Day 79

Saturday, April 26, 2008

This morning we took a break from working on our final presentation to do some sport fishing. John Petersen, my teammate from Unified, was able to arrange a charter for Tracy (Albertsen's), Michelle (Dole), and myself to go with him out of Huntington Harbor. John's brother James, who works for Shimano, hooked us up with Captain Matt and the six of us had a fabulous time.

Leaving Huntington Harbor with the sunrise.

We left Oakwood at 4:45 am and were at the first fishing spot by 7 am. We fished for about five hours between Huntington Harbor and San Pedro and brought back 27 Sand Bass, Rock Fish and Sculpin ranging from 13-17 inches. James and Matt did just about everything for us from removing the fish from the hooks to cleaning and filleting them, which let us get as much fishing time as possible. I've never fished for anything except trout and this was just the most incredible experience - we had a blast!

We were back at Oakwood by 3 pm and back to work. It's hard to believe I'll be home a week from tomorrow. I can't wait, but I'll definitely miss days like these.

Picking up live anchovies at the bait barge.

Michelle taking a picture of a sea lion while we were stopped for fuel in San Pedro.

Me, Michell, John and Tracy pictured from the tower.

Michelle throwing the left over anchovies to the seagulls. They caught five of them in the air. Unfortunately the net in Michelle's left hand went over board and she had to catch the rest of the anchovies out of the live well with her hands.

Our catch. Not bad!

Captain Matt fillets the catch with Michelle at the helm (it was on autopilot).

The crew! John, Michelle and Tracy.

The end of a great day on the water.

Day 52 - 54

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Yesterday after the interviews we went to the First Timer's WAFC reception. There we met up with about a dozen of our classmates and then had an opportunity to introduce them to Dale and Jeff who were also there (obviously not first timers). It was nice to see them and have a chance to chat and catch up on what's happening back in the northwest. We also met John Runyan, former President of Associated Grocers, now with Unified, which was a great opportunity for Sue because her group is doing their Mergers & Acquisition project on Unified's purchase of AG. The reception lasted for about an hour and we then headed off to another patio for another reception before heading off to dinner with our Haggen group.


Don and Kathy Haggen hosted a very nice dinner for all of the Haggen delegates at Wally's Desert Turtle. We had a terrific time and it was great to see a bunch of folks from back home, not to mention some fantastic food. One of the things that was really nice about the evening was that I had the opportunity to interact with our senior executives outside the office. We all spend so much time together working that it's nice to get to know each other on a more personal level.


This morning we headed over to the convention early for breakfast, then back to the hotel where I met with my FIMSIM team (in swim trunks on the lazy river!) to discuss strategy, then with half of my Mergers team to discuss preliminary research and presentation ideas. After that we headed back to the convention for the evening hospitality events.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Today we were at the convention center early again for breakfast followed by the official opening of the convention. We were all in our suits today so we'd look sharp as we were presented to the convention. The attire the rest of the time has been business casual, but it actually runs more toward just casual for those who have been here before or are combining business and vacation (which seems to be a lot of people). One of the nice things about WAFC is that it's very family friendly and they really make an effort to make it so that business people can bring their families and have a good time while still getting some work done.


Jim Lee, this year's WAFC President and President of Stater Brothers Markets, and John Eagen, WAFC Vice President and Sr. Vice President of Costco, opened the convention with a welcome address and the Marine Corp marching band presented the colors. This was awesome. They're incredible musicians and did a tremendous job bringing energy and patriotism to the event. Before they marched out they played a medley of all of the service anthems and asked those in the audience who had served to stand as their anthem was played. I was very happy to see my classmates Tracy Hayes (Army Ranger) and Rebecca Cupp (Airforce) standing proud. I was also surprised to see how many in the audience had served, predominantly representing the Navy and Airforce, but also a fair number from the Army and Marines. After that there were a few more introductory remarks and service award presentations and then Jim presented our class to the WAFC. This really felt a little weird. We're in a convention hall with maybe a thousand people and they're all smiling and clapping enthusiastically. It felt, not for the first time during the program, like we were celebrities which, when you consider that many of the people at the convention are senior people from our own companies, is doubly weird, but also really neat. One thing about the FIM program that has struck me a number of times is that we're constantly hearing that we're the future of the grocery industry and the current leaders really treat us that way. One of our challenges is not to let our heads get too big and to remember that the biggest part of leading is serving others.


