According to the HBR Daily Stat …
MBA applicants may be at a disadvantage if they interview on a day when several others have already received positive evaluations
Specifically, the 4th Great MBA applicant interviewed on a given day Is less likely to get a high interview score
Study results and what to do about them …
According to TheVerge.com …
Big grocery chains are increasingly turning to big data and mathematical models to take the guessing out of the process of pricing thousands of items on their shelves,
The models can detect your yogurt flavor preferences and your “internal hierarchy of brands” … i.e. which brands your think are better than others.
And, there’s more …
I often ask: ”Do weather forecasters feel guilty accepting their pay?”
Most people would say: “They certainly should”.
After clearing the streets of NYC for “an unprecedented blizzard of epic proportions”, weather forecasters had to eat crow when the snow-that-would-end-the world turned out to be, well, a garden-variety winter snow storm.
At least one weather-dude had the decency to apologize.
According to CNBC:
“Gary Szatkowski, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s office in New Jersey, stunned people in the wee hours Tuesday with a heartfelt apology for the blown forecast.”
How did the forecasters get things so wrong?
Since President Obama has returned ANWR to the front-burner, we thought it would be time to reprise a HomaFiles balst-from-the-past …
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According to Jonah Goldberg, writing in the National Review Online:
Both the New York Times and Washington Post editorial boards enthusiastically supported drilling in ANWR in the late 1980s.
The Post noted that the area “is one of the bleakest, most remote places on this continent, and there is hardly any other where drilling would have less impact on surrounding life. . . . ”
ANWR is roughly the size of South Carolina …
However, the area where, according to Department of Interior estimates, some 5.7 billion to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil reside is much smaller and … would amount to the size of Dulles airport.
Tempted to vacation there? Keep reading …
Did you watch the Pro Bowl yesterday?
Probably not … but if you did, you probably scratched your head and asked: “What’s up with the goalposts?”
Answer: The NFL is testing narrower goalposts (think, Arena football) and hilking extra points from the 15 yard line.
Why the change?
Bottom line : kickers have gotten too good and taken too much of the uncertainty out of field goals (and extra points).
Here are some interesting stats …
Sounds like an easy question with an obvious answer, right?
Not really.
Sometimes, properly defining the market is a stumbling block for strategists.
Harvard guru Clayton Christensen tries to cut to the crux with a simple principle:
People “hire” products to do “jobs”
The jobs are situation-specific problems that customers have to resolve.
Christensen says that the best way to define (and segment) is based on “jobs to be done”.
He calls the approach “milkshake marketing” …. the 5-minute video explains why.
Here’s a more rigorous definition of the “Jobs to be DOne” Framework …
Excerpted from Quartz: “No matter what the boss says about flextime, get to work early”
Being a “morning person” may be more than virtuous. It may literally be a criteria for career success.
Managers rate workers who get an early start higher than those who get in and stay late, no matter how many hours they work in total or how well they do their jobs.
Apparently, managers have a “morning bias” … that confuses starting time with conscientiousness and productivity.
Managers perceive employees who start later as less conscientious, and consequently less hard-working and disciplined, and that carries through to performance ratings.
Here’s the proof …
Since yesterday Obama was pitching tax increases in the SOTU, I thought you might like to see a recap of how much dough (some) Americans fork over to the government …
Americans pay a tad over $5 trillion in taxes to the Feds, States and Local Governments.
Technical note: In government parlance, the taxes are called “revenue”.
By taxing authority
Drilling down, the $5 trillion is split roughly 50%-30%-20% to the Feds, States and Locals, respectively
Here’s more detail …
The answer is obvious, right?
They take up more seats, require more server time, and eat more food.
Why do I ask?
Since ObamaCare premiums have been back in the news, we have to ask the question.
Virtually all articles re: ObamaCare are saying “at least save the popular parts like allowing adult children on their parents’ policies until they are 26”.
First, the term “adult-children” gives me the creeps. But, that’s beside the point.
I don’t care if insurance companies have to carry 26 year olds on their parents’ policies, but I don’t understand why you & I have to pay for it … not the adult-children’s parents.
Now, practically all employer-sponsored health insurance plans charge premiums in tiers: employee only, employee plus spouse, employee plus children, and employee plus spouse and children. Note: it doesn’t matter if the employee has 1 child or a dozen children … same premium.
Say what? Let’s take a look at the nums …
According to Business Week, top school MBAs haul in an average of about $1,750 per week for their summer internships.
At HBS, the median is $7,000 per month … that’s about $1,650 per week … which annualizes to about $90k.
Of course, there’s wide variation based on the school and the industry.
Note that Kellogg –- a general management and marketing school – tops the list
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In class this week, I was noting that for many (most ?) retailers, the difference between low (on no) profits and extraordinary profits is getting people to throw just one more item into the shopping cart.
