MBS in Review: Electives

Continuing from yesterday's post about MBS core subjects, today I'll talk about the electives, which are half of your subjects at MBS.

During orientation, different study strategies were suggested. The first broad view, taking different subjects in different areas without any specialisation in mind. The other option, of course, was to specialise by selecting multiple subjects in the same area.

In my opinion, specialisation is really not much of an option. With the exception of marketing and possibly finance, there are simply not enough subjects offered in a given discipline to specialise.

This is further complicated by popular electives being frequently oversubscribed. If you did have your heart set on finance, for example, it is likely you would have been unable to take the Financial Institutions subject this term. MBS generally offers places to those graduating the soonest so, presumably you'd be able to take the subject some time before you graduated. Of course, that only works if the next time it is offered, it doesn't clash with another class you want to take or, if you are a part-time student, taking a leave of absence for work-related reasons. Personally, I was excluded from both Business Law and Social Policy this term and will not have a chance to take these subjects at a later date unless they offered when I am on exchange (not likely, and I doubt Israeli business law will be very useful in Australia).

I must say, though, that I have taken some excellent electives at MBS. Standouts include:

• Managerial Judgement - examines the psychology of decision making
  
• Brand Management - an MBS staple taught by renown brand guru Mark Ritson
  
• Business and World Trade - a half subject (we call it a unit) taught by Gary Sampson, a former WTO official. My final exam is Friday.
  

It is unlikely you will take any bad electives because you can drop a bad class relatively easily assuming a replacement class isn't oversubscribed. MBS also provides the quantitative assessments of prior classes so you can check what your peers thought of the subject the last time it was taught by the same lecturer. This helps, but word-of-mouth is much more powerful. For example, I was strongly advised against taking the Entrepreneurship subject by several people. This was reinforced by a last minute information session run by the lecturer for future students of his class at a time that was nearly impossible to make. I wasn't impressed and dropped the class shortly thereafter.

I also found one elective had the wrong prerequisites. While I really enjoyed a subject called Managerial Accounting Control Systems (sounds bad, I know), my mark was less than spectacular. One reason is that the final exam favoured those with finance experience, or those who had completed the Financial Management core subject. I hadn't. This remains, by far, my lowest mark at MBS.

Let me sum up what I've been saying. In general MBS electives are pretty good – some of are excellent – and you aren't likely to be stuck in one you don't enjoy unless it is the first time it is offered, the professor is new or you haven't asked around. An MBA from MBS is more for those who want a broad perspective; if you want to focus on HR or innovation, for example, you are out of luck. Students frequently complain that subjects are oversubscribed. This has certainly been fodder for unhappiness this term and I expect it to continue. Expect some frustration in this area.

MBS in Review: The Core Subjects

I had a chat with one of my fellow Melbourne Business School bloggers this past weekend, and he mentioned wrapping up his blogging with some closing remarks regarding his studies at MBS and his MBA in general. Not wanting to be outdone, I thought I would chime in too.

A little context. I am currently half way through my last term at MBS and my second-last term of the program. My last term will be spent on exchange. I have very ambivalent feelings about MBS and I will try to structure my entries in a fair way and I am happy to amend each post as comments are made or to respond to others in the comments section.

The MBA at MBS is divided into the "core" subjects and electives. This entry will be about the core subjects.

There are 9 electives and one subject called World of Management that I'll discuss separately. The core subjects are similar to offerings in other business schools. Overall, I'd rate their content and breadth highly. After completing all but one (Managing Processes), I'd say my metaknowledge has increased (I now know how little I know) but can still hold an intelligent conversation on subjects like accounting and finance. I also have the tools to continue learning in these areas. I'd say that after completing the core, I'd make a better manager and can better engage with "the business."

I was fortunate: I'd rate the lecturers I had for most of the core subjects above average. This wasn't the case for everyone. Most of my intake, for example, has a very poor experience in Financial Management. Because I fell a bit behind with the core subjects, I was fortunate to get someone better.

