Musings from Strategic Leverage Partners

Build a Life Not a Resume

I have the great pleasure of sitting next to the "interns desk" in our office space shared with Capital Valuation Group.  I learn what is on the mind of smart articulate and mature 20-22 year olds.  These are cream of the crop kids from the UW Business School finance program. (BBA).

Recently there has been a thread of discussion on "what do I want to do with the rest of my life".  Tim is heading off to Chicago as an associate in Investment Banking at RW Baird.  Paul is headed to T Rowe Price in Baltimore.  Both have thought a lot about how this fits into the big picture of life, know why they want to do it, and what their career might look like 5 years down the road.

They know they can find meaningful work just about anywhere, get paid well for what they do, and start off with a very good starting salary.  However, what I heard was that this was all secondary.  More important was a) How can I make a difference by doing meaningful work; b) maintain a reasonable work life balance; c) be challenged and have flexibility/options as my career progresses and I learn more; d) be recognized for my work, enjoy my co-workers and surroundings, and be treated respectfully as a peer.  A very informed and matures perspective.  In fact, both made trade offs based upon their view of how closely potential employers met these criteria.

We spent a couple of hours last night talking about where they are headed.  I was able to recollect and tell stories of my first few years out of undergrad at Amoco's Finance & Accounting group.  I see a huge challenge for many traditional environments to provide the kind of opportunity these top notch grads are looking for.

The end result was providing them with some career management type of articles which I reference below.  I think they are some of the few consciously thinking about this now, and I give them great credit.  (I did some of this work and thinking myself at this age - but more by accident I think).  Here are the resources for all to use.

One of the best was this Bain article Build a Life Not a Resume
The Road to Self-Renewal by John Gardner here and here and here.
Are You Deciding on Purpose an interview with Richard Leider.
Career Anchors by Edgar Schein.

Thanks Tim and Paul, Ryan, Brian, Jake, and others for educating me on what's on the mind of our future organizational talent.  I'm looking forward to hearing of your success in life as well as your career.

The Promise of Ethanol

As much as anyone, I wish there was an effective and available solution for foreign oil.  Our "quick fix" cultural mentality fueled by the media is bewildering to me.  I am also struck by a large number of people who aren't aware of facts on both the optimistic and pessimistic side.

This opinion piece provided a good context I wish was more widely understood. 

First, one gallon of ethanol doesn't elminate one gallon of gasoline.  It is more like 1/5 to 1/3 of a gallon.  Secondly, ethanol is subsidized and with current technology using corn, is an expenseive replacement ($120 barrel).

All of this can change.  There is a lot of focus and attention being paid.  This is good and has the potential of replacing 10-20% of our fuel with new methods and alternative celluose sources.

It is not THE solution, but a good option.

Quote from today's WSJ Opinion Column...

President Bush has made the welcome point that the U.S. needs "to move beyond a petroleum-based economy," and has lent his support to the need to develop energy from biomass, which refers to all bulk plant material. This is popular with the public and also enjoys significant support in Congress. Unfortunately, congressional subsidies for biomass are driven by farm-state politics rather than by a technology-development effort that might offer a practical liquid fuel alternative to oil. Meanwhile, major oil and chemical companies are evaluating biomass and investors are chasing biomass investment opportunities. But how much of this is practicable?

In same catagory is the media's insistence that the oil companies "give back" the excess profits.  Here, everyone deserves an "F" for economic literacy.  See this column.  Oil and gasonline pricing is a highly evolved market mechanism.  I think this is very difficult to "manipulate".

Our Friends in Dubai

 
 
  The United Arab Emirates has caused an uproar by buying a company that runs six U.S. ports. What kind of nation is the UAE?

Read "The Week" Overview here.  $100 billion in construction, 1/5 of the world's cranes, and a place where no one has ever voted.

On Line Personality Profile

What's your personal DNA?  Here's mine. 

A pretty innovative interface, though somewhat simplistic pattern of questions/feedback.

Fourteen S&P 500 CEO's have Univesity of Wisconsin Undergrad Degrees

BusinessWeek reports in this February 27th Article that UW is tied with Harvard for the most CEO's in the S&P 500.  See the attached table for the full list.  Notables include Exxon Mobil's Lee Raymond, Intuit's Stephen Bennett, and Autodesk's Carol Bartz.

Perhaps more impressive is that this group of 14 produced an impressive 97% average return over the past 5 years compared to the  S&P's return of  11%.  Now that's something to write home about. This includes 465% at Rockwell and 393% at Autodesk.

