9 posts tagged “edgar sanchez”

I have to agree. Entrepreneurs have always led change. In fact, one of the world’s foremost thinkers, Malcom Gladwell, thinks so.

Malcom Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker but best known for his two number one best selling books “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” discussed Social Change with another respected thinker Mark Kingwell, a philosophy professor from the University of Toronto.

I attended the seminar that was held on May 13, 2008 at Convocation Hall, in Toronto, Canada. The one point I came out with was that nothing beats doing, and best doers are entrepreneurs.

Gladwell argued that social change is brought about action and not so much about knowing. As an example, he asked the question: What has Al Gore accomplished in the last 8 years of creating awareness for climate change? Gladwell argued that not much. Sure he has created awareness of a problem, but where are the results.

The hope for action lies in entrepreneurs and technical experts, Gladwell said. True enough, a clear example would be organizations like kiva.org and International Development Enterprise (IDE).

Kiva.org is the online micro lender that has helped thousands of poor people connect with lenders to start businesses. Everyone told founders’ Matt and Jessica Flannery that their idea would not work. That making small loans of $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries would not work. Yet today, Kiva.org has a welcomed problem any organization would have; They have too much money and not enough entrepreneurs to lend to. Maclean’s wrote about it last year in an article entitled “No more Cash please we are drowning in it”

Through IDE, Paul Polak has been fighting poverty for the past 25 years and is the author of new book entitled “Out of Poverty”. Watch Paul Polak on The Hour where Paul Polak discusses how he has helped 17 million people out of poverty and his plan to continue to help the 1.2 billion impoverished people around the world who live on less than $1 a day.

The model for successful social change as shown by entrepreneurs according to Gladwell, Doing first, small Goals second, Focus third and finally, fourth, create awareness.

I have to agree. Entrepreneurs have always led change. In fact, one of the world’s foremost thinkers, Malcom Gladwell, thinks so.

Malcom Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker but best known for his two number one best selling books “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” discussed Social Change with another respected thinker Mark Kingwell, a philosophy professor from the University of Toronto.

I attended the seminar that was held on May 13, 2008 at Convocation Hall, in Toronto, Canada. The one point I came out with was that nothing beats doing, and best doers are entrepreneurs.

Gladwell argued that social change is brought about action and not so much about knowing. As an example, he asked the question: What has Al Gore accomplished in the last 8 years of creating awareness for climate change? Gladwell argued that not much. Sure he has created awareness of a problem, but where are the results.

The hope for action lies in entrepreneurs and technical experts, Gladwell said. True enough, a clear example would be organizations like kiva.org and International Development Enterprise (IDE).

Kiva.org is the online micro lender that has helped thousands of poor people connect with lenders to start businesses. Everyone told founders’ Matt and Jessica Flannery that their idea would not work. That making small loans of $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries would not work. Yet today, Kiva.org has a welcomed problem any organization would have; They have too much money and not enough entrepreneurs to lend to. Maclean’s wrote about it last year in an article entitled “No more Cash please we are drowning in it”

Through IDE, Paul Polak has been fighting poverty for the past 25 years and is the author of new book entitled “Out of Poverty”. Watch Paul Polak on The Hour where Paul Polak discusses how he has helped 17 million people out of poverty and his plan to continue to help the 1.2 billion impoverished people around the world who live on less than $1 a day.

The model for successful social change as shown by entrepreneurs according to Gladwell, Doing first, small Goals second, Focus third and finally, fourth, create awareness.

Many of us tend to get caught up on the daily routine of keeping things running and forget to manage the big picture. But it is crucial that you set aside some time to work on the strategy of the company. Otherwise, one day you can find yourself barely trying to keep afloat or worse out of business altogether.

Strategy entails focusing on activities to maintain competitive, providing leadership for your company. This means keeping in touch with customer changing needs. By focusing on your customer, you quickly realize that for example they are no longer buying CDs but downloading music. So rather than doing business as usual, the leadership has to be there to provide the direction to address the change in customer needs.

