Description of the week
This week had so many events that I am going to note them one by one and explain it
First of all we had the SMS presentation (Strategic Marketing Success) which I could not attend because of my CIMA exam. The presentation was well prepared with videos and youtube clips, we all enjoyed both the creation and presentation of the event.
The CIMA exam in Northampton was the first event that took me out of Cranfield alone. I enjoyed both the trip and the exam. Many questions were based on things that I had either learnt during the MBA or earlier, that way I consider myself lucky. Another point on which I am happy is that I completed the paper and hence hope to pass.
During the week, I also put across my preferences for the International Business Experience, I preferred the field trip and the Challenges worldwide at that. In case I am not so lucky to get through to the field trip, I would be travelling to China (which is my most preferred choice).
In terms of Organisational Behaviour evaluations, I found my team playing capabilities, overall this seems to be the best evaluation of my real self till date among all the evaluations that we have had. I turned out to be a Plant, Resource Investigator and Shaper, all of which are a clear indication that I need to recruit or work with other Implementers.
The biggest event of the week, which also resulted in this post being delayed happened over the weekend. I would say this is one of the most significant events that I have participated in. We (a group of about 25 people) from cranfield went over to Oxford for a social enterprise conference which had eminent speakers from many parts of social business. Successful entrepreneurs, influencers, investors and mentors attended the same.
Mr. Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy was the most influential among the speakers. I really got inspired by his spirit and force. He is running the Barefoot College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_College), the idea and the implementation simply blew me off. I really felt happy for having met him, I hope to meet him again in the future and also get some inspiration from him on my future life.
Other speakers of influence also had significant achievements in their life, and were exceptionally talented. The people I was specifically happy for having met are
1. Alastair Wilson, the Chief Executive of Social Entrepreneurs School in london
2. The three speakers in the investing event - Suzanne Biegel, Caroline Tulloch, Jonathan Jenkins (from investors' circle, unltd and Bridges Ventures
3. Tim Smit
4. Anya Navidski (whom I will probably contact in the near future with our business plan)
5. Tim Hartley (who again, we might meet in Cranfield)
Another interesting thing is that I saw a snowfall for the first time in my life. Even though it was short, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Its no justice to have one post for the entire week of such importance, but lack of time :) (the next week seems interesting too)
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Most Eventful Week
Oh... this week.... I can probably write different posts for each of the items, but since this blog is anyways going to be long over the year, I want to avoid making it even longer by expanding on details.
Let me start with non events, even though they were expected to be big events
SMS Report - Strategic Marketing Success report was supposed to be handed in during this week, for teams which took it up in the last minute, it was a rush hour thing, but our team has been almost ready with the report and hence we did not have a big problem with that.
IBE International Business Experience introduction was given to us, this is supposed to be a week long trip to an international destination with a specific business and academic agenda and have exposure to a different culture, I at this point in time have chosen to go for the challengers field trip which involves analysing social businesses, which always interests me.
PWC Presentation - There was a presentation during one of the evenings from a Senior Partner in PWC (Mr. Andrew Miskin), I was stunned by the level of clarity he possessed on the service and especially consulting business. He broke down many of the common business problems with such simplicity that I can remember a few of them without noting anything down for a long long time, I think that meeting was a key value add and a major learning exercise during the full MBA.
Litmus Test - There is this new event where budding entrepreneurs might have ideas that they want to present to a group of entrepreneurship club members to get their perspectives and views, I presented one of my plans (in fact the basic idea comes from my friend Arun Sharma, who could not attend the meeting because he had a baby) and the crowd was very receptive to this idea. I also had positive feedback on the presentation from many people.
Accounting WAC (Written Analysis of a Case) was another easier event which was hyped as a major event, may be because I am an accountant by qualification. I learnt a few things though, and in the end I handed in my report 5 hours earlier than the set target to take a trip to Cambridge.
The Cambridge trip was enjoyable and memorable. There are 31 colleges and we went around a few of them and also a boat ride. We (Me, My Wife and a friend of her) had a good time trying to punt the boat on our own too. The university, being an academic institution and a tourist attraction is probably a rare combination (which is shared by Oxford too) and was good.
