A Piece of My Mind

My best friend and fellow writer Wida and I are currently writing a book together, called On Being Female, literally all our thoughts and opinions and some bitchy comments (of course!) on these four subjects: on sexuality, on relationship, on friendship, and on career.  The book itself consists of columns and blogs that we’ve written before, and some new columns that haven’t been published on any of our blogs.  So guys, help us pick your favorite column from my blog to be inserted in this book.  Would love to hear from you!

I just got a welcome email from Tag Heuer 24, a club dedicated to provide the latest information and held special events for Tag owners.  What strikes me the most was the last sentence on the email: live every second like you mean it.

In an attempt to give personalized attention to their customers, many brands have set up clubs and membership programs.  From frequent flyers programs which offer many advantage and benefit for their dedicated members - anything from priority check-in, seat upgrade, to free flight - to owner clubs like what Tag Heuer and Mercedes Benz have, each one of this so-called society bears the image of exclusiveness.  I’d like to compare the existence of this branded societies with fraternities and sororities in college.  Secret society or fraternity and sorority requires its candidates to undergo certain process, like pledging, before having the privilege of being called members.  This society has its own code of conduct, and above all, a series of activities exclusively available to its members.  We all wore our society T-shirts or sweatshirts in college to show everyone that we belonged to the in-crowd.

The paradigm of fraternity and sorority is now being adopted by the consumer industry to bridge a closer relationship to its customers, by sending a subliminal message that: "if you are our brand consumer, you belong to our exclusive society."  Mercedes Benz Club is one of a few clubs with worldwide membership programs and routine activities, from gathering to social activities like blood drive or donations to refugee camps.  This society does not only represent the pride of being a Benz owner, but also somehow manages to become a communication forum among its members, exchanging ideas on automotive matters, showing concerns through organized social events, and above all, a global friendship based on a simple common interest: a Benz automobile.

While Benz is bringing its customers closer through many activities, Tag Heuer is dedicated to promote a spirited society of Tag owners, with a determination to live life to the fullest.  As stated in its tag line, Tag Heuer is encouraging its society to continuously enrich their life with as many experience as they can.  With the same principle that Tag brings to F1 racing, where even a nanosecond can make a huge difference, Tag Heuer 24 is sending a very strong message to its members: "You are one of a kind, just like the watch that you’re wearing, so live every second like you mean it."

In a society where we are often being judged by what kind of crowds we belong to, the consumer industry has responded sharply by maintaining the so-called society of customers, the chosen ones if I might add, and by offering a personalized treatment to each one of its members.  The reason behind this phenomenon is very obvious: the society of existing customers is a lucrative market, pampering them literally means encouraging them to keep buying the same brand, and even triggering a very effective word-of-mouth advertising: "I love the way Tag is treating me, you should really buy this watch to be a part of us."

As customers, should we respond negatively to this new form of advertising, or should we embrace it with open arms?  Well, we have spent hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars on that one brand, it’s only fair that we’re given a royal treatment, if you asked me.

Have you ever wished that you’re your own boss, that you don’t have to answer to anyone?  Have you ever wished that you live for yourself, that you don’t need to care about anybody else?  Have you ever wished that every decision that you make is solely your won, that you don’t have to explain to anyone?  Have you ever wished that you can do anything that you want anytime that you want, without thinking about others?  Have you ever felt tired of living up to everybody’s expectations, that you’re losing your true self?  Have you ever felt like everybody is minding your own business, but at the same time also felt like nobody actually cares about you?  Have you ever felt that everybody’s pushing you to move, but every path that you take is always wrong in their eyes?  Have you ever felt like you’ve done just about everything to make everybody’s happy, but it’s never enough?  Have you ever thought that you’re right and everybody else is wrong, yet at the same time felt like everybody else is right and you’re wrong?

Have you ever questioned every single thing in your life, only to find that the answer to everything is hidden beneath nothing?

Is this the best it gets?

Have you read Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes?  Honestly, you really should, it’s darkly hilarious.  I love the part when Julie Bergdorf, the heir of Bergdorf Goodman department stores said to her best friend Moi  she just googled the man that Moi set her up with, justifying her action by saying: "Everyone googles everyone in New York!"

So, there I was, sitting on my bed with a laptop and several books lying around, from Candace Bushnell’s Trading Up to Bergdorf Blondes, and I typed my name on the Google search field.  It’s exciting to find out what Google will say about me, and the only correct hit was my complete contact data, from address, e-mails, to phone numbers on my high school alumni website (although somewhat psyched that people around the world can actually google me, it also freaked me out a little bit that people around the world - including stalkers - can google me and find everything they need to know to get in touch with me there, thanks to the magic of search engine).

Never before has finding out details about someone - your date, your friends, or your business partners - became so easy.  Let’s say you were sitting at Starbucks, met a guy and started a conversation over coffee, you can just reach your PDA and google him as he’s sipping his espresso and find out some general things about him in split seconds, thanks to the wonder of hot spots.  I googled a couple of my last dates, and I found out where they went to university and where they previously worked.  If we’re talking about the Javanese principle of "bibit, bebet, bobot" of future husband, Google can actually help you learn some of these three.  What if you goggled him and found nothing?  Well, then he’s not worth dating …. hahaha, just kidding, guys!  Anyway, that’s the hard truth, not everyone is searchable by Google, mainly because they haven’t left their footprints on the net, whether it’s in a form of online resume, news website, alumni database, or others.  I googled some of my famous friends (for privacy reasons, they’d rather not be mentioned), and some hundred hits came out: news about their book launch or movie appearance, interviews, and personal websites.

