I was just having a casual conversation with a few other people on how in business and most other team based objectives, there are so many times where a group can consist of the most dominant and knowledgeable people that one can get and yet a group with less experience can end up outdoing them. While there can be a dozen reasons for this, the topic in particular that was being discussed was how the person who is designated as the one to lead and manage the talent pool can often be the cause of it due to negligence on what one’s goal should really be.

Many times even from my experience, people who are new where they acquire a position of power seem to adapt this mentality that if you are leading a group of people in something then that means you have to rule with an iron fist and that you must look bigger than everyone else as it makes you look inferior if the person below you is better than you in a certain area. I can recollect some real examples way back before where I wasn’t the main leader for a task with a company and the goal was to increase sales by selling a particular item. At that time we have just acquired a new project manager so to speak. Everyone knew that I was the strongest and most knowledgeable person to help implement a marketing strategy. Now you’d think the smart thing to do as a leader would be to capitalize on this as you have someone who knows what they are doing. Instead, I couldn’t believe it when the person told me “That sounds great, but it will make it look like you are better than me”.

It actually lasted a long time and with others as well as instead of properly managing everyone, at times the person in charge would even sneakily try to listen in to conversations on what others say in hopes to secretly acquire knowledge on some best practices so that they won’t look bad in the eyes of the people who are overlooking them. In my opinion, a good leader doesn’t mean that you necessarily know the most or are the best in everything, but rather you have the ability to properly manage and motivate people in accomplishing a common goal. That’s almost like a company that would only hire people who know technically less than they do. Would that sound like a good plan for future growth?

In the end, a team has a common goal and as a leader one’s goal should be to simply find a way to fully utilize your skills and resources to accomplish that goal. If you are placed in a position of power, then learning how to empower others with your position of power to do something is in my opinion what separates a successful leader from an unsuccessful one.

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Recently I saw a news segment that talked about the various types of reward programs out there that companies offer to credit card users as an incentive to buy things with their card. I guess everyone knows that you usually have to purchase a lot of things to accumulate enough points in order to claim some decent rewards usually. There was an example used with one rewards program where you would literally have to spend over $100,000 in order to get an $800 airline ticket. That kind of shows you why companies usually love providing customers these kinds of reward incentives. Now obviously for most reward programs I would think that it would be safe to assume that the company would like you to spend all of your points on an item that doesn’t cost them that much as I guess you can say it is kind of like a mark up on the items they think people would be more inclined to buy. I decided to have some fun to see how true this may be.

Now one of the rewards programs that I have is the Air Miles reward program and so I signed in to its site to find out the type of rewards that I could get with my Air Miles points. While browsing through some of the electronics and games, I saw a Nintendo DS Lite and a Nintendo Gamecube. These were the perfect examples for a test I thought as I know the retail value of these products. Now the Nintendo DS Lite was 1700 points as seen here:

In Canada, a regular price for one of these DS Lite machines are around $149.99 at most retail outlets. Now the other product was the Nintendo Gamecube which was 1400 points:

Although this product is on its way out as the new Nintendo Wii system is already out, a Gamecube here is usually around $99 Canadian. Now for this rewards program, I earn about 1 point for every $40 that I spend with my credit card. That means to buy the DS Lite I would be using about $68,000 worth of purchases to get a $149.99 item and for the Gamecube I would have essentially spent $56,000 to get a $99 item. Kind of absurd when you think about it I’d say. This should be a big reason for you to want to get the best value in whatever reward you take.

Now in the rewards catalogue there was a section where you could redeem your points for gift cards. I noticed that they had these $50 HBC gift cards for 400 points:

There is actually a store here called Zellers where they actually do sell video game systems as well and that store actually happens to be a part of HBC (Hudson’s Bay Company) where you can spend those gift cards. With those gift cards, not including the tax I could technically buy the DS Lite for 1200 points or the Gamecube for 800 points. Quite a substantial difference. This just goes to show you that you have to shop around wisely as well even when it comes to using your credit card rewards points.

