Believe It Or Not So. Cal. Has a Spring!

For those of you who think it is summer all year round down here, I am sorry to say you are wrong. There is a winter and a spring. Spring hit pretty quickly right around March 21st the official start of spring. It seemed like overnight the flowers just popped open and colors are found everywhere down here. It is quite pretty around here right now.

What I am Reading Over the Spring Break

The first book I took on over spring break is Moneyball by Michael Lewis. At first blush Moneyball is about baseball, but it has much broader business lessons. Moneyball is a engrossing tale about the 2002 Oakland Athletics. The books premise is to experience a year in the life of a team that is consistently accomplishing as much in Major League Baseball as teams with 3x the payroll. What it delivers is a lesson of how an organization can use detailed metrics to find opportunities that its competitors overlook from either ignorance or arrogance.

Moneyball is incredibly well written. It communicates the statistics in terms that anyone can understand and paints the issues in very human terms. Oakland has subscribed to the theory originated from a group of statistically inclined fans that the most baseball experts rely on biased stats and overlook the unbiased ones to form their judgments about baseball (On base percentage matters alot more that batting average). Also, if you do the analysis strategies that we think work in baseball, such as sacrifice but or fly, actually are harmful; you should just play to get on base every time. What is amazing is that these objective conclusions are contrary to everything our gut and what the experienced players believe is true about baseball.

In my opinion, the message of the book is that if baseball, with all of the rich statistical data available, is full of misconceptions about what works and who is valuable, then how flawed are our perceptions in our everyday lives. If baseball execs cannot truly value players with all of that information about their performance, how can we value our employees with less perfect information. The premise is frightening, yet ripe with opportunity for those who are willing to commit to tracking objective performance data and perform proper analysis.

Great book! Great read! Great study in performance analysis!

The Hip in Anaheim

Wow! Imagine getting the opportunity to see The Tragically Hip in a small venue. The Anaheim House of Blues is very small. For Londoners - imagine a bar where the square footage of the entire bar is about the size of the dancefloor of Cowboys (previously The Drink, previously the NAC). Thats right you could see the hip in a venue smaller than Cowboys. Now, the venue wasn't perfect; the upper lever did not have very good sight lines. But the main level had plenty of spots to have a great view of the band.

We took a spot to the left of the stage at the start of a raise area so that Lindsey would have a great view. We were not more than 25 ft from the stage. We had a great view of the entire band, but you rarely take your eyes off of lead singer Gord Downey. The venue was pretty full, but I suspect you may have been able to get tickets just before show time. It was a big Canada reunion; hockey jerseys were seen throughout the bar and an impromptu "Oh Canada" erupted during intermission probably causing the few Americans present to wonder what country they were in! I have never seen so many high fives delivered among the audience as they eagerly anticipated the opportunity to see The Hip in such a venue.

The Hip came out and played a high energy hour and 45 minute set (including 3 song encore). Gord was all over the stage doing his trademark showmanship. The Hip are truly a live band as their weaker songs from this recent album suddenly become engaging in a live setting. While they ripped through all or most of the recent album, they still had time to hit us with some of their greats including New Orleans is Sinking, Little Bones, Courage, 100th Meridian, Nautical Disaster, Ahead by a Century, Music at Work and others.

You can't put a price on seeing Downey up close, but I am sure our $35 ticket (all fees included) was a great deal. The man was dripping sweat (or he doused himself in water) from the moment he hit the stage. When he played the acoustic guitar, you could see it glistening in his sweat. I have no clue how he could hold onto his pick with all that sweat. Being this close allowed us to see every detail he puts into a show including his subtle facial gestures. After last night, I don't think I could ever see them in a large venue again because it will not be the same experience.

Well, I hope they make another trip down here before we leave because it was awesome experience. It is a shame that the Americans don't know what they are missing as they worship Nickleback and Avril Levigne.

Goal Alignment and a Busy Quarter

As a lawyer, I learned very early in my career about the importance of managing expectations. Managing expectations is essentially a form goal alignment. If all parties agree on what is the goal of a project, then expectations are clear and realistic. I have noted in the past the prevalence of group work during your MBA. You will likely have also noted my comments of the hectic 2nd Quarter of The Merage School. Any business school you go to will challenge you with at least one quarter that is overly demanding on your time. It is during these times that you will fully understand the importance of constant goal alignment.

