Res Ipsa Loquitor

MBA Global Management Seminar I

Let 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 allows good understanding of forex instruments, and country economic data. I was impressed by the size of EU and also by the fact that Mercosur is considered the third free-trade agreement, behind only NAFTA and EU. These three blocs, though, have huge opportunities to continue improving and opening their barriers to member and non-member countries.

International trade is a very exciting subject, especially nowadays with a global economy totally interconnected. The discussions in class reflected this too; things such as the effect of exchange rates and management of exchange rate risks allowed me to learn new concepts and to make some others stronger. I also enjoyed the topics of monetary and fiscal policies, as well as the discission on what makes international economics so fascinating. It'll be interesting to see how the world's situation change in the next months now that we have more insight on global economy and the role of trading blocs. Finally, the discussions on the Big 3 and world operations were also highlights.
 
I can't believe we finished week 3 already - getting closer and closer to finishing this class and the whole program. Great!

Started my second-the-last class!

Now 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!

To start I had to compare two types of economic blocs. A trade bloc is actually a kind of trade barrier where members of the bloc can import among themselves with low or no tariff and impose higher tariffs on imports from outside the bloc. Examples are NAFTA, EU, MercoSul, etc. I selected to talk about free-trade area and customs union.

Free trade are is a kind of bloc where members remove trade barriers for participants of the bloc, and keep their own national barriers against countries which are not members of the block. NAFTA is an example os this kind of bloc. In customs unions, on another hand, members remove all barriers amongst participants and adopt uniform barriers against external countries. An example is the MercoSul, formed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, having Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru as associate members. Venezuela signed an agreement to be a member but it has not been ratified by the Brazilian senate yet.

Speaking of the Mercosur, I know that the it has had many challenges, economical and political implications. Recently Venezuela has signed an agreement to join, but because Hugo Chaves is Hugo Chaves, the Brazilian senate is putting resistance to approve the deal. In a declaration some time ago, Hugo called the Brazilian congress "subservient" to the U.S. Now he and his country may pay the price of his big mouth.

Another interesting episode was the attempt to create FTAA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas. It faced opposition from other formed blocs, mostly MercoSur, and has not become anything yet. In the meantime, MercoSur has increased his reach with associate countries... it is a political game. SO what we had was many bilateral treaties between US/NAFTA and other countries, which led to pressures on other blocs. The USTR.gov site's last press release on the FTAA is from 2005... I assume things are blocked for now.

So, the next six weeks will be great - I expect exciting discussions on international trade and its implications to business. Will keep the blog updated.

Almost done with the 10th class!

Almost 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 has been very useful in my job – very timely as we do planning for next fiscal year.

This week was almost all dedicated to advance the content of my strategic paper, so I would have a draft ready in time to share with the learning team. Also, working on the strategic plan alignment was a good exercise, since I chose my own department as the target for the strategic paper. It was a good opportunity to stop and think about these issues in my workplace.

The discussion questions were once again excellent material for thought. I liked the discussions on continuous improvement and operational control; it was good to see the diverse viewpoints and how people understand the issues. Excellent brainstorming regarding the topic; in my opinion it was clear the concept of continuous improvement as a way to achieve better operational control, although I can’t see one replacing the other.

The question on quality, efficiency and responsiveness also enacted good thinking and learning. The concepts of TQM and methods such as Six Sigma and ISO 9000 allowed good debate of ideas.

On to week 6 to close this class “with a golden key”, as we say in Brazil!

Blue Ocean, Value Chain and more

Last 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 class may be my actual strategic plan, or very close. The timing of this class could not be better: the FY10 planning cycle has just started, and I have been using the concepts in the real life.

This week's discussions in class were, once again, excellent. The "blue ocean strategy" thread was really interesting; I had not heard about the concept yet, and as I learned about it I realized it makes a lot of sense. Along history, we can see many examples of companies who had their "blue oceans" until competition appeared and transformed it into a "red ocean". Innovation is the main factor that would allow a company to establish a blue ocean; I also thought about the opposite: companies that remain so much time in a  "red ocean" until they lose sight of what it really important to drive shareholder wealth. Sometimes a whole industry collapses or loses its relevance; firms that realize that first, create their "blue oceans" and leave the moribund industry are the ones who write theis success stories.

