Tag: WashU at Brookings

Perhaps you’re a marketing manager eager to launch a new campaign to freshen up an existing product. Or maybe you run a manufacturing operation and believe a second production line would boost the bottom line by increasing output.

In both of these scenarios, you would need to get your ideas past someone in finance.

Todd Milbourn

“The finance function in most organizations is often viewed as the area that always says ‘no’ to resource requests,” said Todd Milbourn, Olin’s vice dean and Hubert C. and Dorothy R. Moog Professor of Finance.

Unfortunately, one way non-financial managers can assure they get a “no” would be to misunderstand what their counterparts in finance actually do.

“It is important to have a perspective on what finance managers are trying to achieve,” Milbourn said. Toward that end, he teaches a daylong seminar aimed directly at the non-financial manager titled, appropriately enough, “Finance for Non-Financial Managers.”

The idea: Bridge the gap in understanding between the finance function and other corporate leaders. “Having this bridge is critical as finance touches everyone in the organization,” he said.

Once managers take the course, Milbourn can’t guarantee participants will always get a “yes” on their requests, “but they’ll know how to better position their own requests to increase their odds of getting funded.”

How non-financial managers can “increase their odds”

• Become conversant in the language.

  “Managers from outside of finance are often intimidated by the language and terminology of finance,” Milbourn said. “That limits their effectiveness in the organization.” If you can speak the language, you work from a common frame of reference. Milbourn’s course walks participants through a variety of scenarios demystifying concepts such as “shareholder value,” “cost of capital” and “return on investment.”

• Understand your company’s big picture.

  Know how to read and interpret a balance sheet and other financial statements. Learn how to relate the company’s strategy to the numbers. Milbourn walks participants through the financing, performance, and continuation decision of a company that participants will help finance themselves, putting them in the shoes of actual investors.

• Understand what finance managers are trying to achieve.

  “The finance function is responsible for allocating resources to a number of initiatives,” Milbourn said. “This balancing act is typically one that cannot say yes to every request.” An appreciation for how finance tracks a company’s historical performance and forecasts its future performance can help you frame your initiatives for the finance manager.

• Appreciate why sometimes, the answer is “no.”

  You can’t win ’em all. Understanding the components of value creation for shareholders means you may learn how to pick your battles when you have an idea. “This seminar will give participants a sense of the ‘portfolio problem’ financial managers face,” Milbourn said.

The next session of “Finance for Non-Financial Managers” is set for Sept. 19, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Knight Center. Visit Olin’s website for registration information and for our other executive education offerings.

Guest blogger: Kurt Greenbaum

Ten years ago, Hillary A. Elfenbein published a major review of research that examined emotion in the workplace in the Academy of Management Annals. Since then, her paper has been cited more than 500 times. At the recent Academy of Management (AOM) annual meeting, Elfenbein’s work was honored as the Annals’ paper that has made the greatest impact over the past decade. Elfenbein is the John K. Wallace, Jr. and Ellen A. Wallace Distinguished Professor at Olin and she teaches organizational behavior.

AOM Decade Award recipient

Hillary A. Elfenbein

“Emotions in Organizations:

A Review and Theoretical Integration”

Vol. 1, Issue 1, 1 December 2007

“The paper was an integration of all of the research that had ever been done on emotion in the workplace,” Elfenbein explained. “Interestingly enough when I started out, emotion was considered a fringe topic. I actually got very sage advice from my mentors that I should give this up and find a serious topic to work on.”

Elfenbein became interested in emotion in the workplace a few years after Daniel Goldman’s popular book Emotional Intelligence was published in 1995. Despite the discouragement from mentors and a general lack of respect for the topic among academics in business schools, Elfenbein was determined. “I’m a bit stubborn and I persisted with the topic even though it was really something that I had to fight for in graduate school to be able to work on.”

By 2006, there was an explosion of research on emotion in the workplace, but Elfenbein found that it was disconnected and disjointed. “With this paper I was trying to draw together all of this new research into one theoretical, unified model,” she explained. Her work has clearly become a touchstone and great resource for researchers delving into the now accepted academic field of emotion in the workplace.

Elfenbein adds that she felt very fortunate and honored to receive the award from the AOM. “The best part is that it came with an umbrella. I got a little plaque and a big umbrella!”

About the Academy of Management 

The mission of the Academy of Management Annals is to provide up-to-date, in-depth examinations of the latest advances in various management fields. Each yearly volume features critical and potentially provocative research reviews written by leading scholars exploring an assortment of research topics. Annals reviews summarize and/or challenge established assumptions and concepts, pinpoint problems and factual errors, inspire discussions, and illuminate possible avenues for further study. Research reviews published in the Annals are geared toward academic scholars in management and professionals in allied fields, such as sociology of organizations and organizational psychology.