Then we had the real learning experience of the week, in which I had a different view on the way we needed to analyse the OSC simulation and in the end it got communicated wrongly and created a lot of uncomfortable moments for me. There were a few dark sides of my personality which got exposed and I think I will remember these for a long long time. There is a learning available from this event, but I am not 100% sure if I will be able to capitalise on this, if I need a successful career then I should.
OSC (Operations) Simulation - We had a simulation of a process flow during the week, we designed an excellent process after significant discussions and made the best process (by about 5% better results), however we were not the winning team, because the process was more skewed towards rewarding better inventory management (have the same level of stock at the beginning and the end) than the process throughput (which incidentally is the Lean measurement mechanism). We were right in pointing out that inventory management should not be given such high importance in a process flow demonstration, however the fact that I was communicating a correct message made me feel that I am right in talking about it in a forceful manner, twice during the week makes me wonder why I do this again and again.
The learning for the week then would be (This is a nice section to have)
Just because you are right (or you think you are) you cant be forceful in expressing your opinion, just learn it and talk about it, if people are not receptive, just let it go
The Learning from the Pre-MBA till date have been (the list does not mean I am perfect on these now, but just a list of learnings I have had)
1. Just because you are right (or you think you are) you cant be forceful in expressing your opinion, just learn it and talk about it, if people are not receptive, just let it go (Pre-MBA Simulation, WAC in Pre-MBA, Twice in OSC simulation).
2. Be committed to your ideas (Just thinking that since you are better at idea forming, you cant be successful)
3. Take leadership through actions, dont expect anyone to tell you that
Let me start with non events, even though they were expected to be big events
SMS Report - Strategic Marketing Success report was supposed to be handed in during this week, for teams which took it up in the last minute, it was a rush hour thing, but our team has been almost ready with the report and hence we did not have a big problem with that.
IBE International Business Experience introduction was given to us, this is supposed to be a week long trip to an international destination with a specific business and academic agenda and have exposure to a different culture, I at this point in time have chosen to go for the challengers field trip which involves analysing social businesses, which always interests me.
PWC Presentation - There was a presentation during one of the evenings from a Senior Partner in PWC (Mr. Andrew Miskin), I was stunned by the level of clarity he possessed on the service and especially consulting business. He broke down many of the common business problems with such simplicity that I can remember a few of them without noting anything down for a long long time, I think that meeting was a key value add and a major learning exercise during the full MBA.
Litmus Test - There is this new event where budding entrepreneurs might have ideas that they want to present to a group of entrepreneurship club members to get their perspectives and views, I presented one of my plans (in fact the basic idea comes from my friend Arun Sharma, who could not attend the meeting because he had a baby) and the crowd was very receptive to this idea. I also had positive feedback on the presentation from many people.
Accounting WAC (Written Analysis of a Case) was another easier event which was hyped as a major event, may be because I am an accountant by qualification. I learnt a few things though, and in the end I handed in my report 5 hours earlier than the set target to take a trip to Cambridge.
The Cambridge trip was enjoyable and memorable. There are 31 colleges and we went around a few of them and also a boat ride. We (Me, My Wife and a friend of her) had a good time trying to punt the boat on our own too. The university, being an academic institution and a tourist attraction is probably a rare combination (which is shared by Oxford too) and was good.
Then we had the real learning experience of the week, in which I had a different view on the way we needed to analyse the OSC simulation and in the end it got communicated wrongly and created a lot of uncomfortable moments for me. There were a few dark sides of my personality which got exposed and I think I will remember these for a long long time. There is a learning available from this event, but I am not 100% sure if I will be able to capitalise on this, if I need a successful career then I should.
OSC (Operations) Simulation - We had a simulation of a process flow during the week, we designed an excellent process after significant discussions and made the best process (by about 5% better results), however we were not the winning team, because the process was more skewed towards rewarding better inventory management (have the same level of stock at the beginning and the end) than the process throughput (which incidentally is the Lean measurement mechanism). We were right in pointing out that inventory management should not be given such high importance in a process flow demonstration, however the fact that I was communicating a correct message made me feel that I am right in talking about it in a forceful manner, twice during the week makes me wonder why I do this again and again.
