Wrapping up the Program - Part I

As of 1pm, barring any last minute disasters (not sure what they would be), my journey through the WFU Executive MBA program is complete. Our final grades were posted today. All that's left now is to receive my diploma at a ceremony in January.

As the last group to ever go through the Executive Program, the ending is somewhat bittersweet (the format was canceled in Fall 2009 due to strategic changes by the WFU Schools of Business). Being EOL brought us closer together as a group, but unfortunately we won't have subsequent classes to build the alumni base. The Executive program was started over 25 years, and was the original MBA program offered by Wake Forest.

Instead of just waving good-bye to this blog, I thought I'd finish it with a series of posts recapping some of the most important things I learned over the last 18 months.

Breadth of Knowledge Matters

Whether you're faced with a Strategy problem, a Marketing problem, a Finance problem or an Organization problem, no decision can be made in a vacuum. Having a fundamental understanding of a breadth of subjects, learned across a wide range of industries (through case studies, classmate experiences, etc.) is invaluable in making executive level decisions. Today's markets move much too fast to build companies that operate in silos, so bringing a breadth of knowledge to daily decisions will make the difference between survival and failure in the 21st century.

The World is Global...and Semi-Global...and Regional...and Local

While the Thomas Friedman's of the world grab many headlines, not every problem today is global. It is invaluable to have the experience of visiting and working in international markets (which we experienced), but knowing when strategy needs to be global is even more valuable. You must be ABLE to step out of your CAGE and see where it makes sense to bring ADDING solutions to market expansion. You must think globally, but act locally.

Create True and Lasting Value

As we saw from the financial crisis of 2008, and in numerous other examples, it is incredibly easy to financially engineer the books or manipulate markets in the short-run in return for near-term profits. But the 21st century, with it's hypermedia cycles, will quickly destroy companies that are not competitive and do not create true value for customers or partners. NOTE: "Lasting" is a relative term. It may only be 3-5yrs, but it's a mindset that should be infected into every company that strives to be competitive and differentiate themselves by creating tremendous value with their products and services.

Think like a CEO

All too often we tend to get caught up in the value of our functional area or market, and fail to see the bigger picture in front of us. Without the correct strategies, financial models and product portfolios aligned to solve customer problems, many ideas are just a set of random details.

Think like a Baby

At times, we plug all the data into our fancy MBA models and answers emerge. But do they always make sense? Have they taken into consideration local factors, or basic inter-dependencies? Have we thought through the simplest of details, asked the simplest of questions? For parents, we're often amazed at the way children are able to ask the most direct questions for complex topics. That type of questioning is valuable for executives as well.

Build Your Personal Brand

The personalization of media and the ubiquity of the Internet allows each of us to be our own Marketing/PR/Ad agency. Companies will come and go, but your personal brand is the one element over which you can have direct control. This blog was created for alternative learning purposes, but it eventually became a foundational aspect of me beginning a journey to better understand how a personal brand is built, cultivated and expanded.

CAGE, Biomimicry and a big lull....

For anyone who reads this blog, I have to apologize for the lack of content and ideas recently. Not only has my day job been extremely busy lately (blog hits over there are up 500% Y-over-Year), but this semester has left me in a funk. It has no rhythm to it, and the pending 50-page papers for GSM II, Management Practicum and Entrepreneurship haven't left much time for writing about new ideas (let alone tidbits from class).

One of the important concepts that we discuss quite a bit with Ram Baliga are analogies, and the importance of making connections outside your current view of a problem. He stresses that many problems have already been solved, just at a different time, or in a different industry, or by looking at the problem outside the context of the existing situation.

So in that vain of thinking, I highlight a couple of analogies:

• In GSM II (and in International Business), we used a framework called C.A.G.E (Cultural, Administrative, Geographic and Economic) to analyze expansion and M&A activities. I loosely used that framework to analyze a problem happening in corporate IT organizations as technologies like VMware's virtualization are creating organizational problems (although saving companies money). It's not an exact fit for the framework, since we're not really dealing with global expansion, but it seems to have some alignment for groups that speak different languages and have different priorities. Apologies to Dr.Lord and Dr.Baliga for stretching the framework a little more than is probably acceptable in their eyes.
• In Leading Change & Entrepreneurship, we often talk about ways to come up with new ideas or sources of new ways to solve problems. This recent article in Fast Company by Dan & Chip Heath highlights the concept of biomimicry to help solve some of your company's most head-scratching problems. Dr.Fogel had given us some papers to read on biomimicry, but not having much in the way of free time, I was highly appreciative of Heath's use of brevity to show examples of a powerful concept.

