The case study method

Harvard Business School (HBS) pioneered the use of case study methodology in their Master of Business Administration (MBA) course over a century ago. The MBA format pioneered by HBS, whilst receiving periodic updates is almost unchanged from its original structure.

The majority of MBA assessment utilises case studies; however, as an online student we were also required to submit essay type assessments. When undertaking an online MBA, it is somewhat difficult to present a case study whilst taking questions and defending methodologies and recommendations.

Whilst I am familiar with online assessments where we would firstly undertake a solo case study followed by working in remote teams on the second case study, I feel full-time on-campus is an easier option as collaboration is easier.

We utilised almost exclusively HBS case studies, as I understand it, HBS professors write case studies and use for a year or so before producing new case studies and sell now obsolete case studies to other universities. This, I believe, works well for all institutions as HBS continuously updates their materials whilst MBA students worldwide benefit from quality HBS materials.

For a world renowned business like HBS, they are able to attract world class scholars and staff, the Harvard MBA is not only world class, the lecturers are pretty much the pick of the crop and in high demand. Clearly, business schools such as Harvard attract the highest level candidates with competition for places difficult to achieve with 8% acceptance rates fairly standard.

Second tier business schools such as the one I attended do not have the same capabilities, reputation and quality of candidates as HBS. I am ok with this as my MBA education, whilst nowhere the price of HBS also doesn't offer the same opportunities for graduates so it is up to me to get on with it and earn my ROI.

Safari - I hate it

When you become an Apple convert you get locked into a certain range of products, you are now firmly entrenched in the Apple world.

Their web browser is a prime example of a substandard product you are forced into using. In short, Safari is rubbish and I seek to avoid it at all costs. My problem is I own Apple hand me down products, I have never in my life purchased an Apple device.

I am forced to use the crappy Safari browser and can’t update to something decent like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or even Microsoft Edge since I now have an old product.

I am having difficulty upgrading to IOS 10.0 or 10.3 to run the latest versions. Then I got lucky, Opera was supported on these devices. I was able to download a version of the Opera browser and all the issues I had evaporated. I am happy now, I don’t think I will ever be an Apple convert and this will limit my annoyance.

Blogging on the road

The vast majority of my posts are written on the road using Google Docs. Then the post is cross referenced and fact checked when I can log onto a WiFi connection in a cafe, hotel or restaurant. I spell check at that stage too hopefully preventing embarrassing blemishes on the page.

As I wrote this particular post, I was awaiting entry into Neuschwanstein Castle in Fussen overlooking the spectacular countryside, a view fit for a king. I had some time to burn as I was on a guided tour of the castle and made sure I was early, this required exerting some energy walking up the hill but better to be early. Besides, I not only enjoy the exercise, I need it.

I can use Google Docs offline to write the bulk of the content on my Samsung tablet before a copy/paste to Blogger and finally uploading pictures to accompany the post. If I am working from home, then I generally upload the picture and write the content around the pic, different methods depending on requirements. What I know is I enjoy writing and travelling and will hopefully continue to do so until I am too old to carry my backpack around.

Rolex shops in Hong Kong

When wandering around the waterfront district of Tsim Sha Tsui as a watch enthusiast, I immediately noticed the distinctive green Rolex logo with gold crown perched above numerous stores.

There were purely Rolex retailers in this tight area along with authorised dealers retailing an array of high end luxury timepieces from Patek Philippe, Chopard, Omega, Tudor, Audemars Piquet, Hublot, Breitling, IWC, TAG Heuer, Panerai, Cartier, Longines, Bruguet, Blancpain and Tissot.

I wandered into their store expecting to see row after row of DateJust and a few DayDate watches, I was pleasantly surprised, they had quite a selection of timepieces. As I sat in front of the display case trying on an Explorer I, an Air King and then a Cosmograph Daytona; a blue/gold Yachtmaster II caught my eye. Within a minute, I had this wonderful expression of nautical precision engineering firmly clamped to my wrist.

