Category Archives: Business

Walt Disney: Departmentalize By Perceived Skills (back then gender was a proxy) / Furnish Your Personal Brand

 

Disney ReLesson: Departmentalize Perceived Capabilities By Gender & Exploit Menial Labour? Oh My: Speaking from a place of white privilege (real and imagined); I can say this letter is unacceptable by today’s standards [insert date/time/year here], obviously. Disney was only training young men? Rejecting women applicants out of turn? Would it have been a dangerous work environment for a young lady to work in? Taking a step back, the above letter is appalling and yet beautifully illustrated at the same time, so there is a silver lining: likely photo duplicated illustrations. This letter exemplifies what might have been happening all the time in an era where it was socially acceptable for women to be considered for only certain functions AND there was a sort of human resource logic that technically still exists today around “skills and capabilities” based hiring.

Would the female applicant have got the role if she had a specific portfolio of drawings mailed in as well? Is that even practical to mail in? We know logically life is not fair and that if you want a job you need to present your value add right out of the gate, regardless of the era. Here is what was going on in the HR manager’s mind: “I have five minutes to decide if I will hire you, you didn’t do cartooning in another studio and you’re from a monolithic group identity that doesn’t align with our goals / workflow / pin-ups in the kitchen / division of labour therefore no job for you” – Disney HR manager. This still happens today all the time in multiple directions, not hiring men at the nail salon etc! Career changers have a difficult time because they don’t have a track record and hiring manager don’t want to risk hiring the wrong person. HR is about making assumptions about the applicant + previous roles + filtering GPA + other variables. Remember that HR stands for Human Roadblock.

A little background, Burbank Studio opened in 1940. All executive and artists were men. Women were in the inking and painting department exclusively. This menial work was demeaning according to many. You were timed to see how quickly you painted and inked the cellophane. Once a women turned 30, it was well known that her hands ‘would be too shaky’ to continue working on inking. Seems like an abrupt logic around a specific age here; kind of like the drinking age laws (if only we could measure maturity!)….Anyway, Walt Disney has been called a racist from a small town in some re-tellings. Walt Disney had prejudices and was considered to be anti-sematic although this is only hearsay. In an unsavoury staff meeting, Disney actively warned the women in Ink and Paint from trying to get in bed with their animator staff. I guess, back then, work was pretty segregated. The men probably couldn’t be trusted to handle themselves around young women so better to blame the victim? Other controversies include the fact that P.L. Travers apparently completely hated Mary Poppins the film and that the recent Saving Mr. Banks is a complete whitewash of what happened in reality.

I digress. Life is not fair and no human-managed-entity can correct that unfairness without displacing others, hence my pro-AI perspective.

walt-disneyFurnish Your Personal Brand: back in the 1930s, you would address your superior by their surname. Walt Disney famously asked that people refer to him as “Walt” or “Uncle Walt”.  In old news footage, it was revealed that ABC Disneyland Episodes were shot in colour because Disney knew that colour was going to be the future of television. From all his brand management work, Disney had built up his image as an Uncle to children around the world. The reality was quite stark but that doesn’t seem to matter much now. Any cruelty or prejudice exacted by Disney is counter-balanced by the most impactful children’s entertainment around. A good brand can withstand a lot with the right kind of Public Relations.

Robert Moses and LBJ Explained by Robert Caro

Best Question @ 55:55 “We expect our political leaders to be principled and ethical; however to be political effective it appears that politicians must be amoral; can the system be fixed or is this tension inherent in the system”

Is politics going to be continually corrupted? Robert Caro says that we should really understand how things actually work in politics. That the challenge for the next generations in developed western democracy and the world generally. Is there a tension between being a principled leader and do anything to get power for its own sake? The political genius of Moses and LBJ shows us how to get things done, you would hope that people would study their political systems but that’s not particularly in high demand. The more people understand how things really work in politics; the more powerful those citizens become.

Robert Moses was never going to get elected; so he drafted legislation that no one understood. He would bury his power in the legislation to ensure that you would have a bridge toll that directly payed Moses. He created overlapping terms of office, created public relations fees, contracts. He was the locus of corruption but he himself was never interested in money. Moses had overlapping authorities and persuaded La Guardia to approve this legislation: you have to read the contract.

