W11: Mini Case Studies

§  What is your attitude toward money?

The entire global economy is based on the exchange of money for goods or services. My attitude to money is that money is needed for my own survival and of my family. With the money we earn with our salaries we strive to be self sufficient. Money is a mean to give well-being to our lives and family but money is not the ultimate goal. In our family journey, we strive to live within our budget and not above it .My husband and I work to strive to provide for our family.

If we make the right use of money: covering our expenses, helps the needy, and obeys the laws of our Heavenly Father promise that we will have abundance in our lives.

§  How can your view of money affect the way you live?

I believe there is a strong relationship in the way we saw the money and the way we live our lives.

Currently my focus on my academic training is to aim to improve the financial condition of our family.

If I would not have a job, I would have more time to stay at home, to help my children with home-works and free time but we would have the sufficient for our needs. I am the first to get up in the morning to go work and the last to go to rest after a day of work and I study in order to achieve my Bachelor Degree. It is a daily challenge, hard work but it is necessary to ensure for our family. The gospel helps me to overcome those challenges.

§  What rules are recommended for prospering?

To live frugally, pay tithing and be generous with the fast offerings, and be obedient to the commandments of God are some rules to get the blessings of the Lord and prosper.

Another rule that can greatly benefit the family is making a savings account; not be afraid to invest or bet on an idea for a business. The academic preparation and professional experience is essential to any business success. Personal attributes such as patience, honesty, hard work, the diligence, love for what you do, contribute to a prosperous life.

WEEK 10 - DREAM BIG DREAMS

Throughout the course and in this week it stood out to me that I must be always focus on what I want to become and pursue my goals and dreams and think big. I have potential to do great things if I develop my skills and learn with others; the importance to have time to reflect, to build things, to be creative and to explore things that we want to develop and do it. Another thing that I enjoyed in one of the videos by Jim was the goal of understanding ourselves and pursues our dreams, the ability to observe and learn with others, and the sensitivity to the things that inspire us to feel important and do great things.

In “The Challenge to Become”, I love It the expression that we may all attain “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”. The importance to pursue the Jesus Christ challenges to become something. The knowledge that we gain from the gospel about the final judgment that it is not only the sum of total of good and evil acts but what we have become. We are the heirs of incomparable inheritance of eternal life. We qualify to eternal life through a process of conversion. Now it is the time to work toward our personal conversion, toward becoming what our Heavenly Father desires us to become. Our mortal family experiences that are the best suited to prepare us for the exaltation.

Measure our progress:

·         If we are losing our desire to do evil

·         When we start to see things as our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, see them. When we start hear His voice and do things in His way.

A person’s most valuable assets are intelligence, energy, and experience.

What a typical administrator asks:

·         What resources do I control?

·         What structure determines our organization’s relationship to its market?

·         How can I minimize the impact of others on my ability to perform?

·         What opportunity is appropriate?

·         Where is the opportunity?

·         How do I capitalize on it?

·         What resources do I need?

·         How do I gain control over them?

·         What structure is best?

It is important to identify where is the opportunity and some pressures may include rapid changes in:

1.       Technology

2.       Consumer economics

3.       Social values

4.       Political action and regulatory standards

Innovation and the pursuit of opportunity impose a cost that many executives resist – the necessity of change:

·         The social contract

·         Performance criteria

·         Planning systems and Cycles

How do I capitalize on it? Commitment is time consuming and, once made, of long duration.

What resources do I need? The innovativeness with which the institution commits and deploys those resources.

How do I control the resources?

·         Greater resource specialization

·         Risk of obsolescence

·         More flexibility

·         Efficiency

·         Stability

·         Industry custom

What structure is the best?

Flashoning tools are the following pressures:

·         The need to coordinate resources that are not controlled

·         The need for flexibility

·         Employees’ desire for independence

·         The greater complexity of tasks

·         Stratified organizational culture

·         Control-based reward systems

To foster the belief of leadership of the organization can:

·         Determine its barriers to entrepreneurship

·         Seek to minimize risks to individual for being entrepreneurial

·         Exploit any resource tool

·         Taylor reward systems to the situation

Week 9 - DISCIPLE LEADERSHIP

In Aspects of Building Trust by Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, Kawasaki urges individuals to be "bakers," meaning trustworthy individuals seeking to create larger pies to share in the world. He also describes the value in building trust by "defaulting to yes."

I already had the opportunity to read “Good t great” and it is an amazing book. In this book by Jim Collings we can learn about 6 concepts:

Disciplined People – Concept #1 – Level 5 Leadership

The leaders of great companies are not high profile or celebrities. Instead, the CEOs of great companies are most likely to have come from somewhere inside the company and will have personalities that are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. And most often, they will attribute their success to good luck rather than personal greatness.

Disciplined People – Concept #2 – First “Who”, Then “What”

The key to making a good-to-great transition isn’t setting the right objective. Instead, concentrate on getting the right people on board, and then they will figure out what the most important objective should be. And the more people with initiative and skills that join the team, the better.

Disciplined Thought – Concept #3 – Confront the True Facts

All good-to-great companies openly face the competitive realities of the markets in which they operate without losing faith that in the end, the company can and must prevail. Honesty and candor allows these companies to make the right decisions as they move forward instead of distorting the facts.

