Horrible United Airlines Experience

So another day, another repeated goof up by an airline.

Recently, while traveling to Aspen, my wife and I volunteered to give up our seats and stay in Denver overnight, and received $400 each in travel vouchers from United. So far so good.

Next, I try to redeem these for a flight. I was told that I could make the booking online, and then either drive to the airport or just mail these in to the Michigan booking center and my ticket will be issued. I figured, why drive? So I sent these in via mail. Big mistake!

I send these in to the michigan center and do not hear anything back for 10 days. Next, I call united to see whats going on. Here is what they tell me:

1. The booking online can be held only for 7 days

2. However it might take their processing center anywhere between 5 to 14 business days to process it

3. There is NO WAY for me to find out what the reservation center has done to my vouchers

The agent re-issued by reservation for 7 days, and hoped that the michigan center would take the vouchers and issue tickets till then. Surprise surprise - in 2 days, the trip is canceled again, and the Michigan center has done nothing. I call again, and of course, there is heavier than expected call volume and I should expect a long hold time. United Airlines, than you for a super aweful customer service experience.

3 steps to new habits

3 Steps to New Habits

View more presentations from Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford.

Ex-consultant going to a startup

I recently came across a Quora thread here that debated whether ex-consultants added any value to startups. The answers varied from 'Consulting is evil and a house of lies,' to the kind of skills that consultants develop and which of those might or might not be valuable to startups, specifically in the consumer internet sector.

I decided to take a different approach in analyzing this, by utilizing a framework I came across while reading Clayton M. Christensen's book Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. The book's hypothesis is that the success of a startup management team can be maximized by ensuring that they have been attended a unique set of schools i.e., they have past experience in tacking some of challenges they are likely to come across in an uncertain environment of a startup. Here are the schools of thought that the book puts forward, along with my assessment of whether consulting experience can help in that particular skills.

1. Operated in environments with high degrees of uncertainty: A consulting project is well structured at the outset, but changes continuously based on recent events, client demands etc. Being flexible and ready to adapt to change is necessary for success in consulting, as in startups. This is a definite plus for consulting.
2. Developed plans to unearth seemingly unattainable knowledge: Neutral, since consultants seems to often find knowledge that the client sought unattainable, but they do so by leveraging the resources of the consulting firm, which are unlikely to be unavailable to a startup.
3. Experimented and found unanticipated customers for a product or service: Neutral. One does come across market research projects, but this is not necessarily a feature of most products consultants work on.
4. Placed bets based on theory and intuition, not necessarily detailed data: Neutral. Depends on the kind of project and your workstream. If you are working on a workstream as a market sizing, you will likely have access to a large stream of data, vs. if you are doing organizational design, in which case theory and intuition play a bigger role.
5. Resourcefully solved problems without spending much money: Negative. Typically consultants have a not of resources, detailed reports etc which they can purchase.
6. Built a management team from scratch - a team with skills matched to the task. Negative. You might get some experience at the Project/Engagement manager level, but before that, you are hardly ever building teams.
7. Shown experience in fending off certain corporate processes and in harnessing or manipulating others, in order to get the right things done quickly: Positive. Being able to influence others and work through corporate processes is an essential consulting skill, which will help in startups.

So they you have it. What's my conclusion? Consulting is a valuable experience, but when interviewing people for startup roles, one must look at other aspects. Has the person worked at startups or technology companies in his/her career? Is there an industry expertise that the person brings? Has the person shown instances in his or her career where he/she succeeded with use of minimal resources?

I am an introvert

OK, I said it. I am an introvert. There. It's done.

A recent article I read called 'Caring for your Introvert' clarifies a lot about what it means to be an introvert, and more importantly what it does not mean to be an introvert.

First things first, introvert is not equal to shy. An introvert likes periods of solitude; a shy person would like to be surrounded by people, but is hesitant of socializing. Thus the two are often confused. For example, I would not be the most outgoing, 'we are best friends at the first meeting' kind of person. However, I am not necessarily shy either; I can quite easily make friends with new people, revel in the company of people I know. However, I love periods of solitude, where I can disconnect from the rest of the world, and read a book/my blogs, sketch ideas, work on some assignment etc.

