New MBA Blog found!

While checking to see who links to me (can you tell I'm avoiding doing all this writing) I found a new MBA Blog. Lucky Goldstar (surely another pseudonym?) is at Insead where among other things he has fallen asleep in finance class. Hell, if we'd spent thirty seconds longer on stripped bonds I'd have fallen asleep in finance class too.

Welcome to the blogroll lucky.

MBA Goon

I feel like I'm in Archers Goon. Archer wants his words by Friday. Only in my case Archer is the rest of my NBD team (words needed today) and the business school (many many words needed by the end of the week). Stuff I've promised to write includes pieces for the next school magazine and copy for forthcoming recruitment brochures. (In an earlier life I was an occasional copywriter)

So coming your way are

The final write up of the Oxford Business Forum
The write up of Herman Hauser on why the future is wet
The big write up on Synesthesia

The thing I'm working on at the moment is the job skills needed for Heritage Theatres new marketing manager. What I want to say is "The ideal candidate will have several years experience of marketing for publishing companies, preferably in the education sector. Key skills will include the ability to screw distributors and media sellers alike to the floor while maintaining good enough relationships that they want to work with you again." and when I was allowed to write recruitment ads I occasionally got away with this kind of thing. (nothing as good as Ogilvy's legendary "Wanted, Trumpeter Swans" ad though). Sadly this is a business plan, and you can't say things like that, .
time to break out the dictionary of marketese and weasel speak.

But only after I get over my first jogging expedition of the year. I really should remember that if you stop it gets harder again.

Things get grim in Baghdad

Salaam Pax is providing better coverage of whats going on in Baghdad than any of the media channels. Worrying things to come out of his latest report are the failure of the Iraqi authorities to properly sound air raid alerts and the definition of targets adopted by the west. He seems to think that so stealthy and frequent are western attacks that the authorities are having trouble knowing when to sound alarms and all clears, I guess this means people are getting caught outside when the bombs start to fall.

The fact that we bombed an officers club is scary too. Sure its a legitimate target since our strategy is to go after the Iraqi leadership, but he says it was in a residential area, and that we missed it, but hit surrounding areas. Since our precision munitions are precise to 35m (admittedly bloody good from 30 000 feet up) its not hard to see how we could start hitting civilians in large numbers when we go after things like this.

This war is grim and getting grimmer, but unless we're very lucky it'll get a lot lot worse before its over. I think our military expected that, but I'm not sure the western public has been prepared for this at all.

Crunch Time

So what happens if you lock five MBA students in a room, during the first *really* nice weather of the year and tell them to write a business plan? Well, they do it, but all of them wish they were elsewhere. To be fair the school becomes absolutely lovely in summer, all light and space, and the rather harsh stone quad becomes surprisingly attractive. Just waiting for the trees on it to develop leaves, and all that climbing ivy to get done climbing.

Anyway, a couple of days have gone by and we've thrashed out a lot of the detail for Heritage Theatre's future plans. Along the way we've discovered that even a rigourous process of 'does this number look right' for each and every assumption in the model still leaves you with an incredibly optimistic result which needs revising to handle the demands of reality. Still, many spreadsheets later we're all happy and tomorrow is the all singing, all dancing presentation, complete with video footage. (anyone know of good DVD ripping software? Answers by midnight or not at all please)

After that its just a case of write the business plan up nice and tidy and this term will finally be over.

What, you were expecting more from me about the war? Sorry, too busy to watch the CNN /BBC/Fox websites and blog. Take yourselves to Technorati's current events material and find more opinion than I can muster written by bloggers with a lot more time on their hands than I have right now.

OK, just the two links. Dear Raed is the weblog of an Iraqi man calling himself Salaam Pax, he's in Baghdad writing as it all happens. Some people aren't convinced he's real, obviously if he is he doesn't want a visit from the Baath party. So he can't provide evidence. After a bit of research Paul Boutin has concluded that he's probably real. Sooner or later weblogs will produce their own Anne Frank. For now though add Dear Raed to blogs like the UN worker in Afghanistan and the Homeless Guy in Nashville. Showing you lives you can't imagine living.

Decision points

Nothing to do now but watch the news and wait for the next decision point. The thousand or so demonstrators on the streets of Oxford last night may have been a little late to the party, but the start of the war doesn't mean the end of the protests. The question of course is not whether the war can be stopped, but whether the decisions taken by the politicians can be altered. Right now the war is on autopilot and the two armies are being left to sort things out among themselves.

