing is consistency," he noted. "People need to be able to count on your decision criteria. I have always tried to build trust, not impose trust. You can't impose it." Consistency in a leader may be even more important than raw intelligence. "If we gave an IQ test at Booz Allen, I wouldn't win and that doesn't bother me. What I bring is the ability to mold lots of things into a direction for the organization." If anything, establishing credibility as a leader is even tougher in a private partnership, such as Booz Allen, because it is easier for the leader to be held accountable, Shrader said. "The owners are my partners. Every day, I interact with the people who own my firm."

- Kaleem Aziz.

VCs can't help us measure/understand innovation. Instead try to understand innovation from market side (sales and marketing numbers). You'll then see that VCs only provide the mechanism or machines for the stimulus -- market provides the response.

Having made the above point, I have seen that lately "innovation" or "creativity" by itself is considered as a solution, rather than the assessment whether it has "utility" or "value", and sells. Innovation done as unsuccessful R&D is an expense that doesn't deliver value -- and while not useless, must be considered "preparation" or "homework"; not as work that can be traded.

To innovate is not the answer of a successful business. To innovate something of utility/value is.

My formula for success (a cliche) is "Pioneer + Perform + Poliferate = Success".

Pioneer stands for creativity or innovation that serves a need in the market, Perform stands for delivering results time and again, and finally, Poliferate stands for the ability to span more and more size of the market profitability. If one pioneers and can't deliver -- they'll be remembered but not necessarily paid. If one pioneers and performs, they'll be a player in the market but not the leader. If one pioneers, performs and poliferates, they've gone through phases of growth (i.e., "performing" through change) and will become the leader in their market segments.

I had blogged about Good and Bad Creativity after finding that Silicon Valley companies were equating innovation to success. Then I had said that Economics is self-correcting, and I still believe it is -- except the practiced monetary Economics has a flaw it follows price rather than value. Rest of the blog still applies.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Someone in my network posted this, and I thought it to be very inspiring.

What Makes Beautiful Minds -- a look at John Forbes Nash of "A Beautiful Mind" fame.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/beautiful-minds.html

The 21-year-old John Nash was certainly a bit of a wizard to have come up with the first theory of nearly everything. That's no exaggeration, either. Most theories apply to just one specific discipline. But game theory, the subject Nash is best known for tackling, applies to any situation involving a mix of competition and cooperation -- corporate rivalry, competition for votes, Darwinian struggles among species.

Nash's thesis was just one of a spectacular string of problems that he solved before he turned 30 and the onset of delusions and hallucinations sapped his creative powers. In fact, most of the mathematicians I interviewed insisted that Nash's contribution to game theory was the most "trivial" of his accomplishments.

His theory of noncooperative games won him a Nobel Prize in 1994, more than 30 years after he fell ill with schizophrenia.

...

Nash absolutely believed in learning by doing. "Classes dull the mind," says Russell Crowe in one of the opening shots in the movie, reflecting Nash's sentiments completely.

...

Winning didn't mean much, though, unless the stakes were high. Nash was always looking for big, unsolved problems. At MIT in the early 1950s, Nash on a dare took up a problem that had baffled mathematicians for a century.

Economics is a "central" science, and luckily for us not yet complete. Any major contribution to it, it seems, will mean contributing to many fields all at once. Added advantage is that the findings in it are not "theoretical", but applies directly into how we live our practical lives, and what guidance we can provide to others. I suggest we do something together, on the side, to break the mind-barrier within Economics.

Many people are trying in their own ways here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ijccr/

Hint: My mentor gave me a profound suggestion recently. She said something to the effect,

"... seek to understand and integrate the small grains of value in those who don't see the world quite as broadly; they may in fact provide the true unifying force."

To me that was very inspiring, collaborative, and on the lines of another thing I had read recently:
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385503865/ref=cm_custrec_gl_acc/102-8992478-2560905?v=glance&s=books

If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Starting with some Economics research:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1082.cfm

The Problem of Time-Inconsistency

In "Rules Rather Than Discretion," their 1977 paper, Prescott and Kydland established that a monetary authority's policy decisions are often time-inconsistent. This means that monetary policy changes intended to remedy an immediate problem such as unemployment will often have unintended ramifications that work against the stated goal of reducing unemployment.

When a government announces a remedy to a short-term problem, individuals and companies adjust their behavior and make new decisions based on that information. Those decisions change the economic landscape, reducing the incentives the government had in the first place for wanting to institute the policy changes. Thus, if a government has the discretion to pursue any policy it wants, given the particular economic situation on the ground, and can't remain committed to the promises it makes, it will face what Prescott and Kydland called a credibility problem. To counter this, it is wiser for a central bank to focus on long-range goals and not interfere in the economy too aggressively by trying to boost employment or stimulate demand in the short run.

It seems it is difficult to separate current Economic opinions with political standpoint. Here's one take:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1078.cfm

Peterson, for example, argued that unless the U.S. stops running massive budget deficits and counting on other countries to finance them by buying its bonds, the country is headed for disaster. At some point, foreigners won't be willing to buy any more U.S. bonds, which could then cause a "crash landing - a sudden hard drop in the dollar and a big spike in interest rates, with grave effects on financial markets and the economy."

...

When lawmakers cut taxes but not spending and resort to borrowing, they are just pushing their bills onto the next generation, he noted. "[Economist] Milton Friedman used to remind us that a long-term tax cut isn't a long-term tax cut at all unless it's accompanied by a long-term spending cut. It's essentially a deferred tax, a tax increase on the future."

Sarbanes-Oxley strikes hard on smaller companies that find it too steeply expensive for them:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1080.cfm

Why did they go dark? Cost was certainly a factor in some of the decisions, says Leuz. "Some smaller companies estimated that the cost of complying with SOX was as high as $500,000 per firm, while the cost for bigger companies could be in the millions," notes Leuz, who co-authored the study with Alexander Triantis and Tracy Wang from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Among the estimated increased costs are those related to "higher audit and legal fees, new internal control systems that need to be implemented, higher director and officer insurance premiums, and a host of other expenses associated with compliance."

...

"We basically find that going dark can serve as a way to conserve cash but it may also be exploited by insiders trying to avoid the scrutiny of the market," says Leuz. "Whether insiders succeed, and whether the decision to go dark is a good or bad one, therefore depends on the governance in place."

IBM, aka. Big Blue, is attempting its hand at Business Process Outsourcing. Outsourcing I believe is not new, in that companies like Nike have practiced it for a long time now. It is only that outsourcing is now becoming more individualized as in one per one organization, whereas earlier only the large ones could afford it. (Think of mainframes vs. PCs as an analogy -- one computer per person caused a boom compared to mainframes used only by few large companies.)
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1083.cfm

IBM became a leader in IT outsourcing, which refers to a company farming out work such as managing central computer centers or handling technical support calls. Big Blue began extending its services reach from the technology arena to business tasks about the time the company acquired the consulting wing of accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers, in late 2002. The roughly $3.9 billion deal was a landmark move. IBM combined the roughly 30,000 employees from PwC Consulting with about 30,000 IBM workers to form a new division called Business Consulting Services. The idea behind the acquisition and new unit was to generate revenue by joining IBM's technology prowess with PwC Consulting's business expertise. Analysts say the PwC Consulting deal has helped IBM compete in the BPO arena.

...

IBM insists that it isn't just targeting BPO deals, which often are focused on cutting costs. Instead, IBM says it is pursuing a market for more comprehensive services - what Palmisano called business process transformational services. During a speech earlier this year, Palmisano took a stab at defining BPTS. "It's about increasing a business's effectiveness and strengthening core competencies," he said. "It's not just a question of taking the cost out. It's about transforming the process, embedding the technology and integrating."

- Kaleem Aziz.

LinkedIn is promising "professional business networking" process based on trust -- however, trust cannot be offered by a tool, it is catered and absorbed by "people" (and their processes). In any case, the process at LinkedIn is designed to be "more private than a Yahoogroup". Try it for a while (http://www.linkedin.com) - simply because I believe it benefits both the entire community as well as yourself.

Why would LinkedIn not sell our e-mail addresses to e-marketters? In many ways, we are the golden egg delivering hen -- the customer -- for LinkedIn. To go bad on its word for anything less, like short-term bribe, works against it business model and sustenance -- just like brawl/violence or food poisoning in a restaurant ends its days. LinkedIn itself may become corrupt only if it gets filled with networkers who continue to find ways to get around the system -- that is, flirt with the "unethical but not illegal" margins.

Here are a few tips I follow on LinkedIn, and would like to hear how others address this issue:

1. LinkedIn invitation is like a handshake. Do with that person what you would in a handshake (typically, if you like him then reciprocate, if he is a stranger then know him, if you hate him then ignore him, if he annoys you then complain, etc.) Note: LinkedIn seems to trust-rank the networkers based on other networkers feedback -- and spammers, bad behavior, etc., is disciplined by taking action against the member.



2. Accept new contacts, because there are only so many people in this world that extend a handshake first. Start with the assumption that you can trust the person, and let them prove to you why they can't be trusted if you have to disconnect from their network. (This fits in with the MGMT 501 research on "trust" having two dimensions -- one of "fear/accountability" of getting into a new relationship and the second of "credibility/reputation" of guarding ones assets by knowing the other person's credentials/capabilities/past.)



3. Just like a business, we survive not just by serving/keeping current contacts, but by expanding them. So, keep the old, but make new friends/acquaintances too. (Remember though: Losing the old friends/customers hits you harder and you cannot make this up as easily by building several new business relationships. If you have to lose a network relationship, there must be a very good reason to justify "why?".)



4. I go with the premise that privacy is desirable, but that it has its limits, and for its own good. Think of any business besides LinkedIn as an example. In a restaurant or a party, what's the guarantee the food is not served with cyanide, or that some one in the guests does not have a deadly plot, or that someone is not using their cell phone camera with the intent of hurting your privacy? With LinkedIn it is your e-mail address, your profile and your reputation; instead of how it's physically us that is "vulnerable" in a crowded restaurant or party. Note: This fear may cause us to become more private and more cut off, seeking only opportunities that have been cleared up in formal mechanisms -- leaving out on opportunties that have not yet been identified/invented by others. That is, despite having the skill, we holdback and limit ourself to our psychological safety net -- a good strategy in risk management, but very limiting in its ability to innovate.
   
   
   Schools that don't let you learn from your own hurt and mistakes don't teach, they spoon feed. Communities that keep their people protected from the dark side of intermingling are undoing their advantage, much like ships that stay in harbor do:
   "Ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what ships are built for."



5. There's almost always no "one right way" of networking, unless one specifies their "one right goal" they plan on achieving, i.e., there is a "context" to each adoptable networking style or theme. In this vien, all networkers attempt to evaluate themselves in terms of their personal goals, not based on our benchmark about him/her. On the other side of the coin, each one of us is evaluated not by what we think of ourselves, but by what others think of us. In other words, this is a people game of being likable, not a game of being technically correct. (Note: This change in paradigm is important to hardcore technology or finance folks who are good with computers and numbers, but bad with people. That is, they may be exceptionally talented, yet emotionally not trained to notice that they probably lost a good business prospect -- although their solution will work on a computer or in theory. I am from technology background, and I take this pill everyday! )

Stay connected!

- Kaleem Aziz.

Even as Wal*Mart and other mammoth traders in private space battled against the need for the same supply pool with US defense government contracts, they have been eye-ing it for the gains in their supply chain by employing RFID technology. RFID has been a very technical subject fundamentally, but here's an article that gives a good intro to this technology -- that some say is going to be "hot":

The Three Rs of RFID: Rewards, Risk, and ROI
http://www.technology-evaluation.com/Research/ResearchHighlights/Scm/2004/09/research_notes/prn_TU_SC_XTP_09_28_04_1.asp

The promise of radio frequency identification (RFID) is every supply chain manager's dream¯real time tracking of every single product, from manufacture to checkout. Compared to universal product code (UPC) bar coding, which RFID promises to replace, RFID proactively transmits information, eliminating the manual point-and-read operations needed with bar coding. This enhanced visibility could significantly decrease warehouse, distribution, and inventory costs; increase margins; and enhance customer service.

