Back from a long break

After two months of really nothingness, I'm back in the work slot. This actually feels a little different having not worked for such a long time. Tomorrow, I'm slated to wake up early in the morning and go to work. This might sound normal, but this time, I'll have to catch the bus, transfer to the metro and then transfer to another bus. Quite a communte, which is something new to me.

What is also new is the client and business. This will be the first time I'll be working for a resource company. I don't know much about resources, but from what I have gathered, they are slow and conservative. It should be an interesting new change. Now, I've got to figure out what I'll be doing on my 2 hour communte everyday. I have one book already, but I think I'll try to write a novel or short story. What would be an interesting topic?

How about, the death of Mark?

Coming back...with What's a Food Distributor

I've been away from writing for some time. It seems the last time I had a chance to write was prior to my vacation in Hong Kong. That was in May and it is now September...make that October. Time sure flies when you're having fun...or working.

So, what have I been up to recently? Let's talk about my last project and what I learned.
I finished about a month ago at a food distributor in Chicago. What's a food distributor? I'm glad you asked because prior to this project, I didn't even know such a business exist but it is all very logical if you think about it.

It seems that resturarnts needs to obtain food of decent quality and consistent prices. Now, your nice, top of the line famous bistro down the street might have the chef walk around the farmer's market every day at dawn to pick up the freshest and nices produce. However, the reality is that most of resturants in America don't have that luck (I'll touch upon this notion later). Rather, most resturants in America order from a food distributor. Food once order are then delivered directly to the resturant.

As a distributor, the there several very important components to your busy. One of the key is order entry with managing the supply chain usually next. Think about it this way, the orders taken by the company determines demand and supply for products. This in turn allows the distributor to think about routing, delivery, services, promotions, marketing, etc.

I was fortunate enough to get a peek under the hood of this large distributor. To say the least, the ordering processes is much more complex than most people think.

Think about a local resturant that you visit. Think of all the items on their menu. Now, think of all the materials that is required to make something as simple as a hamburger. We need buns, the meat, sauce, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, etc. Each of these products have multiple choices. You can buy plain buns or maybe french rolls as buns. You can get organic lettuce from your local farmer or a larger supplier three states away. Each resturant, depending on the market it is competing in, will choose different products. Similarly, the distributor much determine which product to have on its order entry list for people to choose. Do you offer the one pound patty or the 1.3 pount patty? What about 90% lean or 95% lean? As choices increases, so does the complexity of offering each of these choices. Each item has to be priced to be sold. Keeping track of the orders, changing prices, and updating the order catalogy for new products becomes challenging very quickly.

This is part of the work that I was able to participate in. By understanding the order entry processes and looking at potential bottlenecks, our team was able to devise solutions to help the company.

The animal question

Recently, I had a conversation with someone regarding an interview question. She gave a great answer that I'd like to share with others.

The question: If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?

Now, before I give away her answer which I thought was very good, I'd ask you to think about it a few moments and say outloud or use the post below on how you'd answer.
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Still thinking or are you just trying to find out the answer? Seriously, give it a few moments and try to answer the question.

Good. Now that we have your answer, please allow me to ramble first on why I think the animal question is bad interview question.

In interviews, the primary objective is to gauge a person through a short period of time using various tests to determine if the person is capable of performing the tasks as demanded for the open position. There might be secondary objectives exists such as would the person fit within the culture of the organization or is the person someone I want to work with, but the primary objective is usually determined by the needs of the open position.

Now, one way to achieve the primary objective is by subjecting the interviewee to questions. The purpose behind such question is again to gauge the capability of the interviewee. With the animal question, I believe the key objective is to prob several areas:
1. personality of the candidate
2. innovative, creative thinking
3. ability to form coherent ideas out of thin air (bullshitting)
4. logic or lack thereof
5. communication style

While the question is successful in tackling several areas, it doesn't do any of the above very well with the exception of maybe number 3.

If you analyze the above areas, each can be tested with a more concise question. Logic thinking ability can be analyzed by asking the person to solve a problem and explain how they reach the solution. Communication style can be analyzed by questioning communication skills and methods. Creative thinking can be analyzed by asking if the person has developed new ideas. Etc. Etc. By tackling each area individually with better tailored question, we can arrive at a better view of the candidate than the animal question. But because most people are short on time and slightly lazy (myself included), the animal question is a tried question and it continues in its existence.

