Author Archives: Cynthia Lu

THE RISE OF PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

Dear Mrs. Hillary Clinton,

We at Miracle Consulting Ltd. believe that you have the potential to be the 45th President of the United States. Comparing you to the current president, Barack Obama, we can see many similarities. Therefore, we would like to assist you in your rise to Presidency.

Factors for a likely candidate

Creating an effective team greatly helped President Obama during the elections. By hiring David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Chris Hughes, Obama put together a strong team that was essential to his campaign. Not only did his team have the skills required to perform effectively, but the team was also the perfect size and had a common purpose. His team was able to create an effective campaign strategy, which focused mainly on three positions rather than trying to cover every issue. The team also came up with a strategy to target high school students who were old enough to vote, hoping that it would influence the vote.

President’s Obama’s enthusiasm is an important personality trait that gave him a positive perception. By spreading the idea of hope through the use of his enthusiastic attitude, he was able to motivate people intrinsically. During Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 24th 2004, he placed an emphasis on “the audacity of hope”. Because of Obama’s enthusiasm and personal charisma, he was able to gain a larger share of the votes and positive media attention.

Another one of the biggest factors was that President Obama possesses the qualities of change management. Obama best demonstrated this during the Economic Crisis. Unlike Senator John McCain who stated that the “fundamentals of [the] economy [is] strong”, Obama decided to quickly change his campaign messages to address the issue of the global economy. Soon after, Obama addressed the issue by announcing his plans to fix the economy, which included a focus on working families as well as a specific plan for Wall Street and Main Street. By addressing the issues and the willingness to change his campaign messages quickly, Obama essentially won the debates regarding the economic issue.

Factors for an improbable candidate

Despite the many factors that made Obama a likely candidate, Obama’s run for presidency was high in risk-taking as he faced daunting hurdles, two primary ones being race and religion. Having a father who was a black Kenyan aroused “huge skepticism that people were unsure of whether America was ready to elect its first African American President”. Since there had never been a previous African American President before, people who stereotyped and had prejudice against African Americans were less inclined to vote. Moreover, earlier on in his campaign Obama didn’t receive support from African American leaders because they had doubts about Obama’s motives and his loyalty to the African American community. The issue of Obama’s religion was controversial since people were dubious about his religious position believing that he was Muslim when in fact he was Christian.

When running for the Democratic presidential candidate, another huge concern was that there were many other highly qualified candidates, such as you, who had been loyal Democrats with a bigger presence in both Democratic politics and amongst voters. Since your husband’s presidency was remembered as a “relatively prosperous time economically and stable time in military”, and your experience in Senate upheld a strong track record, this placed you as Obama’s main competition. By having a strong campaign as well as having a well-respected name amongst the black community, it was evident you were “the front runner”and Obama was in for an upward battle.

Another cause for the doubt in Obama’s suitability of becoming the next president was his “change vs. experience” platform that focused on new ideas. While this was met with excitement from some, this also received criticism from others. Not only if elected would Obama’s term of presidency go against the traditional of 44 past Caucasian presidents, but also challenge conservative views. Obama faced individual resistance of the general public and also faced organizational resistance of his new ideologies and political stance.

Most Important Reason

The way that President Obama is able to solve problems is one of the most important reasons that he won the election. During his run for candidacy, Obama was faced with many challenges including the controversy with his pastor and the continuous allegations about his race. Not only was he able to get past these challenges, he did not attempt to avoid the problems. Instead, he opted to address the issues directly. During the controversy with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama publicly disapproved the comments made by his pastor during one of his most memorable speeches, rather than trying to avoid the issue altogether. During the same speech, Obama directly addressed the issue regarding racial inequalities. Instead of ignoring the issue of race, he argued how race should not be used as a distraction to the election and that the focus should be placed on the issues. By having his campaign target the younger adults through the use of the internet as a political tool and utilizing social networking, it allowed Obama to create a strong message of change while establishing both a connection and a likeableness to the younger voters. Not only is this genius in motivating younger adults to vote for Obama, but by establishing a personal connection with the people so that they want to vote this has helped solve the issue of a reduction in younger people voting.

