Above all else

Legend has it that Henry Ford once said, if I had asked what people wanted, they would have said, faster horses (instead of a car).  In a similar vein, Steve Jobs famously said, people don't know what they want till you show it to them! I think the point is not so much that we don't need to listen to our customers.  Rather, we shouldn't depend on our customers to give us the solution.  One of the AMP faculty put it well - customers are not so good at telling us what the solution is.  But they're great at articulating what the problem is!  So our job is to listen, and then we figure out the solution to our customers' problems (and for the avoidance of doubt, I mean both external and internal customers, especially in the case of support units). Yet w hen we go about our 'customer engagement', it's so easy to fall into the trap of asking questions like "What can we do better", "How would you like us to change" and "...

Do any of you remember the Pepsi Challenge ads?  Blind taste tests to see whether people liked Coke or Pepsi better.  So we conducted our own Pepsi Challenge in class, with one hard-core Coke fan, one die-hard Pepsi fan and one major supermarket executive (who of course stocks both brands).  Three cups of cola, one Pepsi, one Coke and one generic cola.  The challenge was to identify which was which. With confidence, they each approached their three anonymized cups of cola.  They swirled, they sniffed, they sipped, they let the cola rest on their palate.  And... The Coke fan guessed that Coke was Pepsi, the Pepsi fan guessed that Pepsi was Coke, and basically everybody guessed everything wrong, except the supermarket executive who managed to identify that generic cola was generic cola, but still wrongly swapped Pepsi and Coke!  The class was in hysterics :D Cola is, in the end, just brown sugar water.  So how is it that Coke and Pe...

A distinctive element of the AMP is to have the participants organized in "Living Groups" of 8, specifically picked to optimize diversity of nationalities, industry and gender.  So my living group has representatives from the US, Brazil, South Africa, Switzerland, Norway, UAE and of course myself for Singapura :) The AMP participants have really diverse cultural backgrounds and personal characters of course.  As an example, some cultures and personalities talk a lot, while others don't.  Like, it seems to me that our US friends have a tendency to value speaking up, just because.  Say something, even if you don't know it's right.  And be OK with getting shot down if it's dumb. I think you can make the argument that there is value to this, because it creates an environment where wacky ideas and moonshots can be aired.  So sure, you risk a surfeit of hot air, but sometimes a jewel pops out.  And it is generally true that verbalizing helps y...

A distinctive element of the AMP is to have the participants organized in "Living Groups" of 8, specifically picked to optimize diversity of nationalities, industry and gender.  So my living group is a mini United Nations of the US, Brazil, South Africa, Switzerland, Norway, UAE and of course myself for Singapura :) The diversity in style and culture has a practical impact.  The schedule is pretty intense and requires a lot of cooperation to work on projects and rely on each other to divide and conquer the copious number of assignments.  So the program includes a day with a personal/team coach to iron out our understanding of our respective work and communication styles. It's kinda funny but our coach's name is actually Sex.  Real name.  According to him, it’s a fairly common Irish surname, and he shared some backstory about his life and dealing with that surname.  He is endearingly cool about it :) Anyway, one of coach Sex's exer...

It's a long flight from Singapore to Boston.  As I usually do on these flights, I catch up on the movies!  This time, I watched the latest instalment of the Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.  Pirates is the usual Johnny Depp vehicle - dressed up as Jack Sparrow, he'd be entertaining in an empty room.  But this being the fifth instalment, you get the feeling that Johnny's just doing it for the money now.  King Arthur is shot with a number of Guy Ritchie's familiar quick jump cut sequences, which works well in mafia/low life criminal movies, but translates rather poorly to Camelot (which presumably is why the film bombed at the box office).  Nope, no artsy philosophical flicks for me - I am a cinematic Philistine, so sue me. Aaaanyway.  Major spoilers ahead. ===== In a nutshell, Jack Sparrow's old frenemy, the by-now-extremely-wealthy-pirate-with-jewel-encrusted-pegleg...

They're making me write a blog for the office.  So two birds with one stone, it goes up here too :D ===== So people have been asking me if I’m looking forward to the next 7 weeks in Boston.  Here’s the thing.  I'm worried about three main issues (a) hor fun/hae mee/bak kut teh deprivation and MSG withdrawal symptoms; (b) do I even remember how to study?!; (c) how will I function without my wife telling me where I'm supposed to be! I once went on a business trip to the US.  20+ exhausting hours later, I staggered out of the plane and waited at the luggage carousel, watching blearily as assorted bags and haversacks rumbled past.  2 minutes later, I was on the phone with my wife. “Uh… what colour is my luggage dear?” True story. But I digress.  The point of this blog is to talk about the HBS AMP.  Which I haven’t started yet.  But A says, write a blog!  So I guess I’ll have to talk about the pre-course work.  You...