Some of the core subjects, such as Data & Decisions (D&D) and Managerial Economics, are somewhat mathematical. As MBS students have such a diverse background, some students with rusty math skills struggle with the quantitative subjects. Others, particularly those for whom English is a second language, may struggle through the qualitative subjects. Luckily, MBS allows students to "test out" of a few core subjects. This, no doubt, saves former statisticians the boredom of 12 weeks of D&D. However, for people who have a relatively strong quantitative background (me: major in computer science, master's in software engineering), the math isn't that challenging but I probably won't be able to test out of any of the subjects. Yet, they move a pace more suitable to those without any background in hard sciences. I get get bored…

One last point about the electives. When people ask me why I chose an MBA, one of my responses is that "an MBA is a good course for someone who doesn't know what to do with their lives." I stand by that. An MBA is probably the broadest of all professional degrees. One outcome has been that I can definitely eliminate certain careers from consideration. For example, I now know I have little interest in finance.

World of Management (WoM) is a different beast. This is the very first subject you take at MBS. It is only offered as a one-week intensive (basically 9-5 Monday to Friday), with separates weeks for full time and part time streams. There is no real structure or pattern to WoM. It introduces you to a potpourri of "business related" concepts such as diversity, public speaking, and stress management. No knowledge from anything in these sessions is retained, and I have basically done WoM twice! (Long story, and, no, I didn't fail.)

One good thing about WoM is that there were many break-out activities such as a negotiations exercise, a public speaking contest (I won!), and some peer-to-peer interviewing. So, more than anything, WoM solidifies a connection between new classmates. I'd describe it as a week long orientation. However, unlike a real orientation, you pay for it as if it was a normal subject. That makes it a very expensive orientation. Even more so if you are working and need to take the week off.

In conclusion, I'd rate the MBS core subjects highly for both their breadth and the quality of teaching. However, variance in teaching quality and student capabilities is definitely a problem. World of Management, on the other hand, makes for an excellent social experience, but offers little in terms of learning outcomes. Fortunately, as this point, you only have a vague concept of "value for money."

MBA Exchange

Unable to take all the classes I wanted this term, I decided that rather than take any old class, I would have a reduced course load. The indirect result of this is that I will be left with four subjects to go for next term, just enough to be considered "full time" study.

I decided I will undertake these subjects on exchange.

Now the problem is: where to go? The list of MBS exchange partners is long (about 30 schools). However, I can eliminate over half of them because you are not allowed to go on exchange to your "home country" which for me includes both the U.S. (by citizenship) and Canada (having completed a degree there). Most MBS students go to the U.S. on exchange, with NYU being the most popular. Few go to Europe and fewer still to Asia so it is unlikely I will not be accepted to my top-ranked school.

Choices

Deciding where to go on exchange is typical of most of the hard life decisions one makes. There is a lack of good information and, fortunately, all the choicest seem good; I'm not forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.

Cape Town currently ranks highly on my list. The weather is great, I've been told that the business school is in a fantastic location and Cape Town has natural beauty that is missing in Melbourne. Scandanavian and some other clean, orderly European cities are also appealing: Vienna, St. Gallen, Copenhagen, and Oslo. Rotterdam is a candidate, but seriously, they are not doing anyone any favours with their promotional video (see bottom of the page).

Tel Aviv is also appealing. While I don't like Tel Aviv as a city, I do have friends and family in Tel Aviv and around Israel and they do have subjects related to technology and entrepreneurship that interest me.

East Asian schools have a certain draw. Singapore might a nice place to spend a couple of months, but its low diversity means I may stand out a bit more than I'd like to. (Then again, that could be an opportunity for personal development.)