Several of the most prominent suppliers and retailers are already taking advantage of this new technology; Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense (DOD) are the most visible. Wal-Mart is demanding its top one hundred suppliers put RFID tags on all pallets, cases, cartons, and high-margin items by January 2005, and according the retailer, those one hundred, plus thirty-seven volunteers, are already in line to comply. The DOD has set an early 2005 deadline for its suppliers as well, insisting that all pallets and cases are tagged. If these deadlines are met, suppliers will be forced to invest quickly and heavily, despite the serious business risks. As adoption accelerates, the cost per tag, which is an obstacle today, will also lessen. Companies that invest early will have a serious advantage over competing companies, which will be scrambling to catch up with this new "best practice."

Here's a forecast (for businessmen/enterprenuers in OMIS and SCM logistics) about how "hot" we can expect this space to be:
http://www.tekrati.com/T2/Analyst_Research/ArchivedResearchAnnouncementsDetails.asp?SearchStr=%22commerce%22+AND+%22director%22&Newsid=2995
(Or, http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,39121837,00.htm)

Yankee Group estimates that U.S. manufacturers will invest $5 billion to $6 billion in RFID deployments during the next three years. The analysts say these RFID investments will result in an employment shift, replacing manual operations jobs with value-added positions.

- Kaleem Aziz.

This article analyzes how ethics are compromised at organizations, by looking at several "Enron-era" frauds:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1057.cfm

How Serious Was the Fraud at Computer Associates?

The $3.3 billion securities fraud case against Computer Associates has been called the last of the big Enron-era cases, involving alleged practices termed "the 35-day month," "the three-day window" and the "flash period." Certainly, there are some parallels: Each case involved a multi-billion dollar fraud that required participation by a wide group of top executives and others further down.

...

In announcing the settlement, Mark K. Schonfeld, director of the SEC's Northeast Regional Office, boiled the case down to its essence: "Like a team that plays on after the final whistle has blown, Computer Associates kept scoring until it had all the points it needed to make every quarter look like a win."

...

In addition, Dunfee notes, studies have shown that "people who have been with an organization longer tend to see the organization's values as compatible with theirs.

"I don't think that anybody actually sets out to establish evil norms," he adds. "It's just that they develop ways of looking at things where they frame issues in a way that ultimately becomes more and more incompatible with the outside world."

Europe has shown couple of times recently that it will use its ability to slap sanctions on trade with US, when EU finds itself united on a cause/value against the US. Peter Drucker has categorically said: "The dominance of the U.S. [over the world economy] is already over. What is emerging is a world economy of blocs represented by NAFTA, the European Union, ASEAN. There's no one center in this world economy." Here's an article about a book that says Europe may eclipse US's lead, and also its American dream:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1055.cfm

Continental Drift: Why are the Ties that Bind Europe to the U.S. Unraveling?

The geopolitical map of the world is changing and, according to Jeremy Rifkin's latest book, The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, the most dramatic developments may well occur in Europe. Like continents driven apart by shifting tectonic plates, the European Union and the United States are drifting away from each other, straining the NATO alliance and a cultural heritage dating back to the Age of Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Here's an interesting article on changes in "ROI+marketing", and how it is being done at several companies. (Note the importance of creativity to marketing, and the concern not to overrun it by concentrating excessively on metrics.)
http://www.strategy-business.com/media/file/sb_kw_12-17-03.pdf

In response, a management concept known as ROI marketing is evolving to help executives better understand how they can spend their dollars to attain the highest possible return on their marketing investments. Interviews with Wharton faculty and Booz Allen Hamilton consultants for this white paper explore how companies in a variety of industries are practicing and rising to the challenge of ROI marketing.

...

It is also important to keep in mind that ROI marketing does not attempt to wring the art out of marketing; that would be both unfair and counterproductive, since creativity is essential to effective marketing. Rather, its goal is to bring measurable data to bear on areas that in the past were rarely measured. Within the marketing discipline ROI marketing can be applied across the entire spectrum of marketing techniques - trade and consumer promotions, advertising, pricing and product placements.

...

Zhang explains the concept of marketing profits this way: Imagine a grocery store that sells meat and produce. To find out how the business is doing, the store’s owner would look at the sales from each category, subtract the cost, and arrive at a figure for the accounting profits. Assume that the owner finds that produce is the most profitable category. It would be natural for her to spend more money to market produce, but in Zhang’s view that may not be the right decision to make. It could be that most customers really come to the store because they want to buy meat and just happen to buy a lot of produce, too. Therefore, devoting a lot of money to marketing produce might not result in more desirable customers coming into the store.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Here's a great article, with relevance to Indian audience, about networking concepts. Note the research on random contacts and weak connections:
http://www.businessworldindia.com/sep2004/invogue01.asp

'The Strength of Weak Ties' was demonstrated back in 1973 in a pioneering study of the same name by Mark Granovetter. It concluded that the majority of people found out about jobs through acquaintances (or weak ties), not close friends or family. The argument is, your friends inhabit pretty much the same universe as you - while your acquaintances may be far more diverse and, hence, may open up new possibilities. And this holds even more true if you happen to be an entrepreneur.

In 1999, Martin Ruef surveyed 766 Stanford Business School alumni who had started new businesses to find out where they got their Big Ideas from. The study revealed that the most creative entrepreneurs spend less time than average networking with business colleagues who were friends, and more time networking with a diverse group. "Weak ties - of acquaintanceship, of colleagues who are not friends - provide non-redundant information and contribute to innovation because they tend to serve as bridges between disconnected social groups."

So you buy the theory. But how do you meet these random strangers in real life?

We had taken a look at some of these at my MBA university's life long network, where we are trying to implement these networking concepts:

Tip 2: In addition, if you are in business creativity, interaction with reputed and knowledge-able peers does little good compared to interaction with diverse individuals. In other words, you'd not have imagined a particular solution if you had only discussed it with like minded folks, and network diversity is intended to help you think out-of-the-box. Moreover, it is so in business creativity because, when two people have the same idea, one of them is considered "redundant" -- so the challenge on you is to continuously bring fresh ideas. Therefore, my point is that diversity helps you bring fresh out-of-the-box ideas that help you to be valuable.

- Kaleem Aziz.

Having discussed information overload, here are couple of articles based on research that discuss "task overload".

http://www.cio.com/archive/091503/reality.html

"Current cognitive models suggest that people have a limited amount of attention available at any moment," says Seth Greenberg, a professor of psychology at Union College. "Attention could be thought of as a fuel that can be dispersed. Thus, tasks can be performed simultaneously with efficiency as long as the required attention for both tasks does not exceed the limit." In other words, a person can multitask effectively as long as any given task doesn't require too much attention and thereby exhaust his resources.

http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=printArticle&ID=809

"A summary of more recent research would indicate that the brain doesn't multitask very well, and unlike a computer that allocates an equal amount of energy for each task, the brain's energy expenditure capability is limited. Simply put, energy for each task is finite."

...

Graham says that today's companies are simply leaner and meaner than they use to be, and that employees are feeling the burden of larger workloads. "Employees are taking on bigger roles as companies downsize and merge. The outcome is more irritability in the workplace, trouble making decisions and concentrating." Of course, she notes it is difficult to separate the issue of multitasking from other stress inducers on the job (from family pressures, to fear of losing one's job and more), but she does indicate it as one source of concern.

Gilkey agrees with Graham that the reduction in staff at many U.S. companies means that fewer individuals are now expected to do more of the work. He adds that the current "push for shareholder value is also one of the drivers in this effort to produce more on the job. The boss is under pressure too, and it just goes down the chain of command. If you have the capacity to be available 24 hours a day, from email to Internet, or cell, than there are certain expectations that come along with it." A company like Hewlett-Packard, says Gilkey, with its policy of forcing employees to take their vacation time without the cell or laptop along with them, remains one of the few businesses promoting the need for downtime.

I am not a pro-multi-tasking person, but I think: we can realize greater value of productivity, even in multi-tasking, at an organization/network through (a) "tools" for organizing "information" we use and (b) higher "quality" of our "communications".

- Kaleem Aziz.

We know we experience information overload when this happens: too much information, and too less time available to assess if it is even useful! Here's a study that reaches the same conclusions:
http://www.anu.edu.au/caul/mirror/global/content/repor~13.htm

MAIN LESSONS FROM THE STUDY

People can no longer develop effective personal strategies for managing information. Faced with an onslaught of information and information channels, they have become unable to develop simple routines for managing information.

Technologies for managing information are often the problem, not the solution. They can create the "M25 effect": more lanes just means more traffic. People create and distribute because they can, not because it's useful. Intranets can become like the internet - full of home-made home pages and dead links. "Intelligent agents" frequently do not live up to their name.

Perhaps the main conclusion is that companies need to take information management seriously. However, the job is not in great demand - there is no guarantee that support will be available. Information management should be a board-level discipline as important as finance. The problem will not go away and those that solve it will be the success stories of tomorrow. Similarly, information vendors have to deliver services which offer more useful, relevant and reliable information.

What is required is not for each enlightened visionary to implement their own micro plan at every level/layer, but sweeping changes that span the entire domain [globally]. That's the power of pervasive methodologies that can be adopted by everyone, coupled with regulation to use it productively. Here's another study that states this for educational systems using online means for poliferation of education.
http://www.anu.edu.au/caul/mirror/global/content/repor~21.htm

Beyond the Candle Factory

The paper is subtitled "beyond the Candle Factory". This is not in any desire to be cryptic; it is in reference to a quote from Thomas Edison. When asked, "Mr Edison, what does this mean for the candle industry?", Edison is said to have replied: "We will make electricity so cheap only the rich will burn candles!" A growing pack of pundits now claims we are entering an era in which the survival of most colleges and universities as we now know them is questionable. Peter Drucker, for example, has said quite plainly that they're on the road to the knacker's yard. I am not quite so pessimistic, but I do believe this is a time in which most colleges and universities must soon decide whether to change a little (and thus remain in the academic candle industry) or a lot (and launch themselves into the academic electrical business). My own experience in the University System of Maryland and my contacts with colleagues around the world suggests that we are all facing the same sweeping changes, the same threat, and the same charges.

The solution, it seems, is to unite all the [micro] decision makers into a larger system that can be folded up to guarantee a well planned strategy.
http://www.optimizemag.com/article/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UIICHS2PE101YQSNDBCSKHQ?printableArticle=true&articleId=17700773

Contrary to conventional wisdom, we suggest that line managers represent the basic building blocks of agility. They are at the heart of this issue, and line managers--like consumers--are a heterogeneous lot. Action must be taken in context, and in this case, context depends on managers' stylistic preferences. Therefore, agility is based on the capacity of a company's information infrastructure to respond to the individual needs of heterogeneous line managers in a large organization. Unfortunately for business-technology executives, there's a huge impediment to a simple resolution: Existing IT infrastructures fall short of supporting this requirement. Guess whose responsibility it is to fix the problem?

Today, much of the discussion of agility focuses on the company at large, as in the agile enterprise or the adaptive organization. But at the heart of the company are its managers. The line manager must act fast.

- Kaleem Aziz.

MBA alumni and those getting to the end of their MBAs are busy folks. When those of you who aren't alumni or close to it finally get close to getting your MBAs, you'll see how time is always scarce for MBAs.

This is one reason why I remind newer members to keep the volume of messages down and to do their homework on answers to their questions -- it important for all of us to keep these busy folks interested in staying with us through quality information exchange. [If we want them to go to daily digest or checking the website, we lose a great asset in our membership! Afterall, new students need the alumni for the answers to their questions! ]

In order to realize our mission of collaborative networking, we must balance our risks -- too many people leaving the network or becoming passive is a threat right there because it drops the quality of help you'll subsequently get!

May be these are the very experiences are the "growing troubles" that organizations face. Here's Google facing the "Ferrari factor":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3932875.stm

But the bigger question for Google is whether the new found super-wealth of all its employees with generous stock options will affect their work ethic.

Will they all continue to work diligently, or will they instead rush out and buy Ferraris and other sports cars to spend more time racing around the north Californian hills?

...

In addition to those employees who may see their work rate lessen, Google could also see some staff decide to quit. Both those that want to swap for a life of leisure, and those that want to set up their own companies and potential future rivals.