Advice

A successful leader always puts people first. They consider what others think and demonstrate empathy. By doing so, the leader can gain trust and support. A flaw with your previous campaign plan was neglecting the smaller districts and focusing on people with high power. During your next campaign, we recommend that you follow Obama’s strategy by also targeting both the older and younger generation. This can be achieved by having a common goal that is beneficial to everyone and a positive attitude, which would motivate the nation and give a sense of transparency. We believe that the moral foundation of leadership is essential towards your goal of presidency. By doing so, this is a step forward to becoming a level 5 leader.

People are attracted to resilient leaders who know where they are going and are passionate about their purpose. These leaders have the ability to build confidence in their followers and lead them to believe that anything is possible. One of Obama’s most famous speeches “Yes We Can” used powerful phrases to empower his supporters and reinstate hope when they sensed despair. Although Obama faced many problems throughout his campaign, he pushed on and through this he was able to exemplify strength, creative tension, and genuine belief in what he was fighting for. For a female candidate like yourself we sense that your platform will focus on America’s first female president. Similar to Obama who became the first African American president, we advise you to tackle the issue of gender inequality and carry forward the idea of positive change. By being an effective collaborative leader and using your passion to pull supporters rather than push them, this will not only strengthen your team but also allow it to grow and attract more supporters.

You should consider the concept of change management. The idea worked well for Obama and should work well for your campaign. He was willing to alter his campaign platform almost immediately to reflect the changing concerns of his citizens. By doing so, he essentially won the debate about the economic crisis over his opposition. Additionally, President Obama’s honesty and his ability to be direct can be seen as an attribute to his popularity. Whether it was addressing the controversy with his pastor, his race or the issue of racial inequality, he did not try to avoid the concerns. By being direct about the issues, he not only was able to overcome the issues, but also was able to solidify the support of many voters since he demonstrated that he has the ability to overcome difficult situations, which if handled incorrectly, could slow his progress.

Your relationship with the media has not been an easy one. During your keynote speech on March 24th 2015, you expressed interest in a fresh start with the press and in “new beginnings” . We believe that this is a good step forward towards a new start, however, we believe that you must continuously attempt to strengthen your relationship with the media. Following Obama’s campaign, voters liked how they were able to relate and trust him because of his transparency. Following the Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory, the most ideal followers are those who are both able and willing. By having a positive media relationship, transparent ideas and experience, we believe you could achieve a loyal following.

Because of the positive similarities between you and President Obama, we believe you are a great candidate to be the next President. Therefore, we conclude that by following our advice, your chances of becoming the President should greatly increase.

Works Cited:

Cillizza, Chris. “Hillary Clinton Promised a New Relationship with the Media. She Was Kidding.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2015. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

File, Thom. 2013. “Young-Adult Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964–2012.” Current Population Survey Reports, P20- 572. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC.

Hopkins, Mark. “Creative Tension.” Personal Excellence 1 July 2013: 5. Print.

Krell, Eric. “EXPLORING WHAT IT TAKES TO LEAD IN THE 21ST CENTURY.” Baylor Business Review 31.2 (2013): 4-11. ProQuest.Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Loannidou, F and V Konstantikaki. “Empathy and emotional intelligence: What is it really about?”. International Journal of Caring Sciences 1.3 (2008): 118-123. Print.

Obama, Barack (BarackObama). “Our Journey is Not Complete.” 22 Jan. 2008, 4:34 p.m. Tweet.

Russ, Linden. “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of Collaborative Leadership.” Public Manager 1 Jan. 2013: 3. Print.

Seelye, Katharine Q. “Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 24 Jan. 2008. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.

Thomas, David A., Laura Morgan Roberts, and Stephanie Creary. “The Rise of President Barack Hussein Obama.”Harvard Business School Case 409-115, June 2009.

Campbell and Bailyn’s Boston Office: Managing the Reorganization

Dear Mr. Ken Winston,

First, thank you for hiring Miracle Consulting to assist you in the next few months to improve Campbell and Bailyn’s. The changes that your company has implemented have both positive and negative aspects to them. The establishment of the Key Accounts Team and the New Performance Management System are great ideas. We feel that your KAT team was implemented much better than your performance management system since the KAT team followed most of Kotter’s eight-step plan for implementing change, while the Performance Management System didn’t. It’s obvious that the Performance Management System is a good idea because the results were positive based on annual sales. However, the ideas could’ve been implemented better since there are several key issues. Even though we believe that the issues are detrimental to your company’s well-being, they aren’t impossible to resolve.