The thread on value chain analysis was a highlight. I thought it was similar to the Six Sigma process improvement methodology. The interesting thing about value chain is that a company is never an isolated entity, and as such it is part of a value chain system, with upstream suppliers and downstream buyers; a firm's competitive advantage depends on this value system.

A discussion on the sources of competitive advantage was very enlightening; my opinion is that it is better for a firm to pull from the three sources (cost, differentiation and speed) so it can create its competitive advantage in the market. By pulling from these three sources, a company can have a better mix that makes it unique and difficult to imitate, which is the ultimate competitive advantage. In the end, the competitive advantage strategies need to match the industry stage, whether it is emerging, maturing, or declining, and its nature: fragmented, global, local, etc.

10th MBA class - almost there!

Great 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 all business people talk about but not everyone understands it well. There seems to be a lot of confusion between strategy and tactic, and about what is strategic planning and what is just strategy implementation. I liked the textbook's approach to the concept, and liked very much all discussions we had in the discussion questions' threads.

From the readings, I liked the comparison in on the differences between the 20th Century and the 21st Century approach to business; it is very enlightening on one side and a confirmation of what we see every day on the other. It is also shows the important changes in organizations and the way of doing business with the new paradigms of globalization and light-speed communication. Nowadays things change very quickly, as we have seen in the last few months, and the challenge for leaders is to embrace change and lead organizations to successfully face it. In fact, chapter 10 is great on the skills a good leader needs to manage strategic change in businesses, by taking in consideration the organizational culture.

A great discussion we had in class was about social responsibility; no doubt, a hot topic today given the tough times we face. Amongst the new trends for components of corporate mission, I learned about the sensitivity of customer wishes and concerns for quality, and the discussion also showed the importance of incorporating social responsibility too. Social responsibility includes economic, legal, ethical and discretionary responsibilities. Also interesting the arguments by Milton Friedman against CSR; for me it is a view with myopia; in the long term, a business that acts without social responsibility is going against stockholders interests anyway, and wealth maximization would work only on the short run.

The second week had a nice simulation provided by the university; it was a complete planning exercise starting with information gathering to build a SWOT analysis. It was the first time I used a tool that allowed matching the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and select strategies that could be used to address weaknesses and threats and explore opportunities and strengths. In the real life, I think it is possible to create an Excel model that can do the same; listing Ss, Ws, Os and Ts in a table and strategies in another, and then attributing a weight on each strategy in how it relates to each of the letters, it is possible to make a strategy selection using a mathematical model. Very interesting.

The discussion questions were also excellent; the discussions helped to consolidate the topics of industry analysis and the global environment. A firm needs to pay attention to the environment and to its internal strengths and weaknesses in order to be able to have a good strategic plan; industry analysis is something a firm cannot neglect. Regarding the global environment, companies today need to scan it constantly since a mesh of relationships with customers and suppliers is so globalized that national borders lose meaning in the economic context. A firm, even if it operates only “locally” or “within borders”, needs to include global environmental scanning to have good strategic planning.

The week was also intense in the learning team, with the research for the strategic adaptability paper. Strategic Adaptability is a very interesting matter; I liked the comparison my team did with Charles Darwin theory of evolution:  “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent.  It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Windows 7

Commenting on my MBA - I

Another 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, Hartley, Berkowitz, & Rudelius (2004): convenience, choice, customization, communication, cost, and control. It was an intense discussion with other students. Other discussion questions posted by students also allowed excellent learning opportunities, by reading about different standpoints and experiences. 

I liked also the food for thought threads initiated by the instructor; they promoted good discussion as well. The discussions on the case study, the commpany situation and assumptions, possible solutions and implementation were vital to grasping this week's concepts. The discussion on alignment between product development and firm's strategy were a highlight. As a certified project management professional, I enjoy seeing how critical strategy implementation is, and how important is to know the project management discipline and its relationship with successful strategies. The importance of involving stakeholders was well stressed.

