Term 1
Of all the mistakes I made while a student here, my single greatest regret, the one thing I dream of changing if I had the chance to do it all over again, would be to have the world simply stop for three minutes after every case discussion in class. That’s right, stop—go deathly silent, and the only thing I was allowed to do during those few precious minutes was jot down whatever was “on my mind” at the time. It could be a conceptual note based on the professor’s case summary, or just as likely it might have been a personal note to call my mother because something someone said during class caused me to think of her, how important she is to me, and how long it had been since I had spoken to her. Oh, what I’d give today for a notebook full of those “personal reflections.”
Leave your reflections as comments!
Steve Myrick
Luke Owings
chuckdieselfuel
Jessica Lackey
FIN1 – LifeHealth – You can do an NPV on anything … but it’s only as good as your assumptions.
LEAD – Echoing Green – Fixate on your strengths while paying a bit of attention to your weaknesses – not vice versa.
LEAD – Echoing Green – Remember your current peer group when reflecting on your weaknesses – compared to the rest of the ‘real world’, what you consider weaknesses may just be your own insecurity when comparing yourself to an incredibly selective group.
FIN – Life Health – The line between a pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing is not cut and dry.
MKT – Dove – Although the ‘Real Beauty’ campaign by Dove sounds great and is excellent for PR, it really doesn’t seem to be doing anything. There are no real quantifiable goals and since there’s no way of measuring what they actually want to do, there’s no way they can succeed OR fail at it. It does nothing more than garner the company good press.
LEAD – Echoing Green – ‘Focus on your strengths, they’ll take you to the stars.’ At the same time, make sure that you pick situations that highlight your strengths and make use of them. You don’t have to be perfect at everything, but you do have to be intelligent in where you spend your time.
LEAD – Letters from the Class of ’76 – When thinking about success, it’s helpful to frame the conversation as “I was successful because…” rather than “I will be successful if…”.
(hat tip to Clint)
FRC – Cutter & Buck – If it’s a crisis time and you’re trying to decided whether or not to do something, put it to the Headline Test. “If this were put in a headline, how would it look?”
LEAD – Letters from the Class of ‘76 – Beware the “tyranny of incrementalism.” For many people, severe work-life imbalance doesn’t come from a single life choice. It sneaks up on them as a result of many small, hard-to-notice trade-offs, each of which appears acceptable. None of us think “I’m going to take the miserable path,” but it’s not labeled like that – it’s a bunch of small, justifiable detours off the happy path.
FRC – Letter from Prison
Boundary and belief systems are not just important in an organization. You need to have personal boundary and belief systems and be willing to stand up when your organization compromises them.
FRC – Letter from Prison – No number of rules or principles will completely remove the gray area in which individuals must use their judgment. How you act in that gray area has an incredible impact on your life and in the world.
FRC – Recap – Only if institutions can see the bigger picture versus optimizing for their own pieces will institutions adapt quickly enough to economic innovation. The two biggest barriers to reliable financial information are information asymmetry and the agency problem – the people that know the most about the business are those with the agenda to manage the financials within the legal limits.
FRC – Recap – The market has most of it’s issues because of two inherent problems: information asymmetry and agency problems. Solving these and so capital allocation becomes efficient is extremely complex, and that’s why it’s lucrative.
MKT – elBulli – The acid test of whether or not you’re a good marketer comes down to whether you can CREATE and CAPTURE value. Everything else is secondary.
LEAD – Alex Montana – “No success in your career can compensate for failure at home.” (hat tip to Chris Harrison)
LEAD – Recap – Leadership is not a symbol of success. And of course, “With great power comes great responsibility.” (thanks spidey!)
LEAD – Recap – Leadership is not about you, it’s about everyone around you. Humility comes from knowing that there are always things that you can’t control.
MKT – Recap – You can’t be all things to all people.
SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE – Day 1 of 5 – “Hope is not a business strategy.” – Barry Sternlicht
SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE – Day 2 of 5 – “Problems are learning experiences.” – Ray Dalio, head of Bridgewater Capital
SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE – Day 3 of 5 – After failure occurs, the first question often asked is “Who” as in “Who is accountable and thus who can be blamed?”. This is very often not the productive way of going about things.
SUCCESS THROUGH FAILURE – Day 5 of 5 – If you can answer the question ‘To whom or to what are you accountable?’, then you build a vision and principles to live your life by.