Issues and Analysis

Issue 1: Fears of Job Specializations

It has been expressed by your team members that they’re worried about the new team structure limiting their future career prospects. Managers often neglect to further develop skills of employees that are in a specialized role since the managers are satisfied with their employee’s current role and performance of their employees(Tucker). However, if your team members start to believe that their current role has no advancement opportunities, they may leave your company to find a career that provides better opportunities to learn transferable skills and the possibility to advance further in their career. Therefore, this may lead to your company seeing a higher turnover rate.

Issue 2: An increase in customer dissatisfaction

It’s obvious that, because of specialization, trades have become more complicated for your clients since they would have to communicate with several different departments rather than dealing with just one generalist. This made trading more complicated and tedious for your clients and about half of them didn’t believe the change was necessary. Also, by forcing your clients to deal with more than one person, the personal connection between client and generalist is lost.

Issue 3: Resistance of Performance Management System

Currently, there’s tension and resentment within your sales staff due to the rash implementation of this system. Unlike the introduction of the KAT team, we noticed there’s little communication during the transition period. Employees are less likely to accept change when there is a lack of communication and they feel excluded from the process (Langton 551). According to the cognitive evaluation theory, the increase in working pressure to make higher profits has also shown to be an ineffective method of encouraging employees in the long run. If your employees continue to be dissatisfied with the new management system this may lead to a continuance commitment or an increased turnover rate.

Alternatives

Alternative #1: Resign of Evaluation System. With the new system, the bonuses are solely based on feedback; however, we don’t think this is the best solution to judge a person’s efforts. We advise you to redesign your effectiveness evaluation system by considering both sales volume and feedback in the evaluation. Financial incentives are still necessary, so that employees are rewarded both intrinsically and extrinsically. It’s common that people may focus too much on getting the compensation. However, the new performance management system may destroy the work environment and cause them to lose their target while they’re chasing the sales figures.

Alternative #2: Unlimited Vacation Days

We initially thought of offering your employees unlimited vacation days. Not only will your employees feel recharged from the extra time off, they may also enjoy the feeling trust that’s bestowed upon them since they’re asked to take time off at their own discretion. However, this policy can be both underutilized by employees, when they’re too scared to take time off and abused by employees who don’t care about the company. Therefore, we believe our recommendation of communication and setting team goals would be more beneficial.

Recommendations and Solutions:

Recommendation 1: Problem-Solving Team and Job Rotation

We recommend that your company should develop a problem-solving group consisting of members from the Key Accounts Team and hold weekly meetings. We believe that this would provide your employees with more opportunities to develop their personal soft skills. The purpose of each meeting would be to increase communication within the company, so all members are well informed of any major decisions.It also allows group members to express any dissatisfation with the company and therefore, would be in the “Voice” quadrent of the Job Dissatisfation Response Chart. Also, a job rotation system should be implemented with quarterly rotations. We believe that your organization should still have specialized roles since it increases productivity (Tucker). Not only will job rotation increase motivation, it’ll reduce the fear of future job prospects since employees can learn a wider range of skills (Langton 189).

Recommendation 2: Conference Calls

Due to specialization, the process for in-house traders to receive information is now more complicated. Therefore, your company should utilize conference calls that would include the client and all the members of the KAT team. This would allow the client to receive all the information they’re looking for at one time, rather than having to make three different phone calls. This could also please the clients since they’re now receiving more facetime with the employee that they’d initially worked solely with.

Recommendation 3: Team Goals and Increasing Communication

Currently, the biggest concern is the loss of customers due to specialization. In order for the performance management system to resolve this we suggest increasing lunch visits, dividing the customers amongst the specialists, and integrating customer satisfaction into the performance evaluation. Through this, close working relationships will be maintained and your company will be able to keep their personal connection with clients which can build trust and loyalty. Another crucial change needs to be an increase in communication.By allowing your employees to provide feedback, it gives your employees a voice and is a good indication of how well the new system is working. Furthermore, just as you had shared sales figures from a competitor you should continuously share valuable information regarding your company’s position compared to competitors to motivate employees. The feeling of purpose and meaningfulness to the company are high intrinsic motivators for employees (Langton 190). Not only will this improve the overall satisfaction of the employees but studies show this will increase customer contentment and loyalty (Langton 101). Lastly, by creating small goals for the team and rewarding these short-term “wins”, this will increase both teamwork and the likelihood of the new system being accepted by employees.