Jim McKelvey, entrepreneur and co-founder of Square, will be the keynote speaker at the Second Annual Wealth and Asset Management Research Conference to be held at Olin Aug. 22-23, 2017. Hosted by the Wells Fargo Center for Finance and Accounting Research (WFA CFAR), the meeting brings together researchers and practitioners who share the common goal of better understanding the capital markets to create better outcomes for investors. The conference will feature research from leading academics with audience discussions lead by industry experts in each given field of research.

McKelvey was appointed as an Independent Director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve in January 2017, but is better known for his involvement in several St. Louis-based startups including Cultivation Capital (general partner and co-founder), Six Thirty (co-founder), LaunchCode (founder), Third Degree Glass Factory(co-founder), Mira publishing (founded when he was a WashU student), and Square, the mobile payment company he founded in 2009 with Jack Dorsey.

McKelvey graduated from Washington University in 1987 with degrees in Economics and Computer Science. Earlier this year, he donated $15M to the University to build a new computer science and engineering building named in honor of his father, James McKelvey, Sr. who is a former dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

In addition to research topics, the one-and-a-half-day conference will feature presentations by noted industry experts including attorney Jerry Schlichter, and author William Cohan.

Link to register.
Sessions will be held in Emerson Auditorium, Knight Hall.

Conference Schedule:

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

12:00 – 1:00 pm  Registration – Knight Hall, Frick Forum1:00 – 1:15 pmWelcome & Opening Remarks Richard Ryffel, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Washington University

1:15 – 2:00 pm  Presenter – Bob Dannhauser, Head, Global Private Wealth Management, CFA Institute, “The Art and Science of Wealth Management: Looking to the Future”

2:15 – 3:00 pm  Presenter – Dan Bergstresser, Associate Professor of Finance, Brandeis International Business School, “Changes in the Municipal Bond Landscape since the Global Financial Crisis”

Discussant – Linda Matkowski, Chief Operating Officer, Stern Brothers & Co.

3:00 – 3:45 pm  Presenter – Andy Kalotay, President, Andrew Kalotay Associates, “Tax Optimization of Municipal Bond Portfolios”

Discussant – Steve Wood, Principal, Stephen A. Wood Consulting, LLC

4:00 – 5:00 pm   “Remembering Steve Ross: The Man and His Ideas” – Phil Dybvig, Boatmen’s Bancshares Professor of Banking and Finance, Washington University, Rick Antle, William S. Beinecke Professor of Accounting, Yale University, Michael Griswold, Senior Director, Risk Managment and Asset Allocation, Ascension Investment Management

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

8:00 – 9:00 am
A Discussion of the Importance of Financial Services to the Economy – William Cohan, Author,  “Why Wall Street Matters“

9:15 – 10:00 am   Presenter – Jerry Schlichter, Founding and Managing Partner, Schlichter, Bogard, & Denton, “Litigation Pitfalls for 401k Plan Fiduciaries”

10:15 – 11:00 am   Presenter – Matt Ringgenberg, Associate Professor of Finance, David Eccles School of Business,  “On Index Investing”

Discussant – Hans Fredrickson, CIO, Oak Summit Capital

11:00 – 11:45 am   Presenter – Todd Gormley, Associate Professor of Finance, Washington University, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Effect of Passive Investors on Activism”

Discussant – Charles Stucke, Chief Executive Officer, Lepercq

12:00 – 12:45 pm   Presenter – Emily Gallagher, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Household Finance, Washington University, “Financial Challenges of Low-Income Households”

Discussant – Chris Krehmeyer, President and CEO, Beyond Housing

2:00 – 2:30 pm   FinTech Showcase – Presenter – Cliff Holekamp, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Academic Director for Entrepreneurship “How Venture Capital Pays”

2:30 – 3:30 pm   FinTech Showcase Panel – Ben Harrison, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder, DealCloud, Inc., Josh Smith, Co-founder and CEO, Solovis, Laurence Stock, COO and Co-founder, Numerated Growth Technologies, Inc., “Automation in Asset Management”

Moderator – Joe Maxwell, Managing Partner, Cultivation FinTech

3:30 – 4:15 pm  FinTech Showcase – Keynote Address – Jim McKelvey, General Partner and Co-founder, Cultivation Capital, Co-founder and Director, Square.