Now, away from my rambling and onto the answer.

She said she would be a snowdog because they work well in a teams (and must work in teams) but also are strong individually in pulling the sled. Was it really what she would be? I don't think so! But she answered it in a creative fashion with logic to boot. She followed by clearly explaining her reasoning (which I shortened for writing sake) along with a demostration of her personality: teamwork and individual strength. In essence, she was good at "form[ing] coherent ideas out of thin air" a.k.a bullshitting.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not writing to by cynical or to badmouth my friend. I know she's smart, a hard-working, creative girl who has a good understanding of what a interviewer wants to hear. Does this make her a great candidate for the job? I don't know, but I believe she should fit well in many organizations. Rather, my point is that because of such uninsightful interview questions, often times interviewing ends up being is less about demonstrating the skills for the job and more about getting the "right" answers.

Marketing: The Last Job You'll Ever Have?

Recently, I've been searching around the web to understanding the "advertising" industry. This all began with a conversation I had with a friend regarding the industry his works in. After my conversation, I decided to do a little research into his industry. This is where I hit the wall.

I couldn't find an easy to understand article anywhere it clearly describes the advertising space. While I found numerous articles explaining the 4 or 6 major players, the type of services each player offered sometimes number in the 100 if not more. Additionally, the largest players in the advertising space were holding companies such as WPP Group, which held so many companies that I found the following image on their website amuzing.



If I was a non-marketing executive trying to get my feet into the advertising door, I'd be quickly lost in the information overload.

That's when I stumbled upon the following speech given by Seth Godin. If you haven't ever heard of Seth, as I haven't until this video, you can find general information about him here:link

What made the video great was not necessarily what advertising agencies do or how to go about understanding the advertising agency structure. What Seth did for me was made me realize the power of market and how to best leverage that power.

You see, I was asking the wrong question in my quest to understand advertising. I was asking, what did people do? What I should have been asking is, what do customers (customers of advertising agencies) need? If we find out what customers need, we can then work backwards to determine what people need to do to fulfill those needs.

Anway, why not just watch the video. It's much more interesting than my words.

Shift Happens?

I recently attended an Accenture Technology Workshop Conference in Chicago. One of the best topics we discussed at the conference was the "shift" that is occurring in our society/economy today. This shift, as coined in the video below, isn't something new. Rather, the conference speakers believed, it is occurring at a faster pace than previously thought.

The original and subsequent video are posted below. If you're short on time, just watch the original video because it is shorter.





Back to the topic of shift.

I realized from the video that while this tremendous shift is occurring, most individuals are simply not ready. Just last night on 60 minutes, Steve Kroft asked both Senator Clinton and Obama if they had plans of enacting protectionist policies if elected as President to help relieve the economic pains Ohio is feeling due to the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs.

There is a fundamental problem with the acceptance of the question Kroft proposes. It goes beyond the fact that protectionist policies are not going to solve the problem of the shifting economy. Shutting our doors to global competition is probably the worst solution in "protecting" jobs and uplift the economy. One fantastic example of an extreme protectionist policy and its subsequent effects is detailed in "History of Humanity" by Sigfried J. de Laet. His writing on the Qing dynasty shows how protectionist or isolationist policies "limited China's dealings with other countries, so that China remained ignorant of the development of the world outside."

While such facts show the error in Kroft's proposed solution, the fundamental problem is his interest in such questions. Rather than seeking real answers on how our government can help us manage in a shifting economy, Kroft proposed to bait the two politicians with the humanizing, easy answer. Protectionist policies are always easier to do. It easier to close the door on a problem or blame China, India, your neighbor on the pains at hand. But the blame game doesn't solve the root problem which is that shift is occurring. How individuals outside manufacture, outside Ohio deal with the shift economy is the real answers that we need. Such answers are much more difficult and require more transformational changes than slapping on a tariff or reducing subsidies to business that outsource.

If we look at the deeper question that shift has presenting to our generation, then perhaps we can think of the right solution.

Success...What are the factors?