Conclusion

After a careful analysis, we strongly believe that our recommendations will be highly beneficial for your company. Not only will they decrease the fears about job specialization, they will also increase communication between employees. We also believe that they will solve the problems that your clients face, especially having to make several calls to receive the information that they need. Attached to our analysis, we have included an implementation plan that will give you the initial steps of using our recommendations.

The image above is our suggested implementation timeline. We believe that, immediately, you should implement conference calls since it takes very little effort to implement it. Also, by using conference calls, you are also increasing communication immediately. After one month, we believe you should have set goals for your team and extrinsically reward them for being able to work as a team. By month 3, we suggest that the problem solving team is implemented and that you begin the quarterly job rotation. We wanted to introduce the problem solving 3 months in rather than immediately so that you are given an opportunity to communicate the idea to your team members.

Work’s Cited

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational

Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition.

Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Rouse, Margaret. “Soft Skills.” Search CIO. TechTarget, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2015.

Tucker, Kristine. “Job Specialization Pros & Cons.” Globalpost. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 27

Feb. 2015.

TEAMWORK TURMOIL

Dear Mr. Tony Marshall,

First, we would like to thank you for the opportunity that you have provided for Miracle Consulting Incorporated. As you already know, there are several major issues within your team and with these issues, your team will not function to its potential. Your team is composed of people with different backgrounds and therefore will have different values and methods for how they work in a team. However, a diverse group can be beneficial since it can bring in a “greater number of ideas, perspectives, knowledge and skills” (Langton 236). The issues, though big and important, are not impossible to resolve. If you decide follow our recommendations, we believe that your team will not only see an improvement in productivity, but also a stronger team efficacy.

Issues & Analysis

Issue 1: Disorganized Meetings

Your group does not have defined goals. A lack of goals can cause team members to lose motivation. Also, since your group’s meetings are not structured, there is a substantial amount of time wasted during disagreements about what should be accomplished next. The issue became apparent when Delery disagreed about doing takeaways for each meeting claiming that the group never agreed to do it every time and that time could be used more efficiently.

Issue 2: Bad Relationships

Currently, many essential team skills are missing within your group such as trust and respect. Often, individuals resist any changes because they do not trust the person initiating it (Langton 548). Without trust, the level of effort towards the project could decrease due to members feeling that they are being treated inequitably. Without respect, group members can begin to feel disrespected and therefore, compromise any trust that was built before (Ray). This is best seen when Onyealisi fails to preread the case and Delery votes against dividing up the work because he believes he would have to redo Onyealisi’s part.

Your group has bad relationships on both an individual level as well as within a team. By looking at the big five traits that influence organizational behavior, it is apparent the traits of agreeableness and openness are missing from some individuals. These are relevant to your team because when members challenge others’ ideas and handle the process poorly this can lead to frustration and poor team performance. Griffin and Cooper display this when they constantly bicker and question each other’s standpoints when in actuality they argue about the same ideas.

Issue 3: Norms

Since your group has undefined behavioural expectations this can lead to bad norms, which ultimately will lead to inefficiency. Bad norms can cause a variety of problems such as tardiness or poor team interaction. One instance of this was when Onyealisi was late to the meeting and other group members were unaware if he was coming or not. Not only is this an example of the lack of communication between your group, but also this critical event can create a bad norm of being late. Furthermore, if the group continues to neglect addressing unacceptable behaviour this can lead to multiple bad norms, which can create group conflict. The second instance of potential bad norms forming is when Onyealisi comes to the meeting unprepared. By failing to read the case prior to the meeting this prevented Onyealisi from contributing meaningful ideas to the group. This issue can tie into continuance commitment as he has no passion about the group study and always exhibits a negative attitude.

