1. Money or Relationship? 认钱或认人？

Which society works better? The one that recognizes money as the main trading item for resources? Or the one that emphasize on 'relationship' to gain resources?

A society that embraces money or embraces ‘relationship’. During the past, we used to live in a society of embracing relationship. In order for us to climb up the pyramid of the society, we need to go by relationship. Throughout the journey, we learn how to enlighten the higher ups and hoping that they would bring us up to the higher levels. This will leave us with no solid skills rather than just how to specifically pleasing certain people. Now the world is changing, whereby emphasize has not much on relationship but value. In order to obtain the value, one must commit monetarily. It’s a fair and square game which makes trading quantifiable and transparent.

In the society that takes money as the main trading item for resources, the poor can rise to the middle income and even the rich through selling their skills and products. Making a living will be much easier compared to a society that only takes care of 'relationship'.

The value of this situation is that the only asset that can be mobile and permanently stay with you is knowledge and know how. This knowledge will enable you to survive no matter where you are and who you are with as you will know who your customer is and what services (skills and products) you can provide to earn. In the contrary, if I were to learn only how to please my boss throughout my career, then it would leave me with nothing when I leave that environment.



2. Cost 成本

The concept of cost is equivalent to the price of abandoning the highest value that we can get.

For example, you spend a lot to buy a dream car, then an opportunity strikes whereby you could invest in something that could bring you a greater return. At this moment, short of cash, the cost of your doing is not the price of buying the car but the amount of income or profit that could be generated through the investment that you missed. It is indeed another level of thinking about the cost.

A few tips that were given to be a cost conscious person:

1. Spend small when comes to daily expenditure and spend big when comes to investment and opportunity.
2. Know yourself through trying different possibilities, that will open up more doors for your future.
3. Able to imagine your future self that you place yourself with the future value that you have yet to gain.
4. Know how to differentiate between making a living and pursuing a purpose. Making a living is for the present, earning bucks to have cash in order to survive whereas pursuing a purpose is a long shot, a motivation for us to go further than our present self.
5. When you have a big dream, then the present challenge ahead will become smaller as you know each challenge solved, is a step nearer to the big dream.


3. Resources 资源

An entity’s value increases when there is diversification.

The geographical factor is not the real influence but the people are the primary influence of resource. Imagine a mega city and a small town, what’s the big difference between these two places? Population and opportunity. 

There is a few example that highlights how to find resources that work to your benefit:

- All schools are almost the same as the curriculum had been structured, but why people are trying to be enrolled in good schools? The answer is the resources, which the density of the good teacher and good students (future partners) are more in good schools. In other words, there is a higher probability of meeting a good teacher in a good school rather than in a less performing school (no offense as the less performing school also has a great teacher but in less density). 

- Imagine if you pitch an idea of making a rocket in a small town, the people will definitely laugh at you. However, if you pitch that in a city, people will take you seriously and even join or fund you.

- Finally, follow the people that you admire and make them your motivation. You can be as great as them if you work smart and hard enough.


4. Group Culture 组织文化

Group culture plays a big role in building a strong teamwork.

A good group culture comes from the following aspects:

1. People trust each other and able to delegate the job to the others. For example, Uber had enabled us to trust a stranger driver to bring us to our desired destination, rather than driving ourselves.

2. Forgiving in making mistakes is one of the most important factors that encourage innovation and creativity. Mark Zuckerberg stated that the greatest success will only come from having the freedom to fail. It is indisputable that if we fear of making mistakes, we will choose the safe route and not challenge the status quo (which may be the billion dollar problem like Facebook?)

3. Able to collaborate and communicate in an equal state. Regardless of the position that we hold or power that we have, when we are in a team, we need to collaborate in a manner where we have equal voice and rights to express an idea and critic others.

4. We need to have a platform to unleash the full potential of ours through opportunity given by the employer, investors or customers. I believe everyone has a dream of becoming the crème de la crème in his or her respective field and thus opportunity is the key. However, we need to be bold to take it and sharp to be aware of it.

5. Lastly is the leader has to have the flexibility to be lead. Putting the responsibility on the person who can handle the task best and let he or she become the leader. That would mean delegating the decision power to the person who understands the task best and could make the best decision in favor to the group.

6. One last thing is as long as we can keep our ass safe, it will be one of the best contributions to a team. This means that we can trust each other with our back defenseless and let the other to cover your weakness.


5. How to Learn? 如何学习？

Last tips of the day are methods of learning in terms of individual and corporate:

1. Self-enrichment. We have to enrich ourselves with the diversification of knowledge and experience. This will push our circle wider and able to see a bigger world.

2. Self-improvement. When we identify the skills that we believe will bring future value, invest in it and sharpen those skills.

3. Problem-solving. Find problems around you to solve. A good solution could mean benefiting a large group of people and in exchange a life changing moment for you.

4. Accumulate skills and assets for the future. We need to envision ourselves in the future and accumulate whatever skills and assets needed to achieve the ultimate dream. For example, Jack Ma ultimate dream is to help the world’s SME and by establishing Alibaba, Alipay, Taobao, Ant Financial, Hupan University and etc; he slowly realize the dream. 

The above contents are the notes that I took from the live lecture by 薛兆丰 hosted by Luojisiwei's app iGet. An MBA lecturer from the National School of Development at Peking University.

This post was originally posted on: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-concepts-i-learnt-from-peking-universitys-mba-bimba-zhaowei-kim