National debt is real. Most of us are concerned with our daily and personal finances but aware of some BIGPICTURE issues fundamentally affecting our future. On this macro level, U.S. debt should be a concern we share, regardless of politics, as we are all affected by this. “In a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, America’s debt to China was the top concern among respondents in the US, with 89% saying the problem was “very serious.” (Wike and Devlin, 2018). Just to be clear: “The US national debt has grown during the Covid-19 pandemic and is now roughly $26 trillion….the most in the world, in nominal terms. Most of it is owned by domestic actors…Foreign investors—mostly governments or central banks—hold $6.13 trillion of US Treasury bonds. Of that, mainland China purportedly owns $1.1 trillion.” (MSN, Annabelle Timsit, 2020).
This is 26,000 BILLION dollars of debt. Almost too much to conceptualize. Ultimately, and no matter what President or which Congress or Political Party borrowed the money- this is OUR debt. Our children’s and their children’s debt. For those of you who want to be informed, here is a National Debt Clock: https://www.pgpf.org/national-debt-clock. It also gives a current figure for the specific debt of each person in America: $84,697 as of 3/15/2021.
Pile of American money dollar
China and Japan own 33% of our Foreign Debt. I am personally a huge fan of Post-War Japan, and recognize them, along with India, as huge stakeholders and countries we should align ourselves with financially and militaristically. The real concern for me, is China This MSN article outlines the strategic concerns the United States is facing by allowing China- which in all honesty represents the opposite of everything America stands for, like freedom, safety, personal agency, access to information, and the right to speak ones truth- not to mention organ harvesting, environmental destruction, mass-murder, torture, and genocide, to name just a very few. China, in subjective terms, is evil.
The deeper concern is how China operates a Debt Trap Strategy. “Some of the anxiety around China holding a lot of US debt might stem from the country’s reputation for engaging in “debt-trap diplomacy.” (MSN, Annabelle Timsit, 2020). China offers billions to politicians globally, ensnares them in debt, making both country and politician beholden to China’s interests. We must watch very carefully how our politicians intend to make due on their promises. It’s YOUR credit card, and you have to pay- with interest. When our politicians fix their problems with debt from China, we are playing into the hands of our most ruthless enemy. Not the people of China- we love the thousands of years of Chinese history and contributions to World culture- but to the Communist Party that rules. The Devil still wears red.
These are very emotional times for us Americans, regardless of political orientation. I have read posts full of despair, and calls for activities, that are way outside of (at least) what we should be discussing here on Linkedin. We are all worried about jobs and money and wanting to be safe and accepted.
We must remember that- when feeling concerned about mega-corporations and international organizations running our live, that wealth and power exist only because of millions of small financial exchanges we collectively make every day and over time, which has led to the massive accrual of wealth- and associated power- with these organizations and institutions.
-Welcome to Microeconomics 101-
Each one of us has the opportunity and obligation to be deliberate and informed with whom we do business: who we are helping to get rich and powerful. Be willing to find new social mediums, new service providers, change your shopping habits, and divest yourself of anything that you no longer want to enable. Each one of us is the captain of her own little ship. Your small daily choices are the most powerful statement you can make.
One of my favorite organizational models is Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development. He identified that Teamwork can be measured within Stages of Development, each determined by the cohesiveness of understood and accepted rules, expectations, and changes in leadership. We observe fragmentation, frustration and resistance, accepting new performance metrics and leadership style, leading to optimized out-put and performance, and at some point, another cycle of change.
The upside to constant change is growth, the downside, that change can be hard. We have to embrace change in order to remain a top-performing and open-access economy and the benchmark of global freedom. However long we Storm with each other delays our Performance. Getting angry is normal; wanting to destroy is human. However understandable and justified, we are only hurting ourselves.
“In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny for all. A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay.” -Fredrick Douglass-
TWITTER is a 15 years old company that started with an idea, and a handful of unpaid, and hopeful, developers. Like all startups, it was a gamble, and it paid off. TWITTER exploded in popularity and has become a financial power with an annual revenue of approximately 3.5 billion. Just like Facebook, Cheerios, Coke, and The Pet Rock, people liked it and invested their time and money. There’s no evil conspiracy. Simple business: design, pitch, fund, develop, release, grow, dominate.
Welcome to America.
Remember MySpace? You were such a looser to not be on MySpace. How many dozens of apps and offerings has Google launched that had their day and are no more, as a more desirable offering entered the market. Competition allows for the smallest idea to grow, and the biggest to fade. This is is Schumpeter’s idea of Creative Destruction: that new ideas absorb and grow upon the old.