The deadline is this week, so I'll need to make a decision shortly…

On Psychologists and Technologists

In my Business Strategy class on Saturday morning (!), I asked a seemingly harmless question about why economies of scale did not apply to the now defunct MBS-Melbourne Uni merger. The question apparently struck a nerve with both the lecturer and some of the students. One of the students expressed something I have long felt, not just about the merger, but during my time working at the business school.

We have great faculty in the leading edge of their field. Often, they are engaged in helping real organisations improve their business during the day while lecturing at night and somehow managing to publish their research. Why, then, did the merger fiasco play out the way it did given the business expertise within the school? Why weren't leasons from the Business Strategy subject, for example, applied?

This was the most frustrating thing about working at MBS in general. There was consistent pattern: what I had learned in class was not being applied in the business of the business school. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, the school made very little attempt to integrate the knowledge of the faculty with anything practical.

The lecturer in my class described the general phenomenon whereby those who are best equipped to fix a problem neglect their own problems to focus on those of others This is know as the problem of the problem of the cobbler's children.

This is, of course, no excuse. It's not an explanation. And it isn't generalizable.

Let us consider a counter-example very near to me. Those who work in the IT industry as technologists (as distinct from those in other functions such as project managers) almost always reserve the very best hardware and software for themselves.

Think about it. At a technical conference (say Java), a majority of participants are using Macs (widely considered to be the superior platform). Developers are usually early adopters of the latest and greatest. My peers were the first to use GMail and, more recently, Google Wave. We were the first to set up wireless networks at home. We do things with our laptops that are difficult and complicated, but that help enrich out lives through technology. We have bigger monitors.

Do you really think Sergey Brin, founder of Google, is really using Windows XP? Do you think Joel Spolsky is using Outlook? I don't.

Unfortunately, as I previously wrote, organisations are less likely to adopt the IT practices of their staff, much to their detriment. They are missing the opportunity to make themselves as productive as their most productive employees.

So what separates technology workers from some of the other professions? I'm not sure.

First, my underlying premise may be false. Are IT workers really different from those in other professions? Certainly my perception is that they are but I don't have the research to back this up.

Part of it may be that IT workers genuinely enjoy their field more than others. It is certainly not uncommon to use my leisure time learning new technologies and new ways of doing things; much more so than other professions who might attend a conference or two, and only when paid for by their employer.

Another explanation could be pragmatism. Is a psychologist really going to give himself therapy? Is a doctor really more inclined to diet and exercise? Installing a new Twitter client or learning a new programming language certainly seem much more attainable goals, and the costs are generally small.

The main thing I can conclude is that if you are in a profession or work for a company that doesn't implement the skills you market, your outcome is probably not going to be as successful as you want. That, and technologists probably enjoy their field, on average, more than others. Join us!

Great Post About IT Restrictions in the Workplace

My friend, former coworkers and MBS alum has a thoughtful post following on some of the themes from a previous post. In it, he sites a great Slate article which argues for a loosening of IT restrictions:

…The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies’ success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.

Ameel thoughtfully concludes that IT departments would be wise to add their own in-house analysts to match IT tools available to those in the company who might need to use them, lest services be blocked somewhat arbitrarily.

What is often missing is…:

• In-house IT Consulting: the people who liaise directly with different parts of the business and use the latest technologies to improve the way those people work
  

Without that fourth part, IT departments have a hard time keeping up with what people in the organization believe are the most effective and efficient ways of doing their work. They also don’t keep up with the latest technological solutions for various business problems.

I couldn't agree more. I'd like to think that my former team in Melbourne Business School performed that function admirably. Often, we would just connect business users with simple off-the-shelf services that would dramatically effect productivity. Three examples would be Confluence, Google Groups, and Google Desktop, but there are many more.

The Technology Gap: The Street vs. The Enterprise

I remember reading an article in a men's fashion magazine a few years ago. It said that because the "street" trend was to wear pants lower and lower, this caused the style of "corporate" pants to also have a low waste.

First of all, thank God for that. It was have been difficult transitioning from student clothes to corporate attire had that attire being up to my navel.

