Ryan Jacobs . Org

As an MBA student, I see presentations almost daily. It’s rare that I see a presentation that’s so outstanding that I feel the need to tell others about it simply on the basis of its effectiveness in communicating information. I saw one on Wednesday evening.

The entrepreneur challenge is a series of speakers culminating quarterly in a quick-pitch competition, where locals bring up their ideas for new businesses and get feedback. The speaker list on Wednesday included a guy named Ken Rollins, a lawyer at Cooley LLP in San Diego. Ken’s presentation was on the difference between sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, S-corporations and C-corporations. Like all the speakers, he was given 10 minutes to cover his topic. Note that there are 5 types of corporations here, leaving 2 minutes to cover each. Ken worked effectively with this time constraint, making points clearly but never repeating them. There was no reliance on Powerpoint, and his slides didn’t really need to be there (in fact, I wish they hadn’t been – all he really needed was a list of the 5 types of corporations he was going to talk about). The presentation was impeccably organized: for each corporation type, Ken discussed the structure, the associated costs, the advantages, and the disadvantages as compared to one of the other types. Each corporation type was thus handled. The presentation assumed just the right of audience knowledge – I was familiar with all these terms, but I have never really been given a framework for comparison.

So here is a public thank you, Ken Rollins from Cooley, for not feeling the need to use Latin words in your presentation just to prove you’re a lawyer.

A friend of mine was having issues with TicketMaster, surprise surprise. The situation: she meant to buy tickets for the Thom Yorke April 15th show, but bought them for April 14th instead. She called TicketMaster customer service to ask if they could switch the date. They could not, but they told her that she had 24 hours to cancel her ticket. She then went online via a phone (since she was out and about at this point) and bought tickets for the April 15th show. The next morning, she called TicketMaster customer service again to cancel the April 14th tickets, and they refused. They said their policy was to only refund tickets bought on the same day. She called back a second time, spoke with a different agent who said the same thing, then asked for a supervisor who said the same thing and was also rude.

That afternoon (still within 24 hours of the original purchase), I asked to try. After about 10 minutes, the rep that I spoke to agreed to cancel the April 14th tickets and issue a refund. Given that the rep clearly has some discretion in these situations, I’d like to offer an analysis of exactly what needs to happen on the customer end in order to acheive a desirable result.

1. Before you call, decide what the desired outcome will be. In this case, the desired outcome was “I would like to return the April 14th tickets and receive a full refund of the ticket price and associated fees on my credit card.” Any other outcome should be considered unacceptable.
2. When speaking with the customer service reps, don’t mention any wrongdoing on your part. My friend tried to explain that she bought the first set of tickets in a hurry at the airport and then couldn’t be near a computer to buy the second pair quickly, etc. etc. This is not only irrelevant information, but it actually makes TicketMaster less inclined to refund your money because it shows that you are willing to take responsibility for the mistake.
3. Be sure to bring up any wrongdoing on TicketMaster’s part, and lead with it if possible. In this case, the wrongdoings happened when the first service rep quoted a 24-hour window, and then when the final customer service supervisor was rude.
4. Be neutral and logical. Anger and yelling are counterproductive – the people you’re speaking with don’t need their day ruined. Being nice is also counterproductive – you don’t want to give the rep any reason to think that not refunding your money might be OK.

Here was my opening salvo:

Hi, I bought tickets yesterday for Thom Yorke. When I received the tickets, I saw they were for the April 14th show, but I wanted tickets for the 15th. Your customer service rep said that I had 24 hours to cancel my tickets, so I bought another pair for the 15th expecting a refund for the original pair, but when I called back this morning, I was told that was against your policy and I don’t understand how this is possible. I’d like to return the April 14th tickets and have the money refunded to my credit card.

Fortunately, this argument alone was successful. However, I was prepared for a response of “our policy is to only respond tickets bought on the same business day.” I had my rebuttal lined up, which would have gone something like this:

I understand that, but the problem is that the first customer service rep I spoke to did not state this policy correctly. I then bought a second pair of tickets based on his advice. Since the mistake was yours, I should be entitled to a policy exception in this case. I’d still like to return my tickets for the April 14th show and have a refund issued to my credit card.

The Rady Student Board held elections over the past few weeks. I was selected by my classmates to be the new CEO, and I’ll be taking over in the spring! I’m pretty excited about this development, despite the fact that it confers upon me all the responsibilities of an executive without any of the compensation. To give you a little context, here was my candidate statement:

Rehearsing for my undergraduate music honors recital five years ago was a moving and humbling experience. Moving because of how many of my friends volunteered undue amounts of time for rehearsal for no other reason than to support a fellow member of their community. Humbling because of the phenomenal artistry and work ethic that group of musicians brought to the table. At the recital itself, I was reminded of the same lesson learned by many conductors before me: success in music begins not with individual talent, but with shared commitment and mutual respect.

The students at the Rady School of Management, like those in my old music department, enjoy the benefits of a powerful bond. I am running for CEO because I want to lead us in maintaining and strengthening that bond. I want the incoming classes to know that when any one of us wins a case competition, lands a dream internship, or acquires startup funding, it represents an achievement for all of us. I want to realize the full potential of our clubs, alumni events, community programs, and all the other things that bring us together. I want to do this because I believe what we have at Rady is better than any ranking in BusinessWeek: what we have at Rady is trust and faith in each other. I will be an effective CEO because I’ve learned that success in business, just as in music, begins with shared commitment and mutual respect. Those are the qualities I embody, and those are the qualities I see in you.

I’m in the middle of finals week right now, but the majority of my school-related thought on RSB’s future role (my organizational strategy final is today, which provides some nice overlap because most of RSB’s challenges fall into this arena). How do you institutionalize shared commitment? There’s even an additional layer to this at Rady: there’s an underdog/individual/entrepreneur culture around here, and that kind of culture tends not to promote the institutionalizing of things. On the other hand, it’s that same culture which is the lifeblood of our school, and the last thing I would want is a degradation of our culture through formalization.

I’ll make this a little more concrete. One specific challenge that I want to deal with is a growing contingent of students who “opt out” of the purely social events (not talking about RSB’s professional events here). This contingent has some reasons – the oft-quoted reason is “I don’t like drinking,” to which my response is “so eat instead when you go out, and you still get to socialize.” Furthermore, we do have plenty of events which don’t involve drinking, yet we still tend to see the same students. So I’m going to read in between the lines a bit, and speculate that the real objection boils down to not feeling like part of the “going-out clique.” As I mentioned in my candidate statement, shared commitment and mutual respect are especially important parts of the Rady experience. Personally, I try and build this commitment and respect in the classroom, but my extracurriculars also contribute to this goal. Put bluntly, the more students who “opt out,” the less value I get from going here.

I finally broke down and asked one of my classmates (after about 5 minutes of gentle prodding), “What event would you attend? If you could plan your perfect event, and you knew you could get any portion of our class to show up that you wanted, what would it look like?” Something amazing happened when I asked this: she immediately understood the problem. She had no answer, but her expression clearly showed that she wanted to have an answer. It’s this understanding that I need to tap into, and I’m starting to develop some strategies for doing so. I’ll have the privilege of testing those strategies, starting next week.