Right now, like RIGHT NOW, there are so many options to choose from in social media and marketing, web browsers and email offerings. We are not victims. Was it so hard to move from Hotmail to Google? Any regrets on dumping your flip for a smart, or figuring out SKYPE? Take your energy, time, and money, and find that new product and service you believe in and don’t look back. The revolution you are looking for is switching service providers, changing banks, choosing a phone company that is more aligned with your values. Marching, yelling, burning, and fighting, is often times and empty motion.
Make new friends, make different choices with your daily spending…STOP USING AMAZON…for example, DELETE YOUR FACEBOOK ACCOUNT…for example, and find new ways to shop, new social media platforms to enjoy. Don’t get mad- get busy- reinvest your money and energy, and grow a whole new world. Creative Destruction is the way of the world.
After 12 years of small business ownership and a detour back to school, I wrapped up a year working for a non-profit, confronting everything I believed to be true about business, money, and decision-making. Once the initial shock wore off, and the “you don’t understand how nonprofits are funded” conversations became unnecessary, I slowly conceded my drive and desire to make the organization behave like a business. I developed an understanding of funding requirements integral to grant-based organizations, and widened my scope of understanding to other-than-profit organizational models.
What did stick with me throughout this experience- and in fact became highlighted in bold- is something which has always made sense to me and I have found to be true in every aspect of my life, as a business owner, a student, a soldier in the Marines, and a Manager responsible for multi-million dollar properties. It is this one thing, this one fundamental context, I believe makes all the difference in decision-making, regardless of funding source and organizational model. I believe it is as true personally as it is professionally, applicable in any scope and at every level of decision-making. Ben Franklin is credited with its early record “penny wise and pound foolish”, but I think my first boss nailed it when he criticized my unwillingness to do scheduled maintenance. “O’Toole”, he said “pay me now, or pay me later, but you’re gonna pay, and 5 minutes now will save you an hour later on.” And how true this turned out to be.
My father is 83, old school depression-era and knows how to save a dime. He always resisted spending money on himself, and thought I was a crazy fool with my massages and chiropractors and pricey supplements and gym memberships, and never failed to tell me of how much money I could be saving. However, he retired at 62 at the top of his financial earning capacity- for health reasons- and I started wondering what the cost benefit analysis would actually have been, had he been able to keep working, even for another few years. If he had spent $300 a month on health products, that’s $3,600 a year, and over a 30 year time-frame, that’s $110K, which is no small number and seems enough to end any conversation about spending it, regardless. But Dad was earning $85K a year, and many of the men in his field worked till their late 60’s and even early 70’s, and didn’t end up with cancer and bypass surgery. Another 5 years would have grossed him $425K, and he could have saved 10’s of thousands of his own money spent on medical expenses. Obviously this is a very limited and easily picked-apart scenario, but it did get me thinking.
In capacity as a property manager for high-end real estate, I have consistently reminded my employer that the money we spend now, is to save the money we would have to spend down the road. It costs $50 to replace a leaky faucet; $500 to do the same a year later, also replacing the water damage to the under-sink cabinet. $10,000 five years later when we’re pulling up flooring to address rot and mold in base-boards. You change the oil so you don’t have to replace the engine. This makes sense on paper, but does not always translate to financial decision-makers who are stuck on the ebb and flow of money in the moment, especially when decisions are influenced by non-principal agents who do not have big-picture context and training, who do not truly understand that money is spent so that more money can be saved, and that this is true regardless of funding source, mission, or end-goals. In essence- if you are worried about saving money organizationally, then it is imperative to embrace the spending of money; in fact to see the spending-money-plan as an essential part of the not-spending-money plan; the way out, not the slippery slope down.
This is why HR and Accounting can so crucially side-line long-term success with short-sighted decisions. Yes, you can find someone to do a $20/hr job for $15/hr, and if you do the math, it’s money saved. In fact, for a regular non-exempt full-time employee, that looks like a $10,000 savings. But is it really? The person who takes the lower wage is having a hard time finding work, or is under-qualified, or desperate, and any of these reasons is not the right reason to invest time and money on someone; someone who may feel resentment at their lower wage; who will spend time and energy looking for other employment; who may take on additional and draining part-time work to supplement their income, who has lower morale, decreased motivation and loyalty. On paper it may look good, but the quality of work? The dedication felt? The costs that will come when this person leaves or is removed for poor workmanship? The costs you will discover in ensuing months and years, when other employees have to redo- or make do- with mistakes and less-than-desirable outcomes; this legacy of short-sighted decision-making costs much more in the long run. Pay now or pay later, but pay you will.
