CEO Perspectives -- Dan Mudd

This Wednesday our speaker is Dan Mudd. During preparation of this class, I read a few documents/interviews about Dan, wondering how he could have guts to come here, based on his last records in Fannie Mae. Even through the entire evening with what he presented, talked and was questioned by sloaners. I do not know how to position my view, but certainly know little bit better about how complex role he was in and got himself into. no matter what, I view this as a learning way. At one moment, Dan was caught in such unpleasant questioning, how he handled was quite well. One thing strucked to me was that, he responded that he does not regret any of his decision as he tried his best with the knowledge and data he received to make the best decisions at that moment. Sure, that is much easy for us to question the history, pinpoint the stupidity/fortunate of certain decisions. The question for me to ask is, if you were CEO in that position, with congress and market pressures, what decisions will you make(important, pretend that you do not know what happened in the market in 2008.) in fact, we could never pretend the things/decisions which we do not have a chance to do, only remind us that we should do our best, not leave any room for us to regret.

Back to the class, a few what Dan said I agreed, some disagreed. He, now is CEO for Fortress Investment Group.

-- His model of being a CEO: leaders who lead, keep healhty culture (accept bad news and being lion tamer), keep principle -- Focused Disc., and relentless deadlines
-- mentioned a book
-- explain how Fannie Mae is created, the relationship between congress and market (I have never knew this part of history, quite eye-opening)
-- Everyone should be fired once through his career.

White Mountains

My classmate Karl invited Zhiyong and I to join him and his wife Kathy to go to his NH ski lodge this weekend for hiking/snowshoeing. Zhiyong and I just talked about how we want to celebrate Chinese New Year, also where I hope to show him around in his trip, so far, thinking about NYC. When the invitation in to go to NH, we happily took this over NYC, which turned out to be an excellent decisions. Zhiyong really enjoyed the time with my friends here, getting to know American cultures. Sometimes the questions he asked me, totally remind me of the time when I first came to U.S. Nowadays, I am too Americanized and start forgetting those transition moments. His questions made me more appreciate this journey to the West.

Have not drive for a while, I had a little bit hard time to navigate around, not sure if that is because I am in Boston or my driving skills got dull.


New Hampshire's White mountain is so famous. We head to Welch's peak. So amazed how much well-prepared gears Karl has and took along, without those poles and yak-track, we will have trouble to cross some icy patch.






without too much efforts, around one hour, we have reached Welch's peak, which you could see the entire valley. Karl told us that spring time, here will be so crowded and we were quite lucky to have all the views by us.

Here are Zhiyong and Karl.



On the way back, Karl asked us if we would like to go sliding. I looked at him wondering where. Soon he took us to the place which has quite steep hit with ice and snow around. I tried to think when my last time went sliding, almost back to college time. We are so glad that Karl suggested it. On the sliding path, there was a snow bump, when you hit it, you will fly into the air. have to say, Karl did the best, and I did the worst, Zhiyong sort of slide in a curve line. just so much fun, we were having a blast, though I have landed both in the funny way causing some aching. Later, I told Karl that I was so happy that he is not those kind of serious no fun person! They are definitely on my fun group buddy list.


Saturday night, Zhiyong cooked several tasty chinese dishes. We played a chopstick game. Both Karl and Kathy surprised us with the skills of using chopsticks. You will pick up a choice of which shape/color of items you will need to use chopsticks to pick up out of a bowl. The competition was on...




Sunday all of us went to RattleSnake(both east and west)trails by Squam lake. The views are great, part of these remind me of Northwest.

be yourself, be true to yourself

Saturday I attended 19th Dynamic Women in Business Conference at Harvard. It was very refreshing and recharging.

All the simple but meaningful advice cross the whole day conversation.

Ann Simonds (General mills)
-- not specialist, but generalist
-- moments matter
-- start holistically, for who you are
-- Must Deliver
-- need mentor (I am very thankful for all the mentors in my life.)
-- need critics, need tough medicine, do not always expect applause
-- must own your career, make your choice happen
-- you can not have to do all by yourself
-- give time and patience at hard moment
-- the life you learn with and the life you lead with after that

During the penal sections, you will find the similar interests women to talk with, the successful women in that field sharing their inputs. Regarding to women at male dominate work place, I really enjoy Deloitt senior manager's comments -- do not always push everything link to gender discrimination, without men, this kind of topic won't exist, the efforts should use on how to collaborate and let them aware of difference, and figure out how to work through together, instead of creating many women initiatives and not able to execute.

