Harvard MBA and A Fishing Guide named Joe

I found this story in a book called Creating a Good Life by James O'Toole, which I found to contain alot of meaning and to be highly insightful. Still half-way reading it as I have been swarmed with school work since the start of the year.

Read this and reflect on it....

A Harvard MBA took a vacation to a sunny clime,
Where he hired a fishing guide named Joe to help him land a Marlin.
Joe was in his forties and lived in a modest house by the seashore, with his wife and two children.
Every day, Joe rose when the sun was warm and took a swim in the ocean with his family.
Three days a week, He escorted clients out to sea in his boat, and they would fish until they hooked the big one.
The four mornings when he chose not to work, Joe would sit in his hammock and read from breakfast until it was time for mid-day lunch with his wife.
Almost every afternoon, He picked up his kids up after school and took them on "an adventure" or to his workshop for handicrafts.
After a long dinner, en famille, Joe and his wife would walk to a nearby cafe where the locals gathered to discuss issues facing their community.


As the vacationing MBA immediately appreciated, Joe's fishing expeditions were first-rate:
Joe was a skilled guide, knowledgable not only about anglers' tackle but also marine biology, oceanography, meteorology, and other subjects about which vacationers were curious.

The MBA saw the potential for a big, profitable enterprise. He explained to Joe that it would be easy to put together a group of venture capitalists to "Build your underperforming business".

Instead of inefficiently taking one client out at a time, Joe could have a fleet of high-tech fishing boats, each accomodating a dozen or more clients. With a little strategic advice, he could branch out into related businesses, perhaps build a high-rise hotel on the beach.

Most important, Joe could go on TV and become the marketing face for his business, creating a brand that could be franchised at other sleepy fishing communities:

"A Guy like you could become a CELEBRITY"

The MBA then delivered the clincher: "When that happens, We have an IPO and you get RICH!"

After listening patiently, Joe asked, "And What Then?"

The MBA quickly answered: "Well, you retire to some nice place on the beach, do a little fishing and reading, and get to spend some time with your wife and kids....."

Great irony yeah....

Career Anchors

I just did an questionaire exercise that helps to determine what kind of anchors that a person value most in their careers. I found the model to be an accurate depiction of my anchors. It was first proposed by Edgar Schein from MIT. The Anchors are as follows:

Technical/Functional competence
This kind of person likes being good at something and will work to become a guru or expert. They like to be challenged and then use their skill to meet the challenge, doing the job properly and better than almost anyone else.

General Managerial competence
Unlike technical/functional people, these folks want to be managers (and not just to get more money, although this may be used as a metric of success). They like problem-solving and dealing with other people. They thrive on responsibility. To be successful, they also need emotional competence.

Autonomy/Independence
These people have a primary need to work under their own rules and steam. They avoid standards and prefer to work alone.

Security/Stability
Security-focused people seek stability and continuity as a primary factor of their lives. They avoid risks and are generally 'lifers' in their job.

Entrepreneurial Creativity
These folks like to invent things, be creative and, most of all, to run their own businesses. They differ from those who seek autonomy in that they will share the workload. They find ownership very important. They easily get bored. Wealth, for them, is a sign of success.

Service/Dedication to a cause
Service-oriented people are driven by how they can help other people more than using their talents (which may fall in other areas). They may well work in public services or in such as HR.

Pure Challenge
People driven by challenge seek constant stimulation and difficult problems that they can tackle. Such people will change jobs when the current one gets boring and their career can be very varied.

Lifestyle
Those who are focused first on lifestyle look at their whole pattern of living. They not so much balance work and life as integrate it. They may even take long periods off work in which to indulge in passions such as sailing or traveling.

I think I posted about the Lifestyle Anchor previously when talking about people taking career breaks. Typically, people in this category could be misinterpreted
to be frivolous people who do not work hard. On the contrary, they are pretty full of life and wishes to have a holistic and wholesome living which many of us could only dream about. Makes you wonder where most Singaporeans' career anchors are .....

Reflections for 2007 AD

The year 2007 had been a excellent year for me. Busy but fruitful as my first kid has passed his first year and the second one on the way, due next year.