I glanced at the price tag and I realised I had a $202,000 HKD ($33,000 AUD) watch in my possession - the watch was impressive. I have been instructed that throughout the 1970s, Hong Kong retailers discounted luxury goods as Hong Kong was a major shopping hub of Asia and was the place of a bargain, but this is now unfortunately no longer the case.

I then thought about the supply and demand curves taught to me in economics classes and how retailers are able to demand full retail prices with such a high level of competition in a tight area. Retailers must be making sales to warrant the maintaining of prices otherwise a wave of discounting would then lead to a destructive price war.

A state of equilibrium must have been achieved with a critical mass of sales for both Hong Kong and one also guesses mainland China. I am aware Hong Kong has slowed down in economic terms and luxury item sales are under pressure.

Hong Kong was a great place to be, there was plenty to do and I thought the place was vibrant. I was somewhat surprised at the luxury goods for sale, there was no differentiation, a Rolex is a Rolex anywhere in the world along with, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Armani or Louis Vuitton. There is wealth in Hong Kong and they are happy to flaunt it but the bargains evaporated a long time ago.

Heineken Light - just awful

I was over in Bali for my pre-Christmas break and a hotel bar was offering a two for one deal on beer, that deal included Heineken so I thought that sounds a reasonable offer - so let's head in.

Once we we in and seated the rules changed, it now only included the local Bintang and imported Heineken Light beers. Once you are seated you can't be bothered arguing and it is a hassle to get up and leave. If you read the reviews Heineken Light has a floral taste, I immediately picked this flavour but I never saw it as a positive - I thought it was awful.

I can't complain though, you know what you get with light beer and I shouldn't have expected anything else. The only option is to drink your beer, not complain about it and don't ever make that mistake again. I wasn't going to reward their bait and switch though, we decided on just one drink and then find somewhere else.

Identifying fake Ray Ban sunglasses

Whilst on my yearly pre-Christmas trip to Bali we were looking at genuine Ray Ban sunglasses around the Kuta Beach area. There are multitudes of fake Ray Ban sunglasses for sale from street vendors, that goes without saying, but what about the more reputable retail outlets?

This question is more difficult, the last thing you want is to be sold a high priced set of fake sunglasses. So, how do you identify fake Ray Ban sunglasses? Firstly look at the lens, on the left hand side just under the hinge is a small RB lettering etched into the glass. Now these are Ray Bans so the lens is glass and not plastic.

The frame is important and depending on model, the high quality plastic frames have all the data printed on them. Naturally, some series have metal frames so this isn't always pertinent. Check the hinge carefully, cheap or fake versions have different (and low quality) hinges.

Checking the street vendors, they too had an etched lens but the lens quality, frame material, writing and hinge were different. My recommendation would in such a situation go through street vendors first to inspect their quality and then head to a genuine reseller and the quality will be apparent.

Whilst at the genuine reseller, on their shop door or window will be a reseller decal that is year stamped and has a QR code. With your phone you scan te code and enter the web address and the site will verify if this is an authorised reseller. If there is no decal then this store is not an authorised reseller. I suppose this isn't necessarily fake as the grey market is a reasonably large market.

The Cartier Santos

I love researching and checking out prestige timepieces, a huge name in the fashion industry is Cartier and I am amazed that they generally rate third behind Rolex and Omega in premium watch sales. This surprised me so I began to look into the Cartier watch range and although the Santos has been discontinued at time, the Santos model is constantly revived.

I was wandering around one of those huge shopping malls they have in the Philippines when I decided to wander in the Cartier shop within the anchor department store. Along with Cartier, there was a Bvlgari, Swarovski and Tiffany & Co store with the Cartier store opening into the main mall as well as the department store.

The Santos follows the traditional Cartier formula with an elegant square watch design. The design dates back to 1904 when Louis Cartier design a wrist mounted timepiece for Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont.

So, amazingly the Santos is not only the first watch designed exclusively to be worn on the wrist but the Santos is an aviator's timepiece. With Cartier's market positioning as a high end luxury retailer, it's hard to believe the industrial design origins of the original Santos.

Back around that time watch manufacturers were taking established movements from pocket watches and placing the movement in a wrist mounted case. The move from pocket watches to wrist watches has military origins as military planners needed to synchronise infantry and cavalry charges to artillery bombardments.