Consistently, women leaders refers to be yourself, let your passion drive your career instead of money, when you are true to yourself, your individual thinking, opinions and plan will work for you, not one for all.

Seminars

In Human Supervisory Control, we began to analyze human error involved system. I pick up the flight accident last Feb. in Buffalo, NY, NTSB report detailed list the entire investigation, including the redone video of cockpit last minute before crash. How did pilots lost situational awareness? It took me quite a while to detach the emotional feelings. Professor Cummings constantly reminds us to look beyond the accident, what display or automation can we do to better position the situation and help pilots to avoid the accident? even in your own life, will you let yourself adjust situation or alter the situation? A lot of time, adapting is easy and much simple way to go. What about reverse this?

Thursday night I tried out the course "Power and Negotiation", one of several courses not in IT(like energy, aerospace, psychology...). Different from undergraduate study, I found that I have more interests to know and learn these, interestingly, they are all interlink with each other, no field boundary.

at user innovation seminar, one of TA is a hacker and totally looks like a hacker. one of his projects was photography. with little bit script, he and other hackers can let $100 canon camera do the same thing what $2200+ canon camera does, just check out CHDK site. It is legal, a total open-source site, which Canon even watch closely, taking some new innovation into its new product without credit the creator. Hacker does not care, who let us know why they spend so much time on those things.

By the end of Friday, Paul Krugman will give a talk at MIT. This is how energetic this place can be. So many things going on, you have a constant battle to figure out which to choose over many great things. A group of world renown economists and your favorite professors will be just like you, standing in the crowd, hoping for a seat!

CEO Perspectives

The first week of Spring semester became the "classes hunting". As there are so many good classes offering here, how could you choose one over another? you go to attend(sort of like shop around). This is a quite new experience for me, to hunt and bid for classes.

So far, I am quite happy that I got in the Wednesday class -- Corporations at the Crossroads: The CEO Perspective. This is such a demanding class, 120 students got in and 81 more on the waiting list. Here is the list of speakers:

Feb 3 Jim Sinegal President & CEO, Costco
Feb 10 Dan Mudd CEO, Fortress Investment Group
Feb 17 Strauss Zelnick Founder and Partner, Zelnick Media
Feb 24 Jeff Immelt Chairman and CEO, GE
March 3 Ray Elliott CEO, Boston Scientific
March 10 Nigel Travis CEO, Dunkin’ Brands
March 31 Dan Hesse CEO, Sprint Nextel
April 7 Wyc Grousbeck Managing Partner & Governor, Boston Celtics
April 14 Jeff Zucker CEO, NBC Universal
April 21* Jim McNerney Chairman and CEO, Boeing
April 28 Bill Ford Chairman, Ford Motor Company
May 5 Mark Templeton CEO, Citrix
May 12 Leo Apotheker CEO, SAP

There will be pre-required reading and 3 executive memos. To have them face to face with you discuss their decisions, esp. during critical times. When we look back history, we could objectively say which is right/wrong decision. But for them, how did they make those decisions at that time, what information they depend on or choose to analyze?

To give you a crazy picture of what Wednesday night class looked like, I came way early with my dinner in hand to secure my seat. Before Mr. Sinegal presents, the room was so full, totally break the fire drill policy, each stair was squeezed 2-3 persons.

Costco, the company built in Washington. I am one of Costco customers, always wondering why they only keep the limited choices, but periodically have some surprise products. Mr. Sinegal presents the history, growth plan domestically and globally. He promotes Costco through his every slides and words, but he does not advertise Costco since he believes the word of mouth and fact of long line of Costco gas station advertise well without paying. During Q&A time, being a Washington LCB employee, how could I miss the opportunity to ask him about Costco lawsuits, which my team has provide a lot of data for AG on those cases. After I describes the lawsuits and background info, he asked me if I ever dealt with Government or work for Government. He is such a brilliant person, still believe that the second case will be like the first one, won over Government.