“Millennials in the workplace” is a big topic among non-millennials—both in the media and at work. So we tapped Andrew Knight, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, to shed some light on his research regarding this intriguing generation. He presented his findings in a recent webinar, identifying three trends that organizations are facing:

1. Millennials are difficult to retain.

2. Millennials prize their personal lives over their work lives.

3. Millennials want opportunities to grow and develop.

I don’t think that anyone would argue that #2 and #3 aren’t positive or even natural from generation to generation. So let’s focus on the “difficult to retain” trend. Why? First off, millennials identify less and less with institutions, religion, and even voting. So they certainly aren’t going to drink the company Kool-Aid easily! They are always open to new endeavors and don’t readily choose to stay with a current employer for long. They want opportunities and they want to “work to live” (not necessarily the other way around). And when millennials work, they want to work in a less rigid environment, with plenty of mentoring and coaching along the way.

Millennials are often accused of being “entitled”  and “narcissistic.” However, as Professor Knight pointed out, every American generation has been called the “most narcissistic” to date. And many of the measures which ladder up to the label of narcissistic—”self-esteem,” “drive,” and “persistence”—also build up to being a leader, which isn’t a bad thing.

So how do we best embrace and nurture the Millennial generation? Professor Knight shared some key thoughts to this point:

1. Avoid stereotyping millennials as “entitled.”

2. Recognize that this generation is the most diverse generation in history.

3. Offer career opportunities within an organization, even if a promotion is not available or appropriate. Consider a geographic, functional, or divisional change.

4. Redefine rigid roles and rules to address the fact that millennials value their personal lives more than their work lives. Consider flexible time, flexible roles, or a flexible location policy.

5. Give the “annual” review more often than once a year. Millennials are hungry to grow and develop; they want coaching, ongoing feedback and opportunities.

Millennials are here to stay, and managers need to think about how to better structure positions and policies to better attract, develop, and keep this pool of talent.

Be sure to check out the “Managing the Millennial Wave” seminar scheduled for February 2018, as well as our other management and leadership offerings. 

How millennial are you? Check out the Pew Center’s 14-question quiz.

India’s The Economic Times reports on the new cohort in Olin’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program with partner school IIT-Bombay under the headline, “Where managers evolve into leaders!” The article notes that this is the third batch, or class, to matriculate in the 18-month program, “a much sought-after joint degree course, and is the first-of-its kind in India.”

“The inaugural function was attended by power names from business and academia. Chief guest Yogi Sriram, senior vice-president, Corporate HR, Larsen & Toubro, applauded the course, saying, “The program offered by IIT-Bombay and Washington University in St Louis is ideal for leaders wanting to succeed in ever-changing business cycles and complexities.”

WashU-IIT Bombay EMBA Batch 3

Ten years ago, Matt Kulig walked into a big box home improvement store. After 20 minutes of fruitless searching for a surge protector, asking three employees for help, and being led to three incorrect locations, his patience was spent and he was on the verge of retail rage.

Fortunately, Kulig was able to channel his frustration into innovation by co-founding Aisle411, a mobile indoor mapping and location platform. The serial entrepreneur (he’s now working on his 10th startup) recently shared his story with Executive MBA (EMBA) students at Olin.

The Aisle411 app allows retailers to offer their guests accurate navigation throughout a store. In addition to navigation, it shares information on specials and other helpful data to enhance a customer’s experience. The app also tracks customers’ behavior to provide store owners with valuable insights on shopping patterns.

Today, St. Louis-based Aisle411 serves over 14,000 stores across the globe including Walgreens, Supervalu and Schnucks. They are able to do this thanks to partnerships with key businesses such as Google and Philips.

The EMBA students were all ears when Kulig said, “one can start a company from anywhere – yes, even the Midwest.” Aisle411’s mission is to “Uber-fy” the shopping experience.

Kulig shared 8 entrepreneurial lessons with WashU’s EMBA students:

1. People Matter. You should like the people you work with.
2. Networking Matters. Even for the extroverts, you “gotta do it.”
3. Serendipity Happens. There is no such thing as good luck. There is such thing as opportunity which generally occurs after ideas and people collide.
4. Don’t Wait For Things To Happen. Make them happen.
5. It’s All About Selling. When you are an entrepreneur, whether you like it or not, you are in sales. Everyone you talk to is a potential investor, customer or storyteller.
6. Manage Risk. Do not fear it.
7. Everything is Negotiable.
8. Millions of Ideas Happen, But Few Come to Life. Not all entrepreneurs have an original idea. But most people don’t end up executing.

EMBA student Morgran Crena said, “What I took home from Matt Kulig’s talk was how he managed the ups and downs as Aisle411 grew. As a serial entrepreneur, he clearly has a passion for start-ups and his work in the community shows his dedication to help others. A couple times he invited students to speak with him afterwards to discuss their ideas. When I met with him, he gave practical advice about potential pitfalls and was encouraging.”

The Executive MBA program, as well as student-run organizations, benefit from guest speakers throughout the year who bring real-world journeys to the classroom and add an extra dimension to Olin’s research-based learning.