This is more from my observations of the experiences of my class in general than my group specifically, but goal alignment becomes critical as your group faces stresses from multiple directions. Generally, most business schools expect MBAs to work in teams and they provide training on how to build a cohesive teams. So, we all know that if two team members have different expectations on how a project should be completed, then there will be trouble (especially if the team performs below one person's expectations). Therefore, most teams start by identifying the goal at the beginning of a project. There comes a point where the goals are often the same for the team, so the goal becomes unspoken. This is where trouble can happen.

If your team experiences a trying quarter with projects coming at you from all directions then each member goes into survival mode. Not only do they need to satisfy their team mates, they must keep in mind their person needs for individual projects and exams and extracurricular activities. It is during this busy time that the problem of simply assuming the same goal applies rears its ugly head. Some members will be better than others at handling the time management demands. Others will be stretched very thin and come dangerously close to burnout by the end of the quarter. It is at this point that individual goals for group projects change as each team member adjusts to get through the quarter.

Now, modifying goals is not a problem in itself. It is where it overlaps a period where goals become understood and unstated. Now, one can argue that if a team has a policy of keeping the same unstated goal, then the person who needs to modify it should speak up and talk about why he/she needs to change it. Often, they will not for many reasons such as personal embarrassment or they forgot about goal alignment in the chaos. That is why it is important that the team together, before every major project, clarify what they want to achieve from this project. Do you want to be the best in class or do you just want it done and shoot for the average? The extra steps of doing a mundane task of clarifying goals before the project will go a long way to avoiding future conflict.

Bottom Line is that if you do not take those extra steps to clarify goals before the project, it will be hard for you to criticize your team mates for not meeting your internal goals. Another great reason why MBA school is fantastic for teaching you so much more beyond the actual subject matter of the class.

2 Quarter Down - 1 To Go

I just submitted my last exam, so my 2nd Quarter is done! This was a very challenging quarter due to breadth of topics and the copious amounts of group work. Spare time was at a minimum during this quarter. Thankfully, Lindsey has taken up dog walking and jogging which has reduced my guilt for not being able to spend as much time with her as she deserves.

Overall, I feel that I have learned quite a bit of new knowledge. There is so much information jumbled in my head right now that it needs some time to settle before it truly benefits me. Now the goal is to find an internship that will let me practice some of these new skills. The search is becoming very challenging, but that is the topic for a post to itself.

Right now, it is relaxation time. After a few errands this afternoon, I got eleven other classmates coming over at 4pm to play some poker and watch March Madness. At 7:30pm, we have an "End of Quarter" party in at Woody's Wharf in Newport Beach. Then tomorrow Lindsey, myself, and fellow Canadian Merager Jeff Williamson will be heading to see The Tragically Hip at the small and cozy House of Blues Anaheim! It is a well deserved bout of fun after a challenging quarter.

Trying to Assimilate

Last week I took a major step at trying to assimilate to the Southern California lifestyle when I purchased my first pair of flip flops. Now, I am a sandal man. I like the extra straps that help keep the shoe on my foot. So, I knew that this move to a loose, unsecured flip flop was going to be a challenge.
Within 5 minutes of starting on my morning walk to class, I was in trouble. I think in my paranoia to keep the shoes on my feet, I must have adjusted my walking style to use a whole new muscle set in my legs. My outside calves were burning and I was walking like a bowlegged cowboy. I was very relieved to sit down and crushed when I realized I would have to walk back home (uphill). By the end of the day, the new leather of the flip flop had made a number of strategic scrapes on my feet. It was a rather painful and comedic trek home. Stupid Canadian.
For the rest of the week I am taking a break from the California assimilation in order to let my feet heal, but I will give it another go this week. Oh well, who said this California lifestyle would be easy.
P.S.: Today is 88 degrees F (upper 20s C).

