Think Like an Innovator - Video - Harvard Business Review
Check out Dr. Dyer's Harvard Business Review interview. Very interesting.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
July Newsletter
We are very excited for the second annual strategy program reunion. As you all saw, we will be holding it on Thursday, September 29 and Friday, September 30. We should really enjoy a great time reconnecting as well as learning. We also now have a speaker for the event! Artell Smith, Global Head of HR at Aon Hewitt, will be speaking at the event. He will be speaking about career paths (i.e, how to progress in your current career or make a switch), his thoughts on compensation, and any other topic you think will be useful. Please send me an e-mail if you have a topic you would be interested to hear his take on. Should be very interesting.
Below you’ll find some thoughts from Barrett, LaDon, and me on the program's Twitter account, missionary work, and the new ESPN book. Please enjoy!
Twitter (by Barrett)
"What are you doing?". That was the question Twitter used to launch its platform in 2007. While it was not incredibly provocative question it did garner the attention of millions of text-happy teenagers and a few key celebrities. Unfortunately that original question has caused main-stream America to be very confused as to whether tweeting is simply just noise or whether it's meaningful content. If you are debating about whether to jump on the bandwagon or not, consider the questions Twitter should have originally asked: "What do you find interesting?", "What inspires you?", "What did you learn today?". These are the questions you should considering answering when contemplating your next 140 character tweet.
Twitter is a very powerful and misunderstood technology. Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not require mutual consent of both parties to either follow or be followed. This dynamic opens up many interesting possibilities. For example a few thing you can use Twitter to do are:
- Establish your personal brand
- Create a professional niche
- Collaborate with like-minded individuals
- Gain competitive intelligence
- Read real-time news feeds
- Follow thought-leaders, interesting companies, and people with whom you want to network
@BYUStrategy
Two years ago, one of the strategy projects in Dr. Godfrey’s class was to put together a plan for how we would keep the strategy alumni network strong. At that time, we created a LinkedIn group and a Twitter account. For the last two years @BYUStrategy has been a relatively dormant account, not anymore! Our belief is that this account can be leveraged as a key branding tool for BYU Strategy students and alumni. The goal of the account is to disseminate important information to BYU strategy audience which consists of: current and prospective strategy students, alumni, employers, and graduate programs. Tweets will primarily focus on interesting articles related to strategy topics and announcements. Please send a tweet to @BYUStrategy indicating you are a student/alumni.
Note: I (Nate) want to thank Barrett for spearheading the @BYUStrategy Twitter account. He will be working with me and each of the class reps (LaDon, Brandon, Andrew and Jeff) to provide interesting content for those that follow the account.
Spiritual (by LaDon)
My brother recently returned home from his mission to North Carolina and told me a great story.
They had been teaching a lady who was married to a less-active Mormon and was a strong Baptist. She had a tough time believing in some of the fundamental doctrines of the church that did not coincide with what she learned as a Baptist. One day, she started the lesson by saying, "I'm 97% sure that the church is true." What! What happened? She replied, "I went onto Mormon.org and found myself. There was a girl there who was raised Baptist and explained how she came to be converted. In particular she explained how she overcame the obstacle of not believing the Book of Mormon. It really helped me understand the need to pray about the Book of Mormon in a sincere manner. I did it for the first time, and I believe it's a true book." She was baptized a few weeks later!
Putting your profile on Mormon.org will help the church build a database of members and their testimonies. It's quick and simple, and I really see the value for investigators (and members with questions) to be able to find someone they relate to. I think everyone has some unique things in their backgrounds and also has unique conversion stories and unique testimony development. It is interesting to see the church put the ‘I’m a Mormon’ campaign in New York and take out ad space right in times square. All of us are unique but there are portions of our identity that resonate with those who have questions about our faith. I think it is worth your time to post your profile and Mormon.org. Maybe your profile will make it all the way to Times Square. : )
Note: LaDon would never promote this himself but I think it is a great example of doing missionary work online. He started a blog—thoughtsfromamormon.blogspot.com—that is really interesting to read whether you are a member of the church or not. Check it out.
Book Review (by Nate)
ESPN: Those Guys Have All the Fun by James Miller and Tom Shales
I listened to the BS Report (Bill Simmons) a few weeks back right when the book came out. Bill was talking with one of the authors, James Miller (http://es.pn/ji7X57). I was interested in getting the book but it wasn’t on the top of my list. While I was listening to the podcast, I bought the book (If you like to read, get a kindle!). It is a pretty lengthy book—close to 800 pages—but I finished it in a week. I could not put it down. The authors interviewed over 500 people and used the oral interviews to put together an AWESOME story of how ESPN became what it is today. If you like sports, business, and drama, this book is for you.
Now, I am one of those people that group up watching SportsCenter on Saturday mornings rather than cartoons. I loved Dan Patrick and Keith Olberman as a 10-year old—weird, right. So part of the reason I loved the book was to be able to know what really happened behind the scenes. My favorite part though was getting to know the executives and why they made the decisions they did. ESPN’s current CEO, George Bodenheimer, started as a driver. Not a NASCAR driver! A glorified taxi-cab driver from ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol to the airport. He used that time to ask as many questions to the people he was shuttling around. He was then promoted to the mail room and then applied for a job as an account executive. He worked his way up and was influential in some of ESPN’s greatest accomplishments. If you don’t read the book, know that when he started with ESPN, his dad told him that if he wanted to get into the sports and entertainment industry he should take any job at any pay they offered. In other words, if you are passionate about an industry, get in it however you can and stick with it.
Even if you don’t love sports, this is an interesting book about how a dad and his son started a cable sports channel that has become ‘The World Wide Leader in Sports’ (aka The Mothership).