In capacity as a non-profit Property Manager, I have argued endlessly for the expenditures of funds. Spending money is a Bad Thing in this environment, as spending money looks to the untrained professional as a loss no matter what the reason. So why then purchase something when money is already tight? Well, when looking at the long term costs of failing to purchase a $15 item per housing unit when the lack of that item creates problems that cost hundreds of dollars to remedy, it becomes a sort of organizational suicide to not make the purchase: $1,500 in total can save $500 or $1000 per unit down the road. Who would not gratefully, and gracefully, embrace the opportunity to save this kind of money?
Penny wise and dollar poor is an organizational culture that misunderstands the role of money, and fails to embrace the joy of spending as a path to long-term not-spending. If your business or nonprofit wishes to truly save money, it is essential to embrace the joy-of-spending-to-not-spend. It is this sea-change, this organizational perspective shift, that will over time greatly reduce waste and lower long-term costs. This is not a challenge to any particular business or organizational model, or a criticism of nonprofits in favor of something else. This is my “if you could change one thing” thing, that I would offer to decision-makers in any capacity and in any organizational setting: you will pay, either now or more later; it is much more expensive to be penny wise and dollar poor; and to keep this in mind when hiring, creating salary structures, and making purchases. It can be very hard to see the financial windfall of the accident that didn’t happen, the copier that didn’t break, or the job that didn’t need to be re-listed, recruited and new-hire trained with the associated losses in productivity. Yet these costs surround every decision and every organization, and can be greatly mitigated through a not-so-obvious shift which views spending money as an opportunity to save money, which is especially important for organizational structures with a traditionally difficult time understanding that money spent well is a Good Thing.
Internal resource management is one of the most referenced and discussed topics in business today, coinciding with a growing awareness of the strategic value of corporate culture as a competitive advantage, which will generate and define long-term success.
This conversation reaches far beyond “fit” and requires a deeper understanding of personnel psychology and organizational dynamics. In an ideal environment, interviewing will involve a long-term relationship between both parties, with transparency and mutual well-being, as primary variables. The gaming, the stress, the struggle over money and status would largely disappear from corporate culture, as would many of the negative organizational dynamics which derail Corporate Mission and bottom-line objectives.
Properlyconducted organizational psychology, which is to say, organizational human resource development (a.k.a. HR), would implement strategic, well-documented practices for the screening, hiring, training, developing, promoting, and releasing of internal resources, while tracking the results over time, to be reviewed and corrected, updated and re-worked, to increase life-cycle effectiveness. As has been previously discussed in other Linkedin posts, there is a major and widely misunderstood difference between best practices (which promote organizational efficiency) and unique internal practices which create a real competitive advantage: i.e. that is long-term, and not simply and easily repeatable by your marketplace competition.
Without digressing into an academic exposé of evolutionary psychology, it is important to understand the psychology of human development regarding social interaction.
Humans are hard-wired to sense/feel/intuit beyond linear empirical knowing, and have shown via earliest extant historical records a desire and attempt to predict the future through the use of signs and signals believed to explain what might happen, and the future and fate of individuals. This need to know is as pertinent today as it was long years ago; our lives are composed of 1000’s of interactions with strangers and groups and organizations whose character and intentions are unverified, and we look for indicators to help us predict the behavior of the unknown; in this case, the unknown person.
Hiring involves interacting with the unknown, and as discussed in the introduction, is usually conducted with pressing time requirements. HR doesn’t have the luxury of long-term rapport building, the lengthy process so often recommended before any large purchase or remarkable event, like home-buying and getting married. To resolve this organizational dilemma, systems are created and instituted and soon become standardized, best practices, that are adopted throughout institutional fields. Specifically, culturally specific (fast becoming globally specific) signs and signals become the standard indicators used to predict the outcome of the unknown person. Credit score. GPA. Ranking of educational programs. Status of references. GRE/GMAT/LSAT/MCAT scores, ect. Predictability is conducted through character judgment based on descriptive statistics gathered in socially relevant domains to assess the quality, credibility, and potential performance of a new hire. No business can afford a trial-and-error process hoping that at some point, someone will stick and stay.
