Sunday, December 04, 2005

WRITING ABOUT HOW TO START A BUSINESS – A DISCLAIMER

A beautiful lady friend ask me sometime ago about what business to start here in the Philippines because she is moving back here and she is tired of being an employee. Funny, but I’ve been asked by the same question ever since I’ve entered business school. Every term, I have classmates asking me that question or classmates telling me “not to forget to call them when I’m starting a business because they wanted to chip in”. It is as if I knew the secret to doing business and making money but truth to tell, I only had a big mouth. Anyway, I did promise my beautiful lawyer – friend that I’ll look into it and help her “analyze” things. However, for the past few weeks, I find myself hesitating to write anything about business not because I couldn’t write nor knew what to write (actually, I already have a fairly good idea on what to write) but more like I’m not “qualified” to write something like this. Don’t get me wrong, business is a passion of mine and I’m accustomed to writing this stuffs in business school. I hesitated because I’m no expert in business, I’m no ph D and furthermore, my record as a business manager is spotty at best. I prefer to write stuffs like this when I gained credibility by making billions. That way, I know people would listen. However, I’m no way near that as of now. If I write about business at this time, I would risk being as what the Chinese proverb would describe as “kao thaan kwang lun, cher shang thaan ping”, i.e., “to argue out loud about the art of war on paper and not been to the battlefield itself.” Also, I had to do tons of research to write a business paper although I have a few insights that I could share. Then, there is also the fact that people may just do what I said and later on, blame me for their failure because I’ve “said” it. Two things changed my mind though. The first was my professor, his text message, and the book launching event and the second, was some articles I’ve read. A few months back, my professor congratulated me on my success at my oral defense of my business plan and he suggested that I took up ph D and teach at the undergraduate school. I declined to his disappointment. I had no appetite for multi – variate analysis, which is the cornerstone of doctoral studies and research and I rather teach when I already make my mark furthermore, I prefer to earn my ph D the hard way, honoris causa. A week earlier, I received a text from him, those feel good quotes, “Don’t keep searching for the truth; just let go your opinions..” a quote attributed to the Chinese sage, Seng Ts’an. And then, there was the book – launching event of his, and his speech reminded me of my promise to him, actually our class’ promise to him contained in a manifesto I wrote and signed by our classmates as a parting gift to him. I felt that it is my “duty” to write. Besides, I read some articles from business magazines purportedly as an advice and being an MBA graduate, I find it “lousy” and it sucks. I figured a few more lousy articles from me won’t hurt much, I hope. Anyway, here I am writing a blog proclaiming my opinion about what I’m going to write, proclaiming that it is my point of view and what I think of things and not as a solid fact whether or not you believe me is entirely up to you to decide. If by any chance, the articles I’ve written are in any way good, well, it is not because I’m good or a “genius” rather it is because I’m a good student, a keen observer, a reader, and I could write a few coherent sentences in English. Traits, that are expected of me, being an MBA graduate. I would also like to outline what my professor would call, a framework for my business writings. Being an MBA graduate, I would be mostly using the frameworks developed by the Positioning School of strategic management as espoused by Harvard Business School (By the way, I’m no HBS graduate) modified by the Entrepreneurial/Visionary school that my professor is championing and being taught to me and my classmates in MBA. However, I have “evolve” since my last formal academic subject in MBA in 2001 (I’d just graduated this October by the way) and I had came to “accept” other school of thoughts that would seem contradictory to the established school like the Learning School, the Cultural School, the Constructionist School, and most importantly, the Power School of thoughts. I was already leaning to that school since my last formal studies and it is fairly recent that I “discovered” that there is such a school of thought in management (all along I thought that I’m a genius, guess somebody beat me to it). If in Star Wars, there is the dark side of the force and in Harry Potter, there is the dark arts magic, well, this school is its equivalent in management. The Power school studies the political process of strategy development, namely how office politics affect the choice of corporate strategy. That is in the micro level and frankly, I’m not too keen in that. It is on the macro level that I’m interested in. At the macro level, the Power School deals with how firms utilizes their “market power” to gain advantage and realize the 4 Ps, Price (that firms dictates and not what the market wants), Profit (the more the merrier), Power to influence trends, behaviors (to gain more profit), and Prestige and sugar coating such actions and shove it down the people’s throat. This is the school of management that treats business as a “game”. If you’re thinking in such term, well, welcome to the club. I’m opening this topic because frankly my writings would reflect these thoughts and I would like to dispel any questions as to why my conclusion is this and not the other way around. I would be also adding some experience of mine however little, some observation however narrow, and some insights however insignificant to the articles I’m writing. Another thing, I would STRONGLY ADVISE that MBA students REFRAIN from reading some of the articles I’m going to write (I would indicate as such). Well, this is because I don’t want to “corrupt” and “trash” their young minds to what I’m going to write (READ: READ THE ARTICLES AT YOUR OWN SANITY). A quaint but interesting note on MBA, Henry Mintzberg wrote a book called “Managers not MBAs”. In his book, he laments that business schools are turning out analyst not managers, i.e., the skills taught in MBAs are geared toward analysis. If I may add to his assessment, MBAs are not only analysts but they are also taught to be cocky and overconfident to the extent that they have an incurable messianic complex believing that they could save the company from sure oblivion. The truth is they could and they couldn’t. Management is both a science and an art. MBA teaches the science while the art is gained through experience. MBA teaches one to run a company but not to start it nor to “lead” it. Leadership comes from experience in the line of fire. Take it from someone who is thru with business school, one cannot become a military genius in the likes of Napoleon or Alexander the great simply by studying the art of war. However, in the same breathe, a general couldn’t become a soldier of genius if he only understand on how to charge an enemy in front of his eyes and couldn’t understand the intricacies of deception and maneuver as espoused by the art of war. I end this article by stating that there is a difference between walking the talk and talking. I do the talking, you do the walking if you wanted to start a business.

