Monthly Archives: April 2016

Politics

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: An MBA Is About Taking Control

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MBA = Taking Control: Business school is about gaining control of your financial future. HBS believes that their experience training can also be applied to other spheres- politics, education, health care, the arts. Business culture is pervasive so learn it from within.

Case Studies Are A Learning Device: The entire HBS curriculum is built on the law school model of case studies. The question you will be asked each time is: What would you do? How do you think about solving a given problem? There is a difference between people who are tough-minded, and people who are tender-minded according to Malcolm McNair. Toughness refers to the intellectual apparatus, and toughness of spirit. It is the attitude and training that allow us to seize facts, and make courageous decisions. They know the answer is not in a book, but in real life cases. Grading will be for your benefit as a student, but will not be used by recruiters.

The Baron & The Two Peasants: learning accounting: Imagine a Baron in a small patch of present day Bavaria. The baron is responsible for the well-being of many peasants who occupy the lands around his stately castle. The baron has two peasants whom he asks to farm two different hectares of land. He supplies them equally with seed, fertilized, oxen, and allows them both to lease a plough. The two peasants Sam and Jesop return a year later with different amounts of wheat with the conditions of other resources having deteriorated over the year.

Q: Who was more successful?

This is an accounting case as you are now expected to determine which peasant was more successful. An MBA should be expected to generate an income statement and balance sheet for the two farmers. So, you might need to depreciate the oxen, and you might put the full value of Sam’s plow under ‘costs of goods sold.’ As you begin to play with the empirical figures, you’ll see that the answer of who was more successful shifts according to your metrics. There is no right answer. So the lesson in accounting is actually to use common sense rather than cling to rules.

[This is a synopsis of several books on the MBA experience including What They Teach You At Harvard Business School by P.D. Broughton]
Business, Politics

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: MBAs Inter-Semester Travel

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MBAs Inter-Semester Travel: Go to Brazil, India, China, or Russia, which is now the standard inter-semester trip for MBA students. MBAs have an arrogance to them. Do not go to these places with hand sanitizer in your wallet or purse. These trips are liable to be dominated by booze, clubs, shops, and corporate entertainment. These places are where all the venture capitalists are going. Being a Venture Capitalist is easier than climbing the corporate ladder, all you need is one major success, then you will have 100s of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas, and you get to pick the best ones. Although, it is very risky, and many VCs fail.

2 Years of Banking or Consulting is a Plus: for getting into an MBA Program, some experience in consulting or banking is a major advantage. You will need to be rather tough minded because you might get depressed with all the analysis and 18 hours days. MBAs are insecure overachievers.

[This is a synopsis of several books on the MBA experience including What They Teach You At Harvard Business School by P.D. Broughton]
Business

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: Further Strategy

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Further Strategy: you need to sound out the cost and willingness to pay with your clients. You will see the source of the competitive advantage if you look at these forces. To understand that cost and willingness to pay you need to breakdown the business into its multiple parts, and then try to integrate them in different ways. If you move production, how does it effect culture? You always seek to empower everyone in your business; it was a guy from the mail room that discovered that you could cut a hole in the bottom of the pumpkin in order to allow a candle to be covered by it rather than cutting it from the top: Think Different.

Identify the bad customers who will make a spectacle early on. Business is about the people who run it, regardless of what an Excel spread sheet will tell you. People buy from people. You can tell in Indonesia, which companies are most closely connected to the party leader by what happens when that leader is taken ill. You don’t need to get a patent for a drug, if you can simply keep it a secret as Coca-Cola had with their soft-drink. Environmental campaigns often attack companies that will likely get their campaign the most attention. They may not target the most obvious environmental offenders.

Questions Upon Leaving Your MBA Program: How will I find a mentor? How will I pay off my student loans? How do I make sure I don’t get sacked after two years? People choose consulting because they aren’t sure what they want to do. You should start to recognize your weaknesses, and focus on developing your strengths. Are you willing to make a Faustian pact to work long-hours, and skew your work to family balance?

Rules To Live By: when we look back, the big things will look small and the little things will look big;

  1. Comparison is the death of happiness;
  2. We are all we have. No one else will rescue us.
  3. Resist the temptation to be a short-termist;
  4. Be honest with yourself about what jobs are the right ones for you.
  5. Keep your moral compass
  6. Maintain the proper balance between your professional career and your personal life.
  7. Be unconventional: success should not be based on monetary gain, but value.
[This is a synopsis of several books on the MBA experience including What They Teach You At Harvard Business School by P.D. Broughton]
Business, Politics

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: Mergers and Acquisitions / Porter’s Theory

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Mergers and Acquisitions: Company A announces a merger with Company B, it offers a price x, for Company B which is about Company B’s current stock market valuation. The arbitrageur asks himself, is the likelihood that this deal will actually go through? Will the shareholders of Company B accept it? Will there be account fraud of Company B? What if the CEO of Company A dies? The stock prices of the merging companies move around more than usual as investors weigh up the probability of the merger’s taking place. For risk arbitrageur, the risk of losing $100,000 is .1% and the risk of losing $500 is 20%. They spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the 20% chance ruining a day instead of the .1% chance of running a career. Everywhere in life there are small risks of disaster that you would think of as an arbitrator: chances of the babysitter turning to be a kidnapper; and the costs would be infinite.

Porter’s Theory: Michael Porter believes that competition is the engine of productivity, growth and every business, town or country should be seeking out a competitive advantage. He’s not interested in cost and willingness to pay…

Private/Public Sectors: The relationship between business and government. Government gets its tax revenue from businesses, don’t ever forget that fact. Many believe that business does not need government whatsoever. MBAs are taught to believe that business is the most important institution in society.

[This is a synopsis of several books on the MBA experience including What They Teach You At Harvard Business School by P.D. Broughton]