Websites
Fivethirtyeight.blogspot.com – Nate Silver is a statistician who became famous for predicting 49 of the 50 states correctly in the 2008 presidential election. He is a very analytical person who uses stats to help make better guesses about political races and other topics. I thoroughly enjoy his analysis.
Grantland.com – A new website by Bill Simmons devoted to sports and pop culture. We like Bill a lot and thought you might enjoy his site if you have not already.
Bryce.vc – Bryce Roberts is a popular VC blogger in the Bay Area. Those in the Class of 2009 (and 2010) will remember that he came and spoke to us as part of a strategy class dinner. Enjoy his thoughts on the market and where tech is going…
Legalzoom.com – My wife and I have been talking about putting a simple will together and these guys have a pretty slick program. Also, check your company’s benefit package. My company provides a legal services benefit that you can enroll in for the entire year. This is great if you are buying a house and doing a will all in the same year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-10/mission-training-grooms-mormons-to-pursue-presidency-ceo-suite.html - Here’s a story from Bloomberg on LDS missions. Enjoy…
Monday, February 28, 2011
February Newsletter
Strategy Students/Alumni,
We hope you’re having a terrific New Year and are enjoying the BYU basketball team. We never thought that BYU would have the leading scorer in the country or ranked 3rd in the nation and have a chance at a number one seed in the tourney, but as of today, that’s all true.
We hope you enjoy this strategy newsletter/update. Please let us know if you have any feedback or thoughts for us on the newsletter (good or bad).
Career Progression (by LaDon)
In our last newsletter you heard about Nate’s trip to Asia. I’ve been very happy to hear about how Nate’s career has progressed and the experiences he’s been getting. I too have made a change. I’m no longer working at L.E.K. Consulting. On January 20, I began working for BloomReach, a tech startup with 20 employees in Silicon Valley. I thought it might be useful to talk some of you through my reasons for moving on.
First of all, consulting was an amazing first job and I was very lucky to get it. However, it took about six months for me to realize that it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Then I had to determine what I did want to do because consulting could still be the best path to get there (e.g., Kevin Rollins’ job got him into Dell. If you want to work in a big corporation, strategy consulting is a terrific way to get in at a higher level than you otherwise would).
As I spoke with many people, I was continuously told that getting a great mentor was very critical for a career. Also, I wanted to be closer to the action and decision-making than consulting permits. I decided to try to move into PE for several reasons (mentor relationships, develop new skills, etc). I interviewed with 6 firms and was not offered a position but met a lot of great people along the way (interviewers and BYU grads in PE). One of my interviewers was impressed by me and asked if I would be interested in joining a portfolio company of his. I said yes and was fortunate to be offered a position which I accepted.
Here are the reasons why:
1) Great team. My direct boss did consulting, VC, was named the top student in his class at HBS, and has been a part of 2 previous startups. The CEO and CTO are also very, very strong. One of my peers spent two years at both Bain Capital Ventures and McKinsey.
2) Strong product/strategy in a growing market. We work in the internet search area using data mining and analysis in order to drive traffic for our customers.
3) I will learn a lot about the process of building a company from ~$1.5M in revenues to $xM in revenues. Since I want to either run a business or invest in businesses, this is a skill I’m interested in.
What I have learned from the process:
2) Almost always, people make offers to those that are smart enough who they really like and show a ton of passion about doing what the company does.
3) Get to know as many people as possible. All things get done through relationships. I have my current job because one interviewer really liked me and wanted me to still work with him in some capacity.
4) Work with the smartest, best people you can. If you can find smart people who are good people, that’s a pretty terrific place to work.
Also, I cold emailed about 15 people from the BYU alumni database that now work in PE. About half returned the email and I had a couple of amazing discussions as a result. It was well worth the time. And remember that a career is long. You probably have 40 years to develop skills and relationships. Never burn bridges. And if you put in a good day of work every day for 40 years, you’ll have a great career.
WebsitesHere are some sites that I have found to be helpful.
Firefox Cheat Sheet
Don't know a Firefox shortcut, it's not bad to cheat
http://lesliefranke.com/files/
Word Champ
If you a learning/studying a foreign language Word Champ is a must for studying. Flashcards, Word Games, it is amazing how much Word Champ can do.
http://www.wordchamp.com
Convert Center
Convert Center is so helpful with little unit equations you don't know of. It is also great for the big stuff as well. Since it is like every other converter on steroids this is a "I will use this often" site
http://www.convertcenter.com/
Jimmer!!!
A few sites on Jimmer.
http://www.jimmerpoy.com/
https://www.facebook.com/
http://jimmeraingetracker.
http://dreamcatchermedia.com/
Book of the Month (from Nate)
The Why of Work by Dave Ulrich and Wendy Ulrich (http://thewhyofwork.com/)
The Why of Work gives a blueprint for how leaders can create an 'abundant organization'. In other words, leaders that create meaning in the workplace for their peers, teams, and employs. Although most of us are not at a stage in our careers where we can drive this as managers, the principles in the book are helpful to reflect on as you think about long term career goals and what type of firm you want to work for.
It has also been helpful for me to add value to meetings where I normally would have just been a fly on the wall. Dr. Dyer had a class that was focused on asking the right questions and reading this book has enabled me to ask the people I work with better questions about what we are doing well and what we could improve on as a firm.
Note that I am a bit biased in recommending this book as the authors are my mission president and his wife. For what it is worth, the book is #1 on Wall Street Journal's Business Best Seller's list. It is also on a plethora of other lists so I am not the only one who liked it. : )
All the best,
LaDon and Nate
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