And when a company does lose its key players, it is plaster all over the news and analysts see that as a risk. As in the case of BEA Systems comment by Gartner analysts:
http://www.finextra.com/topstory.asp?id=12341

The 5th August resignation of BEA chief technology officer Scott Dietzen follows the recent departures of founder Bill Coleman and chief architect Adam Bosworth, amid other high-level managerial reshuffles.

Gartner holds that the "organisational turmoil" at the firm is not accidental.

"Each of the resignations calls into question the company's corporate strategy and stability," says the analyst group in a research note. "Although BEA customers are not in any immediate danger, Gartner recommends that they delay new large-scale strategic commitments to BEA until the company's long-term strategy becomes clearer."

Here's an article discussing retention and attrition problems of growing companies:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=800

A company with 50 employees has very different operational requirements than a company that has grown to 200 employees, Trimble notes. "As a company grows, you need different skills, different capabilities and sometimes you need a more seasoned, experienced executive to take ownership of a part of the business."

Yet replacing workers who were there at the beginning * or shifting them into different jobs * raises difficult questions of loyalty.

"How do you keep the people who got you where you are today, the individual contributors you don't want to see leave the company? It's a very delicate situation," Trimble said.

...

"You have to learn how to hire people you can't afford. It's very different hiring a vice-president for sales who knows how to build a distribution network versus promoting your best salesperson to that position."

Ironically our growth is associated to not only our ambitions but others' growth. Our staying in touch as a network will pay off in the long term with better success -- better in comparison to staying as individuals or as uncollaborative groups does.

Kaleem Aziz.

IBM lures students with free software:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020381,39161205,00.htm

Scott McKinley, chief executive and chairman of Northface, said the global supply of adequately trained programmers is not keeping up with demand, despite the elimination of thousands of tech jobs, following the deflation of the Internet bubble.

He said enrolment is down about 30 percent in the wake of the dot-com meltdown and that a majority of businesses find that newly minted computer science graduates are not well-prepared. Traditional computer science programs are too theoretical, McKinley said.

"Companies need to solve business problems, and students need to know how to collaborate and communicate. Traditional schools are not focusing on those skills," he said.

Just in line with my calls for more leadership in Technology -- one that doesn't make false or hyped promises to business! Replay:
"Companies need to solve business problems, and students need to know how to collaborate and communicate. Traditional schools are not focusing on those skills," he said.

I had said the same earlier in this way:
"Most developers seem to take pride in self-made code, and collaboration isn’t seen unless it is driven by a company policy," Aziz said. "In other words, they see their creations as more important, comfortable and well thought out than a business need."

- Kaleem Aziz.

After having surprised yourself with a great achievement, doesn't it make you feel as if you are capable of anything? I guess, you then just assume you are great by just being you, and success has to be your right. So much so that you'd do anything to keep the name. This is just one example of how expectations pressure us on performing better and better -- but then sometimes on just achieving success without actually having performed!

A former boss of mine had a theory. He believed that when a person out-does himself, expectations from others increase. If he continues to meet their expectations, this only further increases the expectations of others about what he can do! This continues to happen until the person fails. He used to believe that this is how we setup ourselves, or our heroes, to fail (or cheat). I find a lot of truth in that!

Here's an interesting article from Knowledge @ Wharton about "Goal setting and Cheating: Why They Often Go Together in the Workplace":
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1017.cfm

Consider recent business scandals. Executives have been caught cooking the books to meet the quarterly goals that Wall Street analysts expect. Salesmen report phony sales, or exaggerate them, manufacturers ship unfinished products and service centers perform unnecessary repairs – often in order to meet internal or external sales targets. In the education area, college administrators have been known to exclude students with low scores on standardized tests in order to hit target pass rates.

...

The authors point out that in situations where an individual’s productivity is more “transparent” than in a consulting or law firm, and where “people are held accountable for specific outcomes … goal setting may not significantly increase unethical behavior.”

In addition, “domains with low transparency and asymmetric information, such as negotiation and sales, represent a particular challenge.” They cite the case of Sears, Roebuck & Co. which in the early 1990s established ambitious goals for its automotive service departments. California state regulators found that these departments “had performed unnecessary repairs 90% of the time,” a finding that led then-chairman Edward Brennan to state that the company’s “goal setting process for service advisers created an environment where mistakes did occur.”

Schweitzer does not advocate the discontinuation of goal-setting, especially when it has a clearly established role in directing and motivating employees. But he does warn against “steep reward systems that have a big discontinuity. If you tell your salesmen that if they sell 30 cars over a set period they will get a trip to Hawaii , you should also have something that is pretty good for the person who sells 29. You don’t want a massive reward that makes a very discrete jump at the goal line.

Here's their full research:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/papers/1279.pdf

- Kaleem Aziz.

Best kept "secret" of corporate growth and success seems to be its people:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=796

Fortune describes its 100 Best Companies list as "the definitive report card on corporate reputations." Companies are ranked based on eight attributes: innovation, financial soundness, employee talent, quality of management, use of corporate assets, long-term investment, social responsibility, and quality of products/services.

...

"It really is possible to have an organizational culture revolution at a company," he continues. "A lot of people say, 'once we have a big company, it's impossible to change.' Absolutely not, if people want to change, they will. You must have a noble goal, and obviously a financial goal. At Simmons, our noble goal is to provide better lives through better sleep. If you can't successfully manage the one-third of your life and rest and recharge your brain, whatever you do in the other two-thirds of your life, you can't be effective. That is our goal and we take it very seriously."

...

"Part of having a great culture is that it allows you to attract great people. If you've got great people, other things are going to follow that," says Johnson.

Johnson isn't worried about the competition stealing the firm's secret. "They just don't get it. And they are never going to get it," he says, citing the legal profession's reputation as a difficult environment, especially for young associates. "It's so ingrained in the culture. They won't get it, so we're safe."

...

"We've been trying to evolve the culture," says Colvin. "For my first few years, people called it the 'program of the month club,' and kept asking when we were going to change."

"If there was ever a people business, this is it," Colvin continues. "It's a vulnerable moment for most people, and if our people are not at the top of their game, it can be a very difficult time."

...

"Happy workers, happy customers," says Flood. "Do that well, and you'll figure out how to turn that into a profitable business."

I agree focusing on anything, including Technology or Finance, without the focus of how they are linked to its "people" is either a recipe for failure, or the failure to be the best in the domain. Here's another good article about not over-focusing on technology R&D, but instead on business-building activity:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=791

The model they offer describes nine major roles for a technology development manager, encompassing three major sets of activities: pipeline-building (or the identification and screening of opportunities), market entry (or the introduction of fruitful opportunities into the market) and take-off (managing the actual launch of the new projects) that are addressed at three levels of challenge: venturing (or entrepreneurial-oriented activities directed toward building new businesses), championing (ensuring that sufficient resources are allocated to the new business development) and heat-shielding (establishing a corporate climate that encourages new business development).

Although the three stages are described sequentially, the authors acknowledge that they often do not unfold in an orderly, linear way. Thus, they say, a thriving business-building program would be likely to experience multiple specific ventures at each stage.

...

"More than 10 years of observation and study have led us to conclude that the winning firms in the technology game will be those who can forge technology development programs focused on business-building rather than R&D," says MacMillan. "Effectively filling this executive position is no simple task, since the manager charged with converting the silo-oriented R&D mentality to a business-building outlook will face many challenges. But such a transformation is no longer an option. It's a necessity."

I was recently interviewed on Service Orientated Architectures, and the cultural transformation needed in the businesses adopting it. Mike, Senior News Editor, picked those comments that answered his polls, but essentially I concentrated on reminding that there is a need for culture change -- one where technology actually delivers on its promise to business, instead of shrugging it off into the chase for the next best toy. Here's a part of my interview:
http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci991978,00.html

- Kaleem Aziz.

A couple of authors look at learning in organizations and try to find what factors learning is a function of.

1. http://leadership.gc.ca/static/dayinthelife/learning/features/summit/dixon_nancy_e.shtml
   
   
   Problems are solved by seekers
   
   Ms. Dixon presented four propositions that she believes are key elements in building a learning organization:
   
   
   • start with the seekers of knowledge, not with the providers
   
   
   • knowledge can only reside in the mind
   
   
   • to acquire new knowledge, the seeker has to connect it to existing knowledge
   
   
   • people are delighted to share what they know
   
   
   "I think we've paid too much attention to finding experts," Dixon says. "We've ignored the people who need the knowledge, people that have a problem." These are "seekers" in Dixon's lexicon.



2. http://leadership.gc.ca/static/dayinthelife/learning/features/summit/senge_peter_e.shtml
   
   
   No networks, no leadership
   
   Great executive leaders may be passionate and committed, but they know they will get nothing done unless there is a broad network of leaders throughout the enterprise. So the second big insight has been that leadership is really a community activity. There are communities of leaders or there's no leadership at all.
   
   We've identified a type of leader called internal networkers. There are executive leaders and local line leaders, but there are also people who weave the webs, connect a local line leader here to a local line leader there. This is a critical type of leadership, and it's all but invisible in most organizations.
   
   The third thing we've learned is that this work is actually difficult. It's not difficult because people aren't trying. A lot of times, once they're committed and start to make real headway, things get harder. The more we grow, the more challenging our lives become. It's no different in organizations than in our personal lives.

About change, Peter Senge quotes something he follows, and I agree with his assessment that neutral tools of change are the secrets of influence and persuation:
"If you want to change how somebody thinks, give up. You cannot change how any person thinks. Give them a tool the use of which will lead them to think differently." -- Buckminster Fuller.

On business writing, there's a 12 page ebook here:
http://www.lucidcommunication.nl/The%206.5%20Principles%20of%20Business%20Writing.pdf

The author, Mr. Ilja van Roon, writes on a network I attend: "Reliable sources have confirmed that my e-book The 6½ Principles Of Business Writing has been shortlisted for the next Nobel Prize for Literature." (... even as I am trying to find out what exactly it does that other business writing doesn't.)

- Kaleem Aziz.

New York times has recently published an article on the lines of what I've claimed will happen with outsourcing. I had claimed that White collar jobs should become ‘whiter’. I hear similar things in this article:

Job jitters are vexing America. Not even the striking gains in employment over the last two months have put an end to hand wringing over work being "outsourced" to low-wage countries. Americans had become used to shedding factory jobs, but the technology and service jobs now at risk were supposed to be secure, the guarantee of our future. So we're left to wonder: what will Americans do?

Well, just like previous generations of Americans, they'll learn to do something different from what they've done in the past.

Our history is one of a constant churning of jobs, with workers always finding the next step forward in the evolution of work — from farm hands to industrial workers to information handlers. They will do so again. As existing jobs succumb to shifts in technology and trade, the economy will adjust, creating new work that uses new skills and talents. Over time, workers move up what we call a "hierarchy of human talents" — they find jobs that demand higher-order skills and offer better pay and working conditions. As depicted in the chart above, the hierarchy provides a guide to the traits and qualities that will dominate the next employment wave.

...

Trying to preserve existing jobs will prove futile — trade and technology will transform the economy whether we like it not. Americans will be better off if they strive to move up the hierarchy of human talents. That's where our future lies.

Infact, I claim that the hungrier countries not only have a great disparity in wealth, they also create a great global disparity in labor. While most pity the hungrier countries and try to eliminate hunger by sending them aid; I also pity their hunger and suffering, and believe it is important to save them -- but I differ in that they must be made to gradually work to save themselves as well as made to contribute to the global economy. The best solution would be to solve this problem once by gradually illuminating these communities, and then solve it once and for all by making sure that they don't get ignorant ever again! By feeding them through aid as givers and accepting them in their state as takers:

1. we elongate their suffering without actually bringing them out of it and
2. we spend our efforts on continuing to send aid, efforts that we could use to progress ourselves further had we solved the problems of suffering communities to create self-sufficient communities.

As a simpler analogy, I show those hungrier communities as a paralysis of humanity, if you can see entire humanity as one entity as I do in my macro-economic models. It is important to cure them not because they suffer, but because they are an extension of our body -- therefore we must save them because we suffer. Think of outsourcing as one way to solve this problem once and for all by bringing to all of humanity the rights to equal opportunity for labor -- thereby, ending the global disparity not only in labor (once and for all), but also disparity in wealth and hunger!