These standards and expectations have become so institutionalized that we observe the same “character requirements” described for applicants to Masters of Arts Programs as we do in top medical, business, and law schools. We observe that employers solicit a set of variables that describe a particular individual, that is somehow the ubiquitous everywoman-hero of the entire workforce.
What we are observing is the diffusion of current cultural beliefs that idealize the “right person” as the best candidate for most situations. In reality, HR is rarely conducted using scientifically tested and developed practices, relying instead on heuristic patterns that reflect internal-cultural beliefs systems and organizational patterns that survive through inertia and lethargy.
There is a wealth of well-vetted and scientifically tested practices and techniques available (Industrial-Organizational Psychology) to accurately determine the best people at the right time for the Firm. Do some digging and research, and find out the efficacy and limitations- the true validity- of standardized indicators before your HR department accepts them as universal truths. Many of the most widely accepted performance standards, from SAT/GRE/FICO/School Ranking to race, age, and gender- are highly sub-standard indicators of long-term performance yet are used as gold-standards in hiring and staffing, with very little substantive validity, to support the myths and belief-systems which hold them in place.
As long as Organizations use talent acquisition practices out of laziness, lack of ingenuity, a desire for legitimacy, or cultural lethargy and inertia, there will be no internal advantage available. There is no ideal person of the industrialized world, however convenient it may be to operate as if this is so. How many times will your business hire the wrong person because she met a set of watermarks on paper. How many times will the same set of assumptions, the same lack of firm-specific documentation and research, the same habitual organizational practices make the staffing decisions for your Firm, while better-fit candidates are screened out before they ever make an interview? If your HR Department does not actually know what the Firm actually needs, it has no idea who to look for, and relies on nothing less than popular myths to develop what many organizational strategists consider to be The competitive strategic advantage (don’t tell Porter) that any organization can have in the marketplace today.
Life in the past two years has revolved around my post-graduation destination. Having abandoned PhD aspirations for the sweet promise of an MBA, the question has been, of course, where to go. I feel compelled to share my experience, as I believe that 99% of everything I’ve read on the “MBA subject” to be backward in its presentation and misleading in its recommendations.
Advice that seems contexted in a vacuum of idealized circumstances that do not reflect the reality of most people, and as such is a disservice to the average person interested in furthering her education.
My experience researching business schools reminds me of the “what’s the best weapon for the zombie apocalypse” question currently popular on Linkedin; a question asked – and answered- as if there were not financial, legal, regulatory, experiential and training requirements and limitations to the actual reality of procuring any particular item and any given place and time. Regarding the MBA question, the “vacuum of idealized circumstances” I mentioned above operates as follows.
“Ask and answer questions in a context of limitless access and timing” where considerations such as family, money, geography, money, career, money- the many faces of reality- are second shelf variables to the almighty Ranking of Programs and schools. The big dilemma each pundit offers to solve: “What’s the ROI of an MBA” and “You’ve been accepted to the Marshal School of Business. Should you leave your job even though it’s only ranked #11?”
Let me tell you how to NOT waste endless hours on this process. Every business school worth its salt, and the 400 that are not, charge an average of $30K-$40K/year, and most MBA Programs are 2-3 years, especially the EMBA’s for working professionals. There are “lower-end” programs in the $50K-$70K range, and many “top-shelf” programs that charge an astounding $150K-$200K. You can assume spending in the $75-$100K range for a respectable MBA Program. Even the U.C. schools charge $100K+; enough to make one yearn for the gentle hand of the Reagan administration.
The first, and ONLY question for you to ask and answer: “How much money can I spend or borrow on a per year basis, and under what conditions?” Until you are clear about how much money you have available- and if the terms are acceptable- questions of rankings and networks and ROI’s are as meaningless as “Marine Corps Sniper vs Navy Seal” (since we all know the Marine would win), and “what’s the best weapon for the Zombie Apocalypse.”
Until the money question is thoroughly explored, and exact numbers analyzed and considered, nothing else should be of consideration. If it turns out that your boss offers to pay for an MBA, your work has a large education reimbursement policy, you are wealthy and have the money to spend- go to the highest ranked program you can get accepted to. But, if you are like most people, there are limits to the quantity of money available, and limits to what terms you can accept. Knowing what exactly you have to spend has to be the primary consideration before anything else.
NOTE: In regards to the anecdotal “You’ve been accepted to the Marshal School of Business, should you leave your job even though it’s only ranked #11?” statement at the beginning of my rant.
