Interactive business challenges

I found that there was a gap in the Wollongong area where we had no homeware store that was really concentrating on a sustainable future for homes in this area. For 55 Parrots it’s as part of our mission. It's about being environmentally and socially conscious. So environmentally we've talked about what we use in our products. How we use them. We use products that that are easily grown and recycle products. We don't use any plastics. The first thing I look at is: am I going to be able to work with the supplier, is this relationship going to work? The next thing I would look at is quality and then the next thing I would look at is price.

When I had the opportunity by the university, when they came to me and said would you like to work with us on some students that were doing their Master’s in Supply Chain and Logistics and Business Management, I jumped at the chance because I thought it just fitted perfectly with where we want to go.

One of the best parts of working with the University of Wollongong was actually spending the time with the students so they could understand my journey and how I got here. We actually had students come on-site here at the shop and they actually went to all of my shops. They went to my warehouse. They watched a container unpack and from that the students have actually written some very comprehensive reports and I have some actual young uni students that I've just picked up that are working part-time for me and they're actually going to sit down and help me go through those reports.

My name is Mitka and I'm a master's student specializing in Supply Chain Management. The business research project is one of the most practical and challenging subjects of my course. We had this company called 55 Parrots come in and talk about the business and future plans. That's one of the best things about the subject is that your research topic is totally flexible. It's up to you to choose what to focus on. I was interested in sustainability so I chose that as my topic. I had colleagues focusing on Marketing, Procurement, Logistics and so on. So, I liked the fact that I could align my area of interest with my report.

I've done research for assessments in the past but that was all based on the data and findings of other academics. In this I could collect my own data and come up with recommendations based on the information that I obtained. I also found that this subject creates a new holistic view, not just about your topic but also about the entire process of doing research.

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[Dr Sharna Wiblen, Subject Coordinator]: Welcome to MBA-908 this trimester together we are doing strategic business project. We are going to be spending our time this semester talking about how we can help Dubai Duty Free.

[Dr. Bernard Creed, Senior Vice-President – Finance, Dubai Duty Free]: I think a lot of our challenges come from the nature of working in an airport. A lot of our customers that come through don't even come into Dubai, 60% of Emirates Airlines are transit traffic. We've got departures, transit arrivals, public shops and so a lot of it is around just the organic nature of how an airport operates. And then you've got other things like just the location and being in the Middle East and some of the political and geographical issues around the location itself. Our overriding brief from the government was to sell duty-free products and be the best in the world at our business. Our turnover is the largest in the world. It's over two billion US dollars based on last year. I mean essentially people go through airports. The purpose of an airport is to transport people from A to B safely and efficiently. But the objective of an airport is to grow ultimately and you need funding to grow. So the largest source of revenue usually at an airport will be the non-aeronautical revenue and a lot of that will sit in the duty-free and the retail space.

[Associate Professor Martin O’Brien, MBA Program Director]: If you're working in a global business, you're likely to have to face working across different time zones. Working with people from different cultures. Working with people that you haven't necessarily hand-picked or chosen yourself as people to work with. And that's the reality of doing business as uncomfortable as it may seem. That's what you're going to be doing in this subject. So we put together cross-campus teams and you would have at least one group member, probably two, that are from Dubai and perhaps KL. And the idea is that we're working as a group for the proposal and also to do a group video which is to get to the point where you're presenting recommendations to Dubai Duty Free. The prize at the end of this is that you can actually go over to Dubai to present your recommendations to Dubai Duty Free. Make a pitch to a two billion dollar firm. You don't get that every day in the MBA.

[Ruth Baulman (Maree), MBA student]: It's going okay. It certainly presented some challenges for myself and the team but I guess that was to be expected. We were sort of given a bit of a warning about the difficulties. But I don't think I was aware of just how challenging that would be.

[Troy Poposki, MBA student]: In terms of, you know, how to coordinate a project like this, someone needs to take the initiative to do the agenda for each meeting. The minutes for each meeting. Schedule the meetings in outlook to ensure that things follow the right pattern.

[Man Yuen Tjoe (Harvey), MBA student]: If we can we can go back in time and kind of redo the whole thing I think the one biggest suggestion that I would come up will be to actually know each other's patterns, what would be the availability during the week, during the day, so that we can time our communication better.

[Ruth Baulman (Maree), MBA student]: There's so many layers here, you know. My team can really only communicate with me through Whatsapp. So it's been very challenging. We've had shared drives for things but there isn't that verbal and video context all the time and face to face. So, yeah learning to just go with the flow and make the best of the situation is definitely my lesson from this.

[Troy Poposki, MBA student]: So when it came to the overall research process, it was clear to us that if we stuck to the process at hand and it's very linear in nature, it became a lot easier. So there's a positive impact to clearly understanding what needs to be done and it's an eight to nine phase process where you start with a topic, you understand your problem, you go into the literature, look at the methodology, where we chose surveys and interviews, and then we had a look at, you know, what are the key opportunities from all our research. Once we had a look at all the opportunities, all the trends in the market, the trends in the industry as well as some of the economic factors impacting Dubai, we formulated our recommendations. And the recommendations were in line with some of the findings in the research.

[Man Yuen Tjoe (Harvey), MBA student]: Leadership skills I think this is something that I didn't know, that I was up for. I was more about thinking this is going to be a whole bunch of assignments and once I've done it I learned a whole bunch of stuff and I’ve become better. But then the more I read into it, I think leadership to me is kind of getting harder and harder. I would probably spend more time reflecting. I think in the past I kind of digesting stuff. Now I look at what I did and look at if I had been given a chance to do it again will I be do it differently, what are the attitudes I need to have to do it differently. What are the mindset that I need to have or shift so that I can transform myself I need to do something I don't normally do. I need to feel, I need to feel uncomfortable, I need to feel how my team members feel, how my other colleagues feel, to be able to actually lead them or being lead. Because I think part of that process you… if you become … if you are a good leader you need to be a good team member as well. So it's kind of like you can't be good at one and not good at the other. And I think there's still a lot to learn. I think the finishing of the MBA or finishing of this subject is just start of my MBA journey. I think it is going to have a life lasting effect on me.

[Juan Carretero, Team 1, Winner of Global MBA Competition]: One of my counterparts, who can't be here to speak, is Vivian from University of Wollongong, had exceptional emotional intelligence and that kind of came through in her leadership. So I kind of drew on that and I like to actually use that as a reference for some of the ways I conduct myself in other places now. So, Vivian was able to really take leadership by segmenting the challenges and just coming up with little solutions as the challenges arose and not getting bogged down in the challenge. The idea behind the competition is that business is global. Business encounters technological challenges, time frame challenges. Then this experience does get you ready for a global organization that does operate across different platforms, different time zones.

[Sarah Stevens, Team 2, Winner of Global MBA Competition]: Global MBA competition was very eye-opening and it posed many challenges that I didn't expect up front. It was one of the subjects at the later part of my MBA and having the freedom to choose your own adventure and take a real-life problem and then actually try and find a real-life solution to that was very different to the world of academia where you've got a framework and then you critically analyze a work by some person or a case study that's already been framed. This was not framed. We are moving to a global workplace. We are moving to quick problem solving and you need to be able to reference the frameworks and the text that you've read but actually apply it in a different way. There's never a standard answer when you're dealing with real world situations. Give it a go. Don't be scared when challenges seem too overwhelming. In a team environment, talk to your team. Try and understand where they're coming from, try and understand why you're feeling uncomfortable in a situation and work together. You're not going to be in a situation very often where you're flying solo so really use those people around you to draw from their strengths, grow from their experiences and I think ultimately you can all lift each other up to achieve more than you could by yourself.