A review of the 4 Ps of marketing mix was important, especially when reviewing the reasons for new product failures - certainly things that need to be taken in consideration when planning solutions. The company in the case study needs to be careful on things such as "insignificant point of difference", "poor execution of the marketing mix" and "incomplete market and product definition".

Ready for another week of learning!

People Management and Leadership

Part 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 goal - or more than one - will not be achieved. As a leader, the inspirational part of the work come to place to make sure the energy levels are high and the correct focus is applied to these defined goals. Different people will react to different motivational messages, and management must communicate very clearly the mission, vision, goals, and the strategies to achieve these goals. This helps employees to understand the importance of what they do and how they fit into the execution of these strategies.
Building continuation commitment is not that difficult - the carrot - but what makes it more complex is to work on the affective commitment. People may lack motivation because of management. That's why I believe so much that people management without leadership skills won't work very well - at the end of the day, people need the inspiration provided by a good leader; this is what will help to build emotional commitment and keep the best performers in the organization motivated toward reaching a shared vision. And with strong affective commitment, employees will work smarter, happier, and more motivated to achieve goals to that support the leadership’s vision.

The Prisoners Dilemma

This 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 3 years each.  If both confess they will get 5 years each. On the other hand, if one confesses and the other does not, the prisoner who confessed will walk free and the other thief will serve 10 years.

What is the best option for each thief?

We start by creating a payoff matrix:

Although it is apparent that the option to not confess is the best for both prisoners, it is not what happens because it is an unstable choice. The best option for both is to confess because one prisoner does not know what the other will do. As prisoner A does not know what B will do, if he chooses to not confess and B ends up confessing, B goes free and A takes 10 years. In order to minimize the risk of paying 10 years, the prisoner must confess.

If they could communicate and arrange a strategy, the best option would be to agree to not confess and be sure they will get only 3 years. 

The best case scenario individually would be to confess and be sure that the other does not, but even if they could play a positive sum game, it would be very unlikely that either prisoner would agree to pay 10 years and let the other go free... unless there is a great amount of money hidden somewhere and the prisoner who goes free gets the money and hires a good lawyer to take the other one out of jail :-)

The interesting thing about the prisoner's dilemma as a strategy exercise is that no matter how you look at it, the best strategy is to betray the other prisoner and confess. In strategic scenarios, the decision maker will usually want to know what the other player will do, and this is not possible in the prisoner's dilemma because they can't communicate - one can trust his friend in the other room... but he cannot really predict what the other prisoner will do. Humans love freedom, and prisoner A, knowing that prisoner B would not confess anything (he trusts him), then the best option for Prisoner A is to betray B and confess so he walks free. So, confessing is the best option for A. Prisoner B can think the same and therefore the best strategic move for him is to confess. Now, if prisoner A knows that B would betray him (he does not trust B), then the best strategy is also to betray and confess, otherwise he might get 10 years while B goes free. Again, B may think the same and betray. From any standpoint, the prisoner should select to betray the other in order to preserve his own freedom - or at least part of it. 

As written in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma), "rational self-interested play results in each prisoner being worse off than if they had stayed silent."

Mathematically, this is called Nash Equilibrium (remember Beautiful Mind?). Wikipedia gives a great coverage at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_Equilibrium: 

"Stated simply, Amy and Bill are in Nash equilibrium if Amy is making the best decision she can, taking into account Bill's decision, and Bill is making the best decision he can, taking into account Amy's decision. Likewise, many players are in Nash equilibrium if each one is making the best decision that they can, taking into account the decisions of the others. However, Nash equilibrium does not necessarily mean the best cumulative payoff for all the players involved; in many cases all the players might improve their payoffs if they could somehow agree on strategies different from the Nash equilibrium"

The Prisoners Dilemma is a Nash Equilibrium where the best option strategically (and mathematically) is to both prisoners to "defect" instead of "collaborate" to each other. This option that gives equilibrium to the problem is not the best option globally because the best option is unstable: both prisoners remaining silent is better globally but it is unstable.”