MBA: $95K tuition + $25K in expected living expenses – EMBA: $127K+
The offering should have been: “You need to borrow $125 thousand dollars and maybe quit your job. Is this in any way a possibility or a complete waste of your time and thought?”
Prompting people to consider rankings and networks and ROI’s instead of the financial realities of paying for a Program is simply bad advice.
Your next step is an accurate realistic assessment of your personal life-situation. This is in response to my “unlimited money and unlimited time” criticism of most Business school advice I have read in the past few years. Again, if you have the means and the situation that will support evening and weekend classes, time off, corporate and family support, quitting your job and supporting yourself on your large savings, the ability to travel or close residence to your school of choice, you are fortunate…..it’s just that most of the working adults in the world have a host of logistics and commitments that make up their life. The idea that the location, time-requirements, current job obligations, sacrifice of personal time, impact on marriage, health, and kids, ect, are not fundamental, primary considerations for most working adults makes me wonder to whom the mass of advice I have read was written for.
NOW: go find out if there’s a Program you can actually afford and realistically manage given your personal situation, and decide if its worth the money. Yes, of course, ROI and rankings and networks is what this is all about; but the next time you find yourself reading expert advice on “magical hand-forged samurai sword vs titanium battle axe” when you should be looking for “aluminum baseball bat on sale at Target”, take a minute to reorient yourself to the reality of the moment, and remember that the Permanency spell required to manufacture magic items lowers the magic user’s constitution by 1 point; and that’s a lot of ROI to consider, even if you live in a world of wishes.
Unlike traditional models that focus on methods by which a firm survives within competitive fields, Blue Ocean looks to uncontested market-space and industries not yet in existence. The strategy of Blue Ocean is to avoid competitive fields altogether by moving into unknown market space with the theory that demand is created, not fought over. Blue Ocean recognizes the diminishing returns from shrinking red-ocean spaces that represent limited terrain and the need to beat an enemy to succeed. Red ocean strategy is a market-competing strategy, while blue ocean strategy is a market-creating strategy. Specifically, Blue Ocean rejects the fundamental tenet of conventional strategy: that a trade-off exists between value and cost. Meaning, that pursuing differentiation and low cost simultaneously drives up value for customers while driving down costs.
According to Sociologist Joel M.Podolny, status is a socially constructed perception of product quality in comparison to competing products. High Status companies enjoy a reputation for superior quality, allowing for increased pricing, greater sales growth, lowered costs, and access to financing. This also produces Greater Visibility (Matthew Effect) and the need to protect corporate image, which constrains both affiliations and partnerships. Importantly, superior status reduces the reluctance of consumers to purchase a product or service when there is uncertainty about a new product or service. An important distinction of high vs. low status companies is a greater willingness to take risks by high status, and less so by middle status companies. Middle status experiences a conservatism generated by lower security; fears of losing limited reputation generates a lack of confidence in terms of risk. Middle status companies are constrained by conformity. Middle-status actors must conform to expectations in order to avoid risking their standing. Whereas middle status firms are more tied to performance norms to ensure their legitimacy, high status firms have security, which equals greater freedom, to separate from market norms and increase opportunities.
There is a particular set of conditions that best indicates a firm’s willingness and ability to adopt Blue Ocean Strategy: Blue ocean is a strategic decision and as such involves risk and leadership. The creation of blue oceans, in other words, is a product of strategy and as such is a product of managerial action. Blue Ocean requires risk willingness, and is most likely to be a product of high status companies, who have the confidence to explore, and the ability to absorb a mistake should their blue ocean project fail. Regarding successful implementation, the important question is: what kind of company has the ability to successfully promote and market the “unknown?” This perhaps is where the benefits of status have significant impact. Kim & Mauborgne are clear that the traditional unit of strategic analysis- company and industry- have little explanatory power when it comes to analyzing how and why blue oceans are created. This makes it difficult to determine exactly what kind of company could or would explore or succeed in creating a blue ocean. The defining characteristics -never using competition as a benchmark and rejecting fundamental tenets of conventional strategy- are not specific to any particular kind of organization.
The question of successful implementation points to high status companies for the following reasons: new and unexplored territory- and no competition- exists, for the public, as fears and concerns of unknown products and services. A high-status company has the superior status and reputation to reduce the reluctance of consumers, when there is uncertainty about a new product or service. High-status companies have greater borrowing power, a desirable affiliation, and consumer trust; these companies can rely on the favorable social perceptions of quality to reduce consumer reluctance to purchase unknown products and services and would thus be more likely to successfully implement a blue ocean strategy, e.g. successfully market and sell the “unknown” using the reputation that comes from higher status.
