Chapter 4 – OB - HR Group Assignment - multiculture conflicts

Background: Your Company is growing to 150 employees. Being an international company, you have excellent employees from many culture backgrounds. However, since about 1 year ago, they naturally break into ethics groups A, B and C. The groups started to develop conflicts and hurt company communications and collaboration. e.g. group A believes group B are too aggressive, group B thinks group C are too selfish, group C talks about how lazy group A is.

For a company to realize its potential and be successful, it is essential for well-functioning teams to be in place in all areas of the business. Effective teamwork and collaboration throughout a company can be a significant competitive advantage, especially in these times of rapid changes and the globalization of businesses. Strong teams help a company innovate, adapt to change and execute more quickly.

Creating a team and its culture, managing team communication and building team trust are but a few of the responsibilities of a leader. I will take steps as follows.  

Crossing groups ‘trainings’ – two groups will sit with the other group watching while they are working so to understand how other groups work & why other groups work in their ways, measure other groups’ contributions to the company and assess how their performance in the current ways can make a difference for the company. Group B has to be aggressive because they work to sell. Group B is a R&D group –they come in late but they work late.

Culture & background differences awareness – have parties to celebrate different cultural holidays, for example, Chinese New Year & Indian New Year celebrations, Mexican Independence day parade, etc. Through these participations, employees from other groups are involved in new cultures and the interactions among groups become natural. They can understand more about other cultures. Eventually, they can understand others better and conflicts will become less and less.  

Team leaders’ weekly meetings – I will call for weekly meetings with all group leaders. On the meetings, we will review what happened on the previous week and discuss what we should do the following week to make communication and collaboration more efficient & effective.

Fire group leaders if the above won’t work –it is a difficult decision but if the leaders can’t perform their leadership to eliminate the conflicts and to be a real ‘team’ player, we will have to let them go! Teamwork is not only limited to the one small team. The company is a big team, which is composed of smaller teams, so having leaders with collaboration and communication skills is essential to the company’s success.  

Chapter 4 – OB - Assignment 2: How OTHER people will characterize you as a leader, using VCM model?

Leadership includes three fundamental clusters of skills and availabilities: creating vision, garnering commitment to that vision, and monitoring and managing progress toward the realization of that vision.

Vision – powerful leaders have a clear vision of where they want their organization to go. Vision is the view a person holds about what the organization will look like and do in the future. Some people have greater visions than others, and some have visions that extend further into the future than others.

Vision is an essential part of leadership. Having a vision requires creativity; one must be able to think and see beyond the present timeframe and beyond the usual options, for example, Steve Jobs.

Commitment – the ability to garner the commitment of others to one’s vision is a key cluster of leadership skills. A leader may have a vision of what an organization can become, but unless others receive and become committed to that vision, it is unlikely to be realized. Leaders can create visions, but commitment, on the other hand, is offered by followers.

As a leader, I foster commitment in a variety of ways: weekly meetings, one-on-one interactions, involving others in the decision – making process, and by modeling commitment to an idea, to name a few.

Monitoring and managing progress toward the vision – The third cluster of skills in leadership that we see is the ability to monitor and manage progress of the organization toward the vision. Management is a component of leadership. As a leader, ensuring that deadlines are met, objectives are achieved, and budgets are used appropriately are valuable and necessary leadership skills.

Other people might not characterize me as a balanced VCM model just because I am relatively weak on creativity. I admit that I am not a genius as Steve Jobs but I do have vision for the team I lead and I stand firm on the vision. Overall, I am a balanced VCM model leader.

Chapter 3 – Accounting- Group Assignment: Analysis of Apple Financial Statement

We analyzed Apple Inc's financial statement Q3 2011 (April-June, 2011) at link (group meeting 930-1015pm Tue Oct 18^th, 2011).

Apple has posted some ludicrously huge numbers for their Q3 2011, with quarterly revenue reaching $28.7 billion and a net profit of $7.31 billion, both new records. By comparison, 2010′s Q3 was $15.7 billion in revenue with a profit of $3.25 billion.