Perhaps there should be a Bucky CEO index fund!  The UW Foundation would have done well to have their investment placed with it's very own CEO's. 

Download uw_ceo.xls

GM's CEO Rick Wagoner Comments on Challenges

Wagoner says in this "Guest Opinion" piece:

What is less clear is why things turned sour so fast for GM, as well as for other American auto makers and suppliers. To put it another way, why are so many foreign auto makers and suppliers doing well in the United States, while so many U.S.-based auto companies are not?

Despite public perception, the answer is not that foreign auto makers are more productive or offer better-quality or more fuel-efficient vehicles. In this year's Harbour Report, which measures manufacturing productivity, GM plants took three of the top five spots in North America, including first and second place. In the latest J.D. Power Initial Quality Study, GM's Buick and Cadillac ranked among the top five vehicle brands sold in America, ahead of nameplates like Toyota, Honda, Acura, Nissan, Infiniti and Mercedes-Benz. And GM offers more models that get over 30 miles per gallon (highway) than any other auto maker.

He goes on to state the three fundamental issues facing US Manufacturing are:

• Healthcare costs
• Litigation costs
• Unfair trade practices (pointing out Japenese devaluation of the yen)

While these certainly are issues, perhaps he should quit reading the surveys and begin asking his customers (or better yet, non-customers).  He should get their opinion on VALUE, QUALITY, SERVICE, and STYLING. 

It might be better than one of  Bill Ford's new ideas listed here:

The biggest challenge to Ford's makeover may be the automaker's hide-bound bureaucracy. Bill Ford on Monday announced a new Web-based system that allows employees to submit ideas directly to his senior management team.

"Sometimes our bureaucracy can be ponderous and not always receptive to a different approach," Bill Ford said.

More than just a clearer conduit for communicating ideas to the top, the new Web site forces employees to think their ideas through before submitting them.

It asks employees to classify their ideas as technical innovations, business improvements, operational efficiencies, competitive advantages or ways to improve relations between the company and its workers, suppliers or customers.

The Web site also asks employees to rate the potential impact of their ideas. Are they on par with the sort of innovations that made Ford great? Will they change the lives of consumers? Will they open new markets? Will they lead to industry-firsts or improve Ford's competitive position? Ultimately, employees reach a screen that lets them type in an outline of their proposal or submit a previously prepared document.

"The bureaucracy at any company is a tremendous challenge," Cole said. "You want to shake it to the roots in a period like this. That's what he's saying: 'We're going to change.' "

The Kalamazoo Promise - Press Release

Anonymous donor's provide up to 100% college tuition for graduates of the Kalamazoo Public Schools.  The Kalamazoo Promise - Press Release.

Wow!  This is a community serious about providing a sustainable difference.

Copyright Protection

Lots of talk about Google providing scans of books.  I thought this was an interesting (and valid) comparison.  The music industry should also take note.

On Oct. 19, David Drummond, a Google vice president and general counsel, outlined the company's stance in an e-mail:

"It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time," he wrote. "The history of technology is replete with advances that first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along.

"In 1982, for instance, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America famously told a Congressional panel that 'the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.' But Sony, makers of the original Betamax, stood its ground, the Supreme Court ruled that copying a TV show to watch it later was legal, and today videotapes and DVDs produce the lion's share of the film industry's revenue."

Crap Circles

A forward in the current Harvard Business Review carries the provocative title of "Crap Circles".  It boils down to something pretty basic - have integrity in how you display information.  The attached is an example.  Who says you have the right to go from maturity to start-up.  This really isn't how it happens.  This harkens back to the work of Edgar Tufte who has written three books on the effective display of information.  There are so many examples of inappropriate data and graphics.  I find the graphics consistently good in The Economist.

The Changing Ways of Journalism

Thanks Jim Zellmer for pointing this out.  The premise is that a radical change in journalism is occuring.  It is being driven by the new generation and shifts in demographics.

Link: TV News in a Postmodern World: Chaos at the door by Terry Heaton- The Digital Journalist.

* The aging of the population

* Growing racial and ethnic diversity

* The continuing and growing gap between the rich and poor

* Metropolitanization/Regionalization

In short the shift looks something like...

Newsprint --> Electronic
Periodic --> Real-time/on-demand/24x7
Edited --> Selected by reader
In-home --> Anywhere (cell phone, website, email, newsreader)
Text --> Multimedia (podcasts, photos, text, links)
Published to Consumer --> Consumer to Consumer
Single thread --> Multi-threaded

Jim has numerous posts on zmetro.com that provide his perspective.  This is HUGE and he's way out in front thinking about (and creating/executing) the business model.