Shock and inspired~~

 

Today, we, SYSU sixers, paid a visit to Xinxin's friend's home, a fabulous house!!

A front yart, back yart, garden, swimming pool, and an elegant-decorated house, it shows the success of a man.

But it's only part of the success. The other part is his hard-working spirit . After finish watching his documentary vedio clip, i respect him more. and the feeling has been growing till now~~

 

i miss this kind of feeling, i have been away from that for a long time. that's good, i find it back now--a source of inpiration and power~~ Last time i had this feeling was with Fangquan Mei, who is a charismatic but humble man. this time is a doctor--who has achieve his American Dream.

 

Where's my dream?

                                             Book Report

Yifeng Wu

 

After struggling for a whole month, I finally finished reading my books. Why books, not book? That’s because when I finished the Good to Great, I was so curious about the Built to Last that I decided to read that book too. Although Jim Collins, a former teacher at Stanford Business School, wrote these two books separately, they seem to reach two very relative results. An average 6 years research of each book, they did really answer some of my questions about how to run a business. Moreover, I also found some surprises in them.

 

As can be seen from the names of the books, Good to Great describes how companies transition from being average companies to great companies and how companies can fail to make the transition, while Build to Last illustrates what makes a enduring company. Combine all the thesis of these two books, to build a great company, first you have to have a core idea and must stick to it. Then you should try to have the right people who share the same idea with the company, followed by the non-stop efforts to make progresses related to the core idea.

 

In the early stage of Good to Great, there’s an emphasis on people, such as the level five leaders and “Getting the right people on bus”. Level five leaders are those embodied with a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are very modesty, to the degree as self-effacing and understated. Also, they are ambitious, but for the companies, not their own fames or wealth. The only thing they care about is the future and success of the companies. They are fanatically driven by their personal devotion to their companies, filled with the longing for producing sustainable success. As a result, they are even willing to sacrifice some of their own privileges and reputations to set up their successors to a greater success. Unlike the level 5 leaders, some CEOs of the comparison act in a total opposite way. Egoism, self centric, and like to show case. Confronted with difficulties, level 5 leaders tend to look into the mirror to blame themselves and take up the whole responsibility, while, on the contrary, the leaders in comparison companies would owe all the failures to the outside world. When success comes, level 5 leaders attribute all of those credits to others or good lucks, and the counterpart leaders to themselves.

 

“First who, then what” means getting the right people on the bus first, the figure out where to drive it. It’s quit contrary to our common knowledge. Shouldn’t we first make out what to do then find the suitable people to accomplish the work? The answer is no. According to the research, the good to great companies get the right people on the bus, right people on the right seat, and the wrong people off the bus, then figure out how to take it someplace great. The reason is that people who join the company because where the company is going will, without any doubt, feel depressed or even leave the company when the company want to change their direction. Now with the right people on board, it’s time for the “what”. This “what” comes from the vigorous debate and argument between the right people and the decision of the level 5 leader, regardless of the parochial interests. The author also mentioned that incentives and compensations are not prepared to make the wrong people right, who, indeed, should get off the bus, but they are intended for the right people in order to keep them on the bus.

 

Coincidently, people also play an important role in the Built to Last, the clock builders. What the clock builders mean is those who build up companies that can prosper far beyond the presence of themselves and through multi product life circles. Instead of concentrating on acquiring individual personality traits of visionary leaders, they take the architectural approach to build the visionary companies, focusing on the organizational traits. Moreover, their primary concern is to build up a company like build up a ticking clock, rather than to hit the market just right with a visionary product idea and riding the growing curve of the attractive product life circle. This kind of leaders shares the characters such as humble, modest, good listener, soft-spoken, quiet, thoughtful, and so on. On the other hand, their counterparts, charismatic leaders, have the reputation of gratification of their ego, and the accumulation of their personal wealth. The charismatic leaders, actually, have accomplished a good job, but it’s not enough. Because what they do is time-telling, making the companies with excellent performance only within their presence.

 

As can be seen, no matter to build a great company or to transform a company to a great one, right people is the initial element. Both level 5 leaders and clock builders are ambitious for the companies and what they stand for, they have a sense of purpose beyond their own success, and they blend genuine personal humility with intense professional will. The mix of level 5leader and clock builder, or they are one unity already, can help ignite the potential of company. With them, the companies will gradually accumulate their momentum, and then finally set off. Important as the leaders are, there are some other causative factors which also play important roles in the building and transformation, such as the core idea, the hedgehop concept, culture of discipline, and so on.