Apple’s Q3 2011 Highlights:

·         Revenue increased 82% year over year

·         Profits increased 125% year over year

·         Gross margin was 41.7% compared to 39.1% in the year-ago quarter

·         Retail revenue increased 36% year over year

·         International sales accounted for 62% of the quarter’s revenue

o    Americas revenue grew 63% year over year

o    Europe revenue grew 71% year over year

o    Japan revenue grew 66% year over year

o    Asia Pacific revenue exploded 247% year over year

Hardware Numbers:

·         iPhones sold: 20.34 million, a 142% increase year over year

·         iPads sold: 9.25 million, a 183% increase year over year

·         Macs sold: 3.95 million, a 14% increase year over year

·         iPods sold: 7.54 million, a 20% decline year over year

In Q3, Apple released iPad 2 & iPhone 4 (service carrier AT&T) in March 2011. The new release of the 2 major products & the international sales increase (62% of the quarter revenue) are the main reasons for the quarter’s revenue increase.

We agreed that the net profit Apple provided is correct.

However, when we read Apple's own analysis at link, we realized that the grow trend that Apple declared for the rest of the year overlooked some information, for example, the iPhone/iPad has lot more competitors come, such as, Samsung, HTC, Google, Amazon, etc. Even Apple used to be run by the genius and the company’s product line for the next 4 years has been preset by Steve Jobs, they can’t stop innovations from their competitors. People are an organizations most important asset, different leaders run an organization differently. There are engineers left from Facebook for Apple, there will be engineers leaving Apple for Apple’s competitors. Additionally, they shifted the focus from Hardware innovation to Software, iOS, iCloud, that creates more uncertainty. Thirdly, the prices for Apple products, from iPhone to iPad to Mac, are relatively high to most of the consumers worldwide. It is true that people would sell Kidney for an Apple product which the battery of the product is not replaceable, which means, the product itself will push you to buy a newer version in the market in about 2 years when the battery is no longer functional. How many kidneys does one consumer have? Finally, Apple has already moved its iPad production from China to Brazil. Some predicted that Apple would lower iPad production & increase iPhone’s. However Brazil has very strict policy on manufacturing & selling cell phones. The labor cost in Brazil is 6 times higher than that of in China. We don’t think it is a good sign for Apple’s next quarter or next quarters.

P.S.: I would like to share with you some news as follows on new released smart phones.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Samsung-Galaxy-Nexus-Android-Smartphone-Features-Ice-Cream-Sandwich-132883/

http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/214763/motorola-droid-razr-and-samsung-galaxy-nexus-revealed

Chapter 1 - Marketing- Group Project for Group C

Special thanks to Linda & Justin. Based on their contributions, I have the summarized notes as follows.

Group C - Go! Kids

Consumer Analysis

A.      Is out product/service makeable? How do you know?

Yes, it is makeable!

According to our plan, rent the facility from local elementary schools and hire tutors will be the majority preparation work and both of them are very much applicable. The local elementary school we are targeting to open our 1^st school has no government education fund so some qualified certified teachers have been laid off and some classrooms are vacant.

B.      Is our product marketable?

Yes, we are planning to post fliers on the bulletin board in the schools & distribute to local church, medical centers such as Stanford Medical centers, advertise on local Chinese TV & Chinese radio (since approx 50% of the population is Chinese)

C.      What is the buying process?

It could even start before the kids were born. The parents will be in the process of awareness - comparison- decision, until they are ready to send their kids to our school.

D.      Who are the influencers?

There are many influencers, from friends, neighbors, colleagues, medias, even the nurses at Medical centers, etc.

E.       Who needs the product and why?

Laws require children under age 14 to have supervision.  For certain reasons, their parents have to find their underage children supervision after the class and before they are picked up. The after school is the perfect place for those kids to go. It reliefs the burden of the parents, and also provides opportunities for kids to social with other kids.  

F.       Is it planned or impulse buy?

It is planned buy!

G.     What are (or will be) the perception of our product?

Go! Kids, Gold Start.

Market Analysis

A.      Is there a market for our product? How do we know?

Yes, we are targeting to open the first after school in Palo Alto where there are only 2 similar after school programs.