PS: Based on my crude formula of money, aka. money = human effort * demand / supply (to denote proportionality more than metrics), I've developed a macro-economic model that drives the point that all money is associated to humans (humans because there's nothing else living that is intelligent currently, i.e., today, intelligent + living life = humanity). By association the value of non-living resources in terms of their value to survivability and progress (i.e., Progress Quotient), I then create a valuation for everything we depend upon (including those things we consider intangible in current Finance and Economics disciplines). This macro-economic model combined with superior technology has the potential to bring about sweeping reforms in each and every aspect of our economic and social life. (I do understand it is a bold statement to make, but I believe this to be true because it 'connects' to everything else in my ToE.)
"The more closely you link money to Progress Quotient of a person, a team, an organization or a machine; the greater the fairness and happiness such system delivers to its human society."

- Kaleem Aziz.

According to a feedback poll at a local network, we got the results that 58.82% are moderately pleased, 29.41% are expecting more and 11.76% are wondering about the purpose of the network.

Re-iterating the central theme of networking diversely with a common shared value:
"Networking is, in essence, the art of:
(1) making more and more acquaintances,
(2) converting those acquaintances into friends, and
(3) keeping those friends for a lifetime."

Ultimately, I believe, networking is about being amicable and in the good books of as many people as possible. Or, said in the words of this sample chapter:
http://www.onlinebusinessnetworking.com/docs/MakeYourBusinessClick1-OnlineBusinessRelationships-Sample.pdf


"The ideal network has a large number of heterogeneous people, who are weak ties, and yet with whom one is well bonded. That is the power of business school and corporate alumni communities. Using the online member databases, one can easily access people in any industry and region of the world. Once one approaches a fellow member, there is an immediate bond by virtue of the common background."

Now CFO.com says that successful executives rely on networks outside of their company, which is what local/global networks try to do for all of us:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,12799|C,00.html?f=options

"I don't know too many people who can be successful without access to a network of trusted advisors," says Ron Copher, chief financial officer of Jackson, Ohio-based Oak Hill Financial Inc. "Most financial managers have networks outside the office they can and should consult."

"Many people understand the idea of networking for careers," adds Saj-nicole Joni, chief executive officer of Cambridge International Group. "But it's been more about calling people and asking them to do something" -- say, to provide an introduction.

By contrast, Joni's Massachusetts-based consultancy offers professional "thinking partner" services, usually on such big-picture topics as measuring performance, checks and balances, sharing best practices, team building, and judging the overall effectiveness of a financial strategy. Cambridge International Group provides these services to leaders in Fortune 100 companies, but Joni insists that not-so-senior executives at smaller companies can also benefit from a kitchen cabinet -- and the sooner they get started, the better.

The sooner "we" get started, the better the above article said ... so, congratulations that we already have started, by being networked! Networking is another name for getting problems solved quickly. And the more I learn about how MBAs from 20 years ago now regret that they should've networked more during their coursework, the more I realize that getting help/advice from a trusted network is like "distributed problem solving with a network of brains".

The logic is simple, be free yet connected:
"You can't survive out there as an individual, nor as a crowd, but only as a team. As an individual you are isolated, as a crowd you are disconnected and as a team you are 'connected'."

- Kaleem Aziz.

One of the challenges of large organizations is the amount of communication, coordination and management they require -- mostly with the help of enterprise class tools. It is a huge effort for large corporations to make sure they don't get crushed by their own weight, to let the left hand know what the right is up to, to respond in time to market forces (despite their size), etc. However, many large companies have successfully employed the true purpose technology was invented for, namely "the need for speed", to keep themselves maneuverable. To a great extent, the processes within these companies are nothing short of the character of an individual.
"Business process is to a corporation, what culture is to a society, and what character is to a person."

Since, large corporations are now possible and sustainable, we have many that are uncomfortable by their presence. Will a single human crushed in a business process matter anymore? Isn't this leading to a loss of individuality and loss of art? What is important: mass produce that can satisfy every person or quality that stands out? Some are up in arms about how the older days of simple human acts was superior and how no one used to die (of stress, duress and speed) in slower life-styles in those days. I believe that if you don't statistically measure how many die over a large population, like we used to in the previous generations, we'll only assume no one died. So, the deaths were higher, but people only watched the living in their vicinity -- not with the dead and suffering. And those who cared used to die alongwith the sick, too. Of course, I think progress and mass produce are good as long as they feed all the hungry, rather than the quality that empowers a few.

Here's an excerpt from "Law, Business and Society" 7th edition by Tony McAdams with Nancy Neslund and Kristofer Neslund, chapter 10 "Antitrust Law -- Monopolies and Mergers", page372:

Do We Need (Fragile) Monopolies?

Some antitrust experts believe that the New Economy built on intellectual property including software, movies, and pharmaceuticals requires a new approach to monopoly law, which was built on the Old Economy of oil, steel, railroads, and the like. In the Old Economy, low prices and consumer choice were key goals of antitrust policy. In the new, digital economy, the dominant goal probably is innovation. Historically, we have believed that innovation is more likely in a competitive market than in a market dominated by a single firm, as Microsoft.

In the new, digital, intellectual property economy, on the other hand, some experts believe monopoly may actually be necessary for success. That is so because all, or virtually all, of the costs are upfront in development. Millions are often required merely to create new software, but the subsequent cost of distribution may be near zero because the product is forwarded electronically. Thus, each additional unit sold is almost entirely profit. The rewards then for knowledge-based companies are to those that innovate very quickly and grab the biggest market share they can before some other innovation destroys them. Once established, the dominant firm creates high barriers to entry by a rival because the dominant firm's marginal cost of production is zero or nearly so. Thus, new entry is discouraged. Those conditions currently call for antitrust intervention, but is that the best course of action? We may need monopolies (at least, transitory, fragile monopolies) in the new economy in order to foster innovation. As then Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers explained, "The constant pursuit of that [temporary] monopoly power becomes the central driving thrust of the New Economy."¹² Without a temporary monopoly the price of a product would be bid down to the marginal cost, high fixed costs could not be recovered, and innovation would be discouraged. We might, therefore, argue that the government should just keep its hands off the new economy. The Wall Street Journal suggests that may not do either:


... In a world where intellectual property serves as the source of greatest value, antitrust policy, patent rules, copyright rules and successful monetary poplicy may turn out to be more important than ever before. That means the government and the courts face a greater challenge to get it right.¹³


The situation is further complicated by what are known as "network effects", which involve the linking and compatibility of products and services in ways that enhance efficiency and service. An information product such as a browser becomes more attractive to purchasers as more people own that product. As more join the network, "switching costs" rise; that is, as more join, the network increases in value and it becomes more costly to change to a competing product. This the dominant firm has established a network of users of its products that makes it very difficult for a competitor to enter of for user to leave, but if antitrust attacks the dominant firm, the result may be fatal dampening of innovation and efficiency. On the other hand, the dominant firm may be a very big barrier to innovation by rivals. Perhaps the special conditions of intellectual property will require some modifications of monopoly law for the new economy, but perhaps not. We just do not know at this point.

While that's no great way to end an interesting subject, perhaps, they are being truthful? I think monopolies happen because one person has the perfect formula to pioneer, perform and poliferate -- whereas some lose out after pioneering, some in performing and some fail in poliferating. There are right ways and wrong ways to do it, and axing a monopoly may only bring in incompetency of those who shouldn't have had the market to sell their sub-standard goods. But then, a monopoly throwing its weight around, one may contest, may do exactly that -- not deliver quality that smaller ones could churn out. This brings up a gaint debate of price vs. quality -- so will people actually buy quality for the price they could buy an airplane?

- Kaleem Aziz.

It is interesting to see what all people associate with their essence of being an MBA.

1. For some it is the understanding that they need to write the shortest possible e-mails, and verbalize their reasoning vocally only in closed door meetings.
2. For some others it is the understanding that getting work done is about delegating and following up on it.
3. For some it is the importance of finance numbers (metrics) over tall claims (emotions).
4. On the contrary, for another camp it is about measuring the intangibles like emotions (emotional intelligence), innovation, etc., and having faith that the financial numbers (metrics) will prove them right -- while they burn out in this belief.
5. Yet another interesting category is of those who find themselves in a higher level of consciousness in that they can only find people that are dumb (unintelligent or unwise), slow (inefficient), imbalanced (confused about their priorities), ineffective (not with quality networks), not punctual (illiterate in time management), etc. This ultimately proves to them how superior and gifted they are by virtue of their MBA, while they continue to use the worst way to motivate people.

The point I am trying to make is that none of the above may actually be the essence of your MBA! Most people pick the aspects of MBA that are relevant to their understanding of an MBA and just continue to be! It is important for an MBA to be balanced or well-rounded; instead most MBAs choose a concentration and then become too focused in looking at everything colored in their domain specific spy-glass!

As discussed before, many have mentioned how MBA has "opened their eyes" to reality or brought them face to face with a "higher truth" or "englightened" them. I believe MBA is an excellent way of storming yourself with wisdom, rather than knowledge.
"MBA coursework is more about learning wisdom, whereas other courseworks are more about learning knowledge."

MBA should bring about a deeper appreciation of the real problems we face, for example, the economic problem of solving a problem the way you want it to be solved. It is painful to see that we have MBAs who still suggest methods beyond its rational economic capabilities -- an appreciation to understanding why some life size problems stand face to face with humanity. Also, some MBAs show disregard to importance of intangibles like branding and innovation, just because of inherent flaws in our economic systems and statistical metrics that measure these things.
"Understand reality for what it is, not merely for what you would rather have it to mean. Then base your actions on what you want it to be, by basing yourself in realism of being it and seeing it happen over however long it takes."

Finally, those who reach this gratifying power position bask in the pride of power it gives them, discriminating anyone who isn't like themselves. MBAs are often known to take the easy route of delegating rather than getting dirty and setting an example. Avoiding having to work in the name of MBA is probably the most misled way to look at their achievement -- because being an MBA means you've understood how the value of work that can be traded results in its valuation we call money. Added to that, the fact that they discriminate people into dumb, slow, imbalanced, ineffective, not punctual, etc., shows that they haven't understood alignment of individual performance of numerous people in their "less educated" or "different domain" teams causes more productivity than they could do by them looking at their polished nails!

MBA's certificate of greatness is how well they can align the team achievements to get to each persons' goals and vice versa, not the fact that they have an MBA from a flashy university. MBA is not a certificate of "laze in peace", it is a certificate that you've got the "set the example" lessons.

To me, or at least from what I find the deepest understanding of being an MBA, this is the essence of being an MBA:
"Essence of being MBA is an appreciation of the value of (1) work, (2) collaboration [in diversity] and (3) practicality; over that of (1) ego, (2) competition and (3) myth, respectively."

- Kaleem Aziz.

Measuring the productivity of knowledge worker is difficult, and Peter Drucker pointed this out. Decision making is a skill that gets paid more as well as means the difference between success or failure for a business. So, decisions are tangible in terms of their returns, and one reason why decision makers often make lot more in our economy than the rest.

This is seen by most as the power of mind winning over the power of the muscles. I look at it differently. I see decisions associated to attitudes, attitudes associated to experiences and ethics, experiences associated to exploration, exploration associated to productivity, ethics associated to introspection and introspection as the feedback channel to productivity. So, whichever way you take it, ethics becomes associated to correct decision making (i.e., "correct" as in one that results in "success"). By considering ethics a personal preference, freedom and then letting a person high up follow unethical personal choices, breaks a lots of nuts-n-bolts of humanity. And this is an unacceptable outcome for civilized human society (as it is the corner stone that keeps human society working collaboratively).

Besides the intangibility or subjectivity of ethics, people find there are several dimensions of ethics. In contrast, I have a single dimension of ethic that I call as Progress Quotient. The difficulty of recognizing tangibility of ethics into Progress Quotient arises from its results in the long-term and observation in large societies. Much like gravitation exists as a phenomenon at all times, but shows up significantly only in bodies with large mass; ethics is a phenomenon that benefits and hinders as a less observable factor in immediate vicinity, but shows up significantly in large societies. Or, its effects trickle down in a long duration (which also make it hardly noticeable for many). Since our modern societies usually exceed a threshold for which ethics are significantly powerful, we must associate a tangible measure towards this characteristic.
"Business process is to a corporation, what culture is to a society, and what character is to a person."