In the prisoner dilemma, the defect strategy only works better if it is a one single instance. If it is a continued game, the cooperation is the best strategy; in fact, there are studies on this where even the alternate cooperation and betrayal is better strategy than always betrayal in the long run. For two companies which expect to be playing in the market for a long term, the betrayal strategy does not payoff in the long run.

Again, I will refer to Wikipedia:

"If two players play Prisoner's Dilemma more than once in succession (that is, having memory of at least one previous game), it is called iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Amongst results shown by Nobel Prize winner Robert Aumann in his 1959 paper, rational players repeatedly interacting for indefinitely long games can sustain the cooperative outcome. Popular interest in the iterated prisoners dilemma (IPD) was kindled by Robert Axelrod in his book The Evolution of Cooperation (1984). In this he reports on a tournament he organized in which participants have to choose their mutual strategy again and again, and have memory of their previous encounters. Axelrod invited academic colleagues all over the world to devise computer strategies to compete in an IPD tournament. The programs that were entered varied widely in algorithmic complexity; initial hostility; capacity for forgiveness; and so forth.

Axelrod discovered that when these encounters were repeated over a long period of time with many players, each with different strategies, greedy strategies tended to do very poorly in the long run while more altruistic strategies did better, as judged purely by self-interest. He used this to show a possible mechanism for the evolution of altruistic behaviour from mechanisms that are initially purely selfish, by natural selection."

Added Value per Employee

In 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 in producing wealth for a company. According to the author, this ratio is now kind of a guiding principle for Human Resources Management analysis - why it is as it is and what a company can do to improve it.

While Wal-Mart’s employees add an average value of about $6,000 to the net profit, Costco’s add over $15,000 – this should tell a lot about both HRM practices and where they can improve…

References

Kearns, Paul (2005). Causation not Correlation. Strategic HR Review; May/Jun2005, Vol. 4 Issue 4, p7-7, 1p.

Costco, Wal-Mart and Turnover

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 higher risk. At Wal-Mart, for instance, they estimate a cost of $2,500 per new employee in tests, interviews and training. With a workforce ot 1.36 million people in the U.S., and a turnover rate about 40% to 45%, Wal-Mart expenses with attrition are humongous (See Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?, Wal-Mart At A Glance, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc). 

Let's estimate it... 

1.36 million employees
40% turnover = 544,000 employees
Cost per new employee = $2,500
Total turnover cost = $1,360,000,000

Yes, I am also impressed. 1,3 billion dollars per year is real money. How much would Wal-Mart save by paying better and retaining more employees? Suppose it had a turnover rate close to Costco's: 6% - or let's say, 10%. The total turnover cost would be $340,000,000, or about 1 billion less. The problem is: with a workforce of 1.36 million employees, 1 additional billion in the payroll wouldn't make that difference.

But with higher payment that allowed lower turnover, wouldn't the productivity also be higher and less employees needed? That seems to be the working formula for Costco...

Management and Leadership

In 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 and a bad leader? What about a good leader and bad manager?

Although I believe we see managers that are not leaders, I don't think one can be a good "people manager" without being also a leader. And I also believe that within any organization, there are people who are leaders and are not necessarily in management positions. The two terms are not the same - we hope that people in management positions, more specifically people managers, are also leaders. This is the best situation. Other leaders in the organization will certainly exist, like technical leaders, subject matter experts, and other kinds of informal leaders that will not step up to management positions.

One can indeed be a good leader and a bad manager - I think history is full of examples of people with brilliant leadership skills that were not good managers. But as long as they are really good leaders, they will be able to attract talent that can help them to manage things. For me, that is the case with many political leaders in history - many are great leaders, but when it comes to administering, or managing, they need to have a professional manager that can handle things as a manager.