Second, this highlights the natural trend that things happen "on the street" before corporations adopt it. This is an interesting phenomenon by itself, and it is interesting how it applies to technology.

Here's a typical scenario.

At work, you probably use Windows XP. Your e-mail experience is either Outlook, which crashes often, or Outlook Web Mail. No doubt, you have mastered the art of sorting your e-mails by date then recipient to track conversations. At home, you probably use GMail. You're conversations are nicely clustered together, and when you can't find something, a quick search is all it takes.

At work, you might even be using Internet Explorer 6. At home, you might be using Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 8 or Chrome. All of these things have the killer web browser feature: tabs. Tabs, of course, have been around for nearly 10 years. However, you likely have several windows of IE 6 open, and naturally, because you are using Windows XP, this slows down your system considerably.

Even at Melbourne Business School, I'm somewhat appalled that my Data and Decision class is designed for those running Windows XP and Office 2003. These are technologies from 2001 and 2002 respectively. I use a Mac, but the class relies on a plugin (StatPro) that only works on Windows. I refuse to buy a Windows license, so I'm running a VM with Windows 7 RC and Office 2007.

If the technology and ease-of-use gap between your corporate (and study) technology life and your home life frustrates you, you're certainly not alone. Gen Y and beyond are going to start demanding that their technology experience is not degraded when going to the office. Employers would be wise to take note; the productivity savings could be enormous.

Upgrading Internet Explorer 6 would be a good place to start.

Melbourne Business School Goes Web 1.9

Recently, Melbourne Business School has started participating in various online social communities such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. When I worked at MBS, I advocated using some of these services for different reasons and to see them using all of them at once leaves me with some mixed feelings. I thought I'd drop some initial thoughts on the use of some of these services.

Twitter

MBS is using Twitter to promote the "Melbourne Experience." This is definitely targeted at international students and tweets point to things like Melbourne bars and breakfast spots (aside: for those considering Melbourne, we have plenty of such venues). I've been using Twitter for a while now, but I have NEVER used them to scope out a future destination and I probably wouldn't. If I was interested in Melbourne, I would follow a known MBS student and if I was interested in Melbourne, I would follow someone (anyone interesting) who lived in Melbourne.

Advice: Tweet for the benefit of current students. Potential students might take an interest.

YouTube

I advocated YouTube as a no-frills way to host video on someone else's server and get maximum exposure. MBS has gotten this one right; now that the videos are on YouTube, they are easy to embed on their web site and someone else can foot the bill for bandwidth.

Advice: Replace existing videos on the website with their YouTube embeds.

Blogger

Again, this blog seems to target those international students considering studying in Melbourne. I'd say its a better choice than Twitter for this purpose; you really need pictures and a good amount of text to give Melbourne its full accolades. I'm much more likely to browse this blog when considering MBS than I am to do Twitter-related activities.

People's experiences in Melbourne are diverse, and Melbourne has a lot to offer. For example, I don't care much for footy, but I do know a lot about where to eat and the IT industry in Melbourne. I'd like to share, but I don't have a proper outlet.

Aside from this blog, students also have a Dean's Blog and I see no reason why they can't be combined.

Advice: Combine multiple blogs into one. Consider guest authors covering niche topics for potential students.

Facebook

The most likely to be vandalized or result in some PR disaster (except for perhaps MySpace which I'm not going to cover because I'm not a teenage girl), Facebook is a high risk, high return adventure.

The duplicate content between here and the blog worries me, mostly because if this process is not automated, it can become very difficult to manage. But let's face it, people are Facebook-addicted and what kind of social media experiment would be complete without Facebook?

Advice: Try to synchronize content across the blog, YouTube and Twitter to Facebook. Watch the posts carefully.