Alternatives

A possible recommendation was to use Robert’s Rule during meetings to help facilitate and keep order. However, we realized this may be too time consuming and limit the closeness between the team as it would create a more formal setting.

Another possible recommendation was to have the group attend team training. By participating in workshops that aim to build collaboration, reliability, and communication, these strong teamwork traits can be applied to their meetings to ensure a more cohesive and productive use of their time. However, we do recognize this recommendation is also very time consuming and may not work if one of the members is unavailable or refuses to attend because of the already existing intrapersonal conflicts.

Solutions

Recommendation 1: Agenda

Our recommendation is to create an agenda for each meeting, with a list of goals that you wish the group should accomplish by the end of each meeting. By creating an agenda, everyone in the group know what to expect each meeting and this would use the allotted time more efficiently. However, for this solution to be effective, the goals would need to follow the SMART criteria. By settling short-term SMART goals such as assigning one member to write up a section by the next meeting, this can help build the team’s efficacy and allow them to rebuild their trust and confidence as a team.

Recommendation 2: Team Dinner or Outing

According to The Five-Stage Model, we believe that your group is currently in the storming phase, however, because of continuous intragroup conflict, we believe that your team should go back to the forming stage before moving up. In order to do this, we recommend that your group should schedule biweekly team outings at a sports bar or restaurant. This is because you have indicated that all the team members are athletic and therefore, we believe that this common interest can be something they bond over. By spending time outside of the classroom, your team can increase their cohesiveness. Alongside the recommendation of the agenda, your team would be at the high cohesiveness and high performance norms quadrant of the relationship matrix, which leads to high productivity.

Recommendation 3: Collectively Setting Team Norms to Abide

In order to have an effective team, you should address pressing issues such as being unprepared for meetings and tardiness, as these have the possibility of becoming bad norms. Norms typically develop gradually as group members learn what behaviors are necessary for the team to function effectively (Langton 222). By collectively deciding the acceptable behaviour for attendance, cellphone usage, attentiveness, and preparedness, this will help meetings go over smoothly and more productively. We propose your team creates a list of norms they all agree upon so conflict and inefficiency will be avoided in future meetings. Furthermore, in the process of group work, we suggest having a team self-evaluation to examine team effectiveness and whether or not everyone has followed the set norms. If positive norms are set in place and followed through, you will have a much better environment of learning and communicating.

Conclusion

Based on what we saw, we believe that your group has great potential to work well, especially because of the group’s diversity. However, we believe that your group definitely has some issues. These issues, though troublesome, can easily be resolved through our recommendations. Our recommendations are not only effective, but they can be easily implemented and used within a short time frame. Furthermore, our recommendations require little to no cost.

Works Cited

Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Group Development. Leadership and Teambuilding. Web. 24 Jan.

2015. <http://wheatoncollege.edu/sail/leadership/student-involvement-handbook/strengthening-

group/leadership-teambuilding/>

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational Behaviour:

Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Print.

“PTO Today: Robert’s Rules for Beginners (color).” PTO Today. School Family Media Inc, 11

Dec. 2007. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.ptotoday.com/filesharing/document/61-pto-today-

roberts-rules-for-beginners-color>.

Ray, Linda. “The Effects of a Lack of Respect in the Workplace.” The Nest. N.p., n.d. Web. 1

Feb. 2015. <woman.thenest.com/effects-lack-respect-workplace-4633.html>.

Robbins, Stephen P. “Organizational Behaviour 16th Edition Powerpoint Slides.” Online posting. Chapter 5: Personality and Values. Pearson Education, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.

SMART Criteria. Digital image. Measuring Results – Sustainable Development – Environment Canada. Government of Canada, 27 June 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ec.gc.ca/dd- sd/default.asp?lang=en&n=FE4918AA-1>.

Business Analysis for Red Bull Media House

Fundamental Direction: Keep Flying

Why keep it? Red Bull Media House (North America) is Creating Shared Value to the world.