I also had a chance to do my post-graduate studies, a dream that had taken me 5 years later than when I had planned to start. But nonetheless, it is choice and tradeoff that I have no regrets as my model of personal priorities are clearly laid out in my mind. Something like a personal balanced scorecard that was first envisioned by Norton and Kaplan.

1) Family
2) Professional Life
3) Personal Investment/Finances
4) Personal Life
a. Spiritual
b. Physical Well-Being/Health
c.Learning and Development

The first 2 quadrants seems to be related to our community, one at home and the other at work. The second set of quadrants relates to the individual person, with finances in the current modern age a real important factor. Of course the 4th quadrant, is what I would need to focus on for coming years as well as I grow older. Especially, the part of 4b) which I have been lacking in fitness for far too many years. Being overweight is probably one of the failures in my scorecard, which I am determined to reach goals in 2008.

Currently, reading on Norton and Kaplans' The Strategy-Focused Organization which shows how a strategy map can tied to a balanced scorecard.

Sometimes what we learn in business, leadership, history, books and films can be applied into our personal lives if we just take out a little time to critically think about them. Of course, some tweaking and adaptation can be made to the original models.

I hope this blog that I first started in April 2007, is a form of explicit knowledge of what I have learnt throughout the year. I may have missed out some of the learning due to a busy schedule which prohibits me of writing but then again, even capturing a certain percentage of the tacit knowledge that resides in my brain is still good enough. In time to come, when my hair has gone gray, I would definitely refer back to here to see what I was doing and thinking in the year 2007 AD.

Financial valuation of beauty

I received this email regarding financial valuations of assets....

Title: Young and pretty lady wishes to marry a rich guy.
Fantastic reply from a financial person.

A young and pretty lady posted this on a popular forum -

Title: What should I do to marry a rich guy?

I'm going to be honest of what I'm going to say here. I'm 25 this year. I'm very pretty, have style and good taste. I wish to marry a guy with $500k annual salary or above. You might say that I'm greedy, but an annual salary of $1M is considered only as middle class in New York. My requirement is not high. Is there anyone in this forum who has an income of $500k annual salary? Are you all married? I wanted to ask: what should I do to marry rich persons like you? Among those I've dated, the richest is $250k annual income, and it seems that this is my upper limit. If someone is going to move into high cost residential area on the west of New York City Garden ( ? ) , $250k annual income is not enough. I'm here humbly to ask a few questions:

1) Where do most rich bachelors hang out? (Please list down the names and addresses of bars, restaurant, gym)
2) Which age group should I target?
3) Why most wives of the riches is only average-looking? I've met a few girls who doesn't have looks and are not interesting, but they are able to marry rich guys
4) How do you decide who can be your wife, and who can only be your girlfriend? (my target now is to get married)

Ms. Pretty
---------------------------------------------------

Here's a reply from a Wall Street Financial guy:

Dear Ms. Pretty,

I have read your post with great interest. Guess there are lots of girls out there who have similar questions like yours. Please allow me to analyze your situation as a professional investor. My annual income is more than $500k, which meets your requirement, so I hope everyone believes that I'm not wasting time here. From the standpoint of a business person, it is a bad decision to marry you. The answer is very simple, so let me explain. Put the details aside, what you're trying to do is an exchange of 'beauty' and 'money': Person A provides beauty, and Person B pays for it, fair and square. However, there's a deadly problem here, your beauty will fade, but my money will not be gone without any good reason.

The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you can't be prettier year after year. Hence from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciation asset, and you are a depreciation asset. It's not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation. If that is your only asset, your value will be much worried 10 years later. By the terms we use in Wall Street, every trading has a position, dating with you is also a 'trading position'. If the trade value dropped we will sell it and it is not a good idea to keep it for long term - same goes with the marriage that you wanted. It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision any assets with great depreciation value will be sold or 'leased'.

Anyone with over $500k annual income is not a fool; we would only date you, but will not marry you. I would advice that you forget looking for any clues to marry a rich guy. And by the way, you could make yourself to become a rich person with $500k annual income. This has better chance than finding a rich fool. Hope this reply helps. If you are interested in 'leasing' services, do contact me .