LinkedIn

The problem with LinkedIn is that it fails to draw a distinction between people who work at MBS and those who study there. This a problem, as students generally don't care about the career path of former MBS employees nor do they particularly care to link up with, say, a former IT business analyst there. New students are not "new hires" and seeing that on LinkedIn just seems wrong.

Advice: Keep LinkedIn for staff. If staff, especially faculty, keep their engagements up to date, this will intrigue potential students who are interested in research and general academia.

Conclusion

This post is really nitpicking. MBS has taken a great step forward and should be commended for pursuing different channels for delivering their message and connecting to current and future constituents.

Tools of the Trade

When at work, many of us are using Windows when are hearts might be elsewhere. As I wind down work with my current employer, I'm taking not of the tools I installed over the past 18 months which has significantly boosted my productivity. Here they are in no particular order.

Confluence

An enterprise wiki developed by a very switched on Australia company, company has been a great tool to share knowledge. Since we adopted it, I don't believe there has been a single file stored on the shared drive. Everything in Confluence is searchable, taggable and can be edited without opening Word.

Mingle

I've blogged about Mingle before, but its worth repeating: Mingle is a great tool. Its easy to use and does a very small amount of things reasonably well. Unfortunately, it was introduced into a team which wasn't very disciplined with project management (and our one project manager left several months ago) or time tracking so it didn't transform the way we work as much as I would have liked. However, if anything was going to work, Mingle was it.

ObjectDock Plus

ObjectDock is a Windows utility which mimics the dock on Mac OS X. Aside from the nice looks (it does suprisingly well, even with very low quality icons), it definitely increases your productivity. I have basically eliminated using the Start menu and can quickly open documents with specific applications just by dragging them to the dock. I use the Plus version and it money worth spending. I am able to move my system tray to the top of the screen (like the Mac menu bar) which makes a bigger difference than you would otherwise expect.

Google Chrome

The early adopter that I am, I quickly tried out Google Chrome when it was released. It turns out the speed is the killer browser feature. I've strayed to other browsers on occasion (Safari 4 Beta isn't bad) but I keep coming back to the Chrome. Lots of you out there rely on Firefox and her extensions. I hear you, but that's just not me.

Excel 2007

Nothing has improved my ability to analyse data more than Excel 2007. It seems to crash less than most Office applications, and the way it handles pivot tables is surely the way nature intended. The is extended to how it works with OLAP cubes; Excel is definitely my preferred OLAP client. For added value, impress your boss by using the data mining plug-in to do some incredibly useful tasks.

E

E is a text editor for Windows based on Textmate for Mac. I still prefer Textmate, but E comes close. I was never able to get the Cygwin integration working, but then again, I'm not as big a Unix geek as some. Still, e is a great lightweight text editor that gets out of your way, quickly opens files as text (even if they're not) and is always a right click away.

Jing

Jing is a very lightweight tool that allows you to quickly take screenshots or screencasts. It is free and has almost no features, but I wouldn't use anything else. It sits on the edge of your screen as a translucent sun, waiting for you to click it. When you do, you decide, image or movie, and off you go. You can't edit videos, but you can draw, highlight and annotate screenshots. Its always available, doesn't consume many resources and "just works". Combining Jing and Confluence can create a very simple but powerful platform to document your software systems and create how-to guides for your users.

This is an image taken using Jing that brings it all together: Chrome + Confluence + Jing + ObjectDock.

Accounting for Managers... Applied

In Melbourne Business School, one of the core MBA classes is Accounting for Managers which covers many topics in accounting that are important for managers. One cornerstone of accounting is when to treat a cost as an asset (capitalized) and when to treat it as an expense. A cost can be capitalized when:

• it is likely that future economic benefits will arise
• that amount can be reasonably estimated

Apparently George W. Bush, himself a Harvard Business School graduate, does not understand this distinction, or doesn't apply conservatism -- another key accounting principle -- when dealing with the American people. I immediately recognized this when reading this article from the New York Times:

But one reason that the agency’s deficit estimate was higher than those of outside analysts was that it added in hundreds of billions of dollars in spending tied to the government’s existing bailout programs, which the Bush administration has thus fare treated as “investments” it would recoup rather than “spending” or “costs” that are down the drain.