From Business Perspective: The initial purpose for Red Bull Company to set up own media company is to help to build and reinforce Red Bull’s overall brand image. This is a unique marketing strategy by running the Red Bull Media House. The Media House has become a major part of the Red Bull’s culture and helps to stabilize its status and reputation in energy drinks market. Despite of advertising Red Bull, the Red Bull Media House North America made numerous products and content, ranging from online network services to electronic goods. Such as Live Broadcast, Red Bull TV, etc. It is clear that this is also an effective way for business to earn income besides of selling energy drinks. Furthermore, Red Bull Company used the idea of disruptive innovation to set up their business, the media house helps Red Bull to build an unforgettable image in competitors’ mind, gives a strong visual impact to its audience and attracts potential partners as well as investors for their business. In contrast, if Red Bull chooses to fold its wings, they may lose the way to target customer segmentation (See Appendix A) and lose numbers of customers, because the customer loyalty is built via the media house. Therefore, in order to perform well in the competitive energy drinks market, Red Bull has to keep running the media house and this idea comes from the sustainability.

From society perspective: There’s no doubt that customers really enjoyed the things that Red Bull Media House North America offered during these years. The popularity was gained for both of the premium media products and compelling content, which were closely related to sports, culture and lifestyle. Such as the Red Bull Radio, music as well as some sports-‐related activities. One of a convincing examples should be the event called Red Bull Stratos; millions of people watched the extreme stunt in live streaming coverage and television broadcast. Several new records were set during this big event. Red Bull Media House made a great contribution to society by raising public awareness on extreme sports, broadening people’s horizons though this tech activity. Similarly, some competitions such as the Red Bull Crashed Ice and the Red Bull Rampage also provided the general public a way to get to know the basic knowledge about extreme sports as well as a consumptive idea with positive, energetic and healthy meanings behind.

Thus, CSV is a main element of Point Of Difference for Red Bull Company in positioning their brand in marketplace. This is a key competitive advantage for Red Bull Company to differentiate their products with competitors’ goods. More importantly, creating the Red Bull Media House North America is a direct way to get to know about the taste of consumers, so that the managers can make better business decisions in order to meet the core needs of market while making their new products and services through this invisible communication channel. Good and close relationships are built at the same time.

Why keep it? Red Bull Media House North America has a great market potential to make profits after taking some financial and marketing actions.

Financial and Marketing Analysis of Red Bull Media House

(Inefficient use of capital investment leads to a pessimistic Return On Capital Employed.)

Red Bull Media House continues producing premium audiovisual media content too quickly to find the interested corporate clients. This shows the supply has exceeded the market demand; the failure is caused by insufficient work of Research and Development Department. To solve this problem, R&D needs to have a successful market research to find out the market demand before to launch their products to market.
Red Bull Media House loses chances to earn profits through its media channel (See Appendix B). Each year, the company spent more than a million dollars to produce big events such as the Red Bull Stratos; The Arts of Flight, the Red Bull Signature Series, millions of people watched it through their media channels. However, it was free for anyone to view at anytime. Obviously, these events were great chances for Red Bull Media House to earn profits, but they didn’t catch it. An effective way to tackle the issue is to charge a fee to audience. These events that the company produced were unique in the market and they gained popularity and recognition in society. According to the Porter’s Generic Strategies, the managers of the Red Bull Media House should choose to use the focus strategy while charging a fee to its audience. Once by taking this action, the company will gain much more profits to try to cover its initial investment.
Losing market share was caused by both of the new entrance competitors like some Asian and European brands and also existing competitors such as Monster and Rockstar. These competitors chose to use less capital-‐intensive approaches to their beverages, and they did make success. According to the statistics, Monster sold more volume of energy drinks than Red Bull did and it had the highest operating margins in the industry. Which clearly showed that Red Bull Company didn’t get more market shares even it invested much more funds than Monster Company. This is due to the derailment of ideal and reality in managing the capital. The Red Bull Media House should realize that investing too much capital does not mean their market share will be increased. In contrast, Red Bull Media Company North America needs to pay more attentions to the local market. One of its main customer groups should be the high school and university students. By creating big events do not get closer to these customers because they have no time to enjoy the activities. In other words, Red Bull Media House North America should look for some small competitions and activities for these people, for example, setting up some interesting sports games or sponsoring the sports-‐related program in school. This is the only direct way to let student become familiar with Red Bull brand.
Moreover, it is worth to keep running the media house because it has so many opportunities. The media house earned a licensed fee to news media; they charged a fee to other companies by offering them a direct access to its fans; and Red Bull Media House North America cooperated with Fox Sports to advertise their brand, Fox Sports will help to fulfill RBMH’s (North America) goal; more importantly, they got the ITunes’s storefront on the site. These evidences also show that the Red Bull Media House North America has a great potential to earn profits by making the changes mentioned before.

