When the Folks Give You the Business

When the Folks Give You the Business

I found this article fitting, considering we are all nearing graduation and it deals with business. Some people feel that maybe instead of sending their kids to grad school they will just buy them a business to run. Both can be seen as an investment, but actually buying a business is a bit more literal. What do you guys think of this? At first I felt this was just a case of rich kids, who were forced through school, getting handed a job by mommy and daddy. "Here's your brand new franchise". Some of the investments were not as substantial for a smaller business and is actually quite a resourceful and innovative way of investing in a business and giving someone a job at the same time.
Here's a few paragraphs from the article.

Watching fellow college students working for $7.50 an hour after graduation, Tana Walther, a fashion-design major at Kent State University in Ohio, snapped up an alternative offered by her father—to run a Pita Pit restaurant franchise he would buy.

"I guess I bought her a job," says her father, Jan Walther, of North Canton, Ohio. Prospects of a career in fashion seemed remote, and Tana, a college athlete, loved eating at Pita Pit restaurants while traveling with her track team. Her first new restaurant opened last year near campus in Kent, and the 25-year-old hopes to open several more.

Even when such start-ups work well, both parents and adult children have to make sacrifices. Dave Hughes, North Little Rock, Ark., bought a College Hunks Hauling Junk franchise last year for his son Nolen, then 22 and graduating from college. Dave had to cash in a retirement account, and Nolen had moved back home with his dad to conserve money.

"You have to be willing to make sacrifices when you own your own company," Dave told Nolen. When the two disagree, Dave says he has learned to step back. "If we butt heads, most of the time I just walk away and say, 'OK, fine, I told you what I had to say,' " Dave says. But Nolen has worked hard, often rising before dawn to drive his big trash-hauling truck around the city during rush hour. "It's a big billboard," he says.

Some parents look farther ahead, hoping their child's business will support them in retirement. After supporting his own father in old age with proceeds from his Canton, Ohio, restaurant, Walther's Cafe, Mr. Walther says he hopes his daughter will do the same for him.

Ms. Walther says she welcomes the prospect, adding, "this is a partnership."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703292704575393092548287792.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird

Building a Successful Project Team

Since our team spoke a little about a management team, and how important it is to have a qualified and ample group of people, I thought I would share an article that I found about how to build a successful team. The author talked about how creating a project team may actually be the most important part of the project creation process, but that it is crucial to select the best team available. He provided 5 tips as guidelines when selecting your business team:

• Understand the specific needs of the project. Every project is different, and the makeup of a team needs to reflect the specific goals of the project. A manager may be tempted to use the same team for every project, but this may not be the most efficient use of skills and time for the people involved. Review the specific project tasks, and determine what specific backgrounds and skills are required.
• Appoint a credible and capable leader. Project manager will guide the whole team to success through the execution of the project. The leader must have a good understanding of the project subject matter, demonstrated leadership skills, and the ability to monitor progress and keep the project on schedule. In technical fields, many employees with extensive subject knowledge may not be the best managers.
• Select team members to meet the needs of the program. Project team members are the people that get the job done. Review the specific needs of the project from Step 1, and select team members that as a whole meet all of the project requirements. If a project includes a literature review, a team member with research experience in the subject area needs to be included. A project to develop a marketing strategy needs to include team members with industry understanding and experience creating marketing approaches.
• Bring in new members to fill capability gaps. If the current employee pool does not cover all of the required needs for a project, a manager should bring in new team members, as employees or as consultants, to round out a project team. This approach is useful if an industry expert in a specific field is required. For example, if a product development team is looking to transition a product to market, it is vital for the team to employ members with commercialization and manufacturing experience.
• Monitor the performance of the team over time. Sometimes, project scope can change over time. Personnel situations can also change over time. The project manager needs to monitor the overall performance of the team as a whole, as well as that of individual team members, to ensure that the team remains best poised to finish the project successfully. This may require rotating some team members in at certain points in the project timeline for specific needs, or moving members out of the team as needed. Personnel who are underperforming need to be either motivated to improve performance, or removed from the project team.

A company is its people, and its people are what bring it success or failure. Selecting the right mix of talent, expertise and leadership will ensure that the work they do leads to success for their company. I think this was a really good article in helping explain a little bit more at what to look for when choosing a business team.

Source: http://business-project-management.suite101.com/article.cfm/building_a_successful_team

The Decision

Unless you've been living under a rock you have undoubtedly have caught wind of LeBron James and his decision to leave his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and play for the Miami Heat next season. There has been much controversy and opinion about his decision to leave and how he went about making that decision public. One of the points of contention in the aftermath of the move has been whether LeBron has hurt is image or not. Has he impeded his chances to capitalize on his own brand by leaving Cleveland or does he stand to make substantial gains by moving his image and brand to Miami? Will winning a championship in Miami mean as much to the LeBron fans as it would have if he would have won in Cleveland? How does winning with other superstars affect his ability to market himself as the face of the NBA?

Baseball and Life

You know the old saying, "Baseball is like life?" Well it got me thinking what that meant because I love sports and I wanted some clarification. So, I found a really good article: "9 Things Baseball Taught Me About Life." I think these same principles could be applied to business as well.

9. Sometimes it's o.k. to steal: Cutting corners isn't always a bad thing because it could make better use of your time.

8. Go home once in a while: Sometimes we can get too consumed in our work and forget about our family life.

7. Sometimes there is sacrifice: As with a sacrifice bunt or fly in baseball, sometimes you need to sacrifice certain things to get ahead in life.

6. A little goes a long way: Much like sacrifice, it's little things that add up to a happy life. Next time you are faced with doing something small or nothing at all, go small. You'll always win.

