RBA Bank – Dr Guy Debelle @ UniBreakfast

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RBA Bank – Dr Guy Debelle presenting at Adelaide University’s UniBreakfast on the 26th of February 2013.

UniBreakfast with Assistant Governor of RBA

Adelaide University has arranged for Dr Guy Debelle of the Reserve Bank of Australia to speak at an exclusive breakfast seminar, part of their UniBreakfast series of events. Dr Guy Debelle works as the Assistant Governor (Financial Markets) at the RBA bank, so it will be very interesting to hear what he has to say. You can read more on him here.

The headline for the event is :

“Hear about the effect of the exchange rate on the economy, what the RBA does each day in the money and fx markets and how this flows through to borrowing rates and mortgage rates.”

I’m told there are over 120 pre-registered attendees, and representatives from the media will also be present. Sounds great!

If you would like to be kept up to date, from 7:30am (Adelaide time) I will be providing live updates throughout the seminar, via this blog post. So check back or refresh your browsers to receive the latest version.

Also, you can contact me during the event via email andy@forbessa.com, or by posting comments on this page.

Event Start Continue reading →

Live blogging @ UniBreakfast, 26/02/2013

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Hi All,

Tomorrow morning I will be live blogging the UniBreakfast with Assistant Governor of RBA event from the National Wine Centre in Adelaide, from 7:30am.

For more details on the event please see https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/mba/2013/01/31/26-february-2013-unibreakfast-with-assistant-governor-of-rba/ for more details on the event.

If you are going and see me there, please come up and say hi! Otherwise, check back later and see how my first live blogging attempt worked out!

Thanks

Andy

Adelaide Startup Ecosystem and ANZ Innovyz

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On the weekend I attended an interesting talk by Dr Jana Mathews at Adelaide University. She touched on many facets of innovation and entrepreneurship  but of most interest to me was her discussion on the Adelaide Startup Ecosystem and ANZ Innovyz’s work in South Australia.

Firstly, on Dr Jana Mathews. She is an expert in her field of entrepreneurial leadership and business growth. She has a doctorate from Harvard, is co-author of several books (such Lessons from the Edge and Building the Awesome Organization). From Colorado, she has recently been spending significant time in Adelaide as the Managing Director of ANZ Innovyz START program – a 13 week startup accelerator modelled after the US TechStars. Continue reading →

Managerial Finance Strategies to Add Value

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High level overview of some managerial finance strategies to add value to your organisation. Covered as part of MBA subject Managerial Finance (2013).

Managerial Finance Strategies to Add Value

The following strategies to add to the net present value (NPR) of a company by altering the cash flow for the better.

Add Value by Maximising Existing Assets

With an existing asset you can:

Increase revenue by either higher sales numbers (make & sell more), or by raising your prices (charge more). The other side of the coin is the decreasing the expenses incurred when using the asset. Find ways to use less resources through greater operational efficiency and seek lower the prices of raw materials and asset support services through tighter procurement. Continue reading →

Motivational Slogans in the workplace – Demming v Zuckerberg

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One of Demming’s pet hates was motivational slogans in the workplace – things like “Do it right first time”, and “Zero defects”. Two from the IT world that come to mind are “Real Engineers Ship” (Steve Jobs), and “Stay focused and keep shipping” (Mark Zuckerberg, see article here, which has an interesting photo of his desk).

Jobs and Zuckerberg make pretty powerful examples of sloganeering. I find it interesting that Demming was so against slogans, they’re everywhere. So let’s dive a little deeper.

Demming stated that slogans should eliminated because they do nothing but “generate frustration and resentment” in the workforce.

“Implicit in such sloganeering is the supposition that employees could, if they tried do better. They are offended, not inspired by this suggestion”   – Demming Continue reading →

The 14 Point Demming Management Method

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This post is a continuation of my second guest post for Adelaide Universities MBA Blog. If you haven’t read my summary of the Demming Management Method, start here first.

Demming’s Fourteen Point Management Method

Demming’s 14 Point Management Method was first published in 1982. A statistician by trade his ability with numbers enabled him to challenge many traditional management practices, resulting in his fourteen point plan:

1. Create Consistency of Purpose for the Improvement of Product and Service

Demming and others, such as (Stephen R Covey) believe that one of the difficulties facing humankind is that we are too easily focused on the problems of today, at the expense of those of tomorrow.

“It is easy to stay bound up in the tangled knots of the problems of today, becoming ever more and more efficient in them” – Demming Continue reading →

Guest Blogging for Adelaide University

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Writing this blog is part of my chasing the cool strategy. If I’m interested or excited about something, that I should do it. I thought – wouldn’t it be cool to have somewhere to record what I learn and think about on my way towards my MBA. True to my “Chasing the Cool’ theory, it has started to snowball, and cooler things are starting to happen.

Late last year I was asked by Adelaide University to be a contributor to their MBA  program’s blog.

I’m now a regular guest blogger on another site! Cool.

I put the finishing touches on my second guest post for them last night, that should go live in the next week or two – on W. E. Demming and his management method.

But it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet linked back to, or talked about my opening guest post for them – ‘Why Do an MBA?’.

If you’re interested, please check it out and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Andy

 

New Year’s Resolutions and The Future You

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I haven’t done a post in a while. I have been too busy having a holiday from work, study and blogging. Whilst it was really nice not having to do any of those three, it wasn’t without some guilt.

So with blogging, I made a resolution to do better –  at least one blog post per week.  Which is a perfect segway into the first post of 2013 – the cultural phenomenon of the New Year’s resolution, personal motivation, and the future you.

New Year’s Resolutions

This year I noticed a number of articles in the media, frowning on the practice of new years resolutions, and this sentiment was also echoed by a number of my friends and colleagues.

Some of the arguments against making new years resolutions were: Continue reading →

Alfie Kohn Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work

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In 1993 Alfie Kohn wrote an article titled ‘Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work’. For the time it was a radical piece critisising any attempts of increasing employee productivity via incentive plans. Even now, it is still more on the radical side of management and leadership theory.

Kohn said that “rewards typically undermine the very processes they are intended to enhance” and that they secured, at best, only temporary compliance.

Before getting further into Kohn’s reasoning, it’s worth hitting pause to revisit some motivational basics. Firstly, motivation is classified into two types, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation comes from the self, whereas extrinsic motivation is supplied externally, usually by the manager. There is a large amount of research that shows that the highest performing people are intrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation is a form of behaviour modification, whereby a manager will use techniques to motivate the individual to do something that they would otherwise not want to do. It may be that the employee theoretically wants to do the work, but in practice they’d rather take it slower or more relaxed than you’d like. Continue reading →

Complex Systems and Change Management – Guest Post

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Complex Systems and Change Management – A guest post by Philip Southwell

I used to think that I could drive change like Michael Schumacher used to drive a Ferrari. If I drove with consummate skill I would take the corners smoothly, overtake competitors and win the drivers’ championship. How wrong was I.

This approach led to frustration. Why wouldn’t people do what I wanted? Why couldn’t people see that the change I was advocating would further the aims of the organisation?

My frustration came because I didn’t realise one simple fact: Continue reading →