HBR March 2010

Started my day with reading thru the March HBR. (Do you start your day like this?)

1. Nice research on page 30 concluding that getting cash makes you feel less pain or being socially excluded. (Yes, that's who we are.)  There is definitely a possible application of cash to many places to improve them, and it's interesting to see how it was put together.
2. One more nice article on page 38 on bankers' practices and the incentives, that, unfortunately, are not long term oriented.
3. On page 66 you can find great review of ways to get from the recession and typical strategies used.  This doesn't apply directly to the small businesses though, but more in general way, mostly because of operating costs and actual budgets range.

And, generally speaking, I liked this month's issue.  Good mix of articles worth reading.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

16 Things Your Lawyer Won't Tell You

1. I use forms but charge you as if I did it from scratch.

2. I hand off work to peons but charge you a lawyer’s rate.

3. My Ivy League education doesn’t make me a better lawyer.

4. I hope you don’t look too closely at the expense report.

5. You don’t really need me.

6. My fee is negotiable.

7. You’re always on the clock.

8. I don’t know much about the law.

9. I don’t refer you to the best lawyers.

10. Your bill is only a guesstimate.

11. I don’t have to tell you how I screwed up in the past.

12. I put on a tough act but that won’t actually help your case.

13. Mediation might be the better choice.

14. I can’t easily fire you as a client.

15. I’m training junior attorneys on your dime.

16. I’m a dime a dozen.

via openforum.com

The most of these are pretty straightforward, but it's nice to see them altogether. :)

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Essays and warming up math for GMAT

The last theory part of Cracking the GMAT 2009 was about essays writing (AWA). Overall, it was very okay, I liked it, although it looks like to makes some points controversial to official guide.

Why business schools need AWA on GMAT? They want to protect themselves a little bit against those non-native speakers who actually paid to have their essays written. Well, it might be so.

One of the important points — write as much as you can. Length matters. There is a statistical research that says that the length of essay is related to better score. I believe official GMAT guide says a little bit different things.

While the people who scores the AWA are supposed to ignore minor errors in spelling and grammar, you should be ready them not to. Keep in mind that we're all people and having only 2 minutes for an essay your graders might use to nail down the obvious mistakes only and these are your errors in spelling and grammar.

Pages 326-328 give you a nice template to Analysis of an Issue (AI) part. Don't use it as is though. Make sure to develop your own style or you can be easily caught by an "E-rater" — computerized grader of your essay.

There is a good organizational structure for AI on page 331:

1. First paragraph to illustrate your understanding of a topic, chosing a position. Restate, express your feeling, but stay limited to couple of sentences.
2. Second, third and fourth are to develop your examples and ideas to support your thesis.
3. The last paragraph should sum up your position, but make sure to use slightly different words from the first paragraph.

Make sure to demonstrate a good vocabulary as well as don't go too deeply into finding unsual ideas to support your position. There is a possibility to be graded lower because of missing some obvious points, even if you took a deeper and more educated look at the problem.

Make sure to be specific and stay away from over-generalization.

Next thoughts are about Analysis of an Argument part (AA). Page 335 has a good intro and template for it, as well.

The organizational notes are the following:

1. First paragraph should sum up the argument's conclusion.
2. Second, third and fourth are used to attack the argument and supporting evidence.
3. In the last paragraph you should summarize what you've said and show how the argument could be strengthened.

Starting from page 340 I found a very good ideas on preconstructions. VEry easy things that can be easily used.

On more thing is this is good to use some book to reference your ideas to. While this is not a panacea and not always possible, you might have a recent book or favorite one which you could use.

At the end I went through the warm-up math test which consisted of 20 questions. Unfortunetly, I made 4 mistakes (I was aware about 2 of them and other 2 were careless), but still went into the top one third section and supposed to start from math bins 3 and 4.

Technically, it looks like I'm switching to the hands-on practice again and it'll be less to blog about, except the hard questions.