Spanners in the works

Just when you're about to get down to a solid weekends revision you boot up your laptop to see 'the following file is missing or corupt C:\windows\winnt32\config\system and after that all you can do is dive into the obscure world of DOS prompts and recovery panels.

Eventually you unearth a procedure for performing open heart surgery on critically ill laptops, it works (hurrah) but only to reveal that the heart wasn't the problem at all, the poor things got brain disease (a problem with lsass.exe) and its time to pull the plug. At time of writing I have no idea what has become of my .pst and document files, the reinstall 'may' have done for them according to the small print. Who knows... All I know is that this isn't revision...

Battling the beat of Redmond

In what's sure to be a MBA case study by the time its over Sun is trying to break the MS monopoly on Office. According to the textbooks what they want to do here is go for Judo Economics, taking a small enough slice of the pie that MS lose more money competing than they do by letting Sun in. Sun's current goal - 10% of the market - looks like it might be in line with this. However Office is arguably a network product, so the more people adopting StarOffice the less MS Office will be worth...

Will Microsoft come down on them like a ton of bricks or let them get away with it? I'm betting on no price cuts for Office, but I wouldn't be surprised if a whole lot of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt is about to come Sun's way.

Its the way I tell em

Todays' "what would you have done if you were the CEO of Marconi in 2002?" went pretty well. Its a much easier question than "what would you have done if you were the CEO of Marconi in 1997". I mean back then they had options, businesses and profits, back then they were called GEC and were good at stuff. It wasn't big or famous or sexy, but it was £11bn a year in turnover and a big pile of cash in the bank. Then someone suggested that maybe what GEC needed was a little shareholder value...

Now not that this course is leading me to believe that the shareholders who's opinions we're supposed to value are a bunch of whining fickle idiots that companies are better off without, but here's what they did. They appointed a management team who were good at selling stuff, and they sold everything that wasn't nailed down, till all that was left was a telecoms company that they called Marconi. Why did they do this? Well it was the year 2000 and shareholders wanted a telecoms company, apparently they hadn't realised that if thats what you want you buy shares in Cisco, or Nortel, or Juniper or something. No, shareholders appoint managers to manage to shareholder whims and since shareholder whims seem to involve reshaping companies to follow trends instead of doing the sensible thing and moving the money they got themselves a telecom company. In 2000.

So 2 years later you've fired your CEO for doing exactly what you asked him to and replaced him with a new guy - in todays case me. The new guy takes one look at the telecoms company he's been left with, a broken institution thats been shafted six ways till Sunday and realises he's only got one option. Either you turn this failure round or its time to start selling the office furniture and writing P45's. So you write a speech, a big rousing speech for your top hundred managers who just happen to be on this MBA class with you, and you deliver it and they love it. Then someone (lets call him the tutor) suggests that just maybe you did this for the bankers, to make them happy to convince them that when you break this company up and sell it in pieces the managers will stay. Doesn't he get this?

This is a company that the shareholders broke and now he's suggesting that you should keep taking their advice - no way - you fix the company, ignore the shareholders and if they don't like what you're doing they should have appointed someone else. Now this is clearly flying in the face of recieved opinion, but if you're a CEO you're not there to wind things up quietly, you're there to rage against the dying of the light, to claw your way out of the coffin and haul your battered and bloodied company into a more meaningful future. If you're only there to close a company don't call yourself CEO. Call yourself an undertaker.

Being CEO

Tomorrow we have a strategy session on Corporate change, and our study group is doing a strategy presentation. It's the first time I've had the chance to enage with the notion of how would you run a company. The company in question is Marconi, and the thing that's really hit home is how little power CEO's actually have. They can set direction, they can push through big deals, but after that all they can do is lead people and set the tone for the company. They can't sell the products, cut the costs or fix the manufacturing - they rely on others to do that.

So being CEO is all about personality. If you can convince others to follow you then your power will be exceptional. If you lack the power to persuade and to lead you'll never change anything and be first against the wall when the revolution comes - and in business revolutions seem pretty commonplace.

The Executive MBA

This is a test. You see the Said Business School is trying to launch an executive MBA or EMBA as some people seem to refer to them and I'm trying to do my bit for the publicity. Still, it is worth commenting on the amount of stuff the Said Business School are up to, there are days when its like being in a start up business school, or maybe a post IPO one, since they now have their nice new building and are trying to consolidate after their great start.