Analogies can be powerful tools in not only trying to explain new ideas, but also for looking outside your current frame of view for new solutions. Often times an analogy can be the best way to connect you with a customer, especially when you come from different backgrounds and you're trying to find a common language.

China -

[cross-posted from our WFU MBA China Trip blog]

It's been just over three months since we returned from our International Trip to China and it felt like the right time to reflect on how that experience has changed my thinking about the world. This isn't going to be terrible formal, just a list of stuff that I've been thinking about recently:

1 - Sort of like the soldiers that returned to the farms after WWII ("you can't send them back to the farm after they have seen Paris"), it's very difficult to get the allure of China our of your consciousness.

2 - When you're in China, the opportunities feel like they are so close and completely within reach. It's only when you're back in the US do you realize how far away they really are (even with today's communications technologies). The immediacy of opportunity in China is intoxicating.

3 - Like anything else, it takes practice and repetition to get better at China. For the first 45-60 days back, I read the Chinese newspapers online religiously, trying to take in every little nuance. Since then, US life has been creeping back in very quickly and I feel like my China-ese is getting rusty. I need to get back into practice.

4 - Two weeks doesn't sound like a long time, but it provided an incredible foundation for understanding the basics of the complex world of Chinese business and culture. Our summer and fall semesters incorporated International elements in every session, and our trip more than adequately prepared us with the right mindset to have success in doing business with/in China.

5 - I miss the food. I miss the adventure of what it was, what it might be, and only using chopsticks. I never felt like I overate in China, yet I also never felt hungry. They seemed to have figured out the perfect mix of variety, healthiness and entertainment with their meals. The US needs to take a page out of the Chinese cookbook.

6 - I've been thinking about ways to start a business that involves China in some way. I'd say that at least half of the people in our class (from the trip) have been having those same thoughts. I have the skeleton of the business plan in place, and a key first meeting in a couple weeks. It's a great time to be an entrepreneur.

7 - If you are ever part of any of the WFU Business School programs and have an interest in International business, do not hestitate to engage Mike Lord. If you are passionate about International business, Mike will match your passion by 2x.

8 - We have problems here in the US, and they have problems in China too. But their problems just feel much larger in scale. So even if you're not going to doing something China-related or International-related, do something that has some scale to it. Make a difference!!

OK, I'll end it with #8, since 8 is the number signifying good luck and wealth in China. I hope you all get to visit China some day, as it's an incredible country and one of the highlights of the WFU MBA program.

Follow-Up: Failure & Growth in China

In previous posts, I've written about growth and failure in China and the role that both of them play in their economy and culture. One of the things that Americans tend to do when confronted with the thought that China or India will potentially (or eventually) overtake them as an economic power is to point to their lack of innovation. Mike Lord referenced this during our International Business course this past weekend, but then reminded us that many of the early American settlers made copies of everything they knew from their homeland in Europe. The easiest way to gain expertise in a new area is to copy what others have done. What you do with it from there really determines if you will create a culture of innovation, and hence a culture that can create sustainable value over the long-term.

Maybe another data point to consider is the Israeli technology markets and their level of innovation. He is a highly-educated population, that has expertise in various areas of technology, and considerable need to solve economic and cultural challenges. Put they haven't been nearly as successful as their American counterparts in creating sustainable new businesses. One proposed reason for this is their "failure is not an option" mentality in the Israeli culture. I bring this up not as a way to highlight American success, but to highlight another culture that punishes (or discourages) failure, similar to what has been discussed in the past with China.

The US still has challenges to overcome in their education systems to remain competitive in the global economy, and we should not rest on our past success. But I believe innovation and the culture we have that encourages success, failure and resulting innovation is the strength that we need to enhance. The foundation still needs to be there via math and science and creative thinking, but the culture also needs to be encouraged. It is the strength that we have which gives us the ability to overcome the population numbers that are in India and China's favor (at least in some aspects).