 

Another finding which interests me a lot is the comparison hedgehop concept and the core ideology. To figure out the hedgehog concept of the company is to make a good understanding of the company’s core idea and purpose. The hedgehog concept is not a goal, strategy, or intention; it is an understanding of what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best at in the world, and what drives your economic engine. And the core value is something ideological rather than thing taught by some business schools, for example maximizing shareholders’ wealth and so on. It tends to be simple and crystalline and serves as the internal drives for progress. With the company sticking to its core ideology, it will show more continuity and stability in operation. I found that the core values and purpose of the company, virtually, is part of the hedgehog concept. If you are not so passionate about the core ideology, how can you stick to it without a thought of giving it up? What’s more? The core ideology will show a clear direction of the company. Last but not least, to find out what’s the company’s core value or ideology is to find out what the organization can be the best at the world but not what it wants to be best at. The core value doesn’t necessarily be in accordance with the company’s core competence. The company might have a competence but not necessary have the capacity to be truly the best in the world at that competence. Contrarily, there may be activities at which the company could be the best while it, currently, still hasn’t got the relative competence.

Although you are fanatically passionate about your core ideology and hedgehog concept, you still need to take some measures to keep the company stick to it. I learned from the books that most great companies would use “software”, instead of “hardware”, to guarantee their consistencies. Great companies are so aware of who they are, what they are about, and what they are trying hard to achieve that they create their own culture. It is a kind of culture that it attracts those who fit it and repel those who don’t. The cultures will motivate and discipline their people, who are passionate about the culture and willing to be in such kind of cultures. The culture of great companies serves as an internal control mechanism. Mentioned in the Good to Great, the culture of discipline will get disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought then take disciplined actions. The company create the culture, while, in return, the culture will help keep the direction of the company. They will keep the companies away from some seemingly great opportunities which are off the track of the companies’ directions. In short, they set up a “stop doing” list for the companies. In the comparison companies, they, on the contrary, depend on physical mechanism or the personality of their charismatic leaders to move forward, sometimes even backward. The development of comparison companies rely mostly on the vision of their leaders, which leads to the lack of consistencies and continuity.

 

After probing into all the chapters of these two books, I found that running a great company is just like being a great person. Being a man who achieves personal success, you have to be aware of who you are, what you can be best at, what you are passionate about. Also to achieve the goal of life, you have to be disciplined, knowing what will contribute to your success and what has nothing to do with your success. Good to Great, then Built to Last, what an exciting process? But a demanding process too. With the right people, right ideology and right culture, the company will, certainly, turn into a great one.

Big Daddy and His Sons Pizza

 

Information about the restaurant:

 

The restaurant is located on the boardwalk of the beautiful Venice Beach, along which there are at least ten other pizza shops which comprise a competition among all of them. During normal days, the Big Daddy serves about 2000people per day, and they reach their peak when summer comes with almost 6000 per day for weekdays and 12000 per day for weekends. It has been there for more than ten years with a very good reputation for the freshness of their food. Before starting the pizza Restaurant, the owner, Larry Parker, had a restaurant on the Beverly Drive for about 15years and one at Downtown Los Angeles. Actually their family has a history in food business for almost 80 years. Something might remind you of his former restaurant, the Haagen-Dazs milkshake that John Travolta ordered in the movie "Pulp Fiction" and Drew Barrymore's favorite vegetarian dishes. Apart from the food service, they also offer gift baskets, party/event planning and restaurant consulting. Lastly, their business motto is “If it don’t make you proud, don’t serve it to the crowd!”

 

The demographic of its customers:

 

According to my observation and the description of the manager, the largest segment of their customers is tourist, especially international tourist. Those who can afford a trip to foreign countries should be pretty rich people. At least they should have some spare money that enables them to come to the U.S. Therefore, their customers are of higher income level. This part of customers are probably under 55, because older people don’t want to stand on the sidewalk, eating with one slice of pizza on one hand and a cup of soda on the other. What’s more, they come here for vacations, so they want to slow down, relax, and enjoy the atmosphere. Sitting in a cafeteria with a cup of coffee in hand, meanwhile doing some reading and occasionally looking out for the ocean and the sky. That’s what they want to do. Those under 55 with their whole families, they come here for fun. They want to swim in the seawater, they want to play volleyball on the beach,   they want to surf on the ocean waves. They don’t have time to sit down in a restaurant, go through the menu, place the order, and then wait for their dishes. They want to make good use of their every minute here, so they want the take-away food to save the time for fun. As the genders of these people seem to be pretty mixed, the Big Daddy really doesn’t have a fixed target gender.