One to think about I guess.

The big write up

Silicon valley comes to Oxford was an exceptional experience. I learned a lot and I'm all fired up to go and do something. If one thing summed up the day though it was this, in the evening panel discussion we were attempting to understand what makes Silicon Valley special, why couldn't it happen in Oxford? A local businessman suggested it was house prices in Oxford, No, came the reply from the panel - in Paolo Alto burnt out houses sell for close on a million dollars. People make sacrifices to work in the valley, they sleep in offices, they undertake monster commutes. To blame house prices is to miss the point by a mile. Silicon Valley is not like Oxford because over there people do stuff and deal with the house prices, and the cost of office space and the whatever else.

I have to mention this, half a dozen chinese students are now singing along to something on a laptop in the back of the lecture theatre. Noone knows why and they're not saying - too busy singing. I wonder if they'll stop when the lecture starts again...

Anyway, the *very big* Silicon Valley in Oxford write up will be along soon.

Doing Business School Right

Seth Godin has a piece on MBA's on his blog. Called 'The power (and fear) of self determination' its so on the money about whats wrong with the corporate attitude to MBA's and the attitude of some of those who just view it as a passport to the next step on the corporate ladder.

Sod the ladder. I'm looking for an elevator to fun...

In other news I may have made it to Googles daily updating run. This is very good news indeed if true.

Help the aged

Bought Pulp's new greatest hits compilation today. Pulp Hits is a fantastic record (odd how we still call CD's records), but its old. Its sooo long since Lipgloss and Babies were the best things on the radio. So long since I was stumbling about at Panic and Bulletproof, so long since Cool Brittania. Long enough that the greatest hits compilations are coming out.

Help the aged
One day they were just like you
Drinking beer smoking and sniffin glue...

26 is too damn young to be feeling this nostalgic. Must try and get to some gigs soon for vicarious teenage spirit or something.

Weekend Roundup

I'll start by saying that all those who warn me that physical activity is bad for your health may have a point. This weekends football match against Imperial College has left me with both wounded pride (a 10-3 defeat in our first 11 a side game.) and a bloody great bruise on my arm gained as I missed my fourth one on one with the keeper of the day.... Still, could have been worse and if we'd had our full side out, (including for instance people who can finish better than me) I reckon we'd have stood a chance.

Thats assuming we could have overcome whats not so much a language problem as a lack of language problem. Pretty much the whole Imperial side were British (their course group is apparently fairly multicultural though) which meant they all understood phrases like 'push up', 'sit in', 'so and so wants' and all the rest. Following half a dozen five a side games we've learned the english football phrases 'time' and 'man on', but useful as these were the transition to big pitches required vocabulary we just didn't have. Ah well.

Still, following our thrashing both sides decamped to the pub to drink beer, eat food and watch Spurs deliver a similar level of humiliation to Leeds, which was nice. It also gave us a chance to chat with some folk on other MBA programs and the conclusion is - MBA students are pretty similar all over the place. Same mix of well travelled, multi-skilled bright folk. Somewhere along the line we're all learning to fit into an MBA subculture, the kind of thing that means in years to come we'll wander into a fortune 500 company, look at the people in the cantine and spot the ones with the same qualifications. Wierd, but possibly true.

In fact this weekend has been largely about fitting work in around sport, what with having to suffer watching Newcastle fall apart at Old Trafford again (It's always on TV too) and then cheering myself up by watching England annihilate South Africa in the rugby. Oh, and on my way to watch the game I ran across an awful lot of people I used to work with on their way out of a wedding and heading for a pub, congratulations guys.

There was also a party thrown by a friend of mine - the theme was historical - which was held to include the late 20th century. Since costume is not something I own a lot of I donned a wig, unearthed an old leather jacket and went as my earlier self. (Once upon a time I had several feet of hair, these days I have several milimeters). While several people looked on in confusion it was worth it for the hostesses reaction of "Oh my God, you've come as you!". Happy Birthday Liz.

The result of all this was that work has been forced to exist around the edges for a few days. However with three weeks to go to exams its time to do the decent thing, cut down on the nights out and give up alcohol for a few weeks. No more quiet beers, just fruitjuice and hard work from now on.