From the Beginning of MBA to Today - DJIA Movement (click to enlarge)
I made this interactive chart to see how the Dow has changed over the course of the three months that we’ve been MBA students at WSJ.com. I chose to compare it to the “DJ World except the US”. It’s interesting to see how interlinked the world really is. We’re quite dependent on one another. I know that it may be premature and optimistic, but I definitely think that things will be looking up sooner rather than later. As far as economic crises go, I think that America has really learned from its mistakes and has (and will continue to) put measures into place to safeguard these kinds of staggering swings. Also, though, you have to consider that historically, the ups and downs are a part of life as well as the market.
Terry mentioned that organizational valuation tool. It’s helpful to see what companies might be worth in terms of their assets and their financial ratios to put a highly inflated or deflated stock price into perspective. The only thing that truly scares me about the markets right now are the seemingly unending strings of bailout packages themselves. I worry about what will happen if we bail out these banks that might need to fail in order for the market to recover along its natural progression. How do you make the choice as to what companies to let fail and which ones to bail? I also consider that even Mighty Greenspan now admits that he may have been mistaken about his de-regulation ideals in terms of the current crisis.
While looking at NPR.org today, I found another interesting, business-related link.
Planet Money Link
This is the “Planet Money” blog, which you can also download as a (weekly, I think) podcast.
What interested me this week as that Dr. Karri mentioned the most recent blog post in class today after hearing about it on NPR.
I found a way to save my Excel files as PDFs and then convert those to JPEGs. That should solve all of the formatting issues I’m having. I’ll re-post the other finance notes that I put on BB as html asap.
Finance Notes - Capital Budgeting 1 (Click to Enlarge)
Finance Notes - Capital Budgeting 2 (Click to Enlarge)
Finance Notes - Capital Budgeting 3 (Click to Enlarge)
Finance Notes - Capital Budgeting (Click to Enlarge)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/stewart-business/4
This article sums up a lot of our concepts, but moreover, it is entertaining. This really helped me to solidify the concepts that we are learning in my mind. This guy boils it down to the dichotomy that exists in today’s Org Behavior debate.
Marketplace on NPR
Sometimes, I catch this when it’s on WCBU, but what’s great about all NPR’s shows is that you can listen to them all online. The Motley Fool is a fun show, too.
The Motley Fool on NPR
There is also a Business section on NPR.org.
As I was loading up my iPod, I searched iTunes for some popular business-related podcasts and eBooks.
First, I searched iTunes for the main authors in my Bus 541 course, Organizational Behavior. Two of the authors for whom I searched were Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Cialdini. Under Pfeffer, I found an hour-long lecture that he did for the Stanford Center for Social Innovation entitled “Evidence-Based Management”. Dr. Cialdini had an approximately 54-minute-long lecture on The Stanford Channel entitled “Executive Briefing: The Power of Persuasion”. I haven’t listened to the Pfeffer yet, but the Cialdini was a fun and easy listen.
Basically, Dr. Cialdini is lecturing the six concepts from his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion in a fast-paced, bird’s eye view manner. From already reading about 40 pages of the text, it gave a nice review of what I’d already read and given me a taste of what was to come in this book. The concepts are:
- Reciprocation: If you give someone something, they will feel obligated to return the favor.
- Commitment and Consistency: We each want to feel that we are consistent from decision to decision, so that when we agree to do something for someone the first time, if the same situation comes up again, we agree to it again.
- Social Proof: What we expect from situations, others and ourselves in regards to social norms and accepted beliefs when a situation is presented.
- Liking: This one is pretty self-explanatory, but he goes into more detail of different ways we can increase our likability to the person whom we are trying to influence.
- Scarcity: If people think that something is scarce, the more that they want to act/acquire.
Another resource I found in iTunes searching was the series of which the Pfeffer lecture is a part. All of these lectures are geared towards non-profits, but the speakers are from the for-profit sector as well.
Adele Martz “Business Continuity Planning: Improving GM’s Risk Profile”
- Ms. Martz has some insight on BCP and how it gave GM a competitive advantage when it came to managing their risk during Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. She touches on her role, how GM hosts tabletops with local law enforcement, their contingency plans and more…
Andy Goodman “Storytelling for Good Causes”
- Andy and others share their stories for why they entered the non-profit sector. He explains that they will be more effective in solicitations by anecdote, not charts and graphs.
Blackaby, Patrick et al “Internet Marketing Strategies: Extending Your Online Reach”
- They go over how webpage design and email structure (and integrating the two) can be used to effectively increase their donor base by learning a few techniques. Also gives some examples of effective campaigns and what makes them successful.