But at some point there will be decisions to be made, and they'll be decisions that go beyond the theatre of war. Perhaps that might not happen till Saddam is gone and the regime broken, or they might come sooner. Wars are too unpredictable for predicitions. Of course the one decision we know we have to make in the UK will come at the local elections. How will we vote, will those who took to the streets take to the ballot box, or will a significant number of British people continue to claim that there's no point voting cause politics is too detatched from reality?

I hope not.

Explain (in one paragraph) the following concepts

1. M1 to M4
2. Total Factor Productivity
3. Purchasing Power Parity
4. The Gold Standard

A few people were foxed by the in one paragraph thing. (it meant a paragraph each) and much email resulted. Jeff Pittman set the tone for last nights discussion

"Hmm, maybe I wasn't supposed to write just one paragraph. Here's the gist of what I wrote:
"1M represents is the liquidity of one bloody Mary, 2M represents Modigliani and Miller who took away my dividends and terrorized my dreams last night, 3M represents an example of my overreaction to stock prices and 4M represents the money supply on steriods. TFP is the residual of the factors which made me feel so low last night, aka two f*ing pints over the convergence of accumulation and depreciation. The gold standard is what I hold my socks' toes to, and purchasing power normalization is what happened when I moved to Oxford and bought into this program.""

As you can tell, we're taking the exams very seriously this time around.

Exams underway

In fact exams nearly over. Only four this term, sat in three papers. Today was a two hour paper on Macroeconomics and Finance II and a one and a half hour paper on Management Accounting. The first and last went pretty well, the Finance paper was, well, tough. Fortunately I spent most of yesterday with my quantitatively gifted girlfriend who patiently explained many of the things I didn't understand, while simultaneously discovering just how little I really know about maths.

How I ever got good marks on last terms finance paper is beyond me. In the unlikely event of it happening again I'll be convinced that our marks are assigned by examiners throwing darts, blindfold at a roulette wheel and have nothing to do with what we actually know. Tomorrow is Operations Management. I reckon passing won't be too hard (hey, fortune, have a hostage) but doing well will be extremely difficult.

Commons debate in real time

Don't worry, I have done plenty of revision for tomorrows exams. This is all a bit more interesting though.

Back later, Jack Straw is summing up and he's showing everything that's wrong with the parliamentary culture. What should be a serious debate loaded with gravitas is turning into a shouting match, a public school boys contest of one upmanship and a frankly obnoxious display. How the hell people are supposed to take us serioiusly after watching this is beyond me.

He's summing up by saying that he 'cannot impune the intentions of anyone in this house' which given that half his speech has comprised character attacks on those who disagree with him and pathetic party political comments has knocked him back even further in my esteem.

hmm, biggest rebellion in modern british political history, biggest demonstration ever and what do we get, nothing. 250 000 countryside alliance supporters was all it took to derail Labours long standing commitment to abolish bloodsports. 1 million suggest killing people is wrong and ... nada

In other news the US published a list of nations it has successfully bribed. "Boucher said the 30 countries on the list are Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Britain, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador (news - web sites), Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea (news - web sites), Spain, Turkey and Uzbekistan. "

Sorry, that's the 30 countries who support it. We know Turkey have been promised $16 bn and places like Columbia and Afghanistan are in no position to say no. I'm a little skeptical personally.

Now go here and ask about civil disobedience

Baghdad is big

"The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforseeable and uncontrollable events" - Winston Churchill. (credit for the quote)

Reading CNN I've just discovered that Baghdad contains five million people. That's about 2/3rds the size of London. London is very very big indeed. When Churchill was contemplating a German invasion of Britain he consoled himself with the thought that at least London would swallow an entire German division before being broken. Popular resistance, he thought, would make an occupation impossible. Up till now I've imagined Baghdad as a kind of town, in a desert, the kind of thing you could walk through in an hour or two, not an enormous, sprawling metropolis, thousands of streets, a million houses.

In comparison the US has 250 000 troops in the region, including only 120 000 combat troops, the rest are support personnel for the Army and Navy. The UK adds another 30 000 or so combat effectives. Regardless of whether Saddam goes or not if Baghdad doesn't welcome our forces with open arms, but instead sees them as an occupying power could this city swallow the entire invasion force? There are other cities to occupy, supply lines to guard and all the rest. What if the Iraqi regime survives the initial onslaught, what if the Iraqi people oppose invasion more than they loath Saddam?