Disciplined Thought – Concept #4 – Hedgehog Concept

Hedgehogs are relatively simple animals who know just one big thing and stick to it. Good-to-great companies do something similar – they consistently stick to doing what they do best and avoid getting distracted into new fields of business that are away from their core competencies. Good-to-great companies move ahead of their competitors by pursuing only those projects that have three traits: 1. What they can be “best in the world” at. 2. What drives profitability for their business model. 3. What their people are deeply passionate about.

Disciplined Action – Concept #5 – Culture of Discipline

Having disciplined people eliminates the need for a hierarchy. Similarly, disciplined thought eliminates the need for a bureaucracy while disciplined action means there is no call for excessive controls. Good-to-great companies combine a culture of discipline with an entrpreneurial ethic to generate truly great marketplace performance.

Disciplined Action – Concept #6 – Technology Accelerator

Good-to-great companies don’t get caught up in new technology fads. Instead, they link technology with the hedgehog concept – that is, they will adopt a new technology only if it accelerates their performance in an area which they are passionate about, perform to world-class standards and makes money. 

Week 8 - OVERCOMING CHALLENGES

I enjoyed the suggestions that Naivenet.pdf gives to help us to get the most out of  ours personal interviews.

“The suggestions below will help you get the most out of personal interviews:

 1 Do your personal soul searching and industry homework first.

Take a personal inventory. Take aptitude tests. Ask those who know you well what you do better than most. Do whatever it takes to narrow your search to a few industries. Read about these industries and the leading companies and people. Personal interviews with teachers, entrepreneurs and executives should not be used to narrow your search or learn about jobs or industries. A stranger or casual acquaintance doesn’t know you well enough to map out your career. This is a very inefficient use of a busy person’s time. A great resource to guide you through your own soul searching is at Acton-Life-of-Meaning.org.

2 Be specific about what you need.

Make sure the other person understands how a little effort on their part can make a big difference in your life. Be clear about what you want. People are more likely to help you if they understand what you need, why it matters and how they can help with a minimum of time and effort. If you can’t explain this in a few sentences, you don’t need a meeting. The first rule of “networking” is that you must put yourself in the shoes of the other person.

3 Always put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

 Whenever you contact anyone, stop and put yourself in their shoes. Why would they want to talk with you? How can you make it easy on them? How can you demonstrate that talking with you would be entertaining or educational? At the very least, be humble and appreciative.

 4 Make it easy.

Never ask for a lunch if a short meeting will do. Never ask for a meeting if a phone call will suffice. Never ask for a phone call if an e-mail will get the job done.

 5 Don’t pester.

If the other person isn’t interested, back off. Ask if there’s someone else they suggest you could talk with or something they suggest you read. Perseverance is a great character trait if you are pursuing a worthy goal, but an empty meeting is not a worthy goal.

 6 Start at the bottom.

Once you have narrowed the list of industries, make your first contacts with people who are helping serve real customers. Look for people who have recently joined the company. These are the people who can tell you the most about what your experience will be like with a company or within an industry. You can learn about an industry’s history by reading biographies of industry pioneers.

7 Show up prepared.

 If you do need a phone call or meeting, be prepared. Make sure you have read all the important books about the industry and the biographies about its pioneers in advance. Thoroughly research the company and the individual with whom you are meeting.

 8 Send a list of questions in advance.

A short list of questions helps set the agenda and shows that you’ve done your homework. Sending your questions in advance makes the most of a short meeting.

9 Ask questions.

 Your goal in a face-to-face meeting is to establish a relationship. Use your time in a personal interview to learn about the other person. How did they get to where they are today? What mistakes have they made? What do they cherish or regret? Once you understand the other person, and they believe you are sincere and dedicated to their industry, and perhaps following in their same path, they are more likely to see you as a younger version of themselves, and are more likely to want to help. Perseverance is a great character trait if you are pursuing a worthy goal, but an empty meeting is not a worthy goal. 4 Your goal in a faceto-face meeting is to establish a relationship.

 10 Give something unexpected in return.

 What can you give in return? Does the entrepreneur have a favorite charity where you can volunteer? Is there some other way you can give them an unexpected gift? Will you at least pledge to help someone like yourself in the future? Being willing to give of yourself without being asked is a sign of maturity and character. A busy entrepreneur can make up to several million dollars each year. That means an hour of his or her time is worth a thousand dollars or so on average, and a marginal hour of time is worth much more. By comparison, as a newly minted MBA, an hour of your time is worth $50 or so, meaning that you should be willing to volunteer ten hours of your time in return for a half-hour meeting. Sound too expensive? Then you really don’t need the meeting.

 11 Be nice to the gatekeepers too.

 Remember, executive assistants run most companies. They can be your most valuable source of information about a company or an entrepreneur. See them as a resource, not a barrier.

 12 Follow up.

Always, always, always write a handwritten thank you note. Let the entrepreneur know how their advice or recommendation helped. Show them your gratitude by offering something unexpected. Summary Entrepreneurs are busy. Every moment of their time already is committed. People who use social contrivances or relationships to gain access for meaningless meetings take time away from more important tasks. If you want to learn about an industry, read books or surf the internet for information. Interview line personnel who have more time and can give you a perspective on what working in an industry at an entry level is like. Save face-to-face meetings with entrepreneurs for that rare moment when there is something specific they can do, at a very low cost in time and effort, that will make a big difference to your life. Above all, remember that it’s not about you. People will help you if they sense that you are on an important mission to help others and have the character and drive to make a difference. You can demonstrate this by doing your homework up front, and always putting yourself in the shoes of the other person.”