When I started writing about FEMBA almost three years ago now, I told myself I’d do my best not to go radio-silent towards the end, and at the very least talk about this thing, this thing I’d circled in red pen between years two and three of the program: The Global Access Program.
I think it’s safe to say I dreaded it from the start: friends, workmates, classmates all laughed when I said that this was the one major stumbling block to my decision to attend UCLA again, and most told me they were looking forward to GAP. That the prospect of international travel, working with a startup (probably a technology based startup) in another country, and helping them to develop a comprehensive business plan, all of this sounded terribly exciting.
It’s been over and done with now for about four months. Since that time, I debated long and hard about what to say about this experience, and I think I’m going to go minimalist: I can’t think of better teammates to have gone through the process with, and I’ll be happy if I never have to go through anything similar, ever again.
One of my groupmates put it best when he said, “the ratio of learning to effort is the lowest of anything I’ve done here.” Which doesn’t mean that there isn’t learning, because there is quite a bit of it, what it really means is that the work involved to get it is far in excess of every other experience at the school. I can’t really put into terms how far in excess this is, but if you insert your favorite metaphor for comparing really large objects to really small ones here, you should have some indication of what I’m not saying here.
Interestingly, you don’t see the same kind of enthusiasm wafting from recent GAP survivors, and “survivors” is how we’re referred to by our subsequent professors, and how we refer to each other for the most part. But what I have, at least, is a set of suggestions for those who will follow:
Pick your team wisely. Really. This is the single most important task you’ll probably have in the entire FEMBA experience. Don’t just go along with your study group from your core classes, and don’t just implode your study group without a plan. Make a list of the people you want, and talk to them early. Talk about what your real goals are, whether they be high achievement, work-life balance and survival, or whatever it happens to be. Make sure you’re on the same page. Consider the possibility that students say one thing, and maybe think another. Go back to your shared experiences, and figure out what they’re really about. As Randy Pausch said about understanding men, “just ignore everything they
say and only pay attention to what they do.” Figure out what you’re really about- maybe it isn’t what you’d tell people. Compatibility is key.
Pick your project for the most boring, established company you can find. Preferably one that has been manufacturing a widget successfully in their home country for years, and wants to see if they can’t export their widget to neighboring countries or the United States. This is the second most important thing you can do to enhance your odds of survival. The alternative could be working with a company that constantly changes its focus and product roadmap to chase the sexy. Oh, and they could also run out of money before the 6 month GAP project is up.
Understand how you’re going to be graded, if that’s a component of your goals for the project: there are basically two main deliverables, the business plan itself, and the presentation. These are graded by committee, including your own advisor and a “paired” advisor who also has significant input. You need to impress both with the volume of your primary research. This is a category where weight is just as important as quality. Detailed surveys with lots of related industry respondents at trade shows might be a more value-added way to spend time than chasing down senior executives.
Develop a skeleton of the business plan and the presentation on Day One. Put everything you subsequently do into it immediately, and think about everything you might do in the context of whether or not it’s going to add value to these two products. Do only those things that will directly add bang to the products. Don’t wait until the interim deadlines to update a musty business plan, because in the meantime, you might be pursuing information you won’t be able to use in the end.
Figure there’s basically two possibilities here: One, the company isn’t viable for US entry unless certain conditions are met, some of which might be ridiculously hard or prohibitively expensive. Two, you come up with some unforeseen use for their technology that really hits gold for a particular target consumer. Don’t flatter yourself, it’s got to literally be gold, and you’ve got to be able to prove it in volume, with multiples of people holding out checkbooks.
If you can swing it, save a week at the end before the presentation of vacation or sick leave. This is crunch time, and it’s quite frankly very difficult to meet your responsibilities at home, work, and school here.
Hope that helps!
Oh, and in case you don’t want to go through the food processor that is GAP, and come out pureed on the other end, here’s what you learn: primary research, defined as feet hitting the street, talking to as many people as you can, asking them similar questions, and proving or disproving theories based on this input, is vital to learning about the prospects of a business.
Newly opened in the Orchard Hills Shopping Center off Portola Pkwy and Culver Drive, Ayame is a Japanese sushi bar and restaurant by the folks that brought us Zipangu. We ended up there in our neverending search for a decent neighborhood sushi joint, which gained new urgency now that Wasa in the Irvine Marketplace is temporarily closed.