Signed, J.P. Morgan

Well.... this really open my mind on how to value of beauty.... at least in the monetary sense...

Einstein's Intelligence Quiz

I stumbled upon this quiz here supposedly set by Einstein and that he had mentioned that 98% of the people in world would probably not be able to solve it. I tried it the first round, by trying to draw diagrams around it, but it felt not right, so I tried another method which first took me an hour first time, but eventually I still managed to solved it.

Subsequent tries by me using the same method without referring to my previous work, I could solve it within 10-15 minutes.

EINSTEIN's QUIZ

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors
In each house lives a person with a different nationality
These 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet
No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar or drink the same drink.
Here's the question: Who owns the fish?

1. The Brit lives in a red house
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets
3. The Dane drinks tea
4. The green house is on the left of the white house
5. The green house owner drinks coffee
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill
8. The man living in the house right in the middle drinks milk
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house
10. The man who smokes Blend lives next door to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next door to the man who smokes Dunhill
12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer
13. The German smokes Prince
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house
15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbor who drinks water

With these 15 clues the problem is solvable.
Here's the question: Who owns the fish?

The solution is posted in here... but try to do it yourself before going there. I was surprised that I had used the same matrix that Mr Tan used, but I had done it on paper rather than in Excel as recommended by him.

I am Legend

Will Smith has always been an actor I like since the time he was not so famous as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In I am Legend, in my opinion he has delivered his best performance to-date, at least his films that I have watched.

This film practically blew me away with its multiple scenes of New York being totally deserted, I remembered watching a similar film, 28 Days Later which had had London being emptied of its people too.

However, between these two films, I am Legend wins hands down with the strong portrayal of Will Smith in his role as Robert Neville. I was particularly hit by the scene of him training together with his dog and the sheer intensity of his seriousness in keeping fit while doing his chin-ups. His muscular frame and multiple abs must have taken him alot of work and time to attain. I was sort of inspired to be like him.. hahaaa... unlikely but I hope to attain perhaps 10% of what he has.

The sheer loneliness of being the last man of earth... or rather New York filled with strange creatures who roams at night, was in essence the reason why Robert Neville fills his time doing his fitness training seriously. He even goes back to humanity's roots of hunting, cultivating or gathering of food. For entertainment, he goes to the DVD store to so-called 'rent' the movies there. He even returns the DVDs that he as finished.

What is striking about the film is that it shows that man after all is a social animal. With absence of other humans, Robert resorts to talking to his dog and even mannequins in the DVD store. I guess that is the only way he could maintain his sanity. I remembered the other film, Castaway where another lone man protrayed by Tom Hanks talking to a basketball (with straws sticking out as hair and a some stuff being put on it to as eyes, nose and mouth).

What was more touching was the scene on how he had to kill his beloved dog after it got infected with the virus. Such is the fraility of the human mind as after the loss of his dog, he felt no reason to live anymore... but luckily other survivors appeared to save him.

Well, in the end, Robert made the ultimate sacrifice... and it ends with him being the legend.

Rating: ***** (5/5)

The Power of Persuasion

The Power of Persuasion by Robert Levine rehashes some concepts of persuasion that marketers, salesmen (especially car salesmen) on unwitting consumers like you and me. Totally enjoyed some of jokes he inserts in between the lines, but more so his easy writing style giving cases of how we are manipulated by gullibility. I did not particularly like the chapter on the cults, but it does showcases how cults uses the brainwashing which I think is not really an art of persuasion. To me, its like a form enforced persuasion.

However, what stood out was the part of a MLM company selling knives and the woman who sold aromatic candles to friends/families. It does show how people are subtly manipulated to make people buy stuff that they do not need but they were made to feel that its a must-have.

Utimately, i think self-control and mental toughness plus awareness of such techniques that are employed by marketers and salesmen alike will definitely prevent us from overconsumption.

I referenced a link here to cuppakopi.com in which Roddy speaks of his techniques to fight off hard-sell tactics of a beauty salon.

"NOTHING IS MORE COSTLY THAN SOMETHING GIVEN FREE OF CHARGE"
A Japanese saying.... (quoted in the book)

I am starting a star rating: **** 4/5