Personal views on Social Entrepreneurs and Arc Initiative

By reading the articles that came from Prep 20, I gained deeper thoughts about the real meaning of social entrepreneurs as well as the Arc Program that was funded by Sauder School of Business.

It is clear that all businesses have to make profits in order to survive in the society. Besides of making money, the social entrepreneurs are trying to creating their businesses’ value to contribute to the world. Like charity, some Africa programs are built by these people. What they intend to do is to help the people from extreme conditions to survive and to create social values to the whole society.

Let us take the Salem’s Ethiopia as a convincing example. It said that Mrs. Kassahun was worried about how to expand her business meet the current demand her craft product. By taking Arc Initiative program, her problem was solved perfectly; She taught more women how to make the basket by hand and this way helped her gain more labour to run the business. More people gain the skills about hand-making and the market demand could be fulfilled at the same time. Obviously, this is a win-win solution.

On the other hand, I think the most attractive idea about the social entrepreneurs is to create the social value. Even though United Nations would fully funded, companies are still lacking new idea and thought. No more creative opinions, no more values can be generated anymore.

References:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/day-to-day/can-fair-trade-boutique-expand-without-alienating-customers/article4405520/

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative

Comment on Yiyi Nie’s Blog—-Returns of 10 billion pain

Company’s return policy has become more and more popular in the modern life; it is undeniable that this policy maximize customers’ benefits because customers can decide to return the goods without any extra charges. However, this generate more losses to businesses. As the workforce increases, companies have to employ more workers, pay warehouse rent to accommodate those returned goods.

As Yiyi’s said in her blog: it is unfair to both buyers and sellers if customers continue buying and returning the products. I agree with her opinion in this point. However, from my perspective, the customers should not pay full responsibility for the products’ quality after they purchasing. Let us to think about the clothes, the seller guaranteed that you can use water to launder the clothes without any changes in color, while the color ran after washing. Obviously, this is not buyer’s fault.

Therefore, the best solution to tackle this problem is to maintain the refund policy if there’s any quality-related issues. In extent, in order to protect sellers from making loss due to return of consumer goods, the products without any quality problem will not be returned once the customers bought them.

Thus, this way protects both consumers’ and sellers’ right, and help managers supervise the quality of goods in the production process. No more quality fault of goods, no more return anymore.

Reference blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/nyy96/2014/09/29/common-on-returns-a-10-billion-pain/

Comments on Michael Carney’s Blog—-The iPhone Effect (External business blog)

Nowadays, we all know that Apple has become a leading company among the technology industry. Especially for its financial performance. From the two diagrams shown in Michael’s blog, both of Apple’s revenue and gross profits has experienced a high growth over the recent 10 years.

As Michael said in his article, Apple’s dominance is unchanged although the performance of Microsoft is also very well. From this point, I personally think the key factor for Apple’s success is its Creative Social Value. No matter how many similar electronics companies will launch to market in near future, the social status of Apple’s Ltd will not be changed if it can continue to do the innovation. Also, the quality of the product makes a great contribution to its success; unless Apple’s competitors, lots of technical issues just appear after selling to their customers. For example, the GT-I9300 made by Samsung ltd.

On the other hand, besides the production part; making suitable market strategies in different period of time is one of a key factor to success. Like Michael mentioned in his blog, Apple chose A16Z to be its cooperate partner, this action played an important role during its development. A16Z, the most valuable VC company in the world, helping Apple find technical designers and workers, providing them with capital investment and looking for opportunities to develop the business.

The several points mentioned above are my views for the Apple’s growth.