Societal Businesses are one way to link social ethics to profit motive. It doesn't require them to subordinate profit motive to social ethics, but to strategize long-term profits rather than short-term profits. It seems Why Responsibility Pays according to this article:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=whatshot

Virtue may be its own reward, but it appears to pay a good dividend as well. Some professors at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School say the evidence suggests that companies that try to act in socially and environmentally responsible ways actually perform better than companies that don’t. One possible reason: professors say that waiting to respond to demands for reform from outside the company is often more expensive and time-consuming than acting proactively.

After recent terrorism and corporate scandals, the watch dogs have been vigilant and people themselves have switched on to corporate ethics channel alongside profits, stocks and investment channels. Here's "A New Way of Looking at Corporate Social Responsibility":
http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=763

A recent survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) examined the U.S. business community’s understanding and development of sustainable business practice. PwC revealed, “the ‘triple bottom line’ approach is rapidly taking its place along the financial one, and will increasingly be regarded as an important measure of value.”

Indeed, 70% of the survey respondents indicated they were currently reviewing their corporate governance or ethics programs. “Responsible corporate behavior—whether defined to include sustainability or not—is based on effective corporate governance. A company cannot hope to behave responsibly, or sustainably, if it does not have effective internal controls—the programs and processes, checks and balances—to identify and systematically achieve responsible, sustainable outcomes,” PwC reports.

Three-quarters of the survey’s respondents indicated that they have adopted sustainable business practices. Their top three reasons were: enhanced reputation (90%); competitive advantages (75%); and cost savings (73%). Of the quarter saying they have not adopted sustainable business practices, the top three reasons were: no clear business case (82%); lack of key stakeholder interest (62%); and lack of senior management commitment (53%).

“The PwC report is one of the leading guideposts in helping companies get a handle on how to approach preparation for sustainability,” says Konsynski. “It is also a bellwether on attention and interest, and clearly to this point the attention has been in the large organizations. Those that have an immediate perceived need to communicate what they do are either reflecting from pressure in the market, or perceived potential in the market.”

During the recent times, there has been great difficulty in finding contracts as well as jobs -- while it is right to explain it based on macro-economic picture, I believe, we will not be self-deluding if we point to the key factors being "trust" and "credibility" instead of lack of demand or finances! Technology, for example, broke the trust of businesses by creating hype technologies -- which benefitted them in the short-term but hit them in the downtime. Similarily, stock market analysts, marketing executives and researchers are having a difficult time because of the lack of credibility they demonstrated at the same time. Lesson: Exaggeration and lies can only take your credibility and reputation downwards, and remember these things are tangible in long-term!

"Hype is a diplomatic word used to denote lies."

Rising high in business circles may require innovation, but staying there requires integrity. Ethics is one of those tangibles-that-we-treat-as-intangibles where managers/executives don't compromise their integrity in the face of difficult decisions. During a downtime, when unemployment, suicide rates, corporate scandals and crime are higher; ethical decision makers are seen in new light -- I think, one reason why MBA universities get shuffled in ranks more during downtime than in uptimes.

Berkeley University has openly requested liars not to apply, discouraging exaggeration by prospective students. In their message they reminded their applicants that they can live by a lesser qualified truthful candidate, but cannot accept lying at the time of admission -- for the fear that these executives they create will create Enron-Worldcom like problems for humanity down the line, especially since they lied at the time of admission itself!
http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/03/14/application.checks.ap/

- Kaleem Aziz.

From the psychology of networking, and how to tune it to personal and professional success, I'll give some personal tips and opinions in this blog.

I created a poll and respected the privacy of the folks taking it. So it doesn't tell even me, the moderator, who they are when they cast their vote. I know it is one of them and I know the participants are serious because it affects the quality of network they are in -- so there is a motivation to be truthful! Interestingly, it showed one vote:

Quantity Network Contacts

1

0.68%

If he (whoever he/she is -- but its not me) was confident he made the correct choice, it is an excellent choice! But if he made this choice in doubt, he should know that he is probably more correct than many of us. A professional networker who enjoys making more contacts irrespective of whether you find them beyond your domain, or your "judgement of their quality", usually strategizes on picking "Quantity Network contacts" alongwith "Quality Network contacts".

I've discussed this, with respect to the psychology of networking. I tried explaining a network as a mesh of human relationships, much like a spider's web. I've looked around in my characteristic style of assimilating diverse information, that I term research, in which I do not disregard any work that challenges my view point. As you can see, some of these are researchers themselves, and some of these were well researched articles.

In this I consider myself different that I read everything without a pre-disposition, and then look at reality for proof of it or alternate proofs of it. Most people don't read anything any further if it already challenges their previously distilled ideals.

Then I debated with leading networkers trying to understand the balance.

Few months ago, I found new information from at least two sources independently (one of them being my professor) about how networking can be draining for some people! You may, it seems, also have to be bred habitually to be a networker -- but I believe, for responsible adults, parents can neither be blamed for your miseries, nor can they be credited for your achievements. It is upto us to change the past stagnating our minds.


The answer:

I have to assimilate this understanding into what I've distilled so far. This blog is about what I make of all the above.

Old school teaches quality against quantity. New school requires quality with quantity (i.e., the best of both). People have trouble letting go the understanding "But quality is better than quantity!" and accepting "Quality plus quantity is better than quality minus quantity!". See I told you, unlearning is difficult, even if it is for something that can better our lives:
"The very reason that it doesn't seem familiar is enough for people to mentally block it!"

This culture is a bigger problem than networking fundamentals to me. It is difficulty of people to unlearn:
"If something works, most people do not want to evaluate anything else that works better!"

However, very few people see the value in this new school concept. "Where's the balance between networking vs. productivity?", they ask, and rightfully so. This is the balance each one of us has to make for ourselves personally. Overselling networking will drop our performance at productivity -- so network only as much as you are comfortable (i.e., without being overwhelmed).

That's my answer to the strategy (for instance, looking down into networks) to reaching a balance:
"Strategize networking towards productivity, rather than passively assessing whether you want networking or you want productivity."

To maximize your productivity with networking (instead of assessing either-or scenario on them), I suggest the following:
Brand yourself within your network, for example, if they think of a helicopter and your services lie in that line of work, they should think of you! Think of all the ethical (i.e., no lies) marketing techniques you've learned about marketing products; instead apply it, consistently, to your image in your networks. You'll then be a brand all by yourself in the network.

I think the balance between networking and productivity can simply be stated as:
"You are a strong networker not by the number of contacts you have, but by
(1) the amount of help/service you are to your network; and
(2) the amount of help/service you are to people beyond your network by using your network's help/services."

- Kaleem Aziz.

Dogs, no offense to them, and technology have a lot in common. Technology has become as much a pet as dogs had been since ages.

Much like dogs, we need to have technology on leash -- as a part of social and professional responsibility. No matter how domestic and part of family we consider it. Moreso because of their seemingly unpredictable behavior. Dog bites a neighbor and you end up in prison for the actions of an irresponsible stupid mutt! Technology changes, and for no fault of yours, your business folds up and you'll be blamed for it!

Taking dogs, um, technology seriously, we find that "Companies Squander Billions On Tech In The Go-Go Days Of The 1990s, Firms Spent Wildly On Software They Really Didn't Need":
http://siberlink.com/contents/csbotigdot1.pdf

"People kind of viewed it as black magic, so why understand it?" says Charles Phillips, a tech analyst at Morgan Stanley.

...

As a result, U.S. companies threw away more than $1 billion from 1998 to 2000 on Web-server software that did much more than their companies needed, Gartner says.

...

"One short-circuit, and you've lost all your information," she says of tech. "Do I love it? Yes. Do I totally trust it? No."

Economist who is positive about the productivity of IT speaks in the below article:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,7878|C,00.html?f=options

For the past 15 years, Erik Brynjolfsson, the George and Sandi Schussel Professor of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, has been studying the economic impact of corporate IT investment and, more recently, the strategic drivers behind E-business.

...

Let me be a little bit more concrete. One person might look at bar-code scanners and think of them as labor-saving devices. If you were to tout that up, you might come up with one kind of an ROI, but you would really miss the boat, because most of the benefits from those systems come from the way they allow you to track inventory and share that information with suppliers and change the way you do business, not from having the checkout person be able to check people out faster.

...

Companies seem to whipsaw between viewing IT as a source of major differentiation -- "strategic advantage" -- and begrudgingly viewing it as a cost of doing business. Is there a middle way?
They should think of it not as a cost of doing business or as an isolated investment to make or not make, but rather as a catalyst or an enabler, as a tool that makes you think about how you can do things differently. That is the formula for success. Some of those new ways of doing business might involve the same levels of technology spending as you have now, or less.

...

Historically, ignorance and geography have provided a layer of insulation from the marketplace, but we're seeing an accelerated Darwinism. It's going to put more and more of a premium on delivering customer value and less and less of a premium on trying to obfuscate or get short-term competitive advantage that isn't grounded in the quality of the products and services of the firm.

IT has been such a run off mongrel that leashing it has required some to have "The CFO of IT":
http://www.optimizemag.com/issue/013/financial.htm

Is technology too important to be left to the technologists?

...

All use the new position to tighten their control over IT spending, monitoring not only where IT dollars are spent, but also what sort of financial returns these investments are likely to deliver.

But even companies that haven't created a CFO of IT position are intensifying their scrutiny of IT's financial side. "Right now, everyone is being asked to justify what they're doing to the Nth degree," says Maria Schafer, program director of human-capital management at the Meta Group, an IT research and consulting firm. She estimates that perhaps 20% of companies officially have a CFO of IT in place now, with an even larger number of companies filling the role in a de facto way.

...

"It's about understanding the core business of the company, and how technology can enable the business," he says. "The discussions I have with business leaders in Microsoft are never about how I use SQL, but how we improve the customer experience."

...

Raghavan Rajaji, executive VP and CFO of Manugistics, a supply-chain software vendor says, "IT is no different from investing in other important resources. In my mind, an IT expenditure is just as important as building a new plant or coming out with a new product."

...

According to Barry Sanders, the company's senior VP of business development, every IT project is first subjected to a due-diligence review by the company's financial organization to make sure they've captured all the costs, identified the business value, and affirmed that the project's economics work. "There's not a project that we do that the CFO doesn't approve," says Sanders. "It's painful, but a good process to go through."

Much as has been said before, if you have to pet your IT, "Do the MATH":
http://www.cio.com/archive/100101/math.html

Project portfolio management is pretty much just what it sounds like. You collect and control your entire suite of IT investments as one set of interrelated activities in one place—a portfolio. In addition to providing a centralized overview of all IT projects, a good portfolio will make it easy for CIOs to make sure their IT investments are well-balanced in terms of size, risk and projected payoff. Used wisely, it will actually increase IT's value by exposing projects that are redundant or too risky, while revealing how to shift funds from low-value investments to high-value, strategic ones.

The serendipitous beauty of project portfolio management is that it's actually impossible to do it without being aligned with the business, because creating a portfolio requires close collaboration with the business.

...

"It has brought normal business disciplines to IT," Verizon's Castellano says. "People trust us. We're not our own little secret area. We're totally accountable for what we do and that's a good thing."

"It's true, IT is not special," Vantucci says. "That's not only OK, that's great!"

You may love technology or your dog, but you can't get your employees fired nor people killed for it. So get your values and priorities right on IT, pet your boss and customer before you pet your technology! "How Do You Spell Value? -- Metrics: Technologists used to look for innovation. Now they want return on investment.":
http://home.att.net/~kirsner/roi.html

"The glamour days of just investing and hoping that a payoff would come are long gone," says Robert Alston, vice president of information-technology services at Dollar Rent A Car Systems in Tulsa, Okla. "In the late ’90s," says Randy Benz, chief information officer at battery maker Energizer Holdings in St. Louis, "we lived in a feeding-frenzy environment. Everyone was afraid not to have something that someone else had. What you’re seeing now is a backlash. People are taking a look at IT spending and saying, ‘This is like any other investment we make in the company, and it should generate a return’."

Frugality is in.

...

"If someone comes in and makes promises about the returns they’re going to deliver," he says, "then I want them to be held to those promises. One way to do that is to say, ‘You only get paid if the software performs at the level you said it would’."