In other words, the bailout cannot be treated as an asset; it doesn't fit the above criteria and therefore must be expensed.

That worries me.

Melbourne Business School Merger

In the wake of an internal restructure this week, The Australian is reporting today that a merger between Melbourne Business School and the University of Melbourne may be imminent with the University likely to vote on a proposal this week:

An in-principle agreement will be put to the university's council on Monday after about three years of talks between university vice-chancellor Glyn Davis and MBS chairman and former BHP boss Ron McNeilly.

As a student and staff member of Melbourne Business School, I have very mixed feelings about any potential merger and I've very unsure how it will affect both the security of my job and the quality of my education. My sense is that the merger is being tailored to satisfy the faculty, without much regard to the professional staff. This is somewhat understandable, as faculty are really the "core" employees of a University.

However, my team at MBS has made a substantial investment in Information Technology over the past year that shouldn't be overlooked and certainly should not be subsumed by what Melburne Uni has. It is my belief that like faculty, information technology can effect the quality of learning, as well as support fundraising and marketing activities that faculty simply cannot.

I'm hoping that professional staff are well consulted and that management understand the potential synergies of merging professional staff, and also the amazing complexity, politically and technologically, or unifying or discarding IT systems.

I'll have more to say on this as more details are released to the public domain.

Bring it All Together

A couple of weeks ago, I had a go at Joel Spolsky for effectively blaming bad corporate policies on MBA graduates. As a Melbourne Business School student myself, this struck a nerve.

Well it looks like he sorta acknowledges that he often makes claims without any good basis, but that it does make for entertaining reading. I wholeheartedly agree!

Of course, he does that just after he trashes another of my favourite minds, Thomas Friedman. Still, I have to grudgingly accept that he is probably right.

78 Means "You're a just a very tiny bit better than average"

It's official: I'm slightly better than average. But I'm not getting cocky; the difference is not statistically significant. So actually, yeah, I'm probably average. And that's OK.

I have now received my grades for both of my syndicate assignments, which are:

• Marketing: 78
• Accounting 78

You might wonder what mark I received last term. I'm not shy. I'll tell you:

• Managing People for High Performance (MPFHP): 78 (update: my MPFHP mark was actually a 76)

This, of course, is no freakish coincidence. Melbourne Business School grades on a curve, and I'm pretty sure the mean of that curve is 77.

Update: I've been told the mean is actually more like 75, but the gist is the same.

I'll tell you why I love the curve:The curve opens upwondrouspossibilities or learning. You see, when I know that class average must be 77, I don't hesitate to take "hard" classes that I could otherwise avoid. For example, I'm not a fan of accounting, but might try my luck at a whole class on financial statement analysis. Why not? I'm not scared of a 75. And I won't favour an "easy" class like "Leadership" just to boost my GPA. A 79 won't make a difference.

Let me contrast this with McGillwhere I did my undergraduate degree. In McGill, my major -- Computer Science -- was "hard". I can tell it's hard for a number of reasons, but an easy way to tell is that the average mark hovered around a 65, which I think was C or C+. On my transcript, it was not unusual to see a C-, and even once, a D. Without context, this isn't too good. Don't worry, though, I was able to boost slightly my GPA by taking some "easy" classes. Among them:

• Sexual Ethics
• International Organization
• Understanding Planet Earth
• Space Time and Matter

Unfortunately, I was considerably more restricted in the classes I could take than a average McGill student so my GPA stayed low in absolute terms, although probably slightly higher than average for a computer science student. Still, this low GPA had real implications in finding my first job; a legacy which still haunts me in many respects to this day.

So embrace the curve. Ride it. And enjoy your 78.