An article at Newsweek magazine argues whether Google has really taken the privacy out of our life, since everything about everyone is publicly available to anyone with Internet access.  Like it or not, once you are a Google material, you can’t stop information about you from going around.  There’s no such thing as "controlled searching."  The good news is, while you can’t control who has access to your online information, you can somehow control what kind of information you want to be available online.  A career consultant said to me that most employers nowadays google their candidates before interviews.  That’s why, she said, it’s really important for yuppies to have some kind of self-marketing tools available on the web, like personal website or blogs.  These two serves as a window to your daily life and a chance for public to poke into your brains.  From downloadable resume, stories about your life, to your views and thoughts as written in your blogs, they’re all great tools to market yourself.  That’s also why, she said, it’s probably not too wise to put too many party pictures (you and a glass of margarita on the pool side or you and your gang at a rave, for example), although I think it’s also too damn boring if all you have there is your accolades and pictures of you at work (where’s your social life?).

Blog, she said, it’s an excellent way to let people know who you are.  Your writings will show what kinds of issues you’re interested in, and how well you present your thoughts and opinions.  I’m not saying that you should write a column about world hunger or terrorism in your blogs if those are not your main interests.  A short column talking about how you learn bungee jumping or how you deal with your car trouble, for example, can show a lot about your passions in life.  But also be careful not to talk too much about your jobs.  An employee was fired a couple of months ago for including some inside information about his company in his blog, so better let the sensitive issues "ungoogleable."

So is Google helping us or scaring us?  In a world where everyone googles everyone (and not just in New York), you have the choice to make yourself recognized in ways you’ve never thought about before.  Have you tried googling yourself today?

Yesterday I was at a big lunch at Taipan with our Board of Directors, namely Agus Martowardoyo the CEO, Honggo Wijoyo the Director of Commercial Banking, and Sasmita the Director of Small Business, and also with Marwan Budiarsyah the Group Head of Regional Network and A. Kaduhu Sasrayudha the Group Head of Regional Commercial Sales with several managers in Medan during their road show to Regional 1.  In between the Chinese tea, the shrimp cocktail, and the ginseng soup, I thought about how they got to where they are right now, being book smarts who were then shaped by experiences to emerge as both book smarts and street smarts.

What are the differences between the two types?  Honestly, I wasn’t very much aware of both terms until I saw The Apprentice 3 in which Donald Trump was recruiting candidates that he then divided into two groups: book smarts versus street smarts.  Book smarts, as he described, were the people who got impressive degrees from top notch universities (Harvard, Yale, or Wharton to name a few of the Ivy League schools), the kind of people who have learned a billion dozen theories and have solved numerous case studies during their years in business schools, in opposite to street smarts, who might only have high school diploma but have the desire to achieve, proven by their success in managing their own businesses or reaching the top management level at Fortune 500 companies amidst the fact that they lack the MBA degrees like the book smarts.  Now, if you’re recruiting new managers, who would you choose: the street smarts or the book smarts?

One of the set of characteristics that we can argue between the two types is strategy versus implementation.  Book smarts are equipped with the extensive knowledge of the near-science of strategic planning, while the street smarts have proven their craftsmanship of getting things done.  Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, the authors of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, pointed out that "a good strategic planning process also requires the utmost attention to the hows of executing the strategy," or in short: a marriage between strategy and implementation.  Although the art of execution is mainly acquired through experiences as we make our way in the real world (such bumps on the road that the street smarts have impressively tackled without previously studying the cases of Nissan-Peugeot, GE, or Southwest Airlines like their book-smart peers have), can it be taught in business schools?  Can we actually teach things like knowing how to close a sale, when to walk away from a deal, when to speak up or remain silent, and how to intuitively recognize the integrity of our colleagues or business partners?  Jim Heskett of Harvard Business School argues whether street smarts can actually be taught on MBA classes, recognizing the quality of street smart of either attitude or skill.  If it’s considered as attitude, is it just a matter of age and experience?  On the other hand, if it’s a skill, should the curriculum of business schools be designed to foster it, perhaps through greater emphasis on courses in negotiating skills and increased field experience, to name some?

Not all MBAs have the talent to evolve from book smarts to street smarts, as it requires more than merely the knowledge of strategic planning and the desire to execute.  As one of my previous bosses said to me on one of our mentoring sessions: "While you can easily learn the on-paper calculations of credit analysis, the ability to read through your debtor’s mind, the ability to recognize the integrity of your business partners, and the art of knowing when to act, when to stand still, and when to enter or walk away from a deal, are not things that you can acquire over night."

Warren Bennis and James O’Toole addressed the same issue in their article "How Business Schools Lost Their Ways" on Harvard Business Review.  They argued whether business schools in general have lost their relevance by following "the scientific model" of graduate schools of arts and science as opposed to "the professional model" of medical and law schools.  The professional model is a combination of practice and theory, allowing the future MBAs to get a taste of what’s coming ahead of them, beyond the classroom teachings and case studies. But incorporating the professional model in MBA curriculum is by no means easy.  Not only the fact that the professors have to be professionally experienced (we should have someone in the same class as Jack Welch or Donald Trump in the academic board), the "real world experience" also has to be included, the kinds of on-the-job training and residence that law and medical students have.

In the end, many questions remain.  Do corporations prefer book smarts or street smarts?  As the combination of both types is considered ideal, can business schools produce book smarts who not only possess the knowledge of strategic planning but also have the craftsmanship of getting things done?  I believe that street smarts have to be acquired through experience.  Street smarts are not a set of skills that can be taught or forced upon.  Street smarts have the ability to influence others through actions and attitudes, not just through the knowledge of project management.  Book smarts who have developed their street smarts usually come up as a both a good manager and leader, able to lead his team towards turbulence time, knowing how to get through a deal by mastering both the market and financial analysis and the art of dealing with people.

Book smarts or street smarts?  I’ll take both of them on my team.