International Learnings - Page 2 ("China Growth")

One of the great things about MBA programs is the opportunity to learn, fail, make mistakes and be humbled without too much loss of political capital. It's even better when you get almost immediate feedback on an area where you missed the mark, or visualize the concepts in the context of the bigger picture.

A couple days ago, I wrote about my initial thoughts about China's Growth and their ability to sustain it over the next couple of decades. Much of it was based on our experiences from our company visits on the China trip, and multiple discussions with classmates on the subsequent bus rides around the country.

Much of class yesterday, in International Business, was focused on analysis of New Ventures and Corporate Expansion into foreign markets. So I went back and looked at some of the analysis models and compared them to what I had written. Needless to say, much of my initial thoughts were predictable and did not look at the connectedness of the bigger picture. Let's highlight a few of them:

1. Demand for Goods, Worldwide - I said, "...they pay their workers in Mexican plants $13/hr, but pay their workers in Singapore/Taiwan/Malaysia $0.21/hr, so it's hard to make the math of the stimulus work unless people in the US wanted to start paying $200 for a pair of blue jeans." This is a classic mistake of looking at just one element of the end-to-end supply chain for bringing this textile good to market. Stepping back to look at the bigger picture, I may have found that shipping costs from Asia to the US have risen dramatically, or that new plants in the US are taking advantage of tax incentives to educate out-of-work furniture laborers, or some other element that could have made the overall business model work. But instead, I allowed myself to be fixated on a single, seemingly tanglible (and easily understandable) cost element.
2. Failure to Consider Shifts in Capital & Investment - Nowhere in my analysis did I look at the possibilities that Chinese investment would flow directly into the US to take advantage of low-cost workers, or better environmental conditions, or attempts to gain a foothold within the country like Honda, Toyota, Mercedes and BMW did with plants in the US.
   
3. Failure to Consider Shifts in US Opinions - I mentioned that in "Made in China" sometimes carries a stigma, especially when child safety issues arise. But I failed to look at attempts by Chinese companies to reduce any backlash towards a foreign company or brand.

Those are just a few misses. Needless to say, there is a lot that I still don't understand. But the good news is that the learning is in an environment that encourages mistakes. Now it's up to me to figure out when to ask question, what questions to ask, and when to realize when I don't know what I don't know.

This is going to be a fun semester.

3rd Semester begins - 6 months to go!!

The thirty of us remaining in the WFU MBA 2009 program returned last night from our international trips and a couple weeks off. It was good to see everyone again and catch up on their trips. The mood seemed to be slightly less intense than semesters past, partially because the weather is so nice and partially because it's been six weeks since we were here in Winston-Salem and everyone is trying to get back into a groove.

This semester is about all things International. We have three classroom courses and the International Practicum, which included the two week trips to either China, Japan or South America. The classroom courses this semester are all only six weeks (instead of eight), which means they consolidate quite a bit more reading into each session.

International Financial Management is being taught by Dr. Bruce Resnick. The course will focus on FX Markets, differences between Domestic and International Finance, International Strategy and overall International Portfolio Management.

International Business Management is being taught by Dr. Mike Lord. Mike was the lead for our China trip. The course focuses on a broad range of topics (Cultural, Economic, Political, Geographic) that effect how companies engage in international expansion and operations.

Global Strategic Management is being taught by Dr. Ram Baliga. The course focuses on many aspects of strategy as it relates to products, operations, M&A, market entry and competition.

The international trips seem to have changed the overall perspective of the world for many of my classmates. They seem to have a better understanding of how much bigger the world in terms of opportunities and competition. They seem to have a better grasp on how Finance, Culture, Government Policy and Global Economics fit together. And they seem to have a new sense of what to explore and question as they try and make sense of how they are going to fit into the global economy.

We still don't know what we don't know, and but this semester should help to fill in the blanks on a few questions. The courses are all in English, but there is definitely a different set of languages being spoken in class are still a little bit foreign. Hopefully the learning curve moves faster than my attempts at Mandarin.