Following the opening of the convention Jeff Noddle, Chairman and CEO of Supervalu (now one of the largest grocery companies on the planet), spoke about about investing in the future through education and the importance and difficulty of finding tomorrow's leaders at all organizational levels. One of our assignments from Donna Miles, our communication professor, was to critique all of the speakers at the convention based on what she's taught us. Most of them have obviously had a lot of practice and did a very nice job. The one thing that I thought detracted from Jeff Noddle's presentation was that the first ten minutes of it he spent talking about how Supervalu is still working to integrate Albertson's into the organization and realize the efficiencies and synergies that they expected to provide a lot of the value of the transaction. I understand that since Jeff is the chief of such a massive company anything he says in any venue is going to be mentioned somewhere in the press and that since Supervalu hasn't been able to turn Albertson's around as quickly as they had promised he has to constantly reassure investors and Wall Street analysts, but it seemed to me that about two minutes in people at the convention were bored with this and didn't feel like they were getting what they came to hear. Other than that I think he did a fine job.

Next up was former Navy Captain D. Michael Abrashoff who turned out to be the best speaker of the convention. He was the commander of USS Benfold, an Aegis Destroyer (Arliegh Burke class) when it went from the lowest rated ship in the Pacific Fleet to the "best damn ship in the Navy." His presentation was on management techniques, but was really his story of commanding the Benfold and how he was able to turn the ship around, so to speak. He talked about the fact that since people are your biggest asset, the way to be successful is to engage them to take ownership of their work and to use their creativity to find better ways of doing things. As a leader, your job is to create the kind of working atmosphere where your people feel that you care about them and want them to be successful. If you can convince them that you'll back them up when they use some of the freedom you've given them they'll be more likely to implement the ideas they have for improvement and you'll all win. The essence of it was that whether you're in business, the military, or just in life People are important. Get to know them, treat them with respect, be honest with them, and just enjoy the time you get to spend with them. While he was, as he promised he would be, the least polished of all of the speakers we heard at the convention he was so genuine and cared about what he was talking about that it absolutely came through and he completely connected with his audience. It also didn't hurt that we were all still feeling the pride in our armed forces from the morning's Marine Corp marching band performance. All in all he was really terrific and I think he received a standing ovation when he fished. To top it off, when we got back to school a few days later Stacy and Michael from DPI told us that Dan Madsen, President of DPI-West (and Stacy's boss) had been at the presentation and thought it was so good that he bought each of us a copy of Abrashoff's book "It's Your Ship."

As I may have mentioned Dan was a graduate of the program about four years ago and was our first guest speaker of the semester. He's a really terrific guy who is absolutely down to earth and generous. One thing he said that I've heard from several of the younger executives who've been through the program was that he never expected to be President. He just worked hard, treated people with respect and tried to do the right things for his company. I think this is an important thing to think about: the best self-promotion you can do is to just do the best job you can.

After Captain Abrashoff 's presentation we broke for lunch which was a whole other adventure...

(to be continued)

Day 51

Saturday, March 29, 2008

We're off to the WAFC convention in Palm Desert today. Sue, Ron and I decided to all ride together since it's about two and half hours from Marina Del Rey. Every year the Western Association of Food Chains holds a convention where retailers and suppliers get together to network, attend education sessions and meet on business issues. We're looking forward to the experience and to a few hours of R&R. We still have a lot of work to do while we're there, catching up with homework and getting started on our research for the Mergers presentation only a week after we get back.

We're staying at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort in Palm Desert. The convention is actually a couple miles away at the Desert Springs Resort. It's a huge hotel on a 36 hole golf course, but there isn't enough room there for everyone who's attending the convention which shows how big the convention is. As soon as we arrived at the hotel and got settled in we went over to the convention to register and do some TV interviews. The WAFC is putting together some promotional commercials for the Retail Certificate Program that they run at community colleges throughout the west and they've asked to interview us about some of the things we've learned in the FIM program and our general impressions about the value of the courses available in the Retail Certificate Program.

I'm looking forward to some of the speakers, like Sam Donaldson, and Kenny Loggins will be playing at the banquet at the end of the convention. It should be a fun time.

Below, my room at the Rancho Las Palmas and a picture of the golf course off of my patio.

Day 49

Thursday, March 27, 2008

We're now through 12 "weeks" of the simulation. We all posted results and we're back on top. We were a little nervous, but it turns out we're currently showing about double the net income of our nearest competitor. Our strategy has been to run a high end chain supported by advertising and promotions. We don't have the sales numbers that some of the EDLP operators do, but we're making about twice the margin. We're also keeping tight control of labor, shrink and out-of-stocks to make sure we don't bleed out any income where we can avoid it.