1. Reward shareholders by doing 4 things: obey the law, take care of our customers, take care of our employees(huge admiration to him on providing good healthcare plan for employees despite what wall street says), respect suppliers
2. think like a small company
3. succession plan: promote people inside, who knows business well
4. merchandising: senior management should understand merchandising, and have right people skills, the rest of knowledge and skills can be trained later
5. carry everything to save money for customer
6. never have an exit strategy
7. constantly figure out how to keep price low
8. good luck & good people (go back to price club relationship)
9. self-service got good satisfaction
10. never keep old generation products(let 45% TV stock sell for only 4% value, in order to clear the stock)
11. no advertise
12. supplier can not determine the price. (this is critical in order to run the low price)
13. do not put corp. money to political party
14. believe every employee should have health care
15. Japan, Korea & Taiwan take 1/3 Costco sales
16. learn tricks how to use existing data(only 20% make sense, this is a hard decision for managers)

Sounds cool Vs. Dangerous

Today is the beginning of Spring Semester in 2010. My first class is ESD 744: Human Supervisory Control, one of courses that I take a huge step away from my core courses, stretching the area I could learn. Interestedly, knowledge is quite universal. A lot of thinking here are quite supporting with management decision and reshape my mind on design and system thinking!

From 40s plane to nowadays cool design airplane, you will find a lot changes in cockpit for pilot. from totally manual to glass screen automation, the change is supposed to get better and easy for pilot to make quick decision during emergency, but getting better sometimes in design will become to take in some "sounds cool" ideas, which are potential problems for real time flight. From when we allow our life to fill with cool things, some actually purely pleasure without proving functionality. For pleasure, that is fun, but for airplane, what you will put in front of pilot, will you recommend those cool thing?

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have been quite demanded. Imagine that there will be fed-ex airplanes without pilot, for sure our shipping fee is low. But when I learned why company so expects unmanned aerial plane, apparently, the pension for pilot has been considered a quite budget on their yearly financial spending. So, will the trend be less pilot, but more ground support? I wonder. "Training" has not been quite friendly considered in flight industry, as how you can define your training manual in the threatening situation of pilot safety. The computer's calculation is a conditional result, how can we avoid the error by introducing training steps, blocking human decision at critical situations? As I ask myself many questions, the new perspectives to system, safety, human fact errors are changing.

What could be sounds cool but also make sense changes?? I really like the unmanned coal mined vehicle, reduced the possibilities of loosing innocent lives. "Dead-man switch" at train, makes you consider how much automation we would like the drivers to do. For sure, the automobile with sensor(night vision) screen at dashboard will not be my choice, as it draw your focus and lead you ignore the surrounding with your usual common sense.

Sheridan’s Span of Control is from manual control, to supervisory control to automated control. Where should we draw the lines among these? Will you let astronaut rest with one red button having full automation control, or will you let them busy work through everything in the space having manual control? too bad, two days ago, the funding for going to Mars plan got canceled, significant group of MIT studies have to seek other opinions. Not too long ago, they were still discussing those controls...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5IziyOcAg&feature=player_embedded#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77-7EM38MSw

Saturday --- Finish Freedom trail

Finally, two weeks later, we completely finished the freedom trail. Have to admit, if U.S. went for independent like the speed we finished freedom trail, we would have waited long time for the moment.

It was a cold day to walk outside, which we walked for several hours in the cold wind, visiting all these Boston historical sites, finally Freedom Trail lead us to U.S. Constitution ship. Listening the navy lady explaining the history of Constitution, I am amazed to stand here looking away the road I walked, wondering what it was like 200 + years ago.

start at Fenny hall











By Sunday, I completely moved out of Sidney Pacific Housing, my sublet place. On Feb. 4 I will move to Ashdown on-campus housing, which is the newest housing building at MIT. Meanwhile, I am 'floating', a very good floating, staying at a friend's place at Harvard Square, who I knew since 2001 in Olympia, what an amazing connection! She cooks such good Chinese food, oh, I got spoiled here.

Monday is MIT registration day, which we do not have class but still trying to see what courses should take on. Again, this is the biggest struggle for many of us, there are just so many good classes on campus, not like priority one over another, but both top priorities, so hard to choose :( I have to let several my favorite classes go.