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
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