What was revealed about: Moses wanted power for the sake of his dreams. He selected projects that would give him more power. Instead of parks, he built public low income housing. Public housing was where the Federal authority. Moses build 155K housing; he didn’t want lower. Moses was very racist, arrogant. Getting things done was Moses’ skill.

Robert Moses’ response to the 1.2K page biography by Caro:
http://www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com/detritus/moses/response.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: Accounting Is About Perception

Accounting Is About Perception: example, MLB calculation of profits and limiting tax liabilities. In this case study, a baseball team, the Montreal Expos has a dispute between players, and the owner about how profitable the club is in actual terms.

The argument for the players is that the owners are using accounting tricks to reduce their profit and then using those numbers to justify not paying the players as much as they are worth. The trick is that players are depreciated under the tax laws in Canada, and the US. When you buy a team, you can capitalize the value of your players ie you treat your players as assets on your balance sheet, rather than an expense, which is on the income statement. Therefore, if you buy a team for 100 million, and capitalize the value of players at 50 million, you can then charge a depreciation expense over six years. With salaries, this expense means you get a double expense. The problem is that the depreciation expense doesn’t make any sense since the team might have young talent that only improves over time, players don’t depreciate. So the players argue that the real expense is salary and that the owners are abusing the depreciation allowance to minimize their profits to then justify lower salaries.

ACCOUNTING is useless to some because it appears to be the art of manipulating numbers to fit whatever goal you had in mind. It is confusing and deceptive, and describes events long after they had happened. There were far more effective ways of examining a company’s health. Others believe that account is useful because it is a standard measure that allows us to compare companies with different performances. You will need to gain a critical eye in accounting to be successful in an MBA.

There are two major mantras of accounting. The foundation is the following:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

&

Accounting = Economic Truth + Measurement error + Bias

Discovering economic truth is very difficult to do. The rules are the messy by-product of corporate and technological change, lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and companies all scrapping for some advantage. If accounting ceases to reflect what is going on but instead becomes a game, it becomes worthless and destructive on a macro-level as demonstrated by the 2008-2011 Western Country Recessions.

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

Lessons from a Masters In Business Administration: About Management Consulting

About Management Consulting: conventional wisdom states that if you start working at a consulting firm as a single person, you will stay single, if you arrived married you will risk ending-up getting divorced. People with families get fired first at a consulting firm. Other consultants talk about the unending meetings, the way bosses might mislead clients by offering less-than-useful advice accompanied by fancy presentations. Consultancies are full of intellectuals but cutthroat ones. You might encounter a formula as follows: Change = f(D x M x P)+E. In other words, change is caused by the level of (D) dissatisfaction, the new (M) model to resolve it, (P) the process for that change, and plus E is error. This is a classic over-complication of an obvious reality that change is caused by dissatisfaction, and requires a solution that is planned. This kind of equation, although novel is an example of what a consultancy might sell to a client as part of their services.

About Finance Jobs: finance jobs are built around squeezing as much out of employees as possible. You might be expected to leave at 4am, then sleep in a car, then drive home to take a shower, and do it all over again. Did anyone mention the salary, though? You should read Roger Lowenstein’s Warren Buffett, The Making of an American Capitalist.

Summer Jobs: everyone will be applying for summer jobs early on. Being in an MBA program makes you highly sought after. You might be asked in an interview for an investment banker job: “What makes a stock-price move?” You should not say that; fundamentally, it’s a change in expected future earnings, but what influences those changes is a mystery. Some believe it is all rational, based on forecasts, others say there is a herd mentality….the competition will be insane for these positions, and those who naturally fit within a given organization will succeed.

Research is Paramount: understanding a business model will make you an effective investor. You only hear about the success stories, and you never hear about the failures.

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

Hesselbein’s Story about Peter Drucker

Peter Drucker is the most often quoted business leadership scientist in America. What about some of his disciples, for example, Frances Hesselbein? A person who, at 102, has to be considered one of the more inspirational and long living leadership is American business. Let the film speak for itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hesselbein

  1. Ask don’t tell, think first / speak last.
  2. Without followers there can be no leaders.
  3. Effective leaders are those who have followers who do the right thing.
  4. Leaders are highly visible, they set examples.