Andy Penn’s Tips for Doing Business in Asia

1. Be patient.
2. Focus on building relationships.
3. Get the right people and invest in them.
4. Have a high level of cultural sensitivity and awareness.
5. Diversify across Asian markets as the risks are higher.
6. Build a regional model with a distinct platform that can handle all different tax and regulatory environments.

Common Mistakes when Doing Business in Asia

1. Barriers to entry are very high, so don’t overestimate how long it will take to reach objectives.
2. Don’t underestimate the importance of relationships. Early discussions probably won’t focus on business but on areas such as family and interests.
3. Don’t underestimate cultural differences and how they can lead to a situation of being exploited or causing exploitation.
4. The rest of the world is not blind to the opportunities Asia represents. Competition is fierce and there is a higher risk of failure. Don’t go unprepared.

From BRW, April 14- 20, 2011, pp. 30-31   Biographical Information on Andy Penn

CEO Q&A: Ned Montarello

What is your number one tip for managing people?

Honest and open dialogue, synergise personal and company goals, position these around a framework to measure success, then let them get on with it.

What is your number one tip for managing business?

Recognise your strengths and weakness then surround yourself with key people whose skill sets will compensate for those weaknesses. Trust your judgement, be prepared to take the advice and watch the cash flow.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

Find the right work-life balance and keep your sense of humor.

From BRW, April 14- 20, 2011, p. 12.

Global Health and Wealth over the past 200 years

CEO Q&A: Skander Malcolm

What is your number one tip for managing people?

People do things for their reasons, not yours. Listen. Connect. Inspire (stretch).

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

It’s hard to decide between my first boss’s advice, “You are less than half as smart as you think you are”, which set me on the right track and my father’s advice, “There is a big difference between what you think you are good at and what you are good at, which has always reminded me to understand my strengths and play to them.

From BRW, September 16- 22, 2010, p. 10.

New Management Focus: Invest in Relationships!

Designing an organization requires making a million decisions both large (e.g. picking a strategy) and small (e.g. picking out paper for the PC printer). It is easy to get lost in the trivial instead of focusing on getting the critical elements right. In my courses, I try to present ideas and frameworks that help identify what is important. At the recent Academy of Management Conference in Montreal I came across a phrase that was new to me. In my view,  it crystallizes what managers need to do to design an organization that is able to respond to all the unexpected events that invariably occur in the life of an organization:

Invest in relationships!

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You Don’t Have to Pay Employees More Than the Competition to Keep Them Happy

Returning to Chicago for the first time in three years, I went to two of my favorite restaurants. In one, Lulu’s, most of the waitresses and busboys I had seen three years ago were still there. In the other, I recognized no one except for the owner. So I asked the owner of Lulu’s if he was paying his people more.  He said: “No.” I asked him a second time. He still said:  “No.” Confirming the lesson that many management professors emphasize in the context of the Southwest airline example, you don’t have to pay people more than the competition to keep them happy. Lulu’s is a fun place and the interior design is attractive, providing employees non-monetary rewards. Evidently the owner is also not getting on the nerves of his staff.  Jokingly he says in front of one of his female employees: “I cannot even get rid of the people I would like to see go.” The lady—who must have been working there for at least 8 years—interjects: “I knew you were going to say this.” The general lesson (except perhaps for Wall Street before the crash) is: You don’t need to pay people more than the competition. But the total rewards of working for you have to be more than the total rewards of working for someone else. Otherwise people will leave.

The Wrong Stuff Blog

We seem to have a built-in tendency to want to learn from successful people and pay little attention to failures. We also have a hard time admitting mistakes. In fact, what dintinguihses mature and, dare I say, clever,  indivdiuals is precisely that they can admit mistakes and learn from them.  Kathryn Schulz, who is about to publish a book on the subject, has published on Slate a number of great interviews and reflections on being wrong. The one with Alan Dershowitz is particularly interesting. If you want to start with the most recent entry, start here: The Wrong Stuff

CEO Q&A: Greg Bourke

What is your number one tip for managing people?

Be empathetic: When you understand the issues that constrain staff from doing their job you will usually identify bigger issues in the organization.

Is there a lesson you have never forogotten?

Progress is not perfection.

From BRW, April 29-June 2, 2010, p. 12.

CEO Q&A: Lincoln Crawely

What has been your greatest regret in Business?

That I didn’t really get to know and accept my strengths and weaknesses earlier.