Ending the Quarter in Style: Going to See The Tragically Hip

I've always wanted to go on a road trip into the United States to see The Tragically Hip in a small club. Now, I live in the U.S. and I have opportunities to see a wealth of bands in some great venues. Well, The Hip are touring and they are coming to Anaheim's House of Blues. The photo's make the concert venue appear to hold around 500 people. This is a far cry from the Air Canada Centre. Lindsey and I scored tickets and will be going the day after this quarters exams end. Perfect timing.

The Art of the Presentation

My group's first paper was handed in this past Tuesday and we had all of two days to prepare a 20 minute presentation of our findings to our class. As I mentioned before, each group will have two major presentations to do before this quarter ends. In order to encourage every student to develop their presentation skills, The Merage School has mandated that every member in the group must present in at least one of the presentations. Myself and my teammate Andrew volunteered for the first one that we presented yesterday.

Presentation skills are important because managers inevitably will have to sell their ideas to senior management, customers or suppliers. One of the biggest complaints from corporate recruiters is that while MBA students have knowledge, they are very weak in conveying that knowledge and winning over key stakeholders. Studies have shown that our understandings are formed 55% from visual communication (body language, look of presentation slides), 38% from audio communication (what we say) and 7% from written communications. The implications of this conclusion is grave for people like me who are not natural presenters. It means that the written words that I carefully shape on my presentation slides will have little affect on our audience; they will form their understandings of my topic from the look of the slides and my body language in the delivery (that is the sound of my stomach sinking). This is where presentation skills are critical.

This brings me to really great little program that Merage has set up in order to help its students develop these presentation skills. Merage has retained the services of a presentation consultant, Mike Cannon, who has worked with people in all professions including some notable politicians. During Orientation Week, Mike delivers a two day seminar to all incoming students; the first day deals with oral presentations and the second day deals with written presentations. This gives each student a foundation in the theory of how to improve our presentations.

In our first quarter, each small group must make a major presentation. Mike helps each team prepare for the presentation by meeting with them for one hour reviewing the slides and oral presentation. This session was immensely valuable because it taught us how to put the theory into practice and cemented in our minds what it takes for a great presentation. Mike videotapes the actual presentation and gives each presenter detailed feedback. In our second quarter, as I mentioned, we have two presentations and each team member must present once. We don't get the opportunity to meet with Mike beforehand (he is fairly accessible via email), but we get the opportunity to show him how much knowledge we retained because he, again, videotapes each presentation and provides detailed feedback to each presenter.

Now, Mike definitely has a more "outgoing" style than many of our professors. He really pushes you to be dramatic because he feels that most of us will instinctively pull back of the performance whether we plan to be our normal selves or dramatic. Therefore, by shooting for dramatic we will just appear passionate; if we started at normal we would pull back to reserved. With that in mind, Mike gets you screaming your lines at the top of your lungs like a wild madman before you present in order to ensure your voice will project to the entire audience during the presentation (It really works, but it is hard to find a suitable place to practice before the presentation). In the end, for all the dramatic preparation we do, the final product just looks like we believe and are excited in our topic. As I mentioned above, that is 55% of communication.

The end result? Well, I still had some fumbles and stammers as I presented, but I really went for it and felt that I have dramatically improved my presentation skills. While scared silly, I actually want to get back out there and work on them some more?!?! Our power point slides were great. It amazing the jump in positive feedback one gets when he simplifies the text, makes the slides visually appealling (as opposed to informative), and places more focus on the recommendations or solutions and less on the build up of the story. I think back to the presentations I did as a lawyer or for a client company and I want the opportunity to do them again. I think of one of my first sales presentations that I had to lead where I prepared a 40 slide deck that told a wonderful story, but really did not put the focus on our solution (in my defense, I built the deck from the companies standard presentation). There I was in front of key decision makers and I did not maximize the opportunity.

In my opinion, the skills that The Merage School has Mike teaching us are almost worth the price of tuition. If you think that a high level sales person may do 2 presentations a month before key decision makers. That's 24 per year. And let's say from those 24, he wins 5 contracts each worth $1M . If he improves his presentation skills a little bit to win 2 addition contracts, in one year he probably has made the company enough profit and himself enough commission to pay for the tuition of our MBA program. The point is that even if effective presentation skills improve your success rate by a small amount, it has the potential to have a dramatic impact on your life. Remember communication is 55% visual and only 7% written.