Second, if you are an introvert, it is best to acknowledge it in a positive light. And care for it. Schedule time to reflect on things, to do whatever you like to do alone. I love to get up early on Saturday or Sunday mornings, as this is my alone time. Everyone in the house (other than the cat) is still asleep, it is relatively quiet, and I get to spend time with my laptop, a book, and a and nothing else.

Third, understand that extroverts would have a hard time understanding you as an introvert. You can be mistaken for being aloof, arrogant, shy or any combination of the above. The best way to avoid this is to stretch yourself a bit, and speak up whenever you have something good to add. Other things including engaging in small talk, and using your listening skills to make conversation interesting.

One of the best thing the article says 'Introversion is not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.' So accept it, embrace it and use it.

Financial Decisions Course team

I recently completed a course called Financial Decisions, which attempts to teach general managers how to make finance related decisions in a wide variety of scenarios, using the case based approach. The workload was very heavy; we had a net total of 16 cases in the course, which we needed to analyze and submit a write-up of once case before almost every class session.

I was particularly impressed by my team’s performance in this course; we managed to maintain our sanity despite the heavy workload, and did pretty well for most of the cases. Given that I also completed a course called ‘Leading and Managing Teams’ last quarter, I spent some time analyzing what made our team successful, using one of the frameworks from the class:

1. Motivation: We were very clear that we wanted to learn as much as possible from the course, and the only way to do that would be to do the cases to the best of our abilities. The final grade wasn’t very important to most of us. Having an awesome professor also inspired us to do our best in the course.

2. Coordination mechanism: Early into our first meeting, we created a spreadsheet which outlined what task each member was responsible was for each case. The main responsibilities for each case were to do the initial analysis/spreadsheet, to do the case write-up, and to review and submit the final write-up. This gave us a mechanism to track the performance of our peers and clearly outline roles and responsibilities for each of the cases. I personally took up the role of a coordinator; scheduling team meetings and keeping track of responsibilities for each case.

3. Knowledge and ability: Having a former investment banker certainly helped in this case! But besides that, we had all done the basic finance and strategy courses, and also proved our technical competence in applying previously learned concepts to this course. Another aspect was personal competency: we all knew each other to some extent, and understood each other’s working styles. This helped us bond together as a team quickly and work effectively towards the project.

4. Effective conflict management: We debated our points of view pretty effectively in the team, and kept the debates about tasks, processes and our point of view rather than about personality issues. Often having 4 or more people in the room helped; 2 people might be on opposite sides of an issue, but the other 2 helped everyone reach consensus and move forward. Over time this process improved; I started to recognize styles of my team members and adapting to them, trying to figure out how I could work more effectively with the different team members.

I loved working with this team, and hope that I get to work with more such teams in my courses over the next two quarters.

A look back at Kellogg Courses: Winter 2009

Here is the next edition of my look at Kellogg courses. I took the following courses in my winter quarter of my first year. One of my aims was to keep my workload relatively light, as I was recruiting for Consulting and High-Tech companies.

1. Finance I: This was the basic finance course taught by Professor Tarhan. I enjoyed the course, although my experience has been that I really did not understand Finance concepts until I took advanced courses in the subject. For example, Fin II really helped me solidify my concepts of Finance I, and Financial Decisions helped my solidify concepts of Fin I and II.

2. MECN 430 (Microeconomic Analysis): Basic microeconomics course; I somewhat enjoyed it, but nothing to write home about. Not super interesting but very important for strategy; next quarter, I will be taking MECN 441 (Competitive Strategy and Industrial Structure) which applies MECN 430 concepts to competitive strategy.

3. Operations Management: I enjoyed the MMM version of Operations Management a lot more than I thought I would. The concepts are essential for any MBA, and Professor Iravani
was enthusiastic about teaching the course and did a great job in keeping us interested throughout the course. I will soon be taking the advanced version of the course, Operations Strategy (OPNS 454).

