Blonde MBADocumenting the life of a blonde MBA student in sunny California. Maybe some blondes DO have brains!

In the spirit of Election 2008, I just got out of the movie “W,” the new Oliver Stone biopic of, who else, President Bush. All politics and views aside, I think the movie highlighted one of the most important aspects to consider when making a decision about any leader, whether a leader of your business or of your country: decision-making.

From my organizational behavior class, there are basically three theories of decision-making (WOW some of these “b-school theories” actually make sense, AND I remember them?!?). The first decision-making theory basically involves looking at all possible alternatives & reviewing as much unbiased information as possible to make the optimal, ideal decision. This is the best-case scenario, but there is often a lack of time and information to find this optimal decision. The second theory is in picking the first available decision that meets your decision criteria, even if better options are available to at least make a “satisficing” decision. While this method is faster, it may not be the most accurate and best decision.

The final theory has to do with using images and feelings to guide the making of a decision, using decision frames of past history and successes as well as a “gut-feeling” and intuition to come up with a decision in the absence of perfect information.  This ability is probably the best and worse kind of decision-making there is, depending on if your intuition is right or not! While any leader needs to have intution, it should also have some basis to it with as much information as possible.

Most decisions are not routine as leaders do not have any guidelines for how to make them and do not know what the outcomes will be. That said, leaders need to have a combination of these decision-making abilities to make the best decision possible given all time or resource constraints.

Using one theory over another (i.e. usually the very subjective intution or “gut-feeling”) is not the best method and should be closely scrutinized when evaluating who is going to be our next President (or next CEO)…

Josh Brolin as "W"

Phew it’s been a few days, but I think I’m still recovering from taking 2 tests last week! In the next 2 weeks, I have 3 more midterms, 2 projects, 4 workshops, 2 other events + ongoing course work…but I guess that’s the MBA program for you!

What with all the financial concerns of the economy, my subscription of BusinessWeek these last 2 weeks has had nothing but Wall Street & related concerns. In continuing to figure out how this might affect me personally (as in the fact that MBA’s graduating into a recession/depression make on average 20% less over their lifetimes *yikes*), some good news…

“Gutsy marketers spend into the teeth of a recession” according to the article Best Global Brands. With current economic difficulties, the marketing budget may be an easy target for cost-cutting, but many companies use the recession to “get a leg up” on the competition in the area of brand building.  While everyone else may be cutting down on their marketing strategies, those who spend can theoretically lure in more customers via advertising, then when the recession smooths over, come out on top in terms of brand identity & loyalty.

Of course, as consumers in this same recession may also be cutting back their spending & quickly changing their tastes & habits to cheaper tastes & habits (hello McDonald’s [coffee], goodbye Starbucks), marketing research (*ahem, my chosen area of MBA focus*) will be crucial to make sure that if marketing dollars are spent, they are spent very, very wisely!

frappucino or crapuccino?

Phew, I just go out of my first test…not too bad, but if figured I’d wait to say anything about my study group experience until I saw if if paid off or not! On my previous post on study groups, I mentioned my fear of “groupthink” and collectively answering the question wrong…

I forgot something else…5 different people, 5 different study strategies. Alone, this is OK, to each their own device to learn the material. Collectively, however, it’s kind of hard for the person who memorized, yes, MEMORIZED the chapters to study with the person who reworded the concepts via acronyms, real world examples, and songs (j/k, sort of)! Personally, I think you want a little of all the study strategies - there is no one best way - but it does make for an interesting study group.

The results? Being the first test, none of us really knew what to expect… I think ROTE MEMORIZATION was overkill, but it was helpful for me to retype the chapter outlines for repetition, add in some acronyms for possible short answer lists (of which there were many options) and look at the cases we covered in class.

Honestly, the study group did help in a couple of ways. First, there were a couple of things I probably would have skipped over or forgotten to include if someone in the group didn’t bring it up. Second, where one person may not have understood a concept entirely, another was able to explain it in a different way that might have made more sense. As long as you keep a sense of the study strategies that work for you, this can be a helpful addition to your study time!

So, one of my recent hobbies, which in large part has led to me now writing my OWN blog, has been reading blogs on a variety of topics.  I have completely stumbled onto these blogs, starting with my searches to find good fashion deals (P.S. tip: blogs put more text onto a website to make it more searchable, thus probably how I found them), then going from link to link between blogs on random topics.

I find this whole blog process fascinating, and it has today tied right in with my studies, namely my first MBA class on the topics of strategy and competitive advantage…

Print media (namely magazines and newspapers) has been in decline in recent months, likely due in part to the recession, and even more so to the ease of access and low cost of information for consumers via the internet. That being said, magazines have had to emphasize their website content, in addition to their print subscriptions,  to reach viewers that have easier access to a computer than a newsstand.

Glamour.com is currently the source of 3-4 blogs I check on a regular basis (what with catchy titles like “Slaves to Fashion”, “Storked!”, and “Margarita Shapes Up”, it’s hard to resist :)). Its print version, Glamour magazine has had declining subscription sales of last few months and has reinvented its strategy around it’s blogs, which have increased its online readership and thus driven up site traffic as cited in this article. Glamour.com is rewriting its entire site around original site content not found in its print subscription that will be updated daily as well as adding 5-6 new blogs on different topics and linked to other Condé Nast titles.

I  know I check out the blogs every day, as I don’t like to shell out the dough I’m now having to use on textbooks! For the rest of the article, go here…