What if Baghdad is to become the Arab Sarajevo, beseiged for months, bombarded and surrounded. Starved into submission by the 'liberating' troops? Even worse, what if it becomes the next Stalingrad, plenty of people have proved willing to die for obnoxious regimes before now.

Perhaps this is why Stormin Norman turned back at the approach to Baghdad, perhaps this is why so few US generals think this is a good idea. Perhaps this is why the US army wanted so many more troops before they went into action. For a year there have been suggestions that the US military is not happy with the plan it is being asked to follow, is this why? I don't know where I'm going with all this. I oppose the war, I don't think we need it. On the other hand, if it has to come lets hope Bush is right. Lets hope Saddam goes, the Iraqi's elect a benign government, the Kurds are happy with whatever they get, the Shia's and the Sunni live in peace and the monstrous Ba'ath party is consigned to history.

Lets hope Baghdad doesn't swallow all our hopes.

That Robin Cook Speech in full

I never quite got what people meant when they talked about Robin Cook as an impressive politician and a prime ministerial candidate. Well, his resignation speech made that, and a whole lot of other things very clear indeed.

Told you so

Worth some friendly coverage in the Guardian. Thats what I said would be the minimum payoff for the first MP to get a blog. Actually I think his payoff will be several hundred constituents who feel they have a relationship with him, talk to him and promote him. Expect this mans majority to be unassailable by the next election.

Can weblogs get a good man a great job

Well Tim seems to think so. Read all about the latest attempt to expoit networked blogs for the benefit of mankind here
Can Weblogs Get a Good Man a Great Job?

[update] Hmm, #17 on Blogdex and rising. If the usual rules hold and each step up the results ladder doubles the traffic a few more links will see this generate loads of traffic. Not sure its going to result in a job offer though. I am of course ready to be proved wrong.

Maybe he should try Phill Wolff's bloggers for hire page instead.

Pages not big enough

My theory that Finance II is the toughest course going has just received a boost. With the exception of a single lecture in Finance I I've been able to compress the content of any lecture to a single side of A4 for revision purposes. Obviously you lose most of the meaning, inflection and nuances of the stuff, but you've got the mechanics down. (you can get last terms revision notes through the 'doing the mba section'.

Finance II however is blowing this theory out of the water. Well, not the first four classes which dealt with corporate governance, dividend policy and such, but the second half, which dealt with debt, options and currency hedging. Unless I develop a maths degree overnight I'm not going to get anything useful onto a single side of A4 no matter how hard I try. I feel a long and finance shaped weekend coming on here.

In other news the 'everyone chip in with exam notes' section of our shared drive is starting to develop a sense of humour. Latest additions to Macroeconomics include 'why my peso is worthless' (inflation) and 'money is everywhere but not in the bank' (money supply). Cheered me up no end.

Back after these commercials

Elvis Costello sang this when standing in for David Letterman. Who could disagree

As I walk through
This wicked world
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity.

I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?

And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?


So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'Cause each time I feel it slippin' away, just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? Ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?

Viral Marketing?

It's got nothing to do with Reebok, but this will be doing the rounds of offices all over the world pretty damn soon. I bet someone had to fight very hard indeed to stop Terry Tate, Office Linebacker (big download) turning into a product focused love in.

I'm not sure quite what I make of this. By itself it probably won't sell that many shoes. But if they can turn Terry into some kind of cult figure and build the shoe connection slowly over time. Maybe. Here's a link to the support website. Looks like they're trying to turn this content into permission, but to be honest seems all the budget went on films.

Where are...

The Terry Tate office posters to print out?
The Tate intimidation generator? (press here for twenty intimidating words to scream at your co-workers)
The "what kind of fool are you?" Terry Tate quiz?
The nominate a co-worker for a TT smackdown competition?
Or, the have TT in your office for a day competition?
The Terry Tate Blog?

On this last point... Raging Cow copped a lot of flak for using blogs badly, but here's what I'd do. I'd hire a copywriter, a good one. And I'd pay him to hunt out the best bits of business news and office gossip on the web, and then discuss it Terry Tate style. The content should be good enough that genuine business folk might read it, and the thing should link to real news stories. Just like a real blog.

Terry Tate is a big guy. He could have been a whole lot bigger. Now... must do some revision.....

Seth Godin thinks I'm wasting my time

You can read about his ideas for a New Order Business School here. As for me, I've had my classes on presentation already thanks. Prioritising was this morning, do I embrace change? I had a blog before Seth did, some new economy guru he is.