As Randy might say, “that was only okay for me.” The spectacle was reasonably done, with the knives, and the big wooden salt shakers and the catching of the shrimp tails. The kids probably couldn’t tell the difference. But for me, and here’s how I sum up the place: I went to Benihana not long thereafter, to remind myself what the “real thing” was like.
One of my morbid fascinations is with the subject of death itself (yeah). I’m drawn to it because I fear it, and because I’ve always lived in its shadow. So it should come as no surprise that I have been keeping tabs on Randy Pausch’s journey, the unfortunate CMU professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer. He gained worldwide attention for one of the many ways he has been trying to leave something behind for his very young children for after he’s gone. I think many people talk about leaving a book, and these days, video behind to let future generations know what they’ve learned in their time, to hopefully head off some of the more painful mistakes their children and grandchildren might otherwise make. I’ve thought about it too, writing fragments and pieces of things that might make up a part of this message for my wife, for my children. My father wrote some pieces of what he’d always said would be a book, a kind of user’s manual for life.
But Randy’s gone ahead and actually done it- a poignant speech on how to live your life, and how to achieve your dreams, presented at a forum that used to be called the “Last Lecture” series. And the online video of this speech turned into appearances on Oprah and Good Morning America, and ultimately into a book deal, something Hyperion Books is hoping will have Tuesdays with Morrie type sales. This last bit was quoted in a news article on Randy, talking about how both were college professors facing death in a dignified way, and ended up being why I picked up my copy of the book and started reading it.
I’m taking a management class this quarter called Managerial Interpersonal Communications, and Tuesdays with Morrie was on the reading list. I’d like to say I read the book because it was assigned this week, but I actually didn’t know that it was until after I’d finished it. I read it out of order, starting with the chapter on death, and then the one on family, and by then, I was hooked, starting from the beginning and reading the missing pieces.
And there are two parts of this book that resonated with me- the first was an anecdote about Morrie Schwartz’ appearance on Nightline with Ted Koppel, where he talked about a letter he’d received from a woman who was teaching a class of students, where each of the students had suffered the loss of a parent when they were quite young. And he was very emotional about his reply, that he would have liked for there to have been a group like that when he was young, after he’d lost his own mother, and that he would’ve joined the group because he would have been able to talk about how lonely he felt.
And when asked whether or not the pain was still fresh, more than seventy years after the fact, Morrie replied, “you bet.” And I think I know about that a little bit- it’s been more than 30 years for me, but really only a little more than ten since I really let that grief out of this box I’d kept it in. I remember growing up how I’d make greeting cards and gifts during arts & crafts times near Mother’s Day for my dad instead. I remember that people would get this look of shock, then dismay, then embarrassment when they asked about my mother and I told them. And as a child, I smiled, told them it was a long time ago, when I was very small, and so I didn’t really know anything else. I think I was trying to make sure they didn’t feel badly about it. And even as an adult, I still do that today.
But I think that’s where the loneliness comes from. Being different- missing a mother I didn’t know. And pretending so well that it didn’t matter. Pretending so well that nobody ever really took me aside to tell me it was okay to be sad. That it was right to be sad. So yeah, it was actually good to read that Morrie carried that with him for 70 years. I’m happy to know that the pain was as fresh for him throughout his life as it was. Not because it means he suffered, but selfishly, because it means that it’s supposed to be this way for us, for me as well as him.
The other part of it is just the whole idea that, when faced with the knowledge that time was running out, he was able to connect with Mitch Albom, and produce this work in thirteen Tuesdays. It reminds me of all the Saturdays I spent with my dad, when I knew he was dying too, and makes me wonder what could have been if I’d been able to connect with him more. Instead, and I owe a great debt to my little girl who was little more than two years old then, Jacqueline was the one who sat next to him on his bed, reading him stories, bouncing a ball around his room, and laughing and jumping. I hope that spending time with her made him happy, and I hope he forgives me that I didn’t let him tell me what a dying man knows.
I think he didn’t tell me, because one day in the ICU, months before when I came to visit him, there he was, looking not at all like himself, barely able to speak or move, arms and fingers swollen. And he lifted his arm to me, and I touched him lightly, his skin so stretched it was shiny. And he says to me, in his only clear word, “goodbye.” I wasn’t ready to hear that.
So I said no. And I told him he’d be fine, that he’d get better. And I rushed out of there as soon as I could. And he did get better, in a sense. But in another sense, I don’t think he was ever quite the same again. It’s almost like he gave me several more months to come to terms with saying goodbye, but that in some sense he’d already been gone too.
