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| The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum |
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
One of the places I've longed to visit was the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It contains historical artifacts and memorabilia of the late Mr. Kennedy's presidency, from his campaign all the way up to his assassination.
An avid doodler, President Kennedy wrote his thoughts on a yellow pad as he was chairing the meeting and listening to his advisers. Of particular interest are the words "diplomatic", "missiles missiles missiles"and "pearl harbor" that he scribbled. On the left is the actual pad that he used.
The crisis was eventually resolved with both the United States and the Soviet Union agreeing on a quid pro quo. The USSR halted its missile installation in Cuba while the United States removed its missile batteries in Turkey.
A media sensation and a favorite of Washington's social elite, Mrs. Kennedy's outfits were as closely followed as the policy pronouncements of her husband. She brought class and pizazz to the post of First Lady.
Just like her husband, she used what was then a new media called, television, to reach out to the American people to promote her causes, very similar to the manner and style of the iconic Princess Diana several decades later. For her efforts, she is apparently the first and only First Lady to have won an Emmy.
Towards the end of the tour, is a portrait of the Kennedy family in happier times. This was apparently the last photograph of the entire family.
It is my hope that the Philippine too will someday realize the importance of honoring and preserving its history. And just like the Americans, a good place to start is the Philippine Presidency. As a people, Filipinos have had a "love-hate" affair with its President, further underscoring the need to preserve and discuss its history as a monument of unity and redemption. After all as Edmund Burke, an English statesman and philosopher, once stated, "those who don't know history are bound to repeat it".
Class Lessons
Operations.
- You need to create an "an don" culture in order to identify operations deviations and come up with solutions early on
- Doing so alerts the entire organization of potential problems and galvanizes it to come up with solutions and manage business expectations
- Businesses have made an excellent job of making supply chains lean that it has made operations very vulnerable to disruptions (e.g., Fukushima nuclear accident)
- Management credibility premium affects stock pricing
- The Japanese successfully built a strong competitive advantage in a relatively short time and across several industries and this has carried them through over 20 years of economic progress
- The US took 20 years to do the same
- The Germans took about 10 years
- The Japanese saved massively and invested massively and today it continues to reap interest dividends from these investments
- A period of low interest rates and high export earnings, known as "endaka" triggered a housing and stock bubble which eventually burst and led to what has been commonly referred to as the "lost decades".
- Japan continues to teach the world to this day, the American economic policy of quantitative easing, where government takes the lead in spending to boost consumer spending, was a lesson learned from the Japanese economic malaise
- One of the factors that caused the economic crisis of 2008 was that management incentives were geared toward more risk taking as incentives were predominantly anchored on return on equity
- Return on Equity unfortunately ignores the impact of leverage in value creation
- Some of the major players in the crisis unfortunately used short-term funds to manage long-term funds
