Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

AHP is the concept of multi-criteria decision making and a decision support technique with the following steps:

Step 1: Developing the AHP Hierarchy
Step 2: Making Judgments about the Criteria and the Decision Alternatives
Step 3: Deriving the Priority from Pair wise Comparison Matrix
Step 4: Measuring the Consistency of the Decision Maker’s Judgments
Step 5: Synthesis -- Construction of an Overall Priority

We have adopted this method on a case study for the decision making of office relocation. It is an interesting model. I will keep a copy of the excel model and will make use of it later for my company. :-)

慾窮千里目，更上一層樓

剛上完了Marketing最後的一課，對自己的表現不大滿意，看來在以後的課目要更加努力，要不就浪費太多時間和金錢！

周南教授的教學非常哲理，學了一大堆「虛、實」，「天時、地利、人緣」，「多就是少，少就是多」，「時勢造英雄，英雄造時勢」，還有「“提錢”通知」，「好好“煙酒”」，他把西方的市場學理論，用了中國人的文化、歷史和哲學作了另類演繹，對我來說，還是挺受落的，反正那些理論以前已經學過。

反而，在整個課程中，從各個learning partners的presentation中得到不少inspiration，各行各業，原來都有一個成功的「必煞技」，不知我們用對了沒有？

可能真的想「慾窮千里目」，就要「更上一層樓」！

善用無用，方為有用

市場學，越學越「玄」。 Interesting and inspiring!

少即是多 Less is more

善用無用，方為有用

無往不利 to go everywhere and make profits
無孔不入 to get in by every opening (crack)
無所不在 to stop at nothing
無微不至 Without any detail not taken care of
無時無刻 at no time, all the times
無為而治 managing by without the manager

攻心為上，攻城為下

“夫用兵之道，攻心為上，攻城為下，心戰為上，兵戰為下.” 【蜀志】

A Beautiful Mind

I learned Prisoner's dilemma from Dr Poon at my first year in the CUHK. He used Nash Equilibrium to explain a lot of market outcomes. I was amazed and liked him a lot. Despite his mathematical approach and grade killer attitude, I took a few more courses taught by him.

Today Dr Hung introduced this games theory in the class. From the face of most of the learning partners, I could tell that they could not follow.

Dr Hung gave me new insight about the "value of guanxi" in Nash Equilibrium. Nash Equilibrium is a lose-lose outcome. Investing in Guanxi may be able to stabilize the win-win outcome by building on going positive expectation.

Tonight Pearl TV showed movie "A beautiful mind". The story was about John Nash. What a co-incident? I watched the movie a few years ago but I did not remember that I had learnt his theory. When I watched it again tonight, I felt I'm so close to this Nobel Prize Winner.

Competitive Analysis

The professor seems picked a good book and a good focus for the EMBA class. I guess he can't be too "econ" to teach a class full of executives.

Porter's Approach was introduced in the class with Six Forces. How are the forces of my company?

1. Threat of new Entrants
- Possible entry barrier: Brand, Technology (not too strong)

2. Rivalry among existing firms
- A few major players but many small players
- High industry growth

3. Threat of substitute products or services
- Substitute exist such as ERP, Workflow

4. Bargaining power of buyers
- Large

5. Bargaining power of suppliers
- Self developed

6. Complements
- Scanners, server, ...

It seems that we are at a quite competitive industry.

Presentation

Each of the learning partners are assigned a presentation topic at the beginning of the course. The presentation order is based the aphibatical order of our last name. Mine was scheduled on the last day of the class.

Today, my partner and I presented the topic about Cultural Gap. I am so glad to partner with someone who has strong sales background. He added lot of creative elements into the presentation including video, sounds effect and graphics. I am also impressed by his commitment and work passion.

It is a good feeling to work with quality people. : )

Type A people

When talked about executiive stress, Professor Leung told us a research result about Heart Attack. The research result found out that Type A people had higher chance of having Heart Attack.

Am I type A?
- Impatient
- Aggressive, competitive, hostile

I guess not. :-) but I better to remind my Type A friends.

Experience sharing

One of the main reason for me to pay a premium for EMBA instead of MBA is for experience sharing from other learning partners. In the first group exercise, the team worked until 2am at my club house. But, it was fun. I learned some insider news of other learning partners company, such as problems of a well known organization famous at excellence management, why the top management of a media company being replaced, ...

