Business Schools and Buffett

The last two weeks have been full of "B"s--business schools and Jimmy Buffett!

September 16th was the 8th annual Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship Energy and Clean Technology Forum. We won an award at the elevator pitch competition last year and we were excited to be asked back to compete again this year. I love these forums as there is so much energy, so many good ideas, and so many great people throughout them. Anyone who knows me knows how competitive I am, though, so I don't consider such events successful unless I come away with an award. Some people go into such events casually and speaking extemporaneously. I do not. I come to win and prepare obsessively for it.

I spent the plane ride back from Italy refining our message down to just the bare minimum and rehearsing it to ensure that it could be delivered in less than 90 seconds. In my IMD marketing course, we learned that branding is about sacrifice; people can only absorb a few messages. Nothing could be truer about elevator pitches; they are like branding statements for your company or idea. There were many things I would have liked to have included in the pitch but there just wasn't enough time. In many ways, this is similar to the "How do I spend my time?" challenge with which the entrepreneur is faced every day: distilling the top 3 most important things from the top 30 really incredibly important things from the top 300 really very important things. For this reason alone, I think periodic pitch preparation is a helpful exercise in prioritization.

If you would care to see the fruits of my labor, a video of it is available at The BusinessMakers Radio Show's review of their favorite pitches from the event. Looking back at it, I clearly rushed delivery a bit and didn't pause to "plant" my points as much as I would have liked. I welcome additional feedback as well!

Long story short: we won an award again--2010 Rising Venture! I am once again supremely humbled, honored, and thrilled to have won. There were some great pitches and it was exciting just to have been counted among them. As was the case last year, the whole event was a very good one and we made several new very interesting contacts.

The following Sunday I had to shift out of Rice business school mode and into IMD business school mode as we hosted the very first event of IMD's new Houston Alumni Club. It turns out that there are 500+ IMD alumni in Houston so I and a few other "enthusiasts" thought it was criminal not to have some kind of organization to bring us together.

Our first event was a simple networking and brief talk event. IMD professors Don Marchand and Michael Wade were in town for a Shell program so they came and talked with us about their research. The rest of the evening we sipped wine, networked, and discussed the future direction of our nascent organization--it was a great first step!

Then last weekend Katie, I, and my favorite wingman made a very quick (~48 hours) trip to Paris for the Jimmy Buffett concert. It was marvelous and exactly what I had hoped it would be. We spent most of our time walking around Paris, eating, dropping into museums, and drinking great wine. Friday night we tailgated with 96-point Bordeaux (Chateau Pontet-Canet 2005, way too young but still delicious) then made our way to the concert. The total attendance was maybe 1,000 people and, because everyone there was a big fan, it was basically one long, glorious sing-along. It was so much fun, as was the after-party at O'Sullivan's!

Now we're back in Houston with no travels abroad planned until our wedding in May. We came back just in time too; the weather is gorgeous! As Jimmy Buffett would say, the weather is here; wish you were beautiful!

MLK Day

Last week was an exceedingly productive one! Smart Office Energy Solutions hit a major milestone as we received our first checks/wire transfers from investors. Sure it is nice to have some money in the account but even more rewarding is what this signifies. At this incredibly early stage, investors really aren't investing in a business plan or a product; they're betting on me. All of our investors are people whom I respect and admire so their confidence in me feels great!

I tracked pretty well on my goals for last week, except that I did not make as much progress on our global business plan as I needed to and, once again, way way too many of my calories came from fat. On the brighter side, though, I hooked up with several friends, mentors, and former colleagues last week, which was wonderful.

The week ended on an outstanding note. My mother flew into town for some meetings with NASA. We then headed to Austin to spend the weekend with some friends of hers from grad school. I thought it would be fun and relaxing but my expectations were far, far exceeded.

For one thing, the house on Lake Travis was phenomenal--which was a good thing since the weather was pretty glum all weekend. Second, we ate very well all weekend, from Z Tejas Friday night to Oasis Sunday afternoon to great home cooking all the meals in between! Third, they had a Wii and a huge TV--enough said. Fourth, both Peyton Manning and Brett Favre won their playoff games decisively on that huge TV. Fifth, we had lots of fun playing cards, playing Scrabble, and just bumming around all weekend. Sixth, we went to visit Flat Creek Estate winery, which had a stellar muscat dessert wine, the Mistella.

Seventh, these friends are both psychology PhDs and they run a leadership development/executive coaching practice called The LDG. Naturally they were fascinated with my leadership development at IMD much as I was fascinated by their work with CEOs and boards of major corporations. We shared a great deal of common interest and the weekend was fraught with discussions and anecdotes about the only thing that really makes businesses succeed or fail: people. These two really know their stuff so it was no surprise that their phone was ringing off the hook all weekend with executives hoping to retain their services--very, very impressive.

Mom and I drove back to Houston last night very relaxed after having spent a great weekend with some wonderful people. Then Mom had an early flight this morning and it was back to focusing on my startup. The weekend left me with nearly boundless energy, though, and today already has been incredibly productive.

As today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I did take some time to read up on MLK and reflect on what his story means to me. There are many things to take from his story, but a few particularly resounded with me, in no particular order.

1. The power of oration: the man was simply phenomenal at not only writing/improvising his speeches, but at delivering them. It is amazing how powerful oration can be--for good or ill--and I wonder how the changing landscape of media and technology will affect it. Certainly an individual voice can reach many more ears much more swiftly than in the past. However, that voice will also have to compete with a much greater cacophony of competing voices. It will be interesting to see. One thing is for certain, though, the early 60's were a grand time for oration, producing both MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech and JFK's "To the Moon" speech--both of which still give me chills.

