A recent public talk on Business Judgement
Sharing knowledge unpaid in an open way has notuntil lately, when a dear friend recalled my forgotten pledge to contribute to my profession in the way I can. Narrow-minded right? Yes I am. I somehow did a free, public talk last week on something I thought very precious to me regardless. o
I talked about how I started and developed my business, sharing my views with peers, and with potential and perhaps current competitors. I tried to give a simple conclusion: jump-start your operation to the current and future requirements of the community. I started with a definition of key terms and my treatment of the topics, contrasting the difference and similarities of ‘Executive Judgement’ and ‘Executive Decision’. Growth figures for my 3 ex-companies were summarized and expansion strategies discussed. The changing concept of what a Wine Company is about; its product range and promotion strategies, as well as market characteristics were explained, drawing from what I experienced throughout the past 15 years. I sounded gloomy as a matter of fact, but managed to end the session with exciting figures and projects from leading consultancies. Questions list were long, centering on
why I was standing there if I felt so gloomy;
the logic and validity of the quoted figures and projections(tough ones);
how I would have done that again if I were to restart my businesses; and
the missing link from the background to my judgements from A to B.
You know how it will be like in serious ‘tutorials’ Hong Kong style: no body took any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for an answer.
Knowledge sharing is still OK, but what is extent like? I still would think that it still is a bit hypocritical to ‘share’. However, in this late Information Age as coined by the futurist Alvin Toffler, we are progressing through learning from each other. That was just a fair game.
No regrets. I got what I wanted: new attitudes and views with challenges on what I did, as well as quality, peer-to-peer questions from the floor.