4. NuVention Web: This was by far my favorite course of this quarter. Since it was a two quarter course, I will write a full review in my next post about my spring quarter courses.

Steve Blank on Entrepreneurship

Empathy

Recently I was sick - with a cold, nothing major. Because of it, I needed to postpone or cancel several meetings. Most of the people I emailed said 'Get well soon. I can meet at a different time....' All, except one. One email was one line - it said 'I am next free at ....'


Now I am sure this was just a quick one liner typed on a phone, by a person stepped for time. However it stood out in the negative sense; stood out for a complete lack of empathy, for not even acknowledging the reason why I was changing the meeting. Now I know the person and know that he is nice in general; what if I did not know the person at all? Then what impression would I get of him? I guess it just goes to that we all need to express atleast a little empathy in daily life - no matter how pressed for time we are. Else we risk coming across as 'that person.'

A look back at Kellogg Courses: Fall 2009

The thanksgiving break gave me some time to reflect on the Kellogg courses that I have taken so far, and what I have learned from them. So I decided to do a rundown of the courses I took, specifically relevant to anyone applying to Kellogg or anyone at Kellogg deciding between courses. These are Fall 2009 courses; will analyze other quarters in subsequent blog posts.


Fall 2009

Leadership in Organizations (MORS-470): This is a compulsory, pre-term course that students take with their sections. The main lessons taught in the course are related to decision-making, persuading and motivating people, making change happen, culture and negotiation. This course discussed several topics from some of my favorite books on leadership. Since one does not get to choose the professor for the course, I was glad I got Professor Galinsky for the course. He has done extensive research on several topics taught on the course, and manages class dynamics very well to make for a very entertaining class environment.

The only problem with this course, and with other MORS courses in general is that it takes a while to change one's own habits to incorporate everything learned in the class. Some of the lessons can be applied immediately. As an example, I used some of the things I learned around how to structure where people sit to build the right kind of environment, in last year's MIT Sales competition.However the other lessons are still in the book/coursepack, waiting to be applied. If only changing habits was easy. Still, lot of Kellogg Alumni have told me that they remember and use lessons from MORS courses more so than any other course.

Business Strategy (MGMT-431): This course serves as an introductory course to Business Strategy, again compulsory for all Kellogg students. You take this course with your section; in my case, I took it with my MMM section. The format is one lecture and one case per week. The course teaches basics of Business Strategy, including competitive strategy, competitive advantage, industry analysis, horizontal and vertical integration, and game theory. In essence, it teaches one to apply basic strategy framework to solve problems.

One interesting part of the course was a final project in which we were allowed to choose any company interested in launching electric cars, and analyze and critique one part of their strategy. My team and I analyzed the launch of the Chevy Volt, and came up with several interesting hypothesis. In the event, we made the argument why Chevy Volt should not accept the initial suggestions we had; the professor was OK with that sort of positioning, as long as we defended it well.

Again, I got lucky in the fact that we got Professor Busse as our teacher. She was by far one of the most prepared and enthusiastic professors I have come across. Her slides and examples were amazing, and helped me tremendously in preparing for consulting interviews. I referred to the slide that I put together for the finals of this course often during the interview.

Marketing Management (MKTG-430): This course is an introduction to marketing concepts such as 4Cs, 3Ps, STP etc. One of the biggest misconceptions that people with a non-marketing background like me have that marketing was all about advertising and PR. Instead, the course teaches marketing from a strategic perspective; how do you determine which markets to enter based on your competitive advantages, how to segment and select the right targets for your products, how to price products etc.

My professor for the course was Professor Hennessy, who in my opinion, is one of the best marketing professors in the world. She combines years of experience as a senior marketing executive, practical experience in consulting with clients such as Microsoft and Target, and her awesome sense of humor to create a very engaging environment in the classroom. I hardly ever looked at the clock in her class; the hour and a half went by so fast. She also invests a lot in helping students; her last class is always a guide on how to market yourself in recruiting.