Marketing Syndicate Assignment Wrap Up

Last night was the climax of my syndicate work for this term at Melbourne Business School. My colleague has already blogged about our presentation, and I have to agree with him that overall, we had a very engaging presentation and a very successful syndicate. However, we did face numerous challenges, probably faced by other syndicates as well:

• we had trouble coming to a consensus about the topic. I really pushed for alternative fuel vehicle, while others pushed for mobile devices and music distribution.
• I had some trouble working effectively with a particular member of the team and while there was no major conflict, I don't think there was a good synergy between us

On the other hand, everyone contributed their own strengths to the team such as:

• taking ownership of the final paper, creating a unified document out of what was effectively 5 different "mini papers"
• organising samples of wine in a can as well bottles of wine featured in our paper
• handling the logistics of distributing the wine (which included a thoughtful consideration that we should present immediately after the dinner break)
• offering high quality, constructive feedback on the presentation run-through. This helped Shoaib and I improve our presentation style and content tremendously.
• pooling some money to purchase professional images for the slides

For those that might be interested, you can download a copy of our slides. I'd be interested in getting feedback on that, or if you were in class, your impressions of the presentation.

Don't Diss the MBA

One of my first blog posts was in praise of Joel Spolsky whose insights into the software sector from both a business and technology perspective are invaluable. But last month Joel wrote an article for Inc magazine on commissions, taking two opportunities to blame poor commission schemes on corporate MBAs:

I can picture the M.B.A. who worked at corporate headquarters. I bet he reaped a big bonus for coming up with an incentive program that dramatically increased the sales of the high-profit silicone spray.

Meanwhile, did anybody notice that the sales of shoes fell by about the same amount?

Or that I started buying my shoes on the Internet?

Sure, blame the MBA for the success of Zappos!

And then:

...Instead of buying the exciting new products I wanted, I was hurled into a mass of people scamming one another -- and all because of stupid, perverse commission systems that seemed like good ideas to the M.B.A.'s back at corporate.

Why Joel has chosen to single out this with a postgraduate degree in business is beyond me. During my MBA class Managing People for High Performance (MPFHP) [see description of the class] we learned of the pitfalls of poor incentive systems, as well as scheme to motivate people through a sophisticated, multi-tiered reward system and to develop them through feedback, not to mention consideration to

• organizational structure and design
• investment in training
• impact and analysis of corporate culture

and lighting the fire to make implement these changes in a dysfunctional organization.

Joel shouldn't blame the business school graduate (or degree) for the demise of companies with poor incentive schemes; he should be engaging MBAs and MBA students to further improve his company, and to articulate and enhance what makes his people high performers.

There will be some MBA students looking to analyze companies in the MPFHP class beginning in Term 1, 2009. I suggest any company skeptical of MBAs to engage the school for these projects.

Reflections on Marketing Class: Using Apple as a Case Study in Marketing Channels

Today in my marketing class at Melbourne Business School, we examined distribution channels vis-à-vis marketing. Not surprising, we examined the distribution of music, tracing it from a technological standpoint (vinyl to MP3) and its channels (independent shops to iTunes).

The lecturer's main point with regards to Apple's success was the control over the hardware, software, and content of their "ecosystem" which allows them to control the channels of music distribution. While I don't disagree with Apple's dominant position, I take issue with some of comments and perceptions with regard to Apple's technology approach that were made in passing.

Primarily, the point was made that Apple is successful because their system is "closed", as compared with Microsoft that must struggle to handle software from a multitude of vendors. In fact, the underlying assumption, it seems, was that you simply could not develop any custom software for a Mac. Of course, this is simply not true.

Let me briefly explore the development options for both systems.