The learning for the week then would be (This is a nice section to have)
Just because you are right (or you think you are) you cant be forceful in expressing your opinion, just learn it and talk about it, if people are not receptive, just let it go
The Learning from the Pre-MBA till date have been (the list does not mean I am perfect on these now, but just a list of learnings I have had)
1. Just because you are right (or you think you are) you cant be forceful in expressing your opinion, just learn it and talk about it, if people are not receptive, just let it go (Pre-MBA Simulation, WAC in Pre-MBA, Twice in OSC simulation).
2. Be committed to your ideas (Just thinking that since you are better at idea forming, you cant be successful)
3. Take leadership through actions, dont expect anyone to tell you that
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Another week passes by
This week was not as eventful as the previous one, but I still think it was fairly a busy week, with many personal events. I progressed along nicely on my business plan, I had some views from a few of my friends and they were positive about the plan. I am presenting the career counselling plan to my friends tomorrow.
We had the Deepavali party last Sunday, it was nice and enjoyable, largely a successful party which was appreciated by many co-students. I was very happy that it went along very well after the initial confusions around the idea.
In terms of learning, we had a great author of "Pitch Yourself" Mr. Bill Faust talk to us on how to create a winning self-marketing proposal. This was good to know, not very useful to me, but a nice idea of forming a Career DNA based on which you can keep writing CV after CV which could be differentiated, true and attractive.
This week we also had the third family party that we hosted at our house. This time we had a lot of my pre-mba friends and the group coming along. We had previously hosted the Bangalore group and then my learning team.
This week also marked the first anniversary of my marriage with Shiny, we went around to Milton Keynes and friends made it really special by making us cut a cake and pouring lots of gifts.
I played cricket after a long long time and also progressed well along my routine Table Tennis. The winter has started to show its initial warnings, a few days we had 0 degree temperatures, a first-in-lifetime experience for me. I think it will only get worse, but I am looking forward to it, probably because this might be the first (and last???) time I live in a country which experiences such extreme climates.
We had the Deepavali party last Sunday, it was nice and enjoyable, largely a successful party which was appreciated by many co-students. I was very happy that it went along very well after the initial confusions around the idea.
In terms of learning, we had a great author of "Pitch Yourself" Mr. Bill Faust talk to us on how to create a winning self-marketing proposal. This was good to know, not very useful to me, but a nice idea of forming a Career DNA based on which you can keep writing CV after CV which could be differentiated, true and attractive.
This week we also had the third family party that we hosted at our house. This time we had a lot of my pre-mba friends and the group coming along. We had previously hosted the Bangalore group and then my learning team.
This week also marked the first anniversary of my marriage with Shiny, we went around to Milton Keynes and friends made it really special by making us cut a cake and pouring lots of gifts.
I played cricket after a long long time and also progressed well along my routine Table Tennis. The winter has started to show its initial warnings, a few days we had 0 degree temperatures, a first-in-lifetime experience for me. I think it will only get worse, but I am looking forward to it, probably because this might be the first (and last???) time I live in a country which experiences such extreme climates.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The Wac (k) week
This week many things happened, it is becoming difficult to remember one whole week and I think its necessary for me to create a post line every day and publish it on a weekly basis.
First up during this week, I was selected as the Leader for the Cranfield SOM Chapter of NetImpact Club, now I have a good reason to focus on activities, I think I will put in a lot of time in this Club during the next few months.
Next day we had a meeting with Mr. Steve Killelea (from www.visionofhumanity.org, a Priyadarshini award winner) who spoke to us on the need for peace and his attempt to measure peace objectively. I was keen on this topic and he spoke to me about a State-wise peace index in India. I think this would be a nice piece of work to do.
