Reflections, Observations, Learnings
Jigabot now has a proven product, an identified market segment, proven production & assembly capabilities, and some brand awareness. (See Real-World Values for more information about Jigabot.) Jigabot is at a point where its next steps are to “crank up” sales and marketing. The next question is whether Jigabot should develop internal sales & marketing …
In his HBR article, Bill Taylor postulates that there are four styles of leadership. I both agree and disagree with Taylor’s model. First, I agree with Taylor’s premise: as we “gain clarity about the leadership style” we better “understand … ourselves” and are “more effective … [at] marshaling the support of others.” Taylor postulates that …
For deeply personal and spiritual reasons I believe in continuous learning. What made graduate school exciting for me was (1) learning a diverse set of theories that can be applied to diverse business fact sets (case studies); (2) learning to analyze data base upon the perspective of many theories–and learning to identify multiple theories that …
I find accounting boring. I can do it. And I have studied it various times throughout my life. And somewhat ironically, I have spent a fair amount of my life writing software that performs accounting. At the end of my senior year of high school, I took an in-class Accounting final exam. When the test …
Dr. James Spradley’s work was highly influential to my understanding of original research. And his many books, including Ethnographic Interview, were very instrumental generally in creating a methodology for understanding a culture. Ethnographic research is a technique used to learn about people in a specific environment. It is more in-depth than observational research or interviews …
BYU Law Professor Gerald R. Williams, taught a graduate-level negotiations class at Harvard and BYU. I found it to be very instructive. He taught a theory that there are fundamentally two negotiation styles: Aggressive Cooperative He said that aggressive negotiations are characterized by a “game” that participants “play,” where rules change, and “truth” is practiced …
I believe in organizational leadership based on Alan Wilkins’ Developing Corporate Character, which I have written about here. This is what such leadership looks like: Honoring the past. Developing faith in fairness. Developing faith in ability. Painting a shared vision. Honoring the Past A leader must first seek to understand the history, sacrifices, and successes …
Professor Alan Wilkins published a book called Developing Corporate Character: How to Successfully Change an Organization Without Destroying it. In it he asserts that organizations with strong character more easily: Develop new skills Achieve successful futures Wilkins argues that an organization that doesn’t have strong corporate character, may sacrifices values or strengths to achieve short-term …
In BYU’s MBA program, I remember using Harvard Business School case-study books to study, discuss, and learn business Operations. At first a lot of us students wondered what kinds of “proprietary calculus” we would be learning. And while we occasionally had to analyze rates of change (ie. “calculus”), that didn’t happen often. Sometimes we learned …
I grew up in Japan, where I graduated from a private high school. I served as a volunteer representative in Hong Kong for two years. I learned to speak a fair amount of Japanese and Chinese. But perhaps just as meaningful as learning the language, was learning meanings represented by what people say or do. …