For each decision we start with an analysis of our competition: what they're doing, what they've changed, what opportunities have opened up for us. We then go through detailed projections for each department and run different scenarios based on our options. Apparently it's working out pretty well for us.

Day 48

Wednesday, March 26, 2008


Today we presented our research on our Controls topic for Accounting. This was a joint project encompassing both our Accounting and Communications classes. My group, made up of Darren (Smart & Final), Miguel (Costco), Christel (Safeway), Stephanie (Associated Foods), and Bill (Bristol Farms), chose Voice Recognition in Warehousing as our topic. In order to thouroughly research it we read tens of articles from journals and trade publications, contacted people in the industry that had brought such a system into their warehouses and toured a 700,000 square foot grocery warehouse in Commerce, CA to see it in action.


One of the really exciting things about the program is the contacts you make and the ease with which information becomes available. Throughout our research for various presentations we've been able to call upon executives at several companies and they've been very helpful in getting us any informatiton we need.

Our goal for the presentation was to make a persuasive pitch for implementing the control in a real life situation. While we certainly wouldn't win any academy awards for best story, we tried to make it as interesting as possible by showing a very short live demonstration of how the system works and some video of it in action at a warehouse. We're still learning the ropes of presenting, but we've already improved quite a bit. On the other hand, our ability to critically evaluate presentations has also improved quite a bit and we felt that we didn't do as well as we could have. That said, the class rated our presentation as the best overall. In their evaluations they also gave us some things to work on in order to get even better in the future, as did professors Miles and Davila.

Day 46

Monday, March 24, 2008

Today after class we took a trip to the new Stater Brothers warehouse and corporate offices in San Bernadino. We were welcomed by Jack Brown, Stater's CEO, Jim Lee, President, and several of their top executives. They spent the whole afternoon with us talking about the history of their company, what they do and how they've grown it over the years. We were then able to tour their new 2 million square foot warehouse facility which is the largest grocery warehouse under one roof in the United States.

Jack gave us a lot of personal insights into his life, what he thinks is important and how he treats his people. The whole experience was a real treat and it's just so nice that they're willing to give us this level of access.

Days 42-45

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Wendy and Logan arrived at LAX about 9pm last night. I'm very happy Wendy was willing to fly down and visit, both so that I could see them and so they could meet my new friends and enjoy some of the California weather. Wendy's been a real trooper and flying with a 17 month old who wants to jump down and run around on the airplane wasn't easy. This was Logan's first airplane ride and while he liked it and thought the turbulence was funny, it's a long time for him to sit in one place and Wendy had her hands full keeping him occupied and using his "indoor voice."

We didn't have classes today, but instead Jim Lee, President and COO of Stater Brothers' Markets, came and spoke to us along with the folks here this week for the FIM Executive Program (including Andrew). Jim was great and talked a lot about his experience with Ralph's, Wild Oats, and now Stater. I've been very impressed with all of our speakers and the candor with which they speak. They'll answer any question you ask if they possibly can and give very personal accounts of how they made it to where they are now.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Since we had today off, I took Wendy and Logan down to the beach. Logan had never been to a beach with actual sand before and at first he didn't like it. He kept trying to brush it off of his hands and feet, but after about ten minutes of sitting on the sand he started playing with it and dumping it into and out of a bucket while Wendy buried his feet in the sand. We only stayed for about an hour so that he didn't get too much sun, but we had a great time.

Above, Logan and Daddy. Below, Logan playing with Mommy.

After the beach we stopped at Bristol Farms to pick up a few things for dinner. They're probably the closest thing to a Haggen there is down here, except perhaps Gelson's, but neither one is as big, as nice, or as friendly as a Haggen, on top of which their prices are out of sight. That said, they're still neat stores with some interesting and unusual items and Bristol's meat program is pretty terrific (including their dry aged beef).

Three of my friends - Ron (Unified), Michelle (Dole), and Dawn (Safeway) - came over for dinner and we had a great time. It was nice for Wendy to get to talk with them some more and hear from other people what the program was all about and what they thought of it. Ron also scored some big points with Wendy by bringing Logan an Easter basket with some trucks and other fun stuff to play with in it.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Today we took Logan to the L.A. zoo. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking very smart about the trip and we didn't leave until noon. The Zoo is only about 25 miles away, but it ended up taking us two and half hours to get there because of the traffic. When we got there it was in the low 90's so most of the animals weren't too excited about getting up and moving around. We still had fun and Logan really liked the Giraffes and Zebras.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Wendy and Logan flew back to Bellingham this morning and I got back to business. It was great having them here and now I feel like we're coming into the home stretch.