On a less strident note. I've never been to NYU, but browsing around, reading the inanities that appear on the business week forum and looking at the whole rubber stamp mentality that surfaces from time to time I'm glad I'm here. While things may not always go according to plan the idea is at least to rip the lid off the ideas and get at the guts of things. I don't actually know what the Black Scholes formula is, (I mean, the formula, its a thing for pricing options) although I know what you do with it, and if I plough through my notes I can tell you the good and the bad about it. I hope that the Saids' focus on not just teaching us the jargon, the buzzwords and the latest techniques manages to outlast its startup period.

Operations management concluded today with a brief summary of what we've actually been taught.

How to describe systems so you can tell what you're really looking at
How to treat people well, in particular how to create systems that treat people well
The overwhelming importance of quality
Approaches to managing complexity

Somewhere in there was JIT, MRP, TQM and all the rest. Mixed in though was a clear exhortation to skip the slogans and get to the meat. Seth is of course just flame bating, the guy owes pretty much the whole 'guru' phase of his career to magazines like fast company, the reading material of choice for MBA's and capitalist wannabes the world over.

Examination Apathy

This time last term everyone was panicking about exams. In fact for the two or three weeks prior to the exams lecturers were pressured - what's on the paper, is this examinable, what should an answer be? It was largely fear of the unknown.

Fear of the unknown was fear of failure, of exams in a different style, different language, all that coalesced into one big panic. This time people are laid back, we've been there, done that and while some subjects are tough we know its survivable. So people are knuckling down, getting on with business and while some will pass and some will fail the attitude is less 'oh my god this is the be all and end all' and much more 'lets get this over with and go on holiday'

Journey beginning

Tad has just got admitted to UMBS after a truly marathon exercise in applications. Fifteen drafts for a single set of essays? With that kind of dedication he's going to sail through business school.

Just don't forget to take time out to smell the flowers Tad. No sense spending the whole year working. Whens the next time you'll be your own boss?

Media Watch

Ever since Vietnam when an uncensored press corps wrecked domestic morale governments have been very careful about who says what about their troops. According to this piece from the BBC the present UK philospohy is to pretend they're not really there. By contrast the US army is happy to show off their bombs and bullets - presumably a response to very different domestic public opinion in the two countries.

Eminem versus The Streets

With revision suddenly underway in earnest I took time out yesterday to buy a few new CD's, so I'm now the proud owner of The Eminem Show by Eminem and Original Pirate Material by The Streets. Its all 'white rap music', but while Eminem is straight outta Detroit with raging paranoia and a whole bunch of issues too scary to mention The Streets barely make it out of the door of their London council housing before deciding it looks too much like trouble and they'd best smoke something before going back to bed.

Thats possibly a little harsh on The Streets, who seem to like going to the pub and a bit of cockney duckin' and divin' as well but the contrast is huge. Eminem rants and rages at the world, which is great when you agree with him, and in places its hard not to. Taken with his last album he's turning out one of the most coherent critiques of the problems of fame around. He wants to shout, scream and mouth off, he didn't ask to be a role model, and anyone who believes he's driving kids to violence is missing a whole chunk of other explanations for the problems of ghetto youth. On the other hand when he goes off on one about gays, bitches and ho's again you just wish he'd shut up, see a good psychiatrist, patch things up with his wife and go play with his daughter. (If Eminem has a redeeming feature its his solid commitment to looking after his daughter - I still reckon she'll loath him for his music when she's 16 though.)

In contrast The Streets have no bigger fish to fry than moaning about the governments stance on drugs, and avoiding some of the scary geezers who populate their world. Along the way we have a blokish mixture of women as objects 'don't mug yourself' and romantic heartbreak 'its too late'. Some of the social commentary is a bit grating 'Geezers need excitement' (sometime in the next year some Oxford mockney is going to say something very stupid to me and justify it with "common sense, simple common sense" and I'll go off this record completely)

All in all two very different takes on being a bloke. It makes you think, Detroit isn't that much scarier than the wrong ends of London. Is it just the constant presence of guns that fuels the paranoia of Eminem, Dre and all the rest? Or is it that there's something else in UK culture which has done a better job of standing up to macho posturing in music?

Hey ho, and to think I went out to buy the Miss Dynamite album. Who should in no sense be thought as having anything to do with the cartoon at Miss Dynamite.com which I found by accident and is guaranteed to offend pretty much everyone in equal measure. (the cartoon that proves terrorists have humour too, you have been warned)