Thinking big...

I have been reading a rather inspirational book "The Magic of Thinking Big." It has me thinking about a lot of "big" things, namely - the power of positive thinking, the importance of finding energizing peers and colleagues, and the leadership paradox. I know I have the tendency to be my own worst critic, and at times, it causes a serious crisis of confidence in my interactions with others. I don't know where it comes from, whether it is innate or ingrained, but it wasn't until I read this book that I learned I could take conscious steps to overcome these thoughts. It makes sense how negative and self-critical thoughts stymie success and lead to mediocrity, but the converse didn't immediately occur to me - that you could think your way to success. It seems that there is something false about that, something delusional, that you can't make something true just because you stubbornly, adamantly believe it to be true. Yet, it is no coincidence that the most positive and happy and confident people are the ones that give out the most energy and in turn are the ones that get things done - they are the ones that become leaders. Ever met a pessimistic CEO who was successful? We think ourselves into action and we act ourselves into thinking.

Three bricklayers

Three bricklayers at a construction site were interviewed about their jobs. Here is how they responded to the question, "What do you think about your job?"

Bricklayer 1: "What do you mean what I do think? I lay bricks...it's just a job."
Bricklayer 2: "It's a living...it provides an income for myself and my family."
Bricklayer 3: "I'm part of a grand building project that will create new job opportunities and will make life better for generations to come."

Which one of these bricklayers do you think went on to become the most successful in the construction business?

Take home message: "You are who you think you are..."

(adapted from the book "The Magic of Thinking Big", by David Schwartz)

Building My "Math Muscle"

Term 3 is upon us. From all that I've been hearing, this term is going to be the most gruelling of them all - Global Finance, Macro Economics, and Managerial Accounting (listed by order of my current interest). Also this term the two sections have been scrambled, and we have been assigned to new teams, so there will be some breaking in time to get going again. I must admit that while I do like the three weeks away from Fuqua between terms, it does make it that much more difficult when starting back up. It's like you get used to going to the gym every other day, and suddenly, you don't go for weeks - all that muscle mass that takes weeks to build up turns to mush in a matter of days and those tiddly-wink dumbells feel a lot heavier. My "math muscle" that was getting a good workout last term in Decision Models and Econ, has more or less atrophied.

My Dad asked me the other day about what the most important thing I've learned since starting the program. I told him that the most important thing I've learned so far (aside from the importance of a good night's rest), is that business is more quantitative than I imagined it to be. It seems that much of business is about making decisions with limited resources (such as money, information and time). This means, among other things, knowing how to develop and use mathematics to model risk and uncertainity, given a set of reasonable assumptions. Math is making sense in a way that I never really grasped in my science classes.

We learned the concept of "arbitrage" in my Finance class today. For the uninitiated, arbitrage is the idea of "making something from nothing" - taking a discrepancy in price or value between two or more things, and leveraging that discrepancy to make money. I think that is an appropriate metaphor for my pursuit of the MBA, finding opportunities to arbitrage undervalued concepts and ideas. Plus, the word arbitrage just sounds cool...