 

Another part of their customers, which also contributing a great deal to their profits, is the local young peoples. They are right at the best time of their life, so they want sunshine and the beach. They go to the beach for surfing, drum circles, and skating. The income level of these people is not very high. Some of them even don’t have a full-time job. They couldn’t afford some expensive restaurants. Consequently, the sidewalk pizza shops are their first and best choice. The young people I mentioned above are of the age between 15 and 23, and less dependent. The gender feature of this group is also mixed.

 

 The position of the restaurant:

 

The position of the restaurant, as said by the manager and combined with my own observation, is they provide customers with the best freshness, best convenience, and best quality.

 

Freshness:

Compared with other pizza shops also located on the same boardwalk, they are the only one who serve fresh-made hot pizzas. Moreover, they don’t sell frozen fish and frozen French fries. They breed their fish and cut their French fries right in front of their customers in order to give their customers a feeling of freshness.

 

Convenience:

The restaurant lies in the corner of the street. That means it has two faces of wall can be used to cater their customers. As a result, they set up two counters there for customers to place orders and pick up their food. None of its competitors do that. People at Big Daddy can get their food faster than any other place on the beach.

 

Quality:

Having been in the food business for so many years, the Big Daddy has its own recipes. They have special taste pizzas. Furthermore, they create their own recipe of barbecue sauce and cocktail sauce, milkshake and frozen yogurt. And people all like the taste of their food.

 

For Big Daddy, their price isn’t so competitive. While most of the pizza shops there sell a slice of pizza of 99 cents, their price of a slice is $1.25. And diversity is not their goal too. They only serve limited kind of food.

 

How they reinforce their position:

                             

They maintain their position by many ways. First of all, to keep their convenience advantage, they reduce the content of their menu to keep it simple to read. The customers, therefore, can make quick decisions and quickly get their food.

 

Secondly, they keep trying new things. They always want to create new taste of their pizzas and beverages. Once they come across some tasty food from other restaurant, they try everything they can to figure out the recipe. Then improve it and apply it for their dishes. One day, one of their staff try a frozen yogurt at a yogurt shop, he found it so tasty that he wanted to have one every day. After that he tried a lot of times to make out the recipe and finally made it. Now the Big Daddy serve delicious frozen yogurt too.

 

Last and not the least, they make their food their advertisements. When people carry their big bowl of fish and French fries walking on the side walk, the smell and the look of the food just attract other people to go to the Big Daddy.

 

 

What I would do:

 

If I were the owner, the first thing I would do is to decorate the restaurant. Make it a new look, make it looked fresh. Nowadays the outside wall of the restaurant is really not that good. Plus, there are some graphics on them too. And as a food business, a clean image is very important, for with a dirty look, nobody would like to eat there.

 

Then comes the problem of service. Since the main part of their customers comprises of international tourists, the staff in the restaurant should at least speak good English without too much accents. So the international customers can communicate with the waiters/waitresses more easily. If the waiters know something about the local tourism, that would be much better.

  

A Day of My Life

Yifeng Wu

 

Woke up in the morning, I had a light breakfast then rushed out for my school. Line2, which goes to the UCLA via Lincoln Boulevard, Venice Beach, and Wilshire Boulevard, is the bus I have to take everyday. For its earlier in the morning, I could still feel strong sense of sleepiness. As a result, most of the ads or billboards along my way to school could hardly appeal to me. However, there’s a exception—the ads of the latest Windows Operation System.

 

The ad is a typical Microsoft ad. A big blue sky, as if you look out of a window, is the background, in front of which are three box of their brand new operating system-Vista. Before I came to America, I have never seen a billboard ad of Microsoft. In China, MS seldom runs their ads in this way. Most of the time, they just have their ads on certain website, some computer magazines, and some newspapers. At the time I saw the MS billboard, I was really looking out of the bus window for nothing. The background of the ad is so familiar and so similar to the background of my PC that I immediately associated it with MS Windows. Then what came into my mind was some news and some comments about the latest Vista. It had been quite a long time that I wanted to know more about that latest system, so unconsciously I went deep into that billboard to see what it said. Unluckily, the bus was driving fast and I could not read all the details of the ad. But ,at least, it strengthened my interest in the new system.