2. The power of non-violent resistance: whatever happened to non-violent resistance anyway? It seems that now everyone resists with terrorism or overt military action, neither of which seem to be all that effective in achieving desired end results. I'm not sure why non-violent resistance seems to be so effective--perhaps it's because it forces everyone (not only those in opposition but also all the onlookers) to humanize the resisters, creating empathy. Violence does the opposite; according to George Kohlrieser, violence is only possible when human bonding has broken down. Therefore violent acts inherently objectify, rather than humanize, people and humans tend to reach agreements with other humans more than they reach agreements with objects.

3. You don't have to be perfect to make a huge difference: MLK was far from perfect and he was totally upfront about that. He was a notorious adulterer (Again a striking resemblance to JFK!), which is particularly imperfect in light of his being a Baptist minister! The FBI tried to discredit him by spreading reports of his transgressions but, at the end of the day, people forgave him and got behind his mission. We live in a time in which it is increasingly impossible to hide any aspect of yourself--perfect or imperfect--and it takes far less than the FBI to dig up your dirty laundry. No human is perfect, though, and I think the realization that celebrities and role models are not perfect has the potential to humanize them. If they put up a perfect persona and then are inevitably found out, the public turns against them, "AHA! You made be feel inadequate because you were so perfect but you totally are NOT!" Evidence: Tiger Woods. If instead they are upfront about it, the public may not approve per se, but they at least can empathize with the imperfection.

I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect. I also unfairly project that on others too. I'll never forget my PDI coach (IMD's personal development program included a year-long interaction with a Jungian analyst, called PDI.) telling me how she felt that I put tremendous performance pressure on her. I'm sure I do it to employees and even friends and family too. I try to be cognizant of that and ease off a bit. MLK is a good example to remind me that, imperfect as I am, I still have the power to make a positive impact. We all do.

Sustainability

I'm not sure if it is intentional or not (I suspect it is, as every part of this program has been planned out in excruciating detail.) but over the past two weeks our courses have taken on a sustainability theme.

In Entrepreneurship we have been studying cases of social entrepreneurs, startups that help people and/or the environment while still generating profits. In our presentation skills workshop, one group presented, received feedback, and then re-presented a new system for measuring the net social value added to society by businesses. In POM we have studied how one of the world's largest power companies was able to develop and implement a social responsibility plan with very little time and budgetary requirement. Tomorrow in Economics we will analyze the economics of trade, development, and sustainability.

It's great the way it all comes together from several different angles. Because this is a general management program it is important for us to understand how a key goal (in this case, social responsibility) can be accomplished by different business functions--individually or all together.

Furthermore it is gratifying to me personally that IMD emphasizes sustainability. As anyone who has read my first blog entry will know, sustainability is very important to me and I'm pleased that this program does more than pay it lip service. I can see on their faces that there is very genuine interest and inspiration in my classmates too. We are not here just to learn how to "get rich." We are here to learn how to be more effective at making the world a better place. It's a hell of a challenge, but it is worth it.

Presentation Skills

Today and tomorrow are dedicated to studying presentation theory, making presentations, analyzing video recordings of our presentations, receiving (and providing) feedback, repeat. Our leader for these sessions is Steve Knight, who has been awesome so far. He has offered plenty of relevant advice to everyone, especially the non-native English speakers.

My mobile phone all but died last night so I am in the market for a new one. Accordingly it may be a few days before I am taking pictures again. In the mean time, February's pictures thus far are here.

Happy [belated] Valentine's Day to all and thank you SO MUCH to those who sent me cards. I know it isn't cheap to send real mail across the Atlantic but the smiles your cards induced were priceless.

Brazilian High

Yesterday was awesome. It was full of surprises from our faculty, each one better than the last. Because some prospective students read this blog and because the surprises were critical to today's success, I'll refrain from any real explanation. The cool part was that it was our first day of cross-functional project work: addressing a business case from accounting, marketing, and leadership perspectives within our groups.

At the end of the day, three groups were selected randomly to present their arguments. For each group, one member was selected randomly to do the presentation to a panel of faculty members who played roles of actual decision makers/influencers in the case. Given the amount of time we had to prepare, any presentation was essentially an improvisation.

When we were first told about the presentation part of the assignment, my natural reaction was to hope that I was selected. After all, I love presenting to an audience; it's my element. Then, as I realized that I had gaping holes of knowledge about the accounting and marketing aspects of our group's proposal (We split up the work but didn't have time to regroup before the deadline.), I became a little more apprehensive about being selected.

Our group was the second of three selected to present; I was selected from my group to be the presenter--be careful what you wish for! The faculty decision makers' roles were intended to poke holes in whatever we presented, be interruptive at times, and generally stress the presenter out. I didn't know the supporting evidence for several aspects of our plan and hadn't even seen the powerpoint in its entirety, but hey, I didn't come here not to be challenged!

The faculty gave me a hard time, especially on the quantitative stuff, but it was a big rush to be up there. The class gave me a lot of support from the audience, which felt great. At the end of the day, my presentation was pretty BSy, and probably was especially underwhelming to Stewart, the Accounting prof. I spent a significant amount of time afterward thinking about what I would have/should have said and receiving explanations from my teammates about what our slides actually meant. However, I received numerous backslaps and congratulations from my classmates afterward so I think I held my own.

Regardless, it was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again. Afterward the class and the professors (out of character) met in the lobby for Brazilian (The case was set in Brazil.) caipirinhas before heading down to the dungeon for a long night of project work. What a day; I can't wait to do it again!

On another note, the Chinese students made a very gracious presentation for lunar new year and gave away Chinese gifts to all the students. Coming from a country where everyone seems to be leery about competition from China, I found their unsolicited offering to be right in line with the warm, generous culture I've come to know and expect from these students.