As part of this discussion, one of the students argued that Adolph Hitler was a great leader because he inspired the German people. Germany was at a horrible point economically, in many parallels the same United States' Great Depression, and Adolph inspired the people to build strength in the German economy, although in a horrible and sadistic way. This was part of this discussion on Management and Leadership, and how the two things are different and how they complement each other. In my view, had Hitler been a good manager besides being a competent leader, we might be all speaking German today. He surely knew how to create a vision of a better place for his people, how to face that to the bitter place Germany was after World War I, how to create a sense of belonging, and how to make the leadership call so people would follow him - he surely inspired the Germans. Fortunately for the rest of the world - and for Germany too - he was a lousy manager.

I agree that is definitely possible to be a good leader and a bad manager, but I think I will have to disagree that it is possible (today) to be a good manager and a bad leader. Considering that we are talking about people management and not other kinds of managers such as account managers or process or program managers, the leadership traits must be present. In our days, when we move from groups of people to teams, a people manager cannot afford not having leadership skills. In my view, managing people today is more than simply supervising and controlling; there is a great deal of inspirational work, creating a shared vision and shared goals, building trust, communicating well, and other things.

Chapter 12 of Organizational Behavior, by McShane and Von Glinow, brings a good overview of this. A manager will have a great deal of legitimate power, which emanates from the position itself. The text also says that "more generally, employees are becoming less tolerant of legitimate power." And in chapter 14, we can read that "leadership is the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members." What I can grasp here is that legitimate power that emanates from a manager position will not be enough to get the best results of a team if the manager is not a leader too. A leader will not rely merely on legitimate power because he or she will influence people by exerting power that originates from within, such as expert power and referent power.

References:

McShane, Steve L.,  & Von Glinow, Mary Ann (2004).  Organizational Behavior: Emerging Realities for the Workplace Revolution. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies.

Emotional Intelligence

According 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 a set of competencies that allow us to perceive, understand, and regulate emotions in ourselves and in others. These emotional competencies are learned capabilities based on emotional intelligence that lead to superior performance." (Organizational Behavior, 2004, Chapter 4, p. 119).  

These competencies include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management, and they are all related to recognizing and regulating emotions in ourselves (personal competence) and in others (social competence). EI is related to several character traits including sociability, conscientiousness, kindness, emotional stability, and low neuroticism. (McShane & Von Glinow). The good news is that EI can be learned to some extent, and it tends to increase with age as part of the maturity process.

The ability to excel these emotional competencies mentioned by the authors is crucial to be successful in professional life. Great part of our life in business is spent communicating with others, and as managers, making decisions. Emotion can get in the way of both good communication and good decision making; therefore it is critical that the high performer manager is able to develop these competencies. Business life today is very intense and demands a skillful ability to manage time and priorities in order to achieve (and exceed) the goals set. Using the emotional intelligence competencies and developing them further are not only  learning objectives but also actions that will make the learning journey easier and more enjoyable.

On Writing

In 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, collecting information, establishing a thesis, knowing the audience, organizing and outlining the ideas. 

After having planned the work, we implement the writing activity itself, when we should let the ideas flow while we register them on paper, without letting other considerations like formatting, spelling, grammar to interfere with the creation process. When using a good text processor, like Microsoft Word 2007, it will help you with the spelling, formatting and even with some basic grammar checking during the draft phase. 

Then, having finished the draft we start the formatting and revising phase; that’s when we will make sure our ideas are clearly and completely exposed, our content makes sense, and the format is suitable. In this phase we will have great benefit of using a good text processor. 

Finally, we have the proofreading stage, when we read our document and look for errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, mechanics, and so forth. We can also ask for another person to do the revision because sometimes we are not able to see a few mistakes that would be caught by another reader. 

And last, but not least, we go for presentation and publication, where the definitive format will be delivered to the reader. We must have the means that the final result is as good as we planned it to be. An excellent work with a poor presentation may not be even considered by the intended audience.

Summarizing, the five major steps are Planning and Prewriting, Writing, Formatting and Revising, Proofreading, and Presentation and Publication. In the classes I had during the Foreign Business Completion Sequence, I realized that following these steps is essential to writing good papers. In addition, when formatting, having access to the APA Little Brown Compact Handbook is a bless for those who need to comply with this format.

