The Regatta

From the previous post header, you could have easily guessed as to what this post is all about.  Yes, the Cranfield Regatta, the thing that makes me feel a bit shaky even now after the race.  Last 48 hours of our life was spent in a boat, well not any ordinary boat in a F40 (http://www.sunsail.co.uk/files/SS_NW_F40_043_0.jpg).  

It was really great fun, especially on the day 2 when we started finishing races very consistently.  We came 7,10,8,2 in four races making us the sixth team in the overall regatta and second in Cranfield.  The team that came first from Cranfield was an unexpected winner, finishing with 10 points, just 2 short of the first.

Its all about racing, and getting your hands rough with all the rope. I personally cut it in two places with the entire 10 fingers completely sore now.  I think I have developed a taste for sailing now, but this being such a costly sport I might not do it in the future.

The interesting lessons we learnt from the sailing are... leadership is really important... one can fail inspite of good leadership, but generally that does not happen, and in case if the leaders are bad, then there is no chance of winning.  I am not sure if I can apply this entirely to the business world, but I guess it would not be unfair to say that the situation is not very different.  Many of the Cranfield boats came really low in the ranking, and most of them had to say that this was because of the leader lacking a vision to win.

We had an excellent team,and the skipper was a superb guy (Paul) and we had a second sailer (Mark) assisting us with the sail.  He loved sailing and he put in his 100% effort but then he has not been sailing for the past few years and so we were happy with the sixth position.  I guess with a little bit of luck in the first race in which we came 19th (and actually dropped that from our score due to 1 race elimination rule).  As with many things in the MBA, I guess I and my team once again learnt to perfect this game at the end of the game.

Really tiring weekend though, I am writing this off just to make sure I complete each and every detail.  Will never forget this weekend in my life.

The week before Regatta

Well, a better description might be the well before the penultimate week... :) with this entire chapter coming to an end very very soon.

To focus on the period that just went by (just over a week), we were engaged completely in our independent project to create a business.  The plan came along very well, we presented it to the third partner from outside our program and he was happy.  We have now worked out how to go about implementing the plan, the next bit is to find an investor, which we are working hard now.

Other interesting things in this week were the last sessions of Advanced Negotiation, the feedback session with the school and a dinner with the Toastmasters club with our club chartering today.  Advanced negotiation is a very interesting subject recently introduced in Cranfield and attracts the most number of sessions among electives, this has really equipped us with all the necessary tools to be better at commercial negotiations.

The feedback session was interesting to say the least.  There were multiple positive and negative feedback given about the program, and as usual it ended with a promise that we will get back to you with specific actions taken in response to the feedback.  I specifically prepared to give a feedback about the way there is a very hard communication barrier between the batches here at Cranfield, being a one year program, there is little chance to interact with other years, and sometimes learning few things in Cranfield becomes similar to reinventing the wheel.  I proposed a digital forum internal to Cranfield which can act as a bridge between years.  Even if there is no action taken from the School on this, I think there will be some progress in this direction in forums like linkedin.

Toastmasters is a club that I recently joined to become a better communicator and since joining the club, I have picked up many positive points about communication and leadership.  I hope to continue this far beyond the MBA program itself.

Looking forward to a weekend filled with fun over the Regatta event.  

The Busy Term 4

Well, I have been so engrossed with my Independent Project these days that writing this entry has been skipped once.  Everyone in the school is in a different mood, some searching for a job, some already found one.  Some feeling that this whole episode is going to end and feeling not so happy about that and many other types.

The unique thing about our project is that there is a chance of this getting converted into a venture and that would mean no job search :).  We have a meeting to finalise this on the 15th of this month (that Is 4 days from now) and needless to say we are looking forward to it.  If that meeting is successful my dream of starting a business straight after MBA would come true.  We are trying hard, and making relevant connections to live this dream already.  We also had a trip to CUBIC (Cranfield University Business Incubation Centre), a facility where we students at Cranfield could locate our office for free (initially) and run a business immediately after the course or any time in the future.

We had a nice trip to London from the school as part of "Blue Stream Goes to London", well this was a long overdue trip, but as it happened it was fun.  We went to the Greenwich meridian, where time starts :).  A different feeling came about when I realised I had crossed 0 degree latitude (equator) and longitude (Greenwich) in a space of about 3 months.

We had lot of fun activities during last week including "Cranstock" which was a music night where our director of the school and director of the full time MBA played their songs.  These people were good and we enjoyed the night out together to the full.