Reference blog:http://pando.com/2014/11/06/the-iphone-effect-two-graphs-that-leave-no-doubt-about-apples-financial-dominance/

Personal views on Scotiabank’s cost reduction plan

Recently, the Bank of Nova Scotia has announced that it would close some braches and cut 15,000 jobs in order to reduce its cost. This action will have a direct effect on unemployment inside and outside the Canada and lead to a fall of Scotiabank’s stock. The following below are my personal thought:

After doing research, I found that the main reason causes the mass layoff is the overall growth pressure for banking industry. More specifically, the financial crisis has hurt Canadian banks with operations in the Caribbean as well as the South America. However, this huge decision will cause a series of social problems. Almost two third of the employees will lose their jobs; thus, the crime rate may increase due to high unemployment rate. More importantly, other Canadian banks will probably follow Scotiabank’s action and reduce the number of positions in the near future, so the impacts on gross domestic product and the country’s economy will be hard to imagine.

Canadian banking industry is trying to reduce its workers in order to reduce the overall cost so that the profits can be increased. From my perspective, these banks should not experience a fast growth just by continued firing people; this action will definitely increase the pressure to citizens as well as government. As a leading company in banking industry, the bank of Scotia needs to pay full responsibility to society, including both of its employees and customers. It is undeniable that making profit is the main purpose of a company, but sustainability is also important in order to survive in long term.

Reference: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/04/bank-nova-restructuring-idUSL4N0SU5C920141104

Further analysis and strategies for Bayjo Ltd

After doing the case of Bayjo’s Ltd, I was been thinking about its future development plan for a long time, and the following below are my deeper thoughts about how to growth their business. And I am not a consultant for Bayjo Ltd now.

From the article we can know that the Bayjo Ltd are still facing a lot of problems in Internal Management, Operation and delivery, as well as the its financial situation. To be honest, The first thing that came to my mind is the function of a director, what is Blakay’s responsibility inside the business? He had no idea about which products made profits for Bayjo and even didn’t know the business don’t have enough cash to cover the bank interest, this is ridiculous.

The second thing that came into my mind is the purpose to build up a company. Whenever what type the businesses are, they should not only focus on making as much as profits as they can, business ethics is really important to a business because this is the only way to survive in the society, you need to be popular and accepted by surroundings. For example, the quality of Bayjo’s products were becoming worse over the recent 3 years, this lead to a direct fall of customer satisfaction; although they have a good status for now, Bayjo will not performance well in the near future if the director cannot realize how important the quality is!

The third one is about the product segmentation. I think the Boston Matrix is an useful tool to distinguish the products. For current situation: Skateboards still makes a lot of profits, but no more market growth, so it should be named as a cash cow; the Bicycle contributes most profits for business, while its productivity and efficiency needs to be improved, so put it as a problem child; and for Scooter department, it is the future of business, but it contributes fewer profits and it has some internal problem such as financial incentives by its manager, so I put it under the problem child as well. However, due to the changes I mentioned in the Individual Assignment2, the skateboards should be closed in long-time but the director can decide to keep it in short time, because it will become a dog in the future. What I expect is both of scooter and bicycle can be the star after running them for a long period.

The detailed diagram is shown below.（PS：Clicking the diagrams for details)

How Government depressed the development of BC farming industry?

Recently, The first Nations of BC represented its residences to reject BC Hydro’s $8-billion Site C hydroelectric megaproject. The reason why Harper government passed this resolution was because the continued growing populations, they planed to build this project to meet the future demand requirement by BC residence and also to bring a convenience to water resources transportation.

However, the side effect will be non-neglectable once the hydro electrical power station is built. One reason why I think the station should not be built is the condition of the geographical environment is not suitable. According to the relative statistical report, more than 60% of the BC government’s (Natural resources) financial income comes from the Peace River, which means the site C contribute a significant part of revenue to local residence and government. Moreover, the dam would destroy the wildlife habitat and natural farmland by flooding 83 kilometers of the Peace River.

The other reason that contributes to my thought is the new Liquefied Natural Gas project. As Roland Wilson, the West Moberly First Nation said before; the site C are planning to launch the LNG project, so that it will unable to undertake the Hydro’s program.

Generally speaking, some industries and companies are always facing the problems due to environmental issue. However, to consider these kinds of issues are government duties, so local businesses need to show understanding and recognition to those people as well as organizations.

References:

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/energy/Alternative+power+projects+more+cost+effective+than+Site/10192313/story.html?__lsa=7778-7fb9

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html

http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/i/jyjl/l/201409/20140900745939.shtml