Later during the week I had discussions with multiple people about my budding business idea to run a career counselling service for teens. In India a large part of the population gets into engineering or other education that they really do not want to do, but are forced by the social system to do so. I think if an organisation can focus on this population and try to move them away from taking such an important career decision based on social pressure to making a career plan, it would do good business and good to the society. This model attracts me because it does not require a lot of capital, there are no or very few players in the market and this can easily be converted into a brand on which I can build other businesses like a school.
On the MBA part, we had a presentation by Stephen Carver, on Presentation Skills, and man... does he know how to present, he is the most energetic teacher I have ever met, he drives his point with such practical context that no one can miss a point. His key skill in presenting is to taking the attention span of the attendee into consideration and keeping the audience engaged.
We also had a career counselling on what careers would fit me (The idea above was formed before attending this :) ). It was very useful for many people because they were unclear of their goals, however since I was clear that Social Entrepreneurship is my focus, I was a bit closed to the meeting. The one clarity that emerged from the meeting was that I am a good idea generator, but a bad implementer, which is very true. Mr. Peter Bernard, who was my team's facilitator, turned out to be brilliant at coaching and he was very helpful in providing some key material that can be used in my business model.
Then came the biggest event of the week, the WAC (Written Analysis of a Case), this is a Cranfield special, a case given to students at say... 4 PM and then we need to analyse the case and present a written paper with analysis at about 3 PM on the next day, approximately 24 hours is provided. There is a team discussion (5-6 members in our own learning team), a stream discussion (our class) and then we work individually to create a 1500 word report. It was fun, and a good learning exercise because even those who did not understand what economics is about in the class would have understood the facts by now. I was surprised that people lost their sleep over it, given my focus on non-academics or so to say the personality side of it, I took it easy, I just hope to pass, which I am confident I will.
We have Deepavali celebration today, I think the next account will start with explaining that.
First up during this week, I was selected as the Leader for the Cranfield SOM Chapter of NetImpact Club, now I have a good reason to focus on activities, I think I will put in a lot of time in this Club during the next few months.
Next day we had a meeting with Mr. Steve Killelea (from www.visionofhumanity.org, a Priyadarshini award winner) who spoke to us on the need for peace and his attempt to measure peace objectively. I was keen on this topic and he spoke to me about a State-wise peace index in India. I think this would be a nice piece of work to do.
Later during the week I had discussions with multiple people about my budding business idea to run a career counselling service for teens. In India a large part of the population gets into engineering or other education that they really do not want to do, but are forced by the social system to do so. I think if an organisation can focus on this population and try to move them away from taking such an important career decision based on social pressure to making a career plan, it would do good business and good to the society. This model attracts me because it does not require a lot of capital, there are no or very few players in the market and this can easily be converted into a brand on which I can build other businesses like a school.
On the MBA part, we had a presentation by Stephen Carver, on Presentation Skills, and man... does he know how to present, he is the most energetic teacher I have ever met, he drives his point with such practical context that no one can miss a point. His key skill in presenting is to taking the attention span of the attendee into consideration and keeping the audience engaged.
We also had a career counselling on what careers would fit me (The idea above was formed before attending this :) ). It was very useful for many people because they were unclear of their goals, however since I was clear that Social Entrepreneurship is my focus, I was a bit closed to the meeting. The one clarity that emerged from the meeting was that I am a good idea generator, but a bad implementer, which is very true. Mr. Peter Bernard, who was my team's facilitator, turned out to be brilliant at coaching and he was very helpful in providing some key material that can be used in my business model.
Then came the biggest event of the week, the WAC (Written Analysis of a Case), this is a Cranfield special, a case given to students at say... 4 PM and then we need to analyse the case and present a written paper with analysis at about 3 PM on the next day, approximately 24 hours is provided. There is a team discussion (5-6 members in our own learning team), a stream discussion (our class) and then we work individually to create a 1500 word report. It was fun, and a good learning exercise because even those who did not understand what economics is about in the class would have understood the facts by now. I was surprised that people lost their sleep over it, given my focus on non-academics or so to say the personality side of it, I took it easy, I just hope to pass, which I am confident I will.
We have Deepavali celebration today, I think the next account will start with explaining that.
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