A Manifesto of our Commitment

I wrote this piece as a Christmas gift and a tribute as well from our MBA class to our Strategic Management professor, Elfren Cruz, a great man who I considered my mentor. This article came out in his column in BusinessWorld dated January 15,2002 under the title, “Why I Teach”. I had since taken this commitment as a pledge to a mentor, a debt that I would repay back in due time.

In the beginning, we all have dreams. It is this dream that led us to De La Salle University and MBA. Because we believed that we lack the skills and knowledge to help us achieve our dreams and we believed that in this institution, we can learn those skills and knowledge. We were willing and able to endure all the sleepless nights, the pressure of balancing study and work, and braving through the tortuous traffic simply, because we wanted to achieve our dreams and that was all we know. We never knew of a higher calling or purpose until we took up your subject (Strategic Management). Like all of us, you also have a dream or in your business parlance, a vision. Your vision is a Philippines where no Filipino goes hungry or seen begging in the streets. Every Juan or Eva would have a decent job and lived a prosperous and dignified life. Everywhere Filipinos go, they will hold their heads high and proud of their heritage and race and not being look down upon by other races and people. To achieve this vision, you devise a strategy. Again borrowing from your word, reengineer the elite, specifically, the future elite which in this case is all of us, your student. By helping us to develop the skills, you would help us succeed in our career and make our companies more profitable and in the process, we would be hiring more people, generate employment and thus improve the lives of millions of poor Filipinos. By teaching us the frameworks to analyze our companies and making them more competitive, we would be making the Philippines competitive as well, since, the economy is but the aggregate sum of all the companies in the country. For that notable goal, you have our most sincere respect from the bottom of hearts. Before we came to class, we know only our dreams but now, thanks to you we have a vision. For this, we want to offer you, our heartfelt appreciation for what you did for us and for your noble goals, we cannot find a more appropriate response than to pledge our solemn commitment to your vision and to do all we can to improve the performance of our respective companies and in turn contribute to the national economic development. We pledge this with our heart and soul.

From the class of GSTRAMA, 2nd term, 2001 – 2002, Monday class.

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