F.G.H. = Finally Going Home

Transitting at Dubai Intl' Airport - the city I came more than a month ago, probably the most global city in the world with aournd 90% foreigners in the city. You do feel want to go home because everybody is going home:-)

Finally, Going Home!

Home is not where you live but where they understand you. ~Christian Morgenstern

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” ~Maya Angelou

E - the END

IMD campus in snow

“There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.” - Tennessee Williams (American playwright, 1911-1983)

Prof. George Kohlrieser introduced this quote to us at the beginning of our Leadership Finale Day on 2nd Dec 2008, just one day before the graduation. It was quite an emotional day filled with thanksgivings, public appraisals, reconciliations, reflections and surprises. He also kindly gave each of us an English copy of his award-winning book “Hostage at the Table”. Being in a Catholic seminary for 8 years, a Ph.D. in psychology, a Police Psychologist and Hostage Negotiator, 10-year hosting of “Matters of the Mind" - a radio call-in talk show in the US, and a past president of the International Transactional Analysis Association, he drew a lot of examples from his rich experiences in this fascinating book. I highly recommend it to the readers, even your non-English friends & colleagues (it is now available in French, Romanian, Hungarian and Chinese with German, Russian and Korean editions to be published soon).

On a personal note, I just finished my last interview and am now on the train from snowy Zurich to warmer Lausanne. Since 6 months ago when we first attended On-Campus Recruiting company presentations before discovery expedition to Kenya, each of us has gone through numerous interviews, followed by Dings, hiring freezes and of course offers. In fact, these six months at IMD (ok, we’ve officially graduated two weeks ago:-) had been an even more practical and more challenging part compared to the hundreds of real business cases studied through the building blocks. During expeditions, ICP and job searches, we have been exploring new geographical territories (for me – East Africa, East Europe, North America, Middle East) and we have been exposed to the tough macro-environment (my six final round interviews opportunities in different countries were killed one by one within 10 days due to the crisis). However, with the professional assistance of career service team (Katty, Celine, Julia & Barbara) and our individual career coaches, mutual supports from within the class, constant encouragements by family & friends around the world, we made it – so far so good! In the midst of economic crisis, IMD 2008 MBA class still had a very high percentage of job offers upon graduation and the number has been going higher and higher each day as some of us are still in the process of interviews. Now we all deserve a good break and I am confident that we will all get there, sooner or later.

On 16th Dec 2008, as many faculty and staff of IMD paid their tributes to the longest serving full-time faculty member Prof. Xavier Gilbert (37 years with IMD) during his “graduating ceremony”, one colleague shared the following “bon mots” (good words) of Prof. Gilbert, “It is precisely during times of adversity that companies cannot afford to neglect their people. Look at it this way: Why is a company in trouble in the first place? Is it really only the fault of the economic environment? Were the employees perfectly competent? In reality, being in trouble points to an urgent need to learn.”

Even the last two weeks post-graduation, there still have been a lot of happenings: round after round interviews, round after round farewell dinners, house after house hand-over inspections (I went to four apartments in a single day receiving and giving helps) and of course the Christmas parties. Together with Mathieu Pointeau (French), I also attended my first IMD MBA Info Session as an alumnus. But as we say in Chinese, “the most glamorous banquet will also come to an end” and Mathieu has already introduced you the new diary authors from MBA 2009 Class. Like movie sequels, you never know what does the new episode like until you go and watch it. Of course, you can learn some real options techniques from Finance Prof. Arturo Bris for better forecasting!?

A Time for Everything – by King Solomon from the Book of Ecclesiastes (Old Testament):

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
A time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
A time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

D - Dubai, Desert, Deflate

I was in Dubai a month ago, my first visit to the Gulf Region. During the flight, I already saw massive yellow coloured the navigation map after Istanbul. Indeed, that's the theme colour of Dubai - the booming hub between Europe & Asia. Desert is seen everywhere, even the green plants are dusted by the sand. One of the interesting experiences we had there was "Desert Safari". I was expecting to see animals running in the desert. Instead, we were put on a jeep and driving towards the centre of desert.

