It takes 15 years.....to dominate the world.

Every Friday we have a guest speaker that comes in to talk to our class. Usually it is some captain of industry that has some sort of connection with the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary. We've had politicians and entrepreneurs and they usually have an interesting story to tell. It's good to hear from people that have become successful and faced some hardships that they have overcome. All of them have worked hard to get where they are, but it's great to hear them and make a connection.

This is a title quote from our latest guest speaker Benno Nigg, co-director of the Human Performance Lab at the University of Calgary.

Benno was headhunted by the University from Switzerland in 1981 to come and start a Biomechanics department in Calgary. He had no idea even where Calgary was and when he accepted, he started with 5 people in an old locker room in the Physical Education building with 2 computers and a whopping 10Mb of disk space. The department has grown to the Human Performance Lab and it has become the dominant centre in it's field.

They only rely on the University for 31% of their funding (perhaps helping in it's success) but gain most of their funding from Industry and grants.

He was quite inspiring to listen to. He has worked hard to build a centre of excellence which helps a lot of Canadian Olympic athletes. He has helped Adidas test new shoes as well as helped David Beckham improve that kick.

Benno has been at it for 15 years and reckons that it takes that long to dominate the world. These days it seems difficult for anyone's attention span to remain for 15 years - everyone seems to be looking for the quick wins and then move on. Benno is 70 and still seems to be going strong (those Swiss and those mountains I bet) but has an absolute passion for what he does.

Do you have the passion to dominate the world?

Quiet - very busy.....but 1 semester down - 3 to go.

I'm not sure how many people are actually monitoring this blog, but it has been very quiet recently, for which I apologize.

I survived the first semester. Overall, I am happy with the outcomes, however I know that I need to work on my ability to manage my time. One of my favourite adages is "start as you mean to go on". I hope that understanding the workload up front and apportioning my time appropriately will help me feel less "overwhelmed" at the end.

Having said all that - I have decided to change employers. Not only employers, but change careers as well. This will throw my life into a bit of chaos as I will have a steep learning curve at work as well as at University.

I'll muse more on the Winter 2008 semester shortly.

Leading Clever People is Hard

There is desire by every organization to hire the "best and brightest" to innovate and contribute to the success of the company. In some industries, like drug companies, Research and Development is key the continuing growth of the company; without it, there would be no business and no competitive edge.

Hiring these people is hard; keeping them is even harder.

From HBR:

7 things that make clever people hard to manage:

1. They know their worth. The tacit skills of clever people are closer to those of medieval guilds than to the standardized, codifiable, and communicable skills that characterized the Industrial Revolution. This means you can't transfer the knowledge without the people.

2. They are organizationally savvy. Clever people will find the company context in which their interests will be most generously funded. If the funding dries up, they have a couple of options: They can move on to a place where resources are plentiful, or they can dig in and engage in elaborate politics to advance their pet projects.

3. They ignore corporate hierarchy. If you seek to motivate clever people with titles or promotions, you will probably be met with cold disdain. But don't assume this means they don't care about status; they can be very particular about it, and may insist on being called "doctor" or "professor."

4. They expect instant access. If clever people don't get access to the CEO, they may think the organization does not take their work seriously.

5. They are well connected. Clever people are usually plugged into highly developed knowledge networks; who they know is often as important as what they know. These networks both increase their value to the organization and make them more of a flight risk.

6. They have a low boredom threshold. In an era of employee mobility, if you don't engage your clever people intellectually and inspire them with organizational purpose, they will walk out the door.

7. They won't thank you. Even when you're leading them well, clever people will be unwilling to recognize your leadership. Remember, these creative individuals feel that they don't need to be led. Measure your success by your ability to remain on the fringes of their radar.

Are you smarter than an Executive MBA?

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=49591

(Ironically this is on a Calgary Flames forum)

Pretty hard if you are not aware of the world around you.

28th Place

In the recent Financial Times of London survey, the EMBA program at the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary rated 2nd in Canada and 28th in the world. This is up from 45th place in 2006 and 65th place in 2005.

I'm often dubious about these surveys. As my marketing professor was mentioning just the other day (ahem), how you ask the questions and what you are valuing as well as how respondents answer is often key to getting an equivalent ranking.

Regardless, well done team.

Excel 2007 Can't Multiply

According to AppScout, there is a bug in Microsoft Excel 2007 which produces the wrong answer whenever the product of two numbers is 65535.

Here's the whole story. And here is Microsoft's answer.

What is 65535? Why it's 2^16 - 1. Hmmmm.....pretty significant.

Careful how you use those numbers to make decisions - don't repeat TransAlta's mistake.

Marketing Concepts

With the start of my first ever Marketing class, I've started to become more aware of advertising and messages that companies are using to communicate with potential customers. I've also become aware of all the scorn that has been inflicted (or justly earned depending on your point of view) on the Marketing industry. I'm sure I'll have more to say on this as I get further into the "Art of the Message".

A quote from Peter Drucker:

There will always, one can assume, be some need for some selling. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.

A recent Dilbert.