Final Exam

I want to congratulate all of you for finishing the final exam. I received some comments about the difficulty of the assignment. I have not yet had a look at the "results" but you can be rest assured that it is not just a test of your skills, but also my teaching!

Thinking holistically in a world of increasing specialization is a chore. The assignment that I gave you was our test on whether you are thinking of the business and seeing the interconnections. Also, most importantly, you must think of a business as a living organism--often times we view the strategy side of business as a chess match--moving pieces to counter competitive factors and make bold moves that throw the business off-balance. Things get "measured" in market share, revenue per employee, blah, blah, blah. We are looking down on the chess board as the CEO. Yet of course the pieces have hearts and minds of their own and the black pieces (your competitor) also have their own separate agendas--not just combating you.

I want to encourage all of you to expand your human horizons--not just your business techniques. It is important to understand models and algorithms, yet it is more important for the international businessman or public servant to understand human behavior within the cultural context. Read a good, soulful novel about the place with whom your are interacting. I have found this very useful now that I have been dealing with Bengalis. This can lead to a certain soft power, a sense of touch, that will put a glow over the "hard" knowledge or information gleaned from your methodologies that you have learned at KDI.