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This episode starts off with a little bit of a change as team Arrow acquired one of team Kinetic’s member that ended up being Surya. The task in this episode was that both teams would create and sell a new item for the El Pollo Loco restaurant based on the restaurant’s original signature item the El Pollo Loco Bowl. Whoever sold the most would win the task. Team Arrow came up with a dish they called the “Chicken Tortilla Bowl” and Team Kinetic dubbed their creation as the “Paradise Pollo Bowl.” The interesting thing was that team Kinetic’s dish was the original El Pollo Loco Bowl with mango and pineapple added to it.

For marketing, the show seemed to emphasized on how Marissa on team Kinetic was advocating that they should send people out wearing giant chicken suits to help promote the dish on the streets, but the idea along with her other suggestions were rejected by her team. When the doors opened for business, Team Arrow’s creation seemed to have gathered the most support as customers were enjoying their dish more it seemed. An interesting event happened on Team Arrow’s side as Aaron, the project manager, decided to send two of his teammates out to generate some bulk sales of the dish. In doing so, they had less staff to serve the existing customers which created obstacles. While it was suggested to Aaron to call the two people back, he decided not to still and it paid off as the team came back with a bulk sale of 22 bowls. In the end, Team Arrow sold over $400 of their creation and team Kinetic sold $313.54.

Now in the boardroom it looked like Marissa had extreme difficulties in maintaining her composure as she kept interrupting everyone including Donald Trump whenever anyone said anything that involved her whether it was positive or negative. The entire team of Kinetic thought that Marissa should be the one to go as the conscience was that the task was loss due to a marketing failure and Marissa animatedly mentioned how her ideas kept getting rejected and that if the team had gone with the chicken suit idea that they would have likely won. It was all about the chicken suit it seemed after that which was kind of entertaining. There was a moment where Marissa just kept going on and on in interrupting everyone and that drove Trump to tell her to shut up. Towards the end, Marissa blurted out how she shouldn’t even be in the boardroom and that seemed to have sealed her fate. I guess that kind of shows the unwillingness to take accountability in any way which kind of persuaded Trump to take the team’s thoughts in firing her more seriously it seems and in the end Marissa was fired.

The chicken suit…the chicken suit…. That seems to be stuck in my head now. I thought that in this episode Team Arrow showed a great example of taking a calculated risk where two people were sent of to try and land a huge sale despite it affecting one’s overall staff members within the restaurant. That’s often a hard decision to make as demonstrated here as you have to constantly juggle what people tell you against what you think is the best choice. For Marissa, it’s too bad that she couldn’t control herself as she seemed to be one of the more honest people with a lot of flare.

In my opinion, I think if she composed herself better she would of actually been able to put Heidi on the spotlight instead as in many ways to me it looked like the leadership aspect of this task was overlooked due to all of the fiasco about the chicken suit that Marissa kept bringing up. Even if people are ganging up on you like that, like many people say would you rather be the victim or the victor? A change in attitude can go a long way.

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While I personally don’t do this myself, it doesn’t seem to be a very uncommon thing now as it seems like a lot of people are simply using their cellular phones as their main telephone at home as well to cut down on expenses. I guess when you think about it from a financial point of view it can make sense as virtually every company nowadays offers some kind of plan that gives you say unlimited minutes on evenings and weekend which is probably when most people talk on the phone at home.

The main reason why I don’t do this personally is because usually calls directed to my cell phone are more work and business related and I can imagine where using the same number as a regular home contact as well can make things a little less flexible. Not only that, but that way at least I have an option to speak on a line that will guarantee to have a good reception. However, that doesn’t mean this can’t be a good idea for those who are on a budget as it seems like a perfectly logical way to cut down expenses if it suits your lifestyle.

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It was just announced recently that YouTube, the popular video sharing site, is currently planning to launch a program that will allow YouTube users to earn money from the content that they upload. While details about the program are not exactly known as of yet, it was mentioned by Chad Hurley, the co-founder of YouTube, that the program will be introduced slowly over a long period of time as oppose to having one massive release date. This should be interesting for everyone who is already uploading videos on YouTube and would like to make money out of it.

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