5. Cheer on other's accomplishments: You have to cheer on others because you would want acknowledgment also.

4. Have Patience: Baseball is all about patience and outwitting your opponent, much like life.

3. Embrace diversity: Thousands of blacks, latinos, asians, and a host of other races have provided baseball with countless hours of excitement. In life you can't just have one kind of friend. You only better yourself if you experience other cultures, travel to other countries, and make as many types of friends as you can.

2. Be there for your family: Its o.k. to have differences, but always have your family's back no matter what.

1. Sportsmanship: Win or lose you should be proud of your efforts. If your best wasn't good enough, learn from it and improve on your efforts the next time out. Don't be afraid to congratulate someone who has outdone you because you'll earn respect when you give respect.

Are Designer Sunglasses Worth the Price?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704518904575365362932852610.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_personalfinance

Are Designer Sunglasses Worth the Price?

Maybe not, writes Brett Arends. For starters, most shades are made by the same company.

Most sunglasses are made by the same company. Do you prefer the "quality" of Ray-Ban to Oakley? They're all made by one company, Italian manufacturer Luxottica–one of the biggest consumer companies that consumers have never heard of. Luxottica also makes sunglasses branded Burberry, Chanel, Polo Ralph Lauren, Paul Smith, Stella McCartney, Tiffany, Versace, Vogue, Persol, Miu Miu, Tory Burch and Donna Karan.
In many cases, the same company is also selling you the glasses. Luxottica also owns LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and Sunglass Hut. This is extreme vertical integration. The eye doctor telling you that you need a new pair of glasses, the sales people helping you choose them and the people who design and make the glasses all work for the same company.
Luxottica says it makes a gross profit of 64 cents on each dollar of sales. Even after deducting sales and advertising costs, overhead and brand licensing royalties it's still making 52 cents. That's some margin.
"A significant chunk of what you pay for isn't the quality of the lenses, it's the brand," adds Dr. Reza Dana, director of the cornea and refractive surgery service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He notes that making lenses that offer protection against harmful ultra-violet rays "isn't very expensive technology."

I copied and pasted the main pieces of the article. This is pretty interesting and it talks about vertical integration, or the extreme vertical integration, that this company Luxxotica has incorporated into their strategy and business model; Not only making all these different brands but owning all these retailers, they've done backwards and forwards integration here. We just discussed this concept in class, this is a pretty good example. Who knew that all those brands were being made from a single company. The company has crazy margins and you see that really all you're paying for is the brand and styling of the frames.

Strategy

I found this article on the Harvard Business Review website. The name of the article is "Strategy: How to Make Yours Powerfully Simple." The article goes into a three step process for strategy creation and communication. The idea is to keep your employees working toward the same corporate end and empower them to experiment.

First, the foundation of any strategy is the vision. The vision needs to be built to last even as your more specific strategies and practices change. Vision includes the values and purposes for which your company will always stand.

The second step is to articulate and communicate you company's strategic principle using a brief, to the point, action phrase that provides a sense of direction while also encouraging innovation and risk-taking.

Third, there has to be simple rules to guide your company's unique set of strategic processes, lets you nimbly and flexibly respond to unpredictable, complicated markets--and grab the hottest opportunities.

I thought this article was interesting because it is a published article from Harvard Business Review and it addresses class topics, mainly chapter 2 (Leading the Process of Crafting and Executing Strategy). Although the process described in the article describes some of the same elements in our text, it doesn't follow the same order of "phases." But, all things considered, it is nice to see that we are actually learning something relevant.

Management

I found another article in Business Week about strategy. The name of the article is, "A Bold Management Strategy: Keeping Quiet." Kathy Cloninger is CEO of Girl Scouts of USA. Cloninger has a vocal ailment, one of her two vocal cords have become paralyzed. She has trouble talking over a whisper. This has changed her management style significantly. She gives three vital lessons in the article: 1. A greater understanding of the stigma 2. Giving the spotlight to subordinates 3. Listen first, speak last.

Her explanation of lesson one is that her struggles with her voice have given her an even deeper appreciation of young people who find themselves set apart from the crowd. She ties this lesson into how the customer thinks. For example, the message for managers everywhere: There is no better way to conduct customer research than to actually experience what the customer does.

"Giving the spotlight to subordinates," lesson two, Cloninger talks about how her ailment has helped her let other speak more. She states in the article, "I've too often let myself be the organization's spokesperson...Because I lead very well verbally, I haven't really given others the chance to play this role."

Lesson three, "listen first, speak last," explains how her struggles to speak have helped her listen better. To be a leader, she adds, "you don't have to have an opinion on everything."

Nevertheless she continues to manage the Girl Scouts differently from the way she once did. "I still lean on others more than before," she says, "and I am much more conscious about giving others a chance … versus just jumping in and taking charge."

Personally, I wish my manager would shut her mouth once in a while and just let me do my job!!! I am sure you can all agree with this on some level.

Innovation

Team 4, I found a really good article on strategy in business week. The name of the article is "Innovation Perspectives - The Three I's." The article is one of a series of articles that address specific actions to make your business more innovative. The three I's mentioned in the article are introspection, immersion, and ideation.
Introspection is a self examination of your business or understanding what business you are in. To do this you must think at a fundamental level. The second I, immersion, or to immerse yourself in all aspects of your business. As stated in the article, "you need to imagine yourself as having just landed on Earth from another solar system and you are trying to learn about your business as if you knew nothing about it at all." This would address all internal and external factors of your business. Finally, ideation, which is basically brainstorming. The article says to take your team off site to a relaxing environment to talk and share ideas with each other. Then hold formal meetings to address those ideas and expand upon them. The key with ideation is to spend time away from the office.
I thought this really tied into our class discussion on formulating a strategy because it addresses the three big strategic questions: 1."Whats the company's present situation? 2.Where does the company need to go from here? 3.How should it get there?