What's Up, SEC?

The release date of my dad's book is just around the corner. The book's content very much applies to my current studies here at the Johnson School, and the intersection of its release and my life is, at the very least, well-timed.

I'm taking a course this semester called "Ethics and Corporate Culture," which is co-taught between the Business School and the Law School. Interestingly, ethics is a topic that law schools teach more effusively than business schools, although I doubt anyone could come up with a correlation to the ethical standards among graduates. In fact, when lawyers or business people do very bad things, most schools seem to simply throw up their hands, putting the distance of time between themselves and the perpetrators.

My dad's book The King Rat and His Court: Lessons in Corporate Greed, doesn't let anyone off the hook, except the honest, hardworking employee and shareholder. In addition to exposing the rats, the book calls to mind many of the inherent contradictions that MBAs and law students alike must grapple with in today's corporate milieu. Here are a few that are on my mind:

• Free market capitalism is highly effective, but only coupled with integrity, respect for others, and a sense that actions, and risks, have consequences. As our finance professor used to say over and over, "there is no free lunch"...to be sure, if there is, then the free market is broken.
• While profit seeking and greed have very different connotations, they are almost certainly shackled together, and the rare individual holds the key to separate them. All MBAs seek profits, for themselves, their firms, and the various stakeholders in their lives, but are all MBAs greedy?
• Finally, if business is all about arbitrage--or more generally, finding and creating new opportunities for profit--then surely business is about shifting the market away from equilibrium, giving one player or a group of players an advantage, or taking from one to feed another. Thus, businesses engage in price gouging, monopolizing, lobbying, and strangling the competition. What's up, SEC?

Hopefully my dad's book will put some of these issues to rest...or at least spark more questions. I'll be sure to let you know when it's available on Amazon.

BOOM shakalaka

Earlier this week I attended BOOM (Bits on our Minds), the Computing and Information Science Department's showcase of undergraduate technologies. Once I got over the fact that undergrad engineers look about 12 years old, I began talking to some of them about their creations. I saw robots, and 3D printers for food, green technologies, and of course, video games.

There was one aspect of the afternoon that stood out: it is really really fun to see things, and by things, I mean inventions. Even if the inventions are totally purposeless and will never meet the hands of a consumer, they represent progress, evolution, and to borrow a cast aside ideology from the Obama campaign--hope.

That business people often do not interact with things is odd. We interact with money, markets, customers, partners, debt, and equity, but we are not inventors and many of us have never built anything ourselves.

The truth is that making things is therapeutic. So, put away your yoga matt, fire your psychologist, and go make something, write something, or play a song on the piano. Those young, idealistic undergrads may well have a thing or two to teach us after all.

Coming Up for Air

There is a myth circulating the Johnson School that the first semester is the hardest, but I'm sitting here wondering what exactly folks mean when they say hard. First semester classes were challenging to be sure, but we were on a highly regulated schedule that ensured classes, assignments, and exams were coordinated such that the burden wasn't too much to bear.

This half semester has been a wholly different story. My class schedule extended into almost every weekend, such that 6 days a week, the light coming through the ceiling of the Atrium was the only light I saw. But classes were just the beginning...add in clubs, BRV, interviews for summer internships, associated travel, various entrepreneurial activities, and, oh yes, Thursday night bowling, and the result has been very little sleep and the inability to prioritize the things that are most important, like calling my mom and dad and my equally busy brother. I try to keep perspective and allocate time accordingly, but of late, I've even begun to neglect this, my beloved blog (and by beloved, I mean that I take great pleasure in writing it).

Clint Sidle, the leadership guru at the Johnson School, once told me very simply that all-too-often people sideline themselves. They look externally, recognize life is difficult, find particular industries impenetrable, companies too competitive, risks too great, or activities too time consuming or mentally strenuous. So, they simply bow out. They sit on the sideline and watch the team play. They take a job at their third or fourth choice company or even industry. They take the wrong immersion or the wrong classes or they don't throw their hat into the ring for an elected position.

The problem herein is that the individuals who get the big jobs or start the cool companies or become elected officials are often not the best people for those jobs--they are not the most ethical or passionate or intelligent, they simply have the biggest egos or they've got nothing to lose or they are shameless. Of course, one has to be a realist too, right?

Like everything, it depends on individual circumstances, but in the end, I believe that being a bit unrealistic--building that castle in the clouds--is the way to go. And as long as my family remains the most important thing to me, I think I'll be just fine.