Another thing that all students must be very aware of is plagiarism - it is not tolerated. Again, the Center for Writing Excellence is a great resource to check for that. 

In addition, it is important that a paper focus on one or more thesis. A thesis encloses an opinion about a topic, and the author should be able to fit the thesis in one sentence. Being the main idea the author wants to communicate with his or her work, the thesis is a requirement for starting to plan for good writing. By thinking of the thesis in advance, the author creates a scope he or she will use on the work to be done. Once the thesis is defined, other activities support the author in the creative process.

The topic is the issue the author is writing about, the thing about which he or she wants to express his or her opinion. The author will need to have knowledge about the matter to be able to express a point of view, and part of the planning process is to gather information after having thought about the thesis. With the information that serve as the base to the viewpoint, the author will then focus on planning the work for matching the audience in a way to make the work enjoyable.

Reference
Rooks, Clark (1998). The Writing Process. University of Phoenix GEN300 Syllabus Outline (pp. 22-24)

About Leadership

In 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 to inspire followers to give the best to the bigger goal of the group? No doubt that a leader must have vision, must be optimistic, and must communicate very well to his or her followers what are the benefits to accomplishing the goal, what the consequences of not achieving the goal are for the group. Also, good leaders make followers feel valued and have a strong sense of belonging.

A good example of a leader who understood the leadership framework very well was Roman general Scipio Africanus. During the Second Punic War, the final battle that marked the end of the war, where he defeated General Hannibal, was the battle of Zama. Hannibal had never been defeated by Romans, having marched over Italia for years attacking and wining battles one over another. Making a long story short, Hannibal was forced to go back to North Africa, to defend Carthage against Scipio Africanus. Scipio was much younger than Hannibal and less experienced, and this was the speech he gave to his troop before the final battle, according to historian Polybius: 

“Remember the battles you have fought in the past and bear yourselves like brave men who are worthy of your reputation and of your country. Keep this fact before your eyes: that if you overcome the enemy not only will you be the complete masters of Africa, but you will win for yourselves and for Rome the unchallenged leadership and sovereignty of the rest of the world [vision]. If the battle should turn out otherwise, those of you who fall will meet a death that is made for ever glorious by this sacrifice for your country [consequence of failure, belonging], but those who save themselves by flight will be left with a life that brings them nothing but misery and disgrace. There will be no place in Africa that can give you safety, and if you should fall into the hands of the Carthaginians, no one who faces the facts can doubt what treatment will await you. I pray that none of you may live to suffer that fate [consequence of failure]. And so now that Fortune has given us the choice of the most glorious of prizes according to which way the battle is decided [optimism], we should be the most mean-spirited, and in a word the most witless of all mankind if we were to reject the most splendid of rewards and choose the worst of misfortunes merely in order to cling to life. So when you go to meet the enemy, there are two objects only to keep before you, to conquer or to die. When men are inspired by that spirit, they will always master their adversaries [optimism], for when then enter the battle they have already chosen to sacrifice their lives.” (Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire)

Scipio Africanus won over Hannibal's more experienced troops, took Carthage and destroyed it, allowing the rise of the Roman Empire to its apogee.

And there is an interesting note about Machiavelli. He wrote that "it would be desirable to be both one and the other; but as it is difficult to be both at the same time, it is much more safe to be feared than to be loved, when you have to choose between the two" (1532, Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, pg. 85). He had the belief (wrong in my opinion) that "mankind is bad" and "men in general are ungrateful and fickle, dissemblers, avoiders of danger, and greedy of gain", and he believed that "love holds by a bond of obligation which is broken on every occasion whenever it is for the interest of the obliged part to break it." Finally, he concludes that people love according to their own free will, but fear by the will of the leader (or the prince), and therefore a wise leader should rely upon himself instead of the will of others, and above all the leader should look for not being hated.

I don't think there is a place for the one who takes the "fear" path nowadays, although we still see cases of executive leadership acting as if they were doing it according to Machiavelli's leadership framework.