...

"If you really want to ruin your business, you make the CFO the most powerful person below the president, and you don’t spend anything," says Alston at Dollar Rent A Car.

...

Kinzel says. "What we measure is how much the customer screams, and how much they smile. That’s our ROI."

Here's an interesting article that puts value, not just ROI, to IT:
http://www.cio.com/analyst/061702_rfgonline.html

Make dog your master and you could have a pretty rough time -- so also, make technology your master and suffer a similar fate. You've to let 'em know who's the boss. Dogs are dogs anyway, but avoid letting your technology go to the dogs -- regulate it. It'll be a stitch in time!

Those who worshipped technology as a God and didn't leash it like a dog suffered. "What went wrong at Cisco -- The poster company for the new economy not only failed to anticipate the economic downturn, its much-heralded forecasting software and outsourcing infrastructure may have even made things worse.":
http://www.cio.com/archive/080101/cisco.html

Chambers wrote off a mountain of inventory $2.2 billion high, and 8,500 people were laid off.

...

Chambers surveyed the wreckage and compared it to an unforeseeable natural disaster. In his mind, the economy -- not his company's software nor its management -- was clearly to blame.

But other networking companies, with far less sophisticated tools started downgrading their forecasts months earlier. They saw the downturn coming. Cisco did not. Other companies cut back on inventory. Cisco did not. Other companies saw demand declining. Cisco saw it rising.

Even more troubling, there's ample evidence that the company's highly touted systems contributed to the fog that prevented it from seeing what was clear to everyone else. Cisco executives may have been blinded by their own good press. What's clear is that overreliance on technology led the company down a disastrous path.

...

It was just that "the speed of the swing caught everyone by surprise," Solvik says.

Of course, surprise was exactly what Cisco's software systems were supposed to eliminate.

...

But some people don't believe a crystal ball was what Cisco needed. The ability to look away from the computer screen and out the window to see the rain coming down just might have sufficed.

So, it seems human wisdom does count for something in this age of technology and dog pets! (My UVS and PQ may actually fit in very complex factors in wise decision-making, when it is done!) A discussion on Cisco's debacle brings up interesting points too:
http://comment.cio.com/soundoff/080101.html

Cisco’s "virtual close" is a forecasting software system that offers unheard of access to real-time supply-chain and operations data, allegedly giving executives the ability to accurately forecast inventory needs. So sophisticated is the virtual close that analysts and competitors have cited it as one key to the company’s competitive advantage.

...

"What Cisco’s systems didn’t do was model what would happen if one critical assumption -- growth -- was removed from both their forecasts and their mind-sets", writes Berinato. "If Cisco had run even modestly declining demand models, CEO John Chambers and CFO Larry Carter might have seen the consequences of betting on more inventory."

Beat the hype-heat by realizing that technology and IT have their limits (so do dogs!). We do not have a crystal ball yet. "Future Results Not Guaranteed -- Contrary to what vendors tell you, computer systems alone are incapable of producing accurate forecasts.":
http://www.cio.com/archive/071503/future.html

Nike went live with its much-vaunted i2 system in June 2000, and nine months later, its executives acknowledged that they would be taking a major inventory write-off because the forecasts from the automated system had been so inaccurate. With that announcement in February 2001, Nike's stock value plummeted, along with its reputation as an innovative user of technology.

...

According to the documents, i2's supposedly state-of-the-art forecasting system couldn't communicate with Nike's existing systems, which impaired its ability to analyze large amounts of product information. At some point, the data even had to be entered in by hand, greatly increasing the chance for mistakes. And the forecasts themselves were way off. Relying exclusively on the automated projections, Nike ended up ordering $90 million worth of shoes, such as the Air Garnett II, that turned out to be very poor sellers. The company also came up with an $80 million to $100 million shortfall on popular models, such as the Air Force One.

Nike isn't the only company with a forecasting horror story. Corporate America is littered with companies that invested heavily in demand software but have little or nothing to show for it. Goodyear, for example, implemented a demand forecasting system in mid-2000 but hasn't shown significant improvement in managing its inventory, and last year the tire company lost more money than the year before.

...

Furthermore, software can't predict the future, particularly sudden, unexpected shifts in economic or market conditions. Nor can it exercise the kind of rational analysis or judgement that human beings excel at. Hence, demand forecasting technology is inherently limited, and companies such as Nike and Cisco that rely on it without an institutionalized set of human checks and balances will invariably end up in trouble.

To end the story on a good note, don't just feed your pet, expect/demand something from it in return too! "How Levi's Got Its Jeans into Wal-Mart":
http://www.cio.com/archive/071503/levis.html

"Our supply chain could not deliver the services Wal-Mart expected," says Bergen, who spent time at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters during "exploratory meetings" before a deal was signed. Being a supplier to Wal-Mart demands a certain level of performance—and cost control. Wal-Mart drives you to work with your supply chain to put the same requirements on your suppliers that Wal-Mart puts on you. If you can't make your supply chain work, you won't benefit from being a supplier. Period.

So, leash your dog, and your technology; one can bite you, the other can do that plus run you over!

- Kaleem Aziz.

My professor, Chris (ex-CFO at 3COM), would show excitement when discussing IASB and US accounting standards. He would mention how the recent scandals (Enron, Worldcom, etc.) have put US accounting standards in question, and how IASB gains leverage to unify the standards to their taste. Before the scandals, US could brag about the highest level of standards it followed, and could play down IASB's recommendations. Related to that is this interview:
IASB chairman Sir David Tweedie says global accounting standards are within reach.
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,12320|M,00.html?f=options

Indeed, what the IASB is really targeting when it designs an accounting system for the world "is inward investment, growth, employment, and world trade," he says.

CFOs of large companies cannot be loud and demanding, even as some perceive that only heartless money mongers would want to have their hands in so much corporate money. There's a subtle list of skills one needs to be firm and yet amicable. I thought this list was close to cutting it:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,8874|BS,00.html?f=options

A prospective CFO also needs to dig into the company's core competencies, says ImmunoSite's Vennare, who demands that his finance chief understands the company's business and financial model, not to mention its relationship with the capital markets. "If the CFO is still learning about my business, the learning curve is already too long," notes Vennare. He adds that a candidate hoping to join the C-level should be more of a teacher than a student. "If I wanted a CFO who was just good at finance," quips Vennare, "I would have hired a graduate student with good marks in finance."

There was another important note in the above article, about the inevitability of modern CFO's dependency on technology. Here's an interesting article that addresses that quite well:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,5222|BS,00.html?f=options

There's an interesting trend in the corporate world, of replacing or restricting CIOs roles; and instead passing them on to CFOs or subordinating CIOs to CFOs.

CIO's article highlights this issue:
http://www.cio.com/archive/101503/shrinking.html


"Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO," suggests Hon CIO Fields. "They're asking, Do I really need a CIO, and if I do, why not report it lower in the organization and let the CFO handle it as a cost matter?"


The relevant article on CFOProject.com on this issue was:
The CFO as the CIO
Today's CFO must step up and command an evolving leadership position in developing, managing, and measuring the company's information management strategy. The CFO, and not just the CIO, is becoming a central figure for information management as the accountability of the finance organization is increasing.
Kraig Haberer, SAP - CFO Project Volume 1, October 01, 2002
http://www.cfoproject.com/documents.asp?d_ID=1514

In some ways, at least in the short-term, finance and accounting professions will continue to become more stressful as a result of the increase in the accountability towards new regulations. Here's an interesting article about managing newer government regulations and company morale side by side:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,12060|C,00.html?f=options

A less impacting article, that shows the importance of people skills that work at an interview.
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,11078|BS,00.html?f=options

The above are essential people skills, or listening skills, work anywhere beyond an interview (e.g., meeting a new client, etc.). An important point would be that people skills are difficult to list down without considering the past experiences of the persons involved (i.e., you can't please everyone with the same stunt). That is besides the point that, in interviews, it matters more to "know what it takes" than to "know how to behave":
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." -- Abraham Lincoln

- Kaleem Aziz.

In my Organizational Behavior class I had talks with my professor, and reached a conclusion within myself that if all parties had trust relationship, negotiations would be less time consuming.

As some of you know, I have been in B2B technology for sometime now, and I look upon everything as an analytical algorithm of some sort. So in my mind, I was trying to test technology as a way to speed up negotiations -- such that the computers would calculate margins of acceptance and rejection on priority based factors in trust partnerships, and then automatically make the transactions. Currently B2B technology puts off negotiations as a human decision-making activity and takes up only the transaction part.

This quarter, in Organizational Theory class, I came to understand that without negotiations humans would have a remorse -- i.e., the seller would have seller's remorse and the buyer would have buyer's remorse. So after asking a few questions around, I got some very valuable stuff on the topic of negotations, cultural factors while negotiating with Asian businesses, right vs might, etc. This sample chapter from the book International Negotiations: An Entirely Different Animal is an excellent read:
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0072429658/65998/lew29658_sec01.pdf

THE SAD TRUTH OF THE INEVITABLE FUDGE FACTOR

In most one-on-one negotiations, in which there are no other parties who might be interested in bidding on your services, my suggestion is that you start by making a proposal that is reasonable¯but that has some fudge factor to it. It's a sad aspect of human nature, but it's a fact of life: We don't feel satisfied unless we've gone through a process that involves bargaining back and forth. All human beings like to feel some sense of achievement. They want to feel that they've won something. And they also like to justify the time they spent in the negotiating process. So you've got to play the game: Your first proposal needs to be higher than what you would ultimately take.

The table of contents of the same book are here:
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072429658/information_center_view0/table_of_contents.html

My professor also suggested a case study, and I google searched it to find that this case study is taught at Wharton and Harvard business schools. I cannot get a copy of it, and if I get one may not be able to distribute it, because it is aimed only for college-level instructors. So it's upto me to find it and read it. The case study is called:
"Harvard Negotiation Case - Luna Pen"

- Kaleem Aziz.

The big four audit firms may be gaints, but money talk is not monkey talk -- money can really be the yardstick to virtue"
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,11639|M,00.html?f=options
"Our study suggests that ethics will translate into behavior only if regulators ensure it is linked to dollar signs."

Remember, money is neither materialistic nor a piece of paper:
"Money is the certificate of human effort."

By using money to regulate people, you are aligning human work to be applied to the progress of humanity. Had the above happened in any other country, you'd barely had seen any responsibility to make things better. The thing I love about US is that everything that happens to it causes a deliberate effort to learn from it and improve on it (for instance, look at the remarkable way US learnt from 1929 depression). This follows my core philosophy:
"Think on the lines of 'what works, what works better', recursively, to everything."

Going into the history of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,9853|M,00.html?f=options

Sarbanes-Oxley doesn't mark the first attempt to improve the audit process. During the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, a series of commissions — the Cohen Commission in 1978, the Treadway Commission in 1987, the Jenkins Committee in 1994, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations in 1999, and the Panel on Audit Effectiveness of the Public Oversight Board, or POB in 2000 — issued reports recommending changes.

...

Historically, accounting has been considered a highly professional and trustworthy profession. Firms have always trained new accountants in the audit function, but with keen oversight from senior partners who saw their firm's integrity riding on every engagement.

At the same time, auditors have always called their customers "clients," and have worked hard to cultivate them. Partners routinely entertained clients two to three nights a week, and not uncommonly moved on to work in their clients' firms. But the inherent conflicts of these relationships were kept in check by the firm's commitment to professionalism.

All that changed as consulting services grew, spurred on by increased IT consulting work in the late 1970s and early '80s. By the mid-'80s, the AICPA had lifted its ban on advertising. Revenue generation became the foundation on which the partners' compensation was based. Revenues for management consulting in early 1999 accounted for more than 50 percent of the Big Five's revenue stream as a whole.

The audit function itself became a commodity service — a loss leader accounting firms offered in conjunction with vastly more lucrative consulting fees. As they competed more aggressively on price, they were forced to shrink the number of procedures performed for the audit. Auditors claim these reductions didn't harm audit quality, but it often meant they used increasingly computer-based test controls and statistical models, and fewer of the basic, time-consuming auditing practices that could increase the likelihood of finding fraud — site visits to multiple locations, observation of assets, or random sampling at nonmaterial levels.