According to Michael Porter, Operational Effectiveness is “performing similar activities better than rivals. Firms can reduce waste, increase efficiency, employ better technology, develop superior personnel training, and operationalize best practices, which increase operational effectiveness and superior performance. Operational Effectiveness is about performing similar activities in similar ways- leading (according to Porter), to mimicry among companies that end up looking like each other. This creates a competitive convergence since competitors can quickly imitate new techniques. “Competitors can quickly imitate management techniques, best practices, etc.” It leads in effect to firm homogeneity. In this way operational effectiveness has a homogenizing effect similar to the isomorphic mechanisms described by DiMaggio and Powell; but from different, if not opposite, intentions.
DiMaggio and Powell explain firm homogeneity through the process of isomorphism, a process of convergence within organizational and institutional fields that happens for several key reasons, one of which is called MimeticIsomorphism. This mimetic process is defined as a “standard response to uncertainty.” It occurs when organizational technologies are misunderstood, goals are ambiguous, or the environmental landscape is uncertain. In direct contrast to operational effectiveness– which is trying to increase performance and “outdo” the competition- the nature of mimeticism is to negotiate uncertainty through imitation, and to create legitimacy via similarity to other organizational players. This is not the deliberate attempt to increase performance, e.g. create a desired differentiation from competitors, which is the intention behind operational effectiveness. Mimetic
Isomorphism is about being similar, about organizational modelingin order to remove and avoid differentiation (which is viewed as dangerous and risky). “Modeling, as we use the term, is a response to uncertainty.” Operational Effectiveness occurs intentionally, fueled by hopes of strategic distinction through superior performance (the homogenizing effects are not intentional). MimeticIsomorphism may or may not happen intentionally, and occurs to create legitimacy through similarity but is not the product of strategic performance enhancement or a desire to distinguish the firm from its competition. It is fair to say that both processes are forms of strategy for firm survival (don’t tell Porter), but are employed (or occur) for very different reasons and under highly differentiated circumstances.
Deephouse acknowledged the institutional reality- championed by Stinchcomb, Reuf, DiMaggio and Powell- of similarity as unavoidable (isomorphism) and necessary for organizational survival (legitimacy). He is equally aware of the perspective of strategists like Porter (strategic positioning) and Barney (imperfect imitability) for whom similarity is negatively correlated with competitive advantage. Deephouse recognized that organizational performance is how a firm negotiates unavoidable institutional pressures and unavoidable competitive environments- that there is value for organizations to be both the same and to be different. Compared to the partisan “sociologist vs. strategist” dynamic we have observed with writers like Barney, Porter, and Reuf, Deephouse is aware that competition and legitimacy are equally important and valid organizational concerns (“the need for a firm to be different and the need for a firm to be the same”) that are strategic in the appropriate context, creating a tension firms must negotiate to develop strategy. “This paper addresses this tension by developing an integrative theory of strategic balance.” Deephouse recognized a trade-off between differentiation and conformity: strategic differentiation reduces competition which increases performance; but strategic conformity increase legitimacy which increases performance as well.
Deephouse referred to this as “Strategic Balance Theory”, which explains why herecommends that “firms seeking competitive advantage should be as different as legitimately possible”, a brilliant play on words that exactly combines the whole point of his theory: being different lowers competition and increases competitive advantage, but being too different creates legitimacy issues which have a negative impact. The Strategic Balance will combine the positive effects of difference (while avoiding the negative ROA of “too different)” and the positive effects of similarity (while avoiding the negative ROA of “too similar”).
Deephouse assessed the benefits of similarity (conformity) compared to the benefits of diversity (differentiation), and determined that the optimal strategic model was one that balances similarity with differentiation. This balance becomes the firms strategic advantage; the ability to be as different as possible without losing the benefits of legitimacy.
Until the money question is thoroughly explored, and exact numbers analyzed and considered, nothing else should be of consideration. If it turns out that your boss offers to pay for an MBA, your work has a large education reimbursement policy, you are wealthy and have the money to spend- go to the highest ranked program you can get accepted to. But, if you are like most people, there are limits to the quantity of money available, and limits to what terms you can accept. Knowing what exactly you have to spend has to be the primary consideration before anything else. 
The Sweet Spot 