Overview:

In a letter written from prison by Stephen Richards, the former head of global sales at Computer Associates International Inc. (CA), to a University of Chicago graduate student, Richards responds to a number of questions posed by the student about the pressures and challenges he faced while a senior financial manager at Computer Associates. Reading and discussing your views of Richards? comments allows you the opportunity to confront difficult issues that managers can be forced to face.

bilal talaouanou I enjoyed the class contribution for many reasons. First of all, the professor let us speak in order to highlight the different issue we had concerning the case analysis in group. Some students pointed out the fact that some students are introverts including me and does not feel like answering the questions because extroverts such as Alicia, Christen or Edward can speak more easily and they use this ability not to answer the question completely but to give partial significant partial answers. When you feel like answering a question the same students and more are already jumping on it so you feel kind of less prepared although you are not. The professor just picked people randomly today and asked questions related to the case. We cover the most important aspect of the case which is their balance sheet and how they performed well over the years. We looked at the net income, the gross margin as well as the profit margin. Alex had the idea of doing an inner circle and outer circle, the inner circle composed of the extrovert or random students and the outer circle composed of the introverts or random students. The idea was good and will give everyone a chance to speak and give them the opportunity to think thoroughly before making any statements. I like the group discussion but I am a little scared sometimes to say something to jump into the group and be the one everybody has to look at and listen to. My contribution in the class was simple but not overlooked. I said that most of the time during the class discussion or the group meeting some literature questions are left unanswered. I mean by that, questions where it is asked for example the investment strategies in the case of Warren Buffet or the belief in the 95% luck in the case regarding Ben Miller. Most of the class agree with me when I made this comment. In my opinion, the group meeting to discuss cases is like when you join a group outside and have to speak up to sound interesting, people speaking all the time don't realize that they are hurting or stopping the one listening from speaking by the only fact of keeping the speech too long. I'm always prepared before any case discussion and would have to practice on how to answer those questions in class in front of everyone next time. It will not be easy but since we are graded based on the contribution you give I will have to get more and more better