Morrie says you have to forgive yourself first, and then forgive others.
Wow, hard to believe it’s been five months since the last time I wrote here. Then again, given that the last thing written here was the start of GAP, it’s somewhat understandable. GAP has been the death of more than one FEMBA blog.
Today, though I am starting the post-GAP phase of my life. And I kicked it off by watching my daughter perform at her first school recital. Unfortunately, I was nearly out of battery at the time, so I’m lucky to have this one video of the event- Jacqueline singing “Susie Snowflake”.
And because, wow that isn’t at all clear (no, she hasn’t entered the Witness Protection Program, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), here she is in all her holiday finery:
(I hear the festive white collar was quite uncomfortable. It also has an unfortunate resemblance to an Elizabethan Collar.)
So it’s been a while since I’ve posted about the FEMBA experience. I guess part of it is that FEMBA goes from being this shiny, new thing that fascinates and amuses you, to becoming more a part of life. My saturdays have been pretty consistently blocked off for classes for the last two years now, and it’s normal to have an evening or two spent in telcons with classmates. When I started the program, it was painful, the experience was all hard elbows and sharp edges, and leaving comfort zones. There were books to read, notes to take, eyelids to prop open in classrooms, exams to take, papers to write.
Amazingly, though, FEMBA itself has become almost like a comfort zone. I have an easy banter with friends and classmates, some level of familiarity with doing schoolwork again, and I imagine I might even, shudder, miss the time spent when it’s over, in a little less than a year. Of course, I’ll have to try to fill in the void with things like, sleeping in on an occasional Saturday, going for long runs (I don’t jog, I run ;-)), and watching House on television. I know it’ll be a poor substitute, but we have to make do with what we can.
Right now is very much the “calm” before the storm. We have our GAP team, and we are in contact with our company executives, and we are picking up speed in learning about the industry and its potential here in the US. In two weeks we will have the official company kickoff, and we’ll meet the executives who visit, plan out the goals for the project, and finalize a memorandum of understanding regarding our undertaking.
GAP, or Global Access Program, is a 10-unit course that results in the MBA Master’s Thesis, a strategic business plan tailored to an actual startup’s needs. Often this involves seeking capital from venture/angel investors, and often includes an entry strategy for the US market. After finishing the core curriculum and a few electives, a team of 5 joins with companies from places like Finland, New Zealand, Italy, and Chile, and works with them for six months, performing primary research (interviews, meetings, surveys, with analysts, competitors, partners, consumers, and employees), secondary research (coming up to speed with published market research, whitepapers, etc), and condensing all of this into a business plan.
Right now we’re dipping our toes into the business plan waters, critiquing other business plans, analyzing financials, and beginning the research activities. It’s only going to get more intense as the months progress. I probably shouldn’t even be writing about it- instead I should be getting a jump on cold-calling this list of names of analysts and company spokespeople I’ve pulled from news articles. Yep, the first stage is sales: selling yourself as being worthy of perfect strangers’ time and attention. I’m thinking I’ll call around dinner time, and speak through my script so quickly that it’d be difficult for overly polite people to interrupt me to tell me they’re not interested. (or not)
The food was sublime. I rate Bluefin at the very top of the contemporary, fusion Japanese cuisine in Orange County (Sushi Wasabi gets that nod for more traditional sushi). We’ve been there three times now, over the years, the most recent time just this week. Each time we have the omakase, which at Bluefin is a 6-course menu including an appetizer sampler, sashimi salad, two cooked dishes, sushi, and dessert. They differ quite a bit each time, but my wife and I agreed that last night’s was the best we’ve had.
My grandfather was laid to rest yesterday morning, at about 11:15am on Sunny Slope at Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, CA. He joins his son Paul and his daughter-in-law Yuko, my parents. He lived 84 full years, and spent 59 of them married to my grandmother.
I’ve been thinking a bit about how I associate songs and lyrics with periods of time in my life, and with people. And for my grandfather, the song I think best suits him is Frank Sinatra’s My Way (all of it):
And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I’ll say it clear,
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain.
I’ve lived a life that’s full.
I’ve traveled each and ev’ry highway;
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.
Regrets, I’ve had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.
I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.
Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried.
I’ve had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.
To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
“No, oh no not me,
I did it my way”.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!