One of the questions that I often get is what course should a first year student take in the fall if he/she is recruiting for consulting - Marketing, or Finance? I strongly recommend Marketing; several cases tend to have a big marketing component, from New Market Entry, New Product Launch, Profitability analysis etc.


Accounting For Decision Making (ACCT-430-0): Accounting. You always need it. It's almost never fun. That being said, I did get a great teacher, Professor Sridharan. He is very patient and teaches the concepts several times, which is very helpful for someone coming from a non-accounting background like me. He is also very nice, and I felt bad if I was ever behind in class because of that!

I have not covered two half-credit courses that I took in the first quarter; Analytical Methods for Operations, and Design. Both of them are MMM specific and have changed substantially even in one year.

Business School Perceptions

Recently, I came across a link to a NPR show 'On Point' which hosted Dean Blount (Kellogg), Dean Noria (HBS) and Dean Lyons (Berkeley Haas). The show addressed questions such as what Business schools can do to help reboot the American economy.

The show was fascinating - the big question was why do 60% of students go into Finance or Consulting (myself included)? And are these students doing nothing but the same financial engineering, and over-priced consulting 'value add' that doesn't get the economy itself? I have some counter-arguments:

1. While you might not like finance and consulting, they are essential parts of the economy. Financial services are needed for smoothly functioning capital markets, access to capital for entrepreneurs, loans etc. Yes, there are a lot of people making loads of money for what seems like little value-add, but the simple answer is, these services are essential. Should compensation for bankers go down in the long run? Perhaps they should - or perhaps compensation for successfully building businesses should go up to match that. What about consulting? The fact is that it is an essential, and often, immensely valuable service for large companies. Consultants help these companies complement their existing talent pool, bring in expertise from outside the company, and a much needed outsider's perspective. Are there wasted projects? Of course there are. But there is waste everywhere - manufacturing, startups etc.

2. Second, one must look through not just where B School grads go immediately after school, but also, what they do later in life. So many ex-consultants and bankers end up as key executives in large companies, or as Entrepreneurs and investors in Startups. These professions are great in helping people 'polishing' several skills. Do they teach people how to launch and build companies? No, but they can complement existing skills that people come in with.


While the show itself was interesting, what was more interesting was the comments that people left on the website. Take a look at some of them.

"My impression of the kids coming out of business schools today is that the business they are taught is not how to make a good product, how to sell it, or provied good business service but instead are being taught how to weed every little percentile out of their customers which doesn’t provide good business.

No one is interested in manufacturing or making anything – just passing that piece of paper or bundle of mortgages and credit card debt around and around like magical chairs until the last person holding gets burnt.

"I don’t have much respect or confidence for our business school graduates today."

"Many of our finest insightful and innovative economists have commented that business education is more of a problem for our economy than an advantage. (ex:Tom Hudson,Nouriel Roubini, Ravi Batra) Ann’s remarks about financialization describe their critique well. Why are we wasting so many education dollars on business degrees that turn our talented students into brainwashed predators in service to oligarchic interests? People who needed some accounting and management training used to attend inexpensive business academies, and leave their ethics intact. I was dismayed recently when exposed to the financially and ponzi oriented business propoganda being spouted at, of all places, the YMCA. Father and sons slave-catchers was about the limit, I’d thought. The lottery mentality (as taught MBAs) is driving us all crazy and keeping us from desperately needed real work."

"So, 5% of HBS is “solving important problems” — but the other 95% are figuring out how to swindle America: Goldman Sachs et al Cabal (see Baseline Scenario and other blogs), A.C. Nielson on-line data “scrapers” and J&J, Merck and pharma-cons. C’mon, Tom, ask some pointed questions and force the HBS Dean and GS “education leader” to get off their talking points. This is not informative at all."

You get the point. But this made me think: is this what the 'rest' of America thinks of B Schools? Or is there a self-selection bias on who leaves comments on this blog? Ah, I wonder...