What is your number one tip for managing people?

Fairness and balance, which must not be confused with compromise.

From BRW, April 15-21, 2010, p. 10.

Warren Buffet’s Symbolic Leadership

Watch this great advertisement staffed by employees of Geico. Warren Buffet, whose companey fully owns Geico, participates in the ad to demonstrate that he is one the many co-workers. It is funny to see the 80-year-old billionaire impersonate Axl Rose.

The New AGSM MBA (Executive) Strategic Management Year

As the director of the Strategic Management Year, I led of team of faculty to redesign the year-long program. We added many new features (live case studies, book reviews, learning diaries, self-refelection papers, peer coaching, peer evaluations, rewriting of strategy paper) and organized the year around the fundamental problems that a general manager and entrepreneur faces:

1. How do I detect and select business opportunities?
2. How do I develop business opportunities?
3. How do I grow a business?
4. How do I transform a business?

In this short video, I describe the changes that we have made.  Click on “More” to see a more detailed picture overview of all program.

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Apple did not forsee the success of the application store

It is hard to forsee the future as the recent episode with Apple’s application store demonstrates.  The NY Times reports:

The App Store’s success — as much a surprise to Apple as it has been to competitors — has given rise to a new digital ecosystem. Today, hundreds of software aspirants, from individuals tinkering in their bedrooms late at night to established companies looking for lucrative new revenue streams, are jumping into the App Store fray.

When making a decision, managers often make the mistakes of only considering the potential upsides, but not the cost of downsides. Positive surprises don’t kill firms. It is the negative surprises that bring you down. 

Benefits of the Knwoledge Economy

Figure 1 from the ETH Strategy Report: Knowledge is the main engine of economic growth. A strong correlation can be observed between the Knowledge Economy Index (KEI) and GDP per capita. The KEI is calculated by the World Bank and is based on the four pillars of the Knowledge Economy framework: 1. An economic and institutional regime to provide incentives for the efficient use of existing and new knowledge and the flourishing of entrepreneurship; 2. An
educated and skilled population to create, share, and use knowledge well. Click on More to see a powerful picture.

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The Economist on Annoying Bussiness Guru and the Problems with MBA Curricula

The Economist has a wonderful new column called Schumpeter. The October 22 issue revists the shortcomings of management gurus that I highlight in my classes. The Sepember 24 column encourages business schools to teach people to be more sceptical. 

The three habits…of highly irritating management gurus

Business schools have done too little to reform themselves in the light of the credit crunch

 

Phil Tetlock Critically Reviews Three Books on Forecasting the Future

Telock does us the service of giving a close reading of three books that what to overcome the obstacle that Yogi Berra identified in his qib: “Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.”

The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing by Ian Bremmer and Preston Keat.

The Predictioneer’s Game: Using the Logic of Brazen Self-Interest to See and Shape the Future by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman

Read Telock’s excellent review at National Interest.

Debate: Do Women Make Better Managers

The jury is still out. But read this interesting exchange on NYTimes.com. Rember that just because on average women may be different than men, this does not mean that it is true for the person in front of you.

Susan Pinker: Whether we’re talking about mentoring, managing or office politics, the research is clear: “Men and women together are the best.”

Sharon Meers: Women often take an alternative approach to leading teams — encouraging more open discussion, cultivating talent and sharing credit. Feedback is the place where women bosses may add the most value.

Three Books on the Origins of the Financial Crisis and its Lessons

John Lanchester reviews three books on the origins of the financial crisis and its lessons in the New Yorker.  Two of them are useful for the general reader.

Gillian Tett, “Fool’s Gold” (Free Press)

Richard A. Posner, “A Failure of Capitalism” (Harvard)

I personally personally found Fools Gold the most rewarding of all the books and a higly recommend it to anyone who works in the finance industy or simply wants to understand what caused the recent financial crisis.

Read full review here.

CEO Q&A: Bernie Brooks

Chief executive, Meyer (Australia)

What is your number-one tip for managing people?

You never get in trouble for over-communicating with them.

What is your number-one tip for managing a business?

Give the team more responsibility than they expect and measure everything in the business that can be measured.

A lesson you have never forgotten?

How the mighty have fallen. Some six of the top 10 retailers in 1987 don’t exist today and that is a sign that you can never be complacent in retailing.

Excerpted from BRW, Vol. 31, No. 12, FYI.

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