Well, Business Insider must have been listening in …
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Specifically, BI offered up 18 ways that retail stores get us to buy more stuff.
Here’s the list …
You gotta start scratching your head a bit when the Dept. of Defense gets its Twitter account hacked and issues an internal directive to change social networking passwords.
Not obvious to me why the DOD even has a Twitter account, and laughably frightening that they didn’t already have a policy for frequent password changes.
The fiasco reminded me of a competition to see how long it would take uber-hackers to crack 15,000 15-character passwords
Let’s pretend that that your passwords are 16-characters long – a mix of capital and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.
Here’s how long it takes to crack them …
Since psychological studies first began, people have given themselves top marks for most positive traits.
While most people do well at assessing others, they are wildly positive about their own abilities.
The phenomenon is known as illusory superiority. (more…)
Hooray. Bucks 42, Ducks 20
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee took a lot of heat when they seeded OSU in the tourney.
Well, last nite’s game vindicated the committee.
Also vindicated was Rev. Thomas Bayes.
You know, the guy who developed Bayes’ Theorem.
Here’s what I mean …
In my Strategic Business Analytics course we cover Bayesian Inference … applications of Bayes’ Theorem … how to statistically adjust your so-called “prior beliefs” when you get new evidence.
Even I admit that sometimes the subject can get a bit dry …
So let’s bring it to life…
An easy question for loyal readers … (who had to know that today’s post was coming).
First, for casual sports fans … who the heck is Cardale Jones/
Answer: the 3rd string quarterback who is leading injury-plagued Ohio State into tonite’s college championship game.
Now, about the wristband.
Last Friday, even the WSJ has finally noticed that …
“Jones, like every other Ohio State player, went through extensive emotional training over the past two years, studying a formula that he wears on a wristband on his throwing arm. ”
It’s simple formula for life.
For an explanation, let’s flashback to a HomaFiles post from September 27, 2013 … more than a year ago!
The post was titled: Life: E + R = O
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OK, I.m a control freak.
There, I said it.
Along the way, somebody passed along a memorable observations:
“You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can always control the the way you respond to it.”
Fast forward.
A couple of night’s ago, I was watching a replay of an Ohio State football game..
The announcers said that Urban Meyer – OSU’s head coach — preaches the E+R=O principle to his players … even has them wear wristbands.
Say, what?
I ran and googled E+R=O
Answer: Event + Response = Outcome
Hmmmm … sounds familiar.
And, there’s more …
Psychology professor Angela Lee Duckworth has researched successful students, athletes and business managers.
She concludes that talent and intelligence will get you only so far.
The characteristic that separates successful people from the also-rans is, in a word, “grit”.
Grit is tenacious spirit that keeps certain people dedicated to their goal (whether it involves their studies, their projects, their clients, or something else) for the long haul, determined to accomplish what they set out to do.
Grit is working with intensity and stamina over long periods of time to incrementally chip away at some goal.
Prof. Duckworth says schools & companies should recruit people who are not only smart, but also demonstrate “true grit”.
Maybe she’s onto something.
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Here’s a TED talk in which Prof. Duckworth summarizes her findings.
If you want more here’s is a link to a longer talk Prof. Duckworth gave recently.
First day of strategy consulting , so appropriate to reprise the Michael Porter question …
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OK, I was asleep at the switch on this one … completely missed that Monitor – the consulting outfit started by strategy guru Michael Porter – went bankrupt last year and got acquired by Deloitte.
How ironic … an uber-strategist’s own company goes belly up.
Here’s the scoop …
According to the NY Times , the Harvard faculty is throwing a collective hizzy fit.
What’s their beef?
In a touch of irony, the same folks who cheer-led the passage of ObamaCare now feel aggrieved because they’re being forced to shoulder some of the costs.
To quote my grandson Ryne, “Oh me oh my.”
Here’s the scoop … with some priceless snippets from the Times’ article
No, we’re not talking about the defensive pass interference penalty flag that was picked up without explanation in the Cowboys-Lions game.
Everybody is all over that one. So, we’ll pass.
What caught my eye was a piece in SBNation headlined: “Lions fans should be a bit mad at the referees for what happened as they tried to seal a win. They should be just as mad at their coach, though.”
The situation:
Late in the game, the Lions had a fourth-and-1 on the Dallas 46.
At first, they lined up to go for it. But they didn’t.
Instead, the Lion’s punter shanked a 10-yarder …
Retrospectively, a bad call, for sure.
But, coach Caldwell was just going with coaches’ conventional wisdom.
Leading to a broader question: how often is NFL coaches’ conventional wisdom right (or wrong)?
I’ve got something on that …
The Homa Files 