Read Online Learning curves by Gemma Townley - Free Book Online Page A

down the side of the lecture theater, squeezing in beside Lara, who looked at her curiously.
    She sat down, but as she did so, she accidentally pushed Lara’s pencil case off her desk, scattering pencils everywhere. Shooting an apologetic smile at Lara, Jen ducked down quickly to pick the pencils up, then sat back up, noticing as she did so that things had gone a bit quiet.
    Nervously, she turned to the front of the room, where their new lecturer was looking right at her, at which point she dropped her own notepad on the floor, to the hilarity of everyone sitting around her. She went bright red and stared at him in disbelief. It was him. It was the man from the men’s room at the dinner.
    “Sorry, I was, um . . .”
    He was staring at her too. He’d obviously remembered as well.
    “Yes?” he asked.
    He was sort of smiling at her now, and Jen felt herself going a deeper red. Oh, God, he was going to think that all she ever did was say sorry and blush. Still, at least this time she wasn’t pressed up against the door of the men’s loo. At least this time she was just dropping pencils and papers all over the floor.
    “Sorry,” she said again.
    “Well, then.” Daniel looked back at his notes, then briefly gazed at Jen again. She felt her heart quicken, and looked away, quickly picking up her pad and burying her head in her notes. So he was a Bell lecturer!
    As he started talking again, she watched him, taking in his dark hair, his eyes—hazel or green, she couldn’t tell at this distance—his animated expression. Not that she was interested, she told herself. She was just interested in the subject matter. Then she frowned. She couldn’t be less interested in the subject matter. So maybe it was him after all.
    “So, when undertaking an internal analysis, we start at the beginning, with a MOST analysis,” he was saying. “For the uninitiated, that’s Mission, Objectives, Strategy, and Tactics, and the four should be mutually supportive.”
    Jen shook herself and started making notes.
Mission,
she wrote down.
Objectives. Daniel Peterson. Daniel. Dan.
    “The mission statement can be as loose as you want it to be, but it needs to give direction,” Daniel was saying. “Someone, give me an industry so that we can bring this to life a bit more.”
    No one said anything.
    “How about you?” He was looking at her. Oh God, he was looking at her and she couldn’t think of a single industry.
    “How about condom manufacturers?” whispered Lara with a little giggle as she reviewed the notes Jen had made so far. “Or motels . . .”
    Jen shot her a look and furtively covered up her notes. Her mind had just gone completely blank.
    “Come on, any industry,” Daniel said encouragingly.
    “Um . . . ,” Jen said desperately. She needed to say something. “Um . . . condom manufacturers?”
    There was a ripple of laughter across the room, and Daniel looked slightly taken aback.
    “Right,” he said, slightly incredulously. “Right, well, condom manufacturers it is. So, er . . .”
    He looked back at his notes, put his hands through his hair, then looked back up.
    “Okay, then. So a condom company might choose to be the largest global supplier of condoms if it wants to focus on growth and market share, or it might opt for better sexual health if it wants to be considered the ethical, caring provider. The first statement would suggest aggressively targeting new markets; the second might mean partnering up with bodies like the World Health Organization to improve awareness of sexually transmitted infections and building the brand as the informed choice. Either way, the intended results would be more condom sales and better profit margins.”
    “Surely a condom manufacturer is looking for market penetration?” someone at the back shouted, and there was a murmur of laughter.
    “And fighting off stiff competition,” shouted someone on the other side of the room to rapturous applause.
    Jen buried her head in her hands