Chip Heath “What Makes Ideas Stick”
- This is also from a somewhat persuasion / influence angle. Why do we remember false facts (i.e. the “people only use 10% of their brain capacity”)? Specificity and emotions play into what people remember.
I’ll comment on others as I listen to them. The Pfeffer is next on my list of “Required Listening”.
(see Stanford on iTunes U under Links)
This was another available on the iTunes link I have provided under “Links”. Here is a link to more about Dr. Pfeffer:
http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/pfeffer/
It also includes more interviews, some past course outlines, cases, and an email link.
Our required reading for Org Behavior includes Dr. Pfeffer’s book What Were They Thinking? Unconventional Wisdom About Management (2007). In the iTunes lecture, he touches on the EBM (Evidence-Based Management) fundamentals and gives some examples. One of these examples I noticed is a case study that is also part of our required reading “Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc.: Rewarding Our People” from Harvard Business School Publishing. Another case study we are to read is Dr. Pfeffer’s own “Six Dangerous Myths About Pay”.
I was interested in hearing Dr. Pfeffer lecture so that I could better absorb the information I was reading. In one of the past lectures presented (see “Storytelling for Good Causes” and “What Makes Ideas Stick” in previous posts), ideas tend to stick if you absorb them many times through different media. One of these channels is our required reading and another is listening to these authors present their ideas and work through their lectures. I preferred to hear Dr. Pfeffer lecture before I tackled the required reading. This lecture is a great one to listen to before you read his articles, case studies and books, because you get a sense of how he thinks and presents his ideas on a macro level.
Some of the things I have learned already from listening to this lecture about EBM:
- The gap between what we know from experience and policies we put into effect. Contradictions to common sense and half-truths that are accepted in the business world are damaging organizations.
- Base decisions on hard facts. Drill down to find the actual evidence underlying the situation. (Merit-based pay for teachers, Arizona garbage collection)
- One half-truth: Having the best people in your organization makes your organization the best. Only partially correct – The design of the organization itself also plays a significant role.
- Don’t base what you do on what others have done (benchmarking mindlessly or casually, using what you have done in the past in other organizations may not work in your current organization, conventional knowledge may not be correct in a situation).
- Treat your organization as an unfinished prototype. Experiment and use the fact-based findings to make decisions. Constantly changing environment calls for a continuously updated model. Make adjustments that make sense.
- Accept criticism – It is the only way that we improve.
- Pay alone doesn’t increase employee satisfaction. Look outside the box for solutions to a lack of employee engagement. Employee ownership is more effective than stock options.
- Don’t get into an intelligence rut – Move employees around, find new ways to gather info.
There are also examples from the airline industry (on-time flights), the medical community, and professional sports.
More on the EBM movement:
http://www.evidence-basedmanagement.com/index.html
(also under Links)
Dr. Karri suggested that we read the Wall Street Journal. Probably something that I should be doing, anyway, as a person working in business and as an investor.
I decided to go with WSJ online, since:
- I am constantly online, especially with WiFi all around me. This will make it easier to access and I won’t have to carry around a bunch of newspapers.
- WSJ in paper form is a waste. Plain and simple. It is a waste of natural resources.
- I can customize a WSJ homepage so that I can access certain information and articles first, then other information at my convenience. This includes articles from back issues that I might be able to use for research.
My WSJ homepage has the DJIA, NYSE, S&P500 and various select corporations (including my employer), along with market information for the U.S., Europe and Asia. Then, I subscribe to ten features, whose headlines are shown first, followed by other articles. I am especially interested in technology, health care, and environmental features, so I specified those features in my template.
This site offers such great information and I really enjoy looking at it daily as part of my new “thinking like an entrepreneur” routine. I will reference more specific articles and my thoughts on them in the future.
(see WSJ Online under Links)
This is a neat, informative application that downloads short articles to your iPhone or iPod Touch. What is great about this program is that it is organized into articles in new media, email marketing, buyer insight, and small business marketing and even inspirational stories.
I read an article today by Jane Schulte, author of Work Smart, Not Hard!, so it doesn’t seem like there are random contributors who might be amateur bloggers contributing to this site’s application. Schulte’s article “Make Nice” is about the story of Saturn (GM) and their low-pressure, no haggle sales strategy. It also had some pointers on customer service – being empathetic, accountable and professional at all times.
If you’re extremely pressed for time (even to read these very short articles), then there is a summary of one to two lines at the end of each article.
