Whatever happened to "there are no stupid questions"?
Last night in class we were talking about the general performance of companies depending on their business strategy. Considering that each strategy being discussed was vastly different from one another, and the companies being analyzed could be of varying types and sizes, I thought to myself "they can’t be measuring performance based on profits.. they must be measuring based on some relative ratio for it to be a fair comparison," so I raised my hand and asked the teacher to define "performance" and whether it was by profit margin. She made a face like I had just asked her what class was I sitting in. She answered "profitability" which still didn’t answer my question, and made me feel like I was the dumbest person in the room.
To add insult to injury, she has the audacity to email me today a 5-paragraph email asking me what was the "source" of my question, because it was clear throughout the semester and all the readings that performance is measured by profits.
So I guess there are stupid questions after all.
I replied explaining to her that it was not fair to measure such vastly different companies and strategies based on an absolute value of revenue minus costs, and it made more sense to measure in relative terms.
I am still waiting for her answer to my original question.
ina