Organization ---> complex
human beings -----> complicated

Leadership

We talked about Executive Role and Leadership. In the class, everyone is having an executive role or being a leader in certain areas. However, not every leader have leadership.

Leadership may be trained or in-born. It is about personality or character but not a role. Leadership may have the following elements:
- Uplifting
- Visionary
- Charismatic
- Inspiration
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individualized consideration

I think I am only a good executive but not having much leadership. Although I believe leadership is more in-born than trained, I still hope to learn having more leadership elements in the class. :-)

How can we create a culture of leadership at our company? We need more people with leadership to achieve our vision.

Balanced Scorecard

Balanced scorecard is a framework to help organization alignment.

The scorecard has 4 strategic objectives
1. Financial
2. Customers
3. Internal Process
4. Learning and Growth

Each team or functional department can define their own measurement on the above 4 objectives.

This class reminded me the Appraisal System in PwC. They do have a very objective and systematic way to review staff performance and tie up the firm's objective to staff's objective.

Is it feasible for me to bring this framework to Beijing? We need a system for measurement!

Action item: Work out a plan to share with my partner this weekend :)

Reengineering: Organization Alignment

It is not easy to have a right Vision. It takes lot of effort to formulate strategies. Without the implementation ability, Vision, Mission, Strategies are only BS.

My business partners and I are working on a real case. We have just acquired a company in Beijing which consists of many top talents from renowed universities in China.

How can we share our culture and vision to them? Who can be our facilitators? If we fail to align our culture and vision, we may fail to manage them.

When my partner told me what he was doing in Beijing, I was amazed that he'd done a lot on Organization Alignment by his common sense. He is so talentive in business.

Management Theory: X vs Y

In the 3 hours lesson, Prof Leung led us run through the History of Management from ancient management, Weber's bureaucracy, management theories from Industrial revolution to modern matrix theories.

Among all the models, I like the McGregor Theory X and Theory Y the most.

Theory Y - work is natural
People care about meaning in work, quality of work life, personal growth and sense of achievement.
e.g. build dream, share vision

Theory X - humans are lazy
People are lazy and penalty, stimulus and control behavior are necessary for managment.
e.g. penalty, pressure and quatitative reward driven

McGregor explained the different management styles of my partners. Well, no wonder!

Team Work Exercise: Total Loss

In the team work exercise, each team was reuqired to perform certain tasks.

GAME RULE

Before we started the game, each team had to set a score target for their own team. Any score exceed the target would only be counted by 50% discount. If the team fail to meet the target, their score would be ZERO.

GAME OBJECTIVE

Strategy, Leadership, Team Work, Intuition / Creativity, Risk Management

GAME RESULT

Even having the highest score, we scored ZERO.
We even failed to sell the other learning partners to vote us as the best teamwork team or the most creative team.

Learning
- Risk Management - Certain risk shiuld not be taken
- Goal setting - Too Simple Dimension will lead to short sighted

Open and Close

Ida was the trainer. She was amazing with unlimited amount of energy.

Ida tried to teach us how to use our body to release stress, to review our own personality and to understand other people from their body movement.

We had done a few exercises:

Shake hand
Open and close
Create and Fill
Blind Dance

The class was fun but not very impressive. But, I was lucky to pair up with a handsome guy. So, it's not too bad!

EMBA Orientation

Learnt Myer-Briggs Type Indicator - MBTI in the class.
E (Extraversion) vs I (Intoversion)
S (Sensing) vs N (Intuition)
T (Thing) vs F (Feeling)
J (Judging) vs P (Perceiving)

Computer Test Result: ENFP
Self Interpretation: ISFP

I am not surprised to see 2 different results. In fact, it is very consistent. I don't have a very clear character or personality. The exercise recalled my training experience in Enneagram. I couldn't indentify my Type and at the end of the class, everyone told me that I should be Number 3.

Anyway, it is good to learn another system to understand people. I start to label some people around me.

Miss A: ENTP
Mr A: INTJ (wor!! no wonder!)
Miss I: ENTJ (wor!! isn't she a leader? oh ya...)
Mr D: ISTJ
Miss K: ENTP
Mr B: ESFP

That's enough!