You don't want to move too soon nor do you want to leave the charge too late and the defensive positions have the chance to move back to their machine gun posts and cut you down.

The pioneering days of flight had requirements where two hands were required on the controls, it probably wasn't a great technique to fumble around pulling your pocket watch out, flipping the case open and glancing at the time.

Back in those days, flight was a fairly hazardous activity considering the Wright brothers made their first flight in December 1903. Flipping the auto-pilot on back then wasn't an option.

Dumont graduated from balloon flight to fixed winged aircraft that has been described as lighter-than-air to heavier-than-air flight. Some arguments exist that Dumont predated the Wright brothers in self-propelled fixed wing aircraft flight. What is not denied is that Dumont was a pioneer of flight and was a well known aviator of his time.

The now iconic design with curved horns formed from the case, Roman numerals on the dial, blued Cartier hands and exposed bezel screws. The case is water resistant to 10 bar or 100 metres depth but I really couldn't see anyone going diving with this on their wrist.

The current movement is automatic on the models I checked although quartz movements also exist with this model. The Calibre 1847 is an in-house movement with 23 jewels operating at 4Hz frequency and a 42 hour power reserve.

Would I ever see myself purchasing a Cartier Santos? Well, the answer is no. However, I do like to head out and research, try on and review iconic timepieces.

The Cartier Santos certainly has the heritage to be worthy of the respect of the watch community. For me, one of the advantages of heading out to the retail store is I am able to collect the books the major manufacturers produce and assist my research.

Vasse Felix Filius Chardonnay

I have been a fan of Vasse Felix chardonnay for a long time now, so when I saw the Filius range sitting in the refrigerator at my local bottle shop - I was always going to make the sale.

I was disappointed, yes, I am aware this was in a cheaper price range with filius apparently translating to son of their premier brands. Based on a fruit driven style, the Filius chardonnay still has oak but it is much more subdued than their premier or icon brands.

The wine has a pale straw appearance with green tinges, the palete has citrus notes with peach overtones and soft oak as is now favoured by contemporary consumers. For me, it isn't to my tastes as I prefer old style wooded chardonnay with much deeper fruit and I will instead seek their premier range in the future.

2000% returns on offer

I was diving in Subic Bay and introducing myself to the people on the dive boat. People are generally pretty reserved as we all climb on the boat, I prefer to instigate a conversation with individuals as I am fairly conversant with proceedings and how our morning will pan out.

We were chatting about finance as I was asking about people's careers, I really enjoy asking about what people do for a living. I meet a diverse range of people on dive boats, they tend to be successful types with high disposable incomes and I like making friends outside of my usual channels.

As I spoke further to him, he was recruiting for his finance operations, I was somewhat surprised to learn he was claiming 2000% returns. I am generally happy with 10% returns for a ten year rolling period, sure I would appreciate higher returns but one sees just over 5% as a fairly standard yardstick.

He also requested time to make back any losses, he explained that this doesn't normally happen but should it, he required at least six months to recoup losses. I would have thought a high risk/high return strategy would generate some losses from time to time but he appeared adamant this wasn't the case.

Despite his constant assurances, I was not under any threat of sending my hard earned money to him to speculate with. I have always thought there is no lower return than not getting your money back and my personal risk/reward factors are firstly determined by capital preservation and secondly a return on capital. 

Make a decision

When I first finished my trade back in 1989 and was on my first major project I was given some advice by the Leading Hand that was very simple. It was “make a decision and stick by it, even if it is the wrong decision.”  

I have also heard the term ‘frequently wrong but never in doubt” used and while you are able to amend the process the implementation period - that is decisiveness.

So how did this advice come about? Simple really, the Maintenance Superintendent on the project was terribly indecisive, to the point of making no decision and becoming frozen with inaction. What we needed was leadership, we needed support and we needed action - we got none of that.

He was a really nice guy, I liked him but we just couldn't rely on him. Even worse, he lost the respect of the guys under him but what torpedoed his career, well at least at this company was the loss of support by the upper management.