In addition, junior auditors were often assigned the crucial oversight roles usually filled by senior partners, who were increasingly busy selling to prospective clients. "A lot of the audit changes were [prompted by] competitive proposals based on pricing decisions by management," says Ellen Masterson, global head of audit methodology at PwC and point person for the firm's new antifraud auditing initiative, "and as a profession we allowed that to happen."

This just reaffirms to me that unregulated progress is bad for the society.
"Progress without regulation is like slow suicide as in deliberate smoking of cigarettes, short-term pleasure that expedites our demise."

Then there was a hue-and-cry over the costs of implementing this regulation:
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,10546|M,00.html?f=options

It's hard to know exactly what Congress expected, since it did not assess any costs when it passed the law. That's not unusual, since "there's no formal process for Congress to calculate benefits or costs of legislation," says Thomas McCool, head of financial markets and community investment at the General Accounting Office. "Sometimes they try to get indications from various parties, but when it's something prospective like this, [costs] would be very hard to tell."

...

Ranking low on the list of costs is software. Forty percent of finance executives say compliance will not affect their IT budgets, while another 25 percent say it will involve minimal IT costs, according to a CFO IT survey. "Tools are often bundled with consulting fees; I don't think [software is] an integral part of the solution," says Kim Roll-Wallace, vice president of consulting for The Johnsson Group Inc. EMC, in fact, uses Excel. "We've found it works quite well in this regard," says chief accounting officer Mark Link, largely because "everyone already knows how to use it."

...


Then there are the indirect costs. The requirement to disclose off-balance-sheet structures more clearly has encouraged some companies to bring these structures on the balance sheet and others to collapse them entirely. Financial experts have become hot properties now that companies are required to disclose if they have one on their board. Restrictions on nonaudit work that a company's auditor can perform has left CFOs scrambling for new tax consultants. Meanwhile, the whistle-blower provision has sparked untold numbers of costly internal investigations.

Of course, there's also an opportunity cost associated with compliance activities.

I asked my professor, the ex-CFO of 3COM (and a great symbol of practical leadership), what software tools they had used to make Finance decisions. He used to tell me he and his staff used Excel, whereas I had imagined large ERP and Financials tools as the answer. At times I didn't believe him (so I rephrased it again and again), and at times I thought "Fine, he doesn't want to give it away!" ; but it does truly seem Excel serves Finance departments well.

After the quick flash-back, the present is filled with discussions and predictions of what Sarbanes-Oxley would mean to them, and sometimes of how little it does in practicality (besides the high cost of hiring the consultants):
http://www.cfo.com/printarticle/0,5317,11639|M,00.html?f=options

A few weeks after the Enron scandal broke, Vanderbilt University conducted a roundtable on the accounting industry. After the conference, a former student came over to talk to Owen Graduate School's Jeter, who chaired the discussion. She recalls with amazement the conversation she had with the former student. "He told me that he had gone on to become a lawyer, and his wife was a CPA," remembers Jeter. "He then said, in essence, that he and his wife both do the same thing. I asked him what that was. He said: 'Find loopholes.'"

Below is some analysis by Gartner research firm. There are also links (white papers) from IBM, below the article.
http://www.knowledgestorm.com/content/users/ibm_gartner_doc1.jsp

Many executives are eager for insights on what the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 will really mean for their enterprises. The manner in which enterprises approach business intelligence, corporate performance management and records management systems will be affected as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Questions Abound

Gartner is receiving many questions about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its implications for IT in the enterprise. To help enterprises better understand the ramifications, Gartner answers those questions from the business intelligence, corporate performance management and records management perspectives.

But, it also opens new opportunities for a regulation industry, ironically, that touts using more technology to solve the previous technology oversight(s) :
http://www.integratedmar.com/ecl-usa/story.cfm?item=11783

- Kaleem Aziz.

In Organizational Theory class there are a few things that are either against what I think is right for business, or they are right and I have wrong notions on these topics. Either way I need to think more. By the way, I am being reminded some valuable points about networking and public speaking (toastmasters), but the following do not seem right to me:

1. Power/position: We are taught to exalt the power/position to control money or people we have, or respect the power our superiors have. Some in the class are disagreeing with exalting (or respecting) power -- the counter-discussion raised was that without power an individual cannot get work done. This is not the first time I've come across this, because I've also been reminded/taught in class to never go against the boss -- for he knows something we don't and because he has some powers to discipline us that we don't. But I've had practical situations in which people who just have the power and title but not the wisdom and empathy required for it (due to some fault in the system), they become more powerful and oppressive (because they don't know how to do things right) when no one opposes them. In other words, leaders exist for the people/team/followers, not for the power but for the responsibility that comes with the power. People or team actually form the source of that power, but people/team can pull them down too. The end result is the feedback of whether the system is working right in bringing right people to power or not.
   
   
   Uncle Ben's advice to Spiderman: "With power comes responsibility." This responsibility is to decide the longterm advantage wisely. So, one should remember that while asking for power. Also, one should be more responsible about their responsibility than fun-oriented about basking in their power. Money, machines, strength & sexual abilities are all "powers", and most people forget their responsibility with respect to them.
   
   
   Therefore, I think an individual that has the capability to handle the responsibility, i.e., can do good to the company, is why he/she is hired in that position to start with. So power ultimately is a function of "what he knows" and "what he can get done" towards the objectives/goals. When someone said this, the counter-argument was that there's a difference between "what should" and "what is" -- he said the industry responds to "what is", in this case by power.
   
   I have a knowledge of the industry, but I felt this understanding of the industry was suited for convincing and getting alongwith middle managers. The majority of the class agrees that they see their bosses' wielding power on them. For those who believe managers just impose their power: I think when employees don't know what their boss know, they avoid doing it boss' way -- that's when boss uses his power to get it done. Managers have to do the right thing, and at most times their employees don't understand what's best for their team and themselves based on the information that the manager alone has. For variety of reasons, manager cannot sometimes reveal it, but yet has to get the task done -- and some managers do sacrifice being empathetic for the sake of performance.
   "Law of Planning: For every long-term planner in a team, there are numerous short-term planners that (intend to) do the exact opposite."
   
   My class also mentioned the thick politics and power in their organization -- I too have seen it at i2, and the book mentioned seeing it at Xerox Parc. But to me those were the examples of where power and title fails! I think "politics" is people involved trying to assert their needs. Often times, one's need is other's greed, and vice versa -- therefore, the bad connotation to the word "politics". I believe that managers that can master empathy and have their team members do the work by their own willingness will always be better bosses.
   
   
   In the powerful responses that I got through discussions on this topic, it seems I am aligning myself into looking at the negative aspects of power. I must concentrate on looking at positive aspects of what power can achieve.



2. Owner(s) driven: We were taught to believe that organizations are driven by the needs of the owner(s) (or stakeholders), not by the needs of the (1) customers and (2) employees. Some of us argued that the owners have no other way than to get their profits by creating something that customers' need. To this the counter-argument was that there are a lot of transactions in the industry (like corporate mergers) that are decided without any plan on customers. They asked us, "I dare you to find the word 'customer(s)' in merger documents." I've never seen a merger document, but was not convinced either; because I consider a merger to be a decision of different abstraction while customer base is always on the "back of their minds" (i.e., implicitly evident).
   
   
   It seems I am forgetting that the dynamics of all human systems are powered by "what each individual wants" for himself (i.e., need or greed). Seen in this sense, owners are actually merely trying to be profitable, customers and employees being their "means" to achieve what they want to achieve for themselves.



3. "Symbolic" factors: People first is not "pragmatic" according to our course work in Organizational Theory, but merely "symbolic". We were given example of Exxon oil spill and Johnson-n-Johnson recall of Tylenol. We were told that the CEO of Exxon should've flown out to the spill and been there (in front of the media and the people) because it was the "symbolic" right thing to do -- whereas the "prudent" right thing probably was to stay in his office and coordinate the high level cleanup task force. I believe that "we care" is an important "pragmatic" strategy of being with the people's wishes, not a "symbolic" gesture (which means they don't have their heart in it, but a false smile or gloom!). The difference between the two approaches is that one is a core factor why companies succeed or fail, whereas while the other treats it merely as a strategy to avoid brickbats. I believe that putting people first is how Microsoft or Coca Cola stays ahead -- they know, or strive to know, what their people want. In other words, they don't consider it "symbolic", but the right "pragmatic" thing to do.
   
   
   Again, this is the case of people wanting something different from what I perceive them to be wanting -- which can only mean that I can observe, but not have a say in it.



4. Writing skills: We are going to be graded in our papers on English grammatical skills as well. We are being told that whatever we write will have high visibility as we climb higher -- whereas I believe that higher we go, the more we will delegate such tasks to qualified professionals in the field. Also, it defeats my belief that executives are humans too, who should admit their faults when they make them. I think, being flawless because people will laugh at us otherwise is not a good enough motivator to be perfect, wanting to be one because we have a passion for it is. This is one reason why many executives don't write their blogs (of course, besides the lack of time). I am not sure that being silent or reticent is a very good idea to connect their company with common vision. Some companies believe/bet/recognize that blogging will be the mode of info/communication internally between departments, and to communicate with their customers, in future organizations.
   
   
   It seems higher up a person goes, being unequivocal and concise becomes more and more respected among peers -- probably because they have more responsibilities and lesser time to hear blabbering. As to executives blogging, I must look into how much benefit they can cause by working on their tasks versus blogging their thoughts hoping someone else (like me) could actually benefit from it.

I strongly feel this is the difference between top universities like Stanford, Wharton and Harvard, versus lower ranked universities like my Santa Clara University. May be we are being taught to be middle managers, while students at the top universities are taught to be CEOs; in addition to networking with professors and alumni. [Or, is this what actually works in the industry?]

So, what really bothers me is: Am I being trained to be middle management, and not a leader?
If so, my tasks become even more tougher -- either I need to be careful about the classes I choose, or try a switch to a (more) famous university or spend years undoing what this MBA is doing to me!

For once, I should try to learn from my professor, rather than try to be his teacher. My objecting to him may be valid in my thoughts, but also such objecting may actually be stopping me from receiving his lessons!

- Kaleem Aziz.

People around the world either love the USA (United States of America) or love to hate the USA. My point is why would anyone care (to love or hate) the USA, instead of just being able to ignore it, or treat it as yet any other country. Why does the USA bring something different (either glamorous or sick) to the mind?

Leavey Lecture "The Only Real Thing I Can Find: The View From The Screen" by Jacques Delacroix, a funny professor if I have ever seen one, seems to want to answer this issue. Here's the result of his study:
http://business.scu.edu/news/leavey_lectures/delacroix_apr03.pdf

While Professor Jacques was giving his dissertation, someone's cell phone went off in the auditorium. Without so much as lifting his head or taking the time to blink an eyelid, he muttered into the microphone "That'd be a C minus in my class."

In summary, he believes the world trade between the USA and rest of the world has remained the same with respect to the GDP -- he shows numbers of recorded world trade 100 years ago and that of recent times to prove this. Using GDP, he infact goes on to prove that some of the countries (like China, Cuba, India, Taiwan, South Korea, etc.) are doing more trade with the USA than 100 years ago! So, he believes it is not trade that puts the USA on the mind map of these countries.

Then he shows how the USA's media, through hollywood movies, shows an image of it where people own cars, have well furnished houses, drink cans of drinks (sodas, juices, coffee, etc.) every few minutes, have lights like those of Las Vegas or New York, have tall buildings and create explosions involving costly cars, helicopters and aeroplanes. Infact hollywood's movies sell more in many countries than their own regional or national movies, with the exception of two notable countries, viz., France and India. In France and India, the nationally made movies sell more than hollywood movies, he believes, because of the countries' protectionist effort to retain their culture and cultural values.

Movies, he says, are the images of what makes people love or hate the USA. In his discourse, he also mentioned that movies are a strong representation of reality, and hollywood movies clearly represent the luxurious life in reality. His report includes, and I quote:

Typical of this unexamined belief is the assertion by one Indian journalist that, ”United States-based Indians take their kids to the [Indian] movies to reinforce cultural values. Weak on plot, the movies promote respect for seniors and the benefits of arranged marriages.” (CIO article:”Don’t call it Bollywood.”).