B.      What is the market size, growth, segments, georgics?

Huge market – approx 50% of the population in the city are Chinese.

C.      What are the trends?
      Growing – our unique after school service is a combination of after school academic tutoring classes and Chinese-language schools which usually operate on weekends.

 

Day 3 - Accounting - The Ten Day MBA

Accounting

2 main purposes of accounting:

-          Provide information on business and its performance to the statkeholders

-          Control and safeguard the assets of the business

2 types of accounting:

-          Financial accounting: results & financial position of business, historic information, no purpose to improve business performance

-          Managerial accounting: information for control, management & improvement of business, not only historic information, also forecasts.

3 main financial statements:

-          Balance sheet: structure of assets and financial sources to finance assets as of particular date

-          Income statement: results of operations for particular period

-          Cash flow statement: changes in cash position for particular period

The fundamental equation of accounting: Assets = Liabilities + Owners’ Equity

With the statement of cash flows it was demonstrated that the changes during the year in the cash balance had to result from changes in assets, liabilities, and owners’ equity. The assets and liabilities changes came from the balance sheet. The owners’ equity changes were the result of changes in net income, provided in detail by the income statement. The three basic financial statements are inextricably tied together.  

Accounting records and statements always balance.

The statements can be interpreted by using Ratios.

Operating results can be analyzed and managed using Variances. There are basically only two types of variances: price and volume variances. Managerial accounting is about variances.

It is fun to see how cash in/out affects the equation. I love the clips Professor Tao provided on uLearn. They are really helpful to recall the knowledge with cases/examples. I have a better idea on how to interpret the financial statements and I can’t wait to put all data together to see whether my business is a profitable business.

Chapter 2 - Assignment 2: What could be an ethical delimma you face in your business?

Ethical challenges occur in all businesses, regardless of the size. Here are three of the more common dilemmas I see faced by small business owners.

Report Income Tax – Nobody wants to pay more taxes out of its pockets. Therefore some small business owners try to get away with lowering their tax bills by under reporting revenues or taking questionable tax deductions. However it will hurt the business in a long run. For example, when they go to a bank looking for a loan, the first thing a banker will ask for is their prior year tax returns. The business owner is now stuck in a situation where he has to explain how he either does not have sufficient income to pay back a loan or explain to the banker that actually he lied on his tax returns and his business really is more profitable than what he reported to the government. Or when the business owner is trying to sell the business, the potential buyer will ask for not only the prior year tax returns but the accounting record, showing less profit won’t be attractive to the buyer (related knowledge refers to Chapter Accounting).

I will report my taxes as they are even I really don’t want to. I fully understand that taxpayers' money goes to help with paying public and social services for both the state and federal governments. These include services such as schools, hospitals, police and the fire departments. Money from taxpayers also goes towards payment for defense and international security, health care and social security. As part of education, the after school service I am running depends on tax payers’ money relatively.

Employees vs Independent Contractors – you know that if you hire an independent contractor to perform services for you business, you do NOT have to pay employment taxes. That is why small business owners prefer independent contractors over employees. Some of them ‘mistakenly’ treat everyone that ever works for them as an independent contractor. Big companies, such as Google, are more favorable independent contractors than employees. I had interviewed a lady who has been working as a contractor for Google for 3 years and her contract can’t be renewed to keep her status as a contractor so she had to look for other opportunities outside Google.

As the owner of my small business, I will hire certified experienced teachers as my full time employees. I believe their experience & expertise will guarantee the quality of my service. In a long run, it will help me build up reputation in the community and expand my business.

These are just two examples of the ethical dilemmas that small business owners like me face as they run their business daily.

There is another ethical dilemma retailers/retail stores owners would face more often but not myself. However I would like to point it out since all of us here are small business owners.

Price – Many retail stores sell to individual shoppers but some shoppers are more price conscious than the others. As a seller, you would like to sell your goods/services as much as you can but it is unfair to charge one customer $500 for what you sell to a more price conscious customer for $400. In order to get long term customers and return customers, build up reputation in the community, I think it is a better idea to provide a fair price to all customers. The market is an open market, after all.