 

The journey kept going. On the corner of Wilshire and the 4^th Street, there’s Best Buy, on whose display windows were the ads of MS again. This time, I had a better view of the ads. What I wanted to do then was to step off the bus and walk into the Best Buy to try them. I would have done that, if I haven’t had class that day. I am pretty sure that I will do that some day in close future. After that, the moment I had access to the internet when I arrived at the school, I directly went to surf the website of MS. In the website, MS listed all the new features of their Vista which made me more and more determined to experience it.

 

Class began, it’s an accounting course, but instructor talked about the comments he had read the day before and discussed that with us. It was about Vista again. This topic aroused all the students’ interest. They expressed their opinion about Vista and some compared it with Apple Mac. I think the topic would have kept on for the whole class if the teacher didn’t stop everybody and started his lecture.

 

You met Vista everywhere, ads, newspapers, magazines, and TV programs. What’s more? People kept talking about it. That’s how MS marcom their new product. This marcom started even before the Vista had been fully developed. At the earlier stage, I, occasionally, came across some news and comments about it on magazines, newspapers, and some websites. This thing kept rolling and at the moment MS proudly released their new product, the marcom reached its peak.

 

That day went on with a strong curiosity about Vista in my mind. At noon, hunger assailed me. It’s lunch time. What and where to eat? In-N-Out Burger! I couldn’t remember since when I had become addictive with the In-N-Out. When I am hungry, the smell of its double cheese burger will come into my mind, urging me to go to In-N-Out. The first time I saw In-N-Out, I even didn’t know what it was. I saw cars outside around it, so I thought it’s something selling car accessories. It didn’t leave me some deep impression at the first sight. Nothing happened until the staff from UCLA Extension who showed us around the campus of UCLA commented that In-N-Out served much better burgers than McDonald did, then I knew In-N-Out sold burgers. In China, if I want to have a burger, McDonald is my first choice and almost only choice. Some local Chinese had tried to imitate McDonalds and sold the local-made burgers. But it didn’t work out. McDonald still sold more burgers than any others. Consequently, when I heard that In-N-Out made better burgers than McDonald, inside my mind there was a impulse that I should have a try of its burgers. I did go to In-N-Out that day, and had it become my most frequent visit restaurant.

 

Having the lunch finished, I walked back to UCLA. With the warm sunshine on my body, I did really appreciate a nap. However, I still had class that afternoon. I tried hard to make up my spirit, yet it didn’t work. Walking on, I saw a Starbucks. Even though I didn’t want to spend $3 on a cup of coffee, I finally did. I told myself I needed a cup of coffee to drive away my sleepiness. Hopefully the $3 coffee would work better than the $1 Nestle in keeping me spirited. I knew that it was only my excuse for getting a Starbucks. In China, the price of a cup of Starbucks is kind of expensive, compared with other kind of coffees. People can afford it, but most of them don’t want to spend that money. So having a Starbucks in hand and walking on the street is more like a showoff, at least I felt so. When I arrived at LA, I found many people on the street have a cup of Starbucks. I perceived it to be some kind of fashion. As a new comer here, I wanted to act like locals, so I wanted a cup of Starbucks in my hand while walking. It’s true that Starbucks seldom runs its own commercial ads, but they have their coffee shops and people with a cup of Starbucks in hand to be their ads.

 

The day was over and I went back home. To relax myself a little bit, I turned on the TV. I wanted some TV programs like the kind of AFV. All I got, however, were commercial ads. Boring as it was, I did find some really motivating ads. One was an ads for a brand of bathroom cleaner. The slogan of the ad was “XXX clean the bathroom for your child, even the imaginary part.” The first stage of the TV ad was a little boy dressed up as some Greece god playing a boundless prairie with a unicorn. Then it turned out that it’s only the imagination of a little boy showering in the bathroom. This ad reminded me something of my childhood. I think every child like imagining too. Though I didn’t need bathroom cleaners at that time, I remember the brand name. Another ad was, again, about MS Vista. The ad was divided into many short scenes, where people all said “Wow!” after meeting some surprises, like NBA star Lebone James felt surprised when he passed a ball to a little kid and that boy played with the ball skillfully. I didn’t know what the ads was about until the scene came to a man sitting in front of a PC operated by Vista and said “Wow!” I couldn’t tell whether it’s a good ad, but I could tell that it reinforced the impression of Vista again.

 

The day ended with the ad of Vista. Admittedly there’s not much good comments on the Vista, I would try it nevertheless.