Have you ever wondered about what makes some people successful and others not? The following video is a presentation by Richard ST. John at the 2005 TED conference where he presents his research on the secrets of success.

Advice for people in their 20s

I recently had a conversation with my Manager and Partner on my project about advices for people in their 20s. The Partner gave one piece of advice that I think is particularly helpful.

My Partner told me that people in their careers early on often lack an understanding of what is best for them. People pursue jobs on the notion of "fun," but in reality, fun shouldn't be the primary objective. He suggests that in determining a career, it is best to first find out what is your "spike."

I asked him what this term meant and he replied, "Spike, is the key thing that you have that differentiates you from the rest of the crowd." He then went on to say that when you are young, if you can start concentrating on building skills that will lead to the creation of a solid spike, then you'll have a good solid foundation for the rest of your career.

I found this advise to be really helpful. I think in one way or another, most people generally apply this concept to their jobs by pursuing careers they excel in some form. This is usually due to the fact that they have a spike over their fellow peers. But as I thought about the advice, I started to refine it. During a conversation with my roommate, I realized a way to build upon the spike advice is to re-name the term to moat. Thus, the advice would be: "It is better to build skills early on the further one's moat" or something of that nature.

The reason for me to choose the term moat is because it is already a familiarize term investors use to evaluate companies to determine their differentiating factor. By applying it skills, I can transfer the same concepts and analysis.

Moats:
Moats in companies typically come in two forms: width and depth. Applied to skills, the width can be thought of as is how much general abilities and knowledge you possess. What are the general skills that you have to offer? A person might have a wide (i.e., knowledge of everything) but shallow depth. For competitors, such moats can be easily breeched. It might get your feet wet and you'll have a long walk, but no big deal.

Similarly, a deep (i.e., specific knowledge) but short moat isn't any more helpful because competitors can jump over the moat. For example, an individual with very deep knowledge of manufacturing might be highly valued until the entire manufacturing process becomes automated.

Thus, the best moat is the one that is both deep and wide.

Here is where I take the advice a little further. How does one go about building this wide and deep moat? To building a moat with both characteristics takes lots of time. Just think of how long it takes to construct an actual moat. Thus, I offer the following guidelines.

1. It is best to start off with building a wide moat when young. While wide moats won't get you very far, it is a good starting point because it allows flexibility in a career. If you don't know where you want to specialize in so having general skills that are transferable across industries helps more than learning specialized skills that are not.

2. After you realized which area you are particularly interested, it is then time to build the depth.

3. But having only a single area where your moat is deep isn't very helpful. It is best to have a few areas to maximize the barrier of your moat. Furthermore, by this stage of your career, you'll need less width and more depth.

Look, I just created my three stage development cycle for building the moat. If you have further suggestions, let me know.

Tuition for Higher Education

During the holiday season, I had a conversation with a cousin about the reason why top universities choose to accept outstanding students that are unable to pay. We were able to highlight the main reasoning as diversity. Our reasoning follows the following logic.

Since the population of students who are academically outstanding, but financial insufficient is small, it reasons that the universities accept those students over outstanding, but financial sufficient students is to create a diverse group of students on campus. There were other additional reasons we listed such as good PR, etc, but diversity seems to triumph over the other explanations.

However, this topic of conversation had me pondering why top private universities charge tuition at all. For some universities, tuition is a significant portion of revenue used to provide for operations. But for top private universities like Harvard or Stanford that have millions if not billions in endowments, the tuition they charge is only a small portion of their total revenue. A recent article that I cannot source stated something along the lines that Harvard’s endowment is so large, it can afford to give free tuition to all its students for the next 10-15 years.

With such vast sums of money, it no longer seems to make sense to charge students tuition at all. Assuming that the mission of a university is to provide unparallel levels of education to as many individuals as possible, it should reason that a university should open its doors to as many students as possible.

Thus, the question is why do top universities charge tuition? It would seem that tuition’s only function in this case is to act as an inhibitor. Middle class families that might be able to afford a Stanford might choose not to send their brightest to Harvard when a great state school will be 10-50% cheaper.

If the above scenario that I wrote is true, then the previous logic of diversity would have to be not the main reason universities outstanding but poor students free tuition.