The Bottom Line One funny thing about business is that everything that your uncle told you from your early days is wrong– I was told by most adults as I grew up that the bottom line is what counts. It’s true… to a sense. Strategy professionals take a different tactic: Profits and the bottom line [...]

We’ve seen a lot of shifts in the last few dozen years– my parents lamented that I would never live in a world where a job was something you could have for a lifetime, and people of my parents’s age were tarred with the worst of both– they wree promised a lifetime job but, mid-career, [...]

ExpectationI had the fortune to go to Sardegna recently for a friend’s wedding. Everything about this place is pretty awesome. The service is attentive yet chaotic– it’s hard to instil a strong series of values when you have four hours off in the middle of the afternoon in 40 degree (C) heat. When there’s a [...]

I wonder what, exactly, is my job title sometimes. My card says “Partner — East Africa” but that doesn’t say much. I’m working with Mike on his pitch for SBSVC. He don’t exactly need capital, but it’d make AEP move faster, further, and achieve profitability sooner. The early-stage companies that I’m working with, has got [...]

Use who you are & what you’re good at in your teams Teams are groups that are cohesive. In most of the work you’ll do in business school, in work, and in life will require the assistance and aid of others. While I can build a financial model, there are others who can probably do [...]

African Branding Kampala– and much of Africa– in incredibly brand-conscious. Entire buildings and building blocks are painted (often just for the cost of the paint and labour) in UTL blue, Warid red, Zain purple-pink (a particulalry hideous shade that makes me think of a little blood mixed with Pepto-Bismol– see below), and now Orange. Bugolobi [...]

Figure out what you’re good at and be who you are. In strategy courses, we talk a lot about sustainable competitive advantage-what it is that makes your company better than others at doing what it is that you do-in some cases, you may have companies that compete in markets but don’t directly compete against each [...]

You don’t get to know the rules; deal with it. For most of my academic life, I had some idea of what the grading policy would be for my work-I always lost all the penmanship points, but got most of the rest of them. You could, of course, use this to game the system-you’d get [...]

The most important lessons are learned, not taught. You can only be taught so much in life, but most of what’s important you’ll have to learn yourself. A lot of people were frustrated in our core Financial Reporting course-the accountants were upset that the course was teaching that their science was all tricks, smoke, and [...]

What you learn at Oxford’s Business School (The most important parts of which they don’t teach you) In my final set of posts about Oxford, I take a look back, six months out, and reflect on what I learned at Oxford. I suspect that some of this applies to all business schools, though much of [...]