However, there is a strong difference between Hollywood movies and Bollywood movies, only someone who sees both can quickly point out. One of my colleagues who hadn't seen Bollywood movies before had remarked "I just don't get it." -- which is characteristic spin that Hindi/Bollywood movies are all about. As said later in the CIO article, the following is more closer to observable facts about Bollywood movies, in comparison to the opinion of Indians taking their children to movies for ulterior reasons:
http://www.cio.com/archive/120100/bollywood.html

"Cinema in India is largely escapism," says Pritish Nandy, a writer, TV producer and media personality who is also a member of India's parliament. "It is all about what you want life to be—candy floss, larger-than-life heroes, gorgeous heroines. It is not about real people, real things, but that is India."

Therefore, I am not sure I agree one hundred percent with the professor's conclusions, simply because I find people to be free in other countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, Dubai, etc., as well; but much of the innovation, tourism, genius, leadership, privacy and individual freedom seems to come from the USA. Yes, hollywood movies is one form of innovation; but so is innovation in technology, military power, tourism, leadership, travel opportunities, financial market opportunities, equality and much much more. I agree Japan, Canada and France have better medical systems than the USA to an average citizen, but upon analysis I find that the USA is very particular about billing the person for his health (in essence, not having me pay extra taxes for the health and maintanence of a smoker!). Oil rich countries in Gulf don't have taxes at all, but so do they lack rights to define their life like people in the USA do. The life style in Germany, Australia, Holland and New Zealand is much more relaxing and luxurious in comparison to the USA, but so are the opportunities to diversity limited in comparison. Japan is a lead manufacturer of micro engineered products, China is a cheap manufacturer of mass manufactured products, Germany is a lead manufacturer of high class mechanical and electrical engineering products, India is a lead provider of high priced IT human resource, Singapore is a great provider of financial markets infrastructure, and so on; but what the USA brings to the table is business, (pioneering) innovation and leadership in each of the above. In essence, business (the trading of people's work) is probably done more diligently here than anywhere else.

When I asked my ex-bosses' husband, who I was meeting for lunch at a buffet restaurant with my ex-boss, about what he'd say is the culture in the USA; he remarked, "The culture of the US is that we do not have a culture." Years later, I heard someone loving to hate the USA because it did not have a culture (as if it was a bad thing). Then I heard from a lady who had moved from Iran with two little children to feed. She says her own country hadn't given her equal opportunities (for her sex, caste, etc.) like the USA did, and that she is today a successful business owner -- thankful to the USA for everything she has accomplished and for what she is.

I personally feel this freedom from culture gives the USA the creative edge to think beyond the limits of one train of thought -- something that can be attributed to the genius of this democratic system, made possible by its leaders and its people. Those who have always lived in this system may not notice it, for they do not know the ills of other systems; so also those who have never experienced it may not notice it either, for they haven't experienced it themselves. Only those who have travelled and mingled will see the difference -- and may be able to put their finger on what makes this difference so stark.

- Kaleem Aziz.

It is difficult to mentally be some other place than where you've lived all of your life. In someways, rocket science is called rocket science (i.e., arcane and difficult) because it requires thinking outside the rock.

In businesses today, average intellect has developed enough to do work the old fashioned way. At most professions, "get trained, complete jobs" mottos no longer keeps you as far ahead as you want. Businesses are rewarding creativity and innovation, and this requires thinking out of the box -- whether it be in creating products, creating solutions, selling products or making advertisements/commercials.

You must've already heard puzzles of 3 bulbs in a separate room from the switches, why manholes are round, how many barbers are in your city, etc. Here's a story that I find remarkable, of course, until it becomes yet another cliche:

Zakr, a king of a large kingdom had just received a message declaring war by a neighboring country. The neighboring kingdom was smaller and inferior in almost everyway, but was ruled by an ambitious, young and hasty king, Zula, who obviously wanted the resources Zakr's kingdom had built. Until Zula came to power, there had been no personal or regional enemity between the two.

Zakr was confident that Zula's army would be squashed in the end and believed that Zula is too greedy to understand that; but he was concerned about the loss of life, the unnecessary bloodshed, the loss of trade and the loss of peace for the citizens of his kingdom. He worked on the preparations of his kingdom for war with full force -- by readying the supplies and his army.

While Zakr prepared for the war, he planned to also attempt to avert this war -- through diplomacy. Everything now seemed to depend on excellent diplomacy (as it always does before a war). He had able generals, ministers and noblemen, but everyone of them lacked a well rounded understanding of the real situation. So many of them could not think out-of-the-box for a practical solution beyond their role. [One of the disadvantages of division of labor is that everyone knows their part well, but not the whole picture.] So, in the short time he had, he started a search for a well rounded wise man who could take his place in meeting Zula midway and convince him successfully to stand down.

He asked three of his generals to take charge of 17 horses to protect three gates of the fort. He asked the first to take 1/2 the total number of horses, the second to take 1/3 the total and the last to take 1/9 the total. When the generals replied that they'd have to kill/cut a few horses, or take an approximate, Zakr asked them to find a man who could solve their problem -- and quickly. Zakr also instructed them that he would want to meet the person who solves the problem. So the three generals started a search throughout their army and the country for a person who could solve their problem.
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STOP! How would you solve this problem? Read on only after you've tried to solve it for at least a few seconds.
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By sun-down, an old man rode towards where they were stationed and suggested he could help them out. When the 17 horses were brought out, the old man included his horse alongside, making them 18 horses in total. 1/2 of 18 was 9, so he gave 9 horses to the first general. 1/3 of 18 was 6, so he gave 6 horses to the second general. And, finally, 1/9 of 18 was 2, so he gave 2 horses to the third general. 9 + 6 + 2 totalled to 17, leaving his horse remaining. He took his horse and started to ride away. The generals, as per their instruction, asked him to meet the king, and led him to where the king was camped.

It is told that the king took the wise old man's help in diplomatically averting the war. We do not know what the old man said to Zula to convince him, because he rode away after saving the two kingdoms that had been on brink of war.

The motto of this story is: Thinking out of the box to understand concepts beyond where we have been helps solve practical problems of humanity.

A side motto could be that WAR = We Are Right (i.e., we are right ideology of each of the two or more sides at war), and successful diplomatic negotiations where common ground can be reached (i.e., understanding that others are right too) can avert human tragedies of war. In case of wars in US-Iraq, US-Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, etc., I find that both sides speak different languages and cannot understand anyone but themselves. Simple and clear of one is the unbelievable and shocking of the other. I believe it is not just the West or the rest that needs to communicate better, it is both -- which makes it twice as impossible as making one of them is. Ultimately, fairness in leadership on both sides may gradually and eventually solve these problems. At individual level, traveling and mingling is only going to clarify to us the real magnitude of this problem -- reading may not.

- Kaleem Aziz.

This is a story from before the Industrial Era. I know we like to think we are the only ones who actually know how to do business, but people in those days had very successful businesses despite knowing a tad little less than we do today. So this is a story of IE Industries (fictional), who were the biggest known business in that side of the country in Import-Export (IE).

Mr. Charles, the businessman who had owned and run this business, had grown old and was in his death bed. He called himself a self-made man, who had been a successful businessman, a people's person, a wise strategist and a champion of justice; besides being a passionate hardworker. However, on his death bed he was implementing his strategy for his successor strategist.

So he called his three sons. All the three were sent to the best schools in the country, and the father had taken them along on business deals. However, they did not inherit the strategy or wisdom of the old man, and this did concern him a lot. He was not concerned about his sons losing his immense wealth, but was concerned how it could be misused to harm people.

When his sons came to meet him, he asked the eldest "What will you do to help and save the thousands people around you and dependent on your decisions?". The son had a passionate answer, "I'll play my guitar and entertain them!". When the old man frowned, the son said, "Trust me, I am good at it, Dad!". The father said it wasn't him that he was thinking about, and that he was sure the eldest son would do fine. However, he had frowned thinking his son hadn't realized that only work opportunities can help him save his people and himself; no matter how well he could play the guitar. May be his son needed more time to mature. So he posed the same question to the second son, who said he would worship to God and bring the message of God into his people. God, he contended, would save his people. The old man could only wish him well, and held his hopes on the youngest -- for the youngest was known to think ahead of times. When asked, the youngest son said that he'll create an agency for dating -- where eligible men would meet eligible women and create happy lives.

The old man was a little concerned by the answers that no one was talking of creating goods, but were only (luxury) services that fell short of creating sufficient opportunites for tens of thousands people like his businesses touched. But then, may be it is just that they've had easy lives compared to how he had started his business. So, he asked his sons to appoint a strategist (or in today's parlance an "active partner") and make decisions with him for their business. He let his sons own his businesses because he knew fully well that he lived in an age where titles (i.e., their being his son) meant everything.

He also defined for them who would make a good strategist. He asked them to hire a strategist who could operate the business in following manner, with minimum cost to the business. His requirements were that the hired strategist should be so dedicated to the business that he:
1. Shouldn't walk to work, or back from work, under the Sun.
2. Shouldn't let the person he has an appointment with see him coming.
3. Shouldn't write on the page he wrote the previous day.


Since IE Industries was one of the largest Import-Export business in the country, many were keen on getting interviewed. However, the answers to the questions majority of candidates gave involved constructing overhead structures or tunnels or vehicles, mazes, and purchasing specialized books that were extremely technologically advanced. Finally, one aspiring candidate, Mr. Justin, figured out a way to not only solve the current problem in the interviews, but also the essence of how Charles had run his business, as follows:
1. The old man wants me (the strategist) to be at work before sunrise and go home after sunset. That is, I should live the life of this business, not just do a job -- there should not be a time when my work starts and a time when my work ends. This way I'll not be walking under the Sun to work, or back from work.
2. The old man wants me to be punctual, and infact ahead of time, with meetings with my customers. That way they'll not be able to see me come to them, because I am already there for the meeting.
3. The old man wants me to close all the accounts the same day and to do them correctly. For if I don't, I'll be writing on the same page the next day.


Justin added he'd be glad to continue the tradition of this business and accept the responsibility of this challenging opportunity.

Many of today's MBAs probably learn in lesser time of their lives all that Charles learned in a lifetime. And I bet, they would be glad to work for a company like the one Charles had started, owned and run.

- Kaleem Aziz.

As portrayed in the movies, women get a rough edge in the men world of business, we are told. Not so, if you know women characteristics that are great for leadership and business ethics, I've come to understand. Here's an excerpt from "Emotional Intelligence - Why it can matter more than IQ?" by Daniel Goleman:

"When girls play together, they do so in small, intimate groups, with emphasis on minimizing hostility and maximizing cooperation, while boys' games are in larger groups, with an emphasis on competition. One key difference can be seen in what happens when games boys or girls are playing get disrupted by someone getting hurt. If a boy who has gotten hurt gets upset, he is expected to get out of the way and stop crying so the game can go on. If the same happens among a group of girls who are playing, the game stops while everyone gathers around to help the girl who is crying. This difference between boys and girls at play epitomizes what Harvard's Carol Gilligan points to as a key disparity between the sexes: boys take pride in a lone, tough-minded independence and autonomy, while girls see themselves as part of a web of connectedness. Thus boys are threatened by anything that might challenge their independence, while girls are more threatened by a rupture in their relationships. And, as Deborah Tannen has pointed out in her book You Just Don't Understand, these differing perspectives mean that men and women want and expect very different things out of a conversation, with men content to talk about "things", while women seek emotional connection."

Did you notice how they considered boys and girls for the sample, but derived men and women in the result? Is that a wrong conclusion, since boys are not men and girls are not women? No, it is a valid example of looking into male and female psychology in its natural unpressured form. As maturity and social pressures set in, people tend to stop being their natural selves on the outside (even if they can't control or change the inside as effectively). Therefore, such experiments are carried out with children. (Did you know that a series of experiments that proves democracy to be the best form of team work in a diverse group was carried out with children as well?)

Aggressive selling is not going to do the same magic as listening to 'what customer wants' does; because relationships (i.e., long lasting bonds with customer) are built more on good (personalized) treatment and less on trumpeting. So also, modern businesses that are doing it right are not inadverantly forcing women to be like men; instead, I believe, they are inadverantly urging men to think like women -- at least in terms of building relationships by demonstrating empathy.

- Kaleem Aziz.