Res Ipsa Loquitor

Wow, great to see this change in the MSDN blog - I really like it. It gives me more motivation to write again... it has been a log time.

L et me start by the last work I did this week: the paper. Great opportunity to learn; I selected the EU and Mercosur as the trading blocs, and the amount of research I did was incredible. Fortunately the UOP library has a great deal of material that...

N ow it is only 12 weeks and I'm done with my MBA. It has been a long journey of learning - and it has been worth it. Started yesterday the seminar on Global Management, and international trade will be the thing for the next six weeks. Very exciting!...

A lmost there! With only one week to go, I feel really close to the end of the MBA program, with just two additional classes for the concentration on Global Management. I think I have written before that this class on strategies for competitive advantage...

L ast week was busy in my MBA - the Environmental Analysis Paper took most of my time in research. I am happy with the end results, especially because I am using this exercise to help me the strategy for next fiscal year; at the end the result of this...

G reat start on my 10th class in the MBA in Global Management program; this class is really interesting and the concepts we started to discuss this week are very useful to any business leader. I find it very surprising sometimes that strategy is something...

I loaded Windows 7 Beta on my production laptop - a nice upgrade experience, without any surprise. I had first to update my machine to Vista SP1 since it was a requirement to upgrade to Windows 7; I have been running Windows Vista 64-bits on a Dell Inspiron...

A nother great busy week, with lots of time invested in a benchmarking research for this week's case study in my MBA program. In my discussion question this week, I chose to talk about the six reasons customers buy online, according to authors Kerin,...

P art of the people manager’s responsibilities is to provide clear, achievable goals to all employees; then assess how they are progressing toward those and support them in their endeavor to accomplish. Lack of motivation most of the time means that some...

T his week in my MBA, the instructor presented a question regarding the classical Prisoners Dilemma. In the prisoners dilemma two thieves are captured and separated so they cannot communicate. If neither prisoner confesses they will only be charged with...

I n an article published on Strategic HR Review by Paul Kearns, I found especially interesting the idea of Added Value per Employee – it is a key business metric that helps to understand the how efficacious the Human Resource Management practices are...

I liked Costco's approach - they hire for frontline positions, promove from within and are a pay-level leader in their industry. For a company that chooses the other way around, or to pay average or below average, investing in career development means...

I n a recent discussion in my MBA course, the subject of leadership was again brought to debate. The discussion was about the terms leadership and management: are they the same and can be used interchangeably? Would it be possible to be a good manager...

A ccording to McShane and Von Glinow, Emotional Intelligence " is the ability to perceive and express emotion, assimilate emotion in thought, understand and reason with emotion, and regulate emotion in oneself and others. In other words, EI represents...

I n my opinion, when writing a paper, we must have in mind some important points in order to execute with excellence and achieve optimum results. First, we must plan what we are going to write, and perform some prewriting activities, such as thinking...

I n a broader sense, what makes someone a leader? Why one decides to lead or to follow? Not only within corporations, but in any instance where more than person is necessary to accomplish a given task, how leadership emerges and how the leader is able...

T his is an interesting subject - how emotions can get in the way of sound decision-making. Scientists tell us that our brain is actually divided in three layers: the Reptilian Complex, the Limbic System, and the Neocortex. The inner layer, or Reptilian...

W hen leadership does not communicate openly about issues, people will rely on perceptions and assumptions about the matter, and will infer from there what will happen and communicate about that. Then it will propagate through the grapevine in a snowball...

A s defined by Browne & Keeley (1998), “critical thinking consists of an awareness of a set of interrelated critical questions, plus the ability and willingness to ask and answer them at appropriate times” (p. 4). Thinking critically gives us the...

B esides potential to increased earnings, a graduate degree also brings the delightful sensation of winning obstacles and achieving a goal. Setting objectives in life and being able to accomplish them is something that keeps us running, and always wanting...

E arly Christians used these seven major human vices to educate followers about the human trend to always default to sin. The list was published in Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy in the 1300's, and was also used in the same order previously by Pope...

According to Wikipedia, "plagiarism is the passing off of another person's work as one's own, whether deliberate or accidental. Accidental plagiarism is usually the result of poor citation or referencing or of poor preparation or a misunderstanding of...

Looking to go from the scientific method to something tightly related to the problem resolution in technical support, members of my team in Microsoft and I started to shape what we named Problem Resolution Framework. Based on the scientific method, tt...

In the previous post I presented some ideas about the use of scientific method in problem resolution. I thought about a situation where it would be applied, and then I remember about an old problem I faced once when I was a support engineer. The claim...

When resolving a problem, what is the method a support engineer should use? What method is effectively used for people engaged in troubleshooting? There are many approaches possible, but it is easily agreeable that using a method that is close to the...