After arriving at a stop point, the driver double-checked everything and began to deflate all tyres. "What are we going to do?" "Oh, we're going to enjoy the sand surfing!!!". That's the essence of a desert safari. Somehow, I related it to the leadership development approach during IMD MBA. The course was built in such a way to "destroy" you first, from inside out, challenging you on where you're most proud of and then "build" you up, through reflecion, counsellig, practcing. It's also a good analogy to the current economic situation. In a crisis moment, we'd better get back to the core, down-to-earth and be releastic.

"What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Pilot, Writer and Author of 'The Little Prince', 1900-1944)

A.B.C. - Andover, Boston, Cambridge

After 4 weeks of industry & company analyses, 2 weeks of first round On Campus Recruiting, we have finally travelled to the market where our issue analysis focuses on – the USA. Our client is a global leader in the dental industry and our mission for the International Consulting Project is to improve the Sales & Marketing effectiveness in the US market. Although two of our team members have healthcare industry experiences, it was still quite a challenge to understand at the beginning the unique business model, complicated multiple stakeholders and fragmented diverse customers. Our hard work paid off and we gained enough credibility from the client to carry on the field research in Andover, Boston for 7 days. All the planning was communicated during the stressful interview weeks and we got almost everything settled by lunch time Wednesday 1st October: logistics, agenda, working approach and visas – yes, Natalia and I are visiting the USA for the very first time.

By taxi, train, airplane and rented car, the team of 5 safely arrived at the Residence Inn after 18 hours of travel from Lausanne. There were only a few hours for rest before the busy schedule starting Thursday morning. Despite the jetlag, we decided to meet at 7:30 am to quickly discuss the first day agenda. Driving to the company US headquarters, which is located in the same industry park as the hotel, we were amazed by the beautiful colours of autumn reflected onto the glass buildings, very different from what we used to see in Lausanne. Arriving in the office, first thing we were informed of: change of agenda! The team was asked to present our Phase II – Company Analysis and discuss it with the Business Unit VP, Marketing VP and Senior Marketing Manager. This sudden change eventually turned out to be a very fruitful and long interaction with the client’s US management team to build a good foundation for our remaining days here. In the afternoon, the team interviewed managers from training, sales and we started first round brain-storming to identify sub-issues and possible solutions. The jetlag effect kicked in around 6 pm (which was 12 am Swiss time) so we called it a day.

The second day which was Friday was even busier. We started from a WEBEX meeting with managers from different functions and then participated in a Sales teleconference. In the afternoon, the team had to split for multiple tasks, calling dental labs, meeting VIP customers, discussing Sales & Optimization, etc. We had to finish the team debriefing by 6:30 pm because there was a client dinner planned at 7 pm. It was a great opportunity to know more about each other at a personal level. As our Faculty Director Prof. Ralf Seifert shared before, in a consulting project team, the manager’s main task is to communicate with the client and continuously align the objectives and outcomes.

Over the weekend, we had some time to visit downtown Boston which is famous for its Harbour, Harvard Business School and Happy shoppers. So some of us went for whale watching, some went for Sunday shopping [which is almost impossible in Switzerland], but we all went to the Harvard Business School in Cambridge. It happened to be the 100th anniversary of the business education here and we walked around in the night campus [see photograph above].

Someone once summarized the difference between school and life as follows: “In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.” I would argue a successful school could combine both – Real World, Real Learning – a perfect explanation of the philosophy of our ICP or International Consulting Project, since 1980!

The Straumann team from Massachusetts, USA.

No. 1

IMD tops Economist Intelligence Unit's MBA rankings, but are the good times about to end for business school graduates? http://mba.eiu.com/index.asp?layout=2008rankings

IMD has been ranked the first in the world in the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest survey of full-time MBA programmes. It is the first time the Swiss school has topped the annual ranking. IMD took the number one slot from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, which drops to third, while Spanish school IESE claims second place. Stanford and Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business round off the top five. The highest ranked Asian school was Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 11th.

IMD is one of the most international business schools in the world. Ninety-seven percent of its students come from abroad—with around half of those from outside of Europe. One of the reasons for the school