Thursday, September 04, 2003

Many people debate endlessly whether certain skills can be taught or if one must be born "competent" in a certain area.  Can you be taught to sing on-key?  Or are you just born that way? These debates happen in business schools too; most people used to think that leadership was not something that could be taught, but the prevailing wisdom (thanks to Kotter, Welch, Drucker, et al) is that it can and should be part of management training. I've spoken with many colleages who feel that negotiation is something that can't be taught, but I am here to tell you differently.  After attending last period's Negotiation Analysis with the caustic-yet-brilliant Ingemar Dierickx, I know that I have improved dramatically from abysmal, pre-MBA levels.  This term, I am taking the course Managerial Negotiation, which explores the organizational behaviour/psychology of bargaining (as opposed to NA's analytical, game-theoretic approach).  In my second negotiation, paired with a friend who has no prior training, I used several learnings from my past course: controlling information flow, probing for the buyer's motivations, setting favorable anchor points (and unsetting unfavorable ones!); the negotiation went smoothly and amicably the whole way through. After class, my friend came up to me and said, "Do you have a minute?  I'd like to buy you a coffee - I really enjoyed our negotiation and thought I did pretty well, and then I saw that I paid one of the highest prices out of anyone!  Can you give me some feedback and tell me how to improve?"  We had a great conversation, drinking a couple beers in the afternoon sun, two students helping each other get better.  It was a priceless day. 5:05:05 PM    comment []

What happened in ICA a few days ago?  Many learnings persist: What is an above-normal return?  Returns above your cost of capital. Why did Boeing purchase McDonnell Douglas?  Not to acquire competitive advantage; no products, people, nor technology.  It was to control the supply of planes, and remove a competitor from the market. Porter's Five Forces analysis framework is effective for industries but never for firms in an industry.  If you see someone using this to describe a firm's competitive position, they don't know what they are talking about. Quotes from Karel Cool: "Cases are perhaps the most inefficient way of learning ever invented." "A case is not the discovery of wisdom.  It is a forum to use tools and frameworks."   4:31:59 PM    comment []

The last few days have been good.  Classes have been interesting and I've gone to dinner with two friends, catching up on summer fun, job searching, and gossip.  Everyone is back now, finally, and we all know that only four months remain of this charmed life, this special place where you can press "pause" on life for one year while you learn and grow.  It's moving more quickly now than ever and perhaps that makes us less venal and petty and perhaps more nostalgic just before we finish and lose this experience together. 4:16:12 PM    comment []