Strategy can also be applied on a personal basis. A simple example is if you are currently investing in some financial instrument such as stock, bond or money market but getting a return far less than the debt you are carrying. Does this really make sense, the answer is obviously no, you are better off paying off the debt or loan first. See the big picture, that by paying off your credit card debt at 20%, you are actually getting an equivalent of 20% return on your money. Rather than making a possible 5% if you were in invested in a GICs or possible 10% in a stock.

The late Peter Drucker summed it up best when he said, “Leadership is doing the right things, and management is doing things right”. Remain strategically focused and truly be the captain of your ship.

Having hit parity and even surpassing the U.S. dollar many are asking how long will this ride last.  The answer is no one really knows.  However, we can hypothesize that it will depend how fast the U.S.  economy recovers.

The U.S. represents one third of the world's economy, U.S $13 trillion.  And although many have argued that China and India will pick the U.S. slack this still has to be seen.  More specifically for Canada, it means that China and India will need to pick up Canada's commodities and services respectively.  For a more detailed discussion see "Bet you a Loonie U.S. Still Matters".

But what does a high dollar mean for business and investors?  Many manufacturers have seen their companies suffer as a result of poor exports and high material costs.  But a high dollars also means there is also an opportunity for companies to take advantage by retooling and making investments in machinery and systems to improve productivity. 

Investors's could you use the high dollar value to buy into U.S. equities.  Prior to parity you had to deal with foreign exchange risk.  For now that risk has been eliminated.  Even if the Canadian dollar were to drop, the investments made in U.S. equities would be hedged. 

Take a strategic approach and see how you can leverage the high Canadian dollar. 

One of the key goals of management is to position the company so it can compete effectively. No one has articulated this better than Michael Porter. Michael porter is a business strategy professor at Harvard.

One of the textbook examples of how to position a company is Dell. Dell’s strategy of uniquely serving its customers directly and customizing computers to users needs had been effective since its launch. Dell was able to carve out significant market share that allowed it to grow to a $50 billion dollar company.

But last year Dell was having a hard time competing. HP had come back strong and started taking back some market share. This had forced Michael Dell back to the position of CEO in Jan 31st of this year.

So what does Dell do? They come up with a retail strategy. They start selling computers through Walmart and so far it has been successful. They have plans to expand by selling in other retail outlets.

What does this say about sustainable competitive strategy? This says that there is no such thing as sustainable. A strategy has a finite life. You constantly have to be in touch with the market and customers to satisfy their needs. Your strategy will eventually need tweaking due to market forces, forces such as those that Porter talks about in his five-force analysis of industry. One of those key forces is technology.

It has been my sentiment ever since high school that you cannot be rich unless you work for yourself.  In other words you have to start your own company.  Granted that many people are not entrepreneurs, and like the security of a job.  But in the end, it goes back to fundamentals of risk and reward.  In order to gain that reward you must take on risk.  The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.  But as you are well aware that it could also go the other way.  You can risk big and lose big. 

Nevertheless, my sentiment is echoed in a new book, Get Smarter: life and business lessons, by billionaire Symour Schulich, he says " I don't think a person can ever get really rich working for someone else, although there are forms of psychic and altruistic satisfaction in many career lines". 

I recently tuned into an interview with Henry Mintzberg.  He talks about his upcoming book  "Managing Right Now".  Professor Mintzberg succinctly defines managerial work by referring to four planes:

Plane #1.  The Thinking Plane---which involves strategizing, insights, big picture stuff

Plane#2. The Information Plane---processing information, finding out what is going on, issuing orders etc.

Plane#3.  The People Plane--Leading people and linking to people externally.  I agree with his point that leadership and management are one in the same.  He asks, "Have you ever seen a leader that is a bad manager or vice-versa?"  The answer is clearly, no.  So he does not understand why people tend to  separate the two, although he says it is ok to separate some characteristics..  But ultimately his view is" ..the separation [of] leaders and managers is nonsense and creates a lot of misery.  Managers have to be leaders and leaders have to be managers.."

Plane#4. The Action Plane--Managing projects, fighting fighters internally, and doing deals externally.

Pretty basic stuff that should not leave anyone guessing what management is about.

Can Canadian companies compete in a global economy?

This will easily be another story that could be part of the new book "Why Mexicans don't drink Molson".  Essentially,  the book criticizes Canadian companies for having a domestic mentality and not being able to compete internationally.