Unlike Windows where developers need to spend hundreds of dollars on software development products like Visual Studio, all Macs come bundled with X-Code, their development environment for building Mac software. One could argue that this alone makes it easier for a developer to create software for a Mac compared to a Windows PC.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. There was many who would argue that the Mac development environment is superior to Windows in other respects. The Cocoa framework seems to be a very elegant paradigm for developing applications, and Mac applications can often be created without writing any code. This doesn't mean anyone can create software for a Mac, but it does mean that more software can be created faster with fewer defects. (As an aside, Automator for Mac does mean that some tasks can be automated by someone without any development knowledge, and there simply isn't anything like it on Windows).

Steve Jobs understood the benefits of having a superior development environment (as well as other marketing principles such as segmentation, targeting and positioning) as demonstrated on this now-famous video from when he was at Next:

This philosophy was brought to Apple when they purchased Next, and brought Jobs back into the fold. Mac OS X is based on Next technology.

In class, it was also mentioned that the iPhone is Apple's first device which supports third-party applications. This, too, is not true (although it is the first iPod which can supports third-party applications). The Newton supported application development,although I don't know if it was a good environment or not.

Finally, Apple has success not just on Macs, but also on PCs with their iTunes software, showing they can success even when they don't control the hardware. Microsoft, too, has had success on Macs. Internet Explorer was highly regarded, and Office for Mac is sometimes regarded as superior to its Windows counterpart.

In summary, I'm making the point that Apple computers and devices are not closed systems; they do support software development, and provide a robust environment at that. Steve Jobs not doubt continues to realize the contribution that software developers make to the value proposition of a computing platform.

Receiving Peer Feedback (En Masse)

I just received my marks for both my syndicate paper and presentation for the "Managing People for High Performance" class at Melbourne Business School. Both of these marks were based partially on peer feedback, and in slightly different ways. [The peer feedback for the paper hasn't yet been received, so I'll talk about the presentation and update this posting later.]

The presentation, worth only a small amount of my total grade, was given to the entire class and the mark was based 50% on feedback from my classmates and 50% from the lecturer. Our final mark was 7.4 (out of 10): 7.2 from the professor and 7.6 from the rest of the class. Included in the document containing these marks were four pages of quantitative feedback from my peers, not all of it positive.

I'm still reflecting on these comments, and while many were positive, there was a general consensus that I relied too heavily on reading the slides (which were behind be, being projected) instead of making eye contact with audience. This is certainly good and constructive feedback; I will definitely watch out for this next time (note: I had forgotten my notes on my desk when I went to up to present, so I'll be sure not to do that in the future). There was one comment in the listing that struck me as both offensive and complementary. It said:

First speaker (Scott) was very distracting. Spoke very quickly and did not make eye contact with the audience as they had their back turned reading the slides. Second speaker articulated the information clearly and engaged the audience.

I find the use of the term "distracting" particularly puzzling, and I'm left wondering if the first sentence relates to the second, or is something reflecting an aversion to my general speaking style and personality?  However, I think most speakers would like to described as distracting when the presenting; what exactly was that person distracted from? The focus of this person's attention should have been on me, and I certainly won't apologize if something I did was a distraction from, say, Facebook (a favourite of students during a boring presentation).

[As you can probably tell, I did get a bit defensive at this point, but I will definitely take this criticism on board for next time.]

As a member of the class, I too was required to provide feedback on the presentations as well. I have to say that despite my defensive tirade above, I was even more harsh on my fellow classmates, perhaps having higher expectations or because I was simply grumpy. I'm concerned that my low scores will start to affect other presentation scores. I hope that the professor scales people's scoring, because everyone will have a different baseline of how to score. For example, I often gave a 4 for a very slightly below average performance, my hope is that they would receive a 70 - 75 for their presentation, based on my expectation that the average mark would be 75 - 80. Certainly, I did not want or even believe that they should fail!

I have to say that receiving feedback from classmates was extremely helpful, and it is very hard to be in denial about relying on the slides when dozens of fellow classmates -- bright, friendly, and intelligent people -- all say the same thing.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite videos on the subject (we made some of the same mistakes):