Naturally, we all like to make the correct decision every time under pressure from cost and time restraints but we will be wrong from time to time. In my MBA education we undertook a whole unit on decision-making.

However, this training came close to twenty seven years after I received this excellent advice, I was involved in plenty of decision-making in that period and I heeded the advice of my then Leading Hand and made sure I was decisive.

During our education, we didn't have a definitive text on decision-making that we could reference although we had plenty of academic reading to perform that didn't really hit the mark in my opinion.

I believe MBA education is heavily based on analysis utilising models to aid that process and post graduation I will draw up a decision-making grid to assist future workplace decisions.

Diving the Suunto Vyper dive computer

The Suunto Vyper dive computer has been around a long time, they were an industry changing computer. Prior to their introduction, the favoured dive computer for dive professionals was the Aladin Pro computer; then everywhere I dived, the Suunto Vyper led computer sales among professionals and new divers alike - the Vyper was strapped to every diver's wrist.

The Vyper was smaller in dimensions to the Aladin computers, the algorithm was the then new de Winke Reduced Gradient Bubble Model (RGBM) as oppossed to the Aladin's Buehlmann neo-Haldanean model. The favourite feature of many divers was the safety stop count-down timer, an altitude compensation setting along with a personal compensation setting, nitrox was standard and you could set a depth alarm. Like the Aladin Pro, the Vyper was a clear leader of its era, the Vyper is still in production and whilst now super-seeded, the Vyper is still a pretty decent dive computer for specific dive applications.

Adelaide International Airport

I couldn't believe it, waiting around the departure lounge of Adelaide Domestic Airport I wanted to go and have a look at the international departure area. Upon our arrival in Adelaide we viewed the international departures already, there was a 22:30 flight to Dubai, our arrival at 22:05 was the last arrival for the night and the terminal was all but closed.

When we headed back to the airport after a week in Adelaide, I had expected the airport to be busier, I was terrible mistaken. At 2:00 in the afternoon, the international departures room was closed, lights off and barricades erected preventing entry. I thought how unusual, how many international flights a day does Adelaide have?

Due to its central location on the southern coast of Australia the real value of the airport is domestic travel I guess. I began some online research of international departures and arrivals at Adelaide finding there was generally one arrival and two departures daily.

The three major east coast cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane service the major routes to the east and north of the country from South America, the United States and destinations such as Hong Kong. Perth on the west coast is ideal for flying to both southern Africa, Asia and Europe.

No one is flying any further south than Adelaide, of course Hobart is further south than Adelaide as the island is located south of Victoria so a short flight to Melbourne pretty much opens up the world for Tasmanian locals. Adelaide is pretty much a regional hub these days and with longer range aircraft already being built and many more planned, Adelaide Airport looks like further slipping into obscurity.

A stalled career

What happens when a career stalls? Many people have been that predicament so they are faced with two basic choices - stay put or move.

I don't have that choice at the moment, my career has stalled and a move back to the private sector isn't a real option. I still have a job so I am in a better position than most people so I can't complain.

But I want to progress and that isn't happening for me right now, the group of people who don't actually have the authority to hold power are doing a fantastic job of holding the power. The problem for them is we have an audit trail and their impropriety can be uncovered.

Reviving a stalled career can be achieved by uncovering impropriety, dishonesty and corruption. This doesn't make you popular and you aren't going to be nominated for any awards; but when you are dealing with public funds, your loyalty is not covering up co-worker's indiscretions but defending the public interest.

I thought I wouldn't be changing employers, so I had to not only expose corruption but I have to ensure I maximise my role in uncovering corruption to revive my stalled career. Changing careers is actually easier than moving forward in the government, especially moving back to private enterprise.

How is this so? They know that I have uncovered their impropriety, the rest of the team are oblivious as to what is happening. They don't fully understand the training process from funding, allocation of funds, resulting, personnel management, training design and training reporting. They are being bribed with preferential treatment and a status they haven't earned or deserved.

They have reduced duties, less stress, increased remuneration and promotions beyond what they could have ever expected. They are supportive of such actions as it is in their own personal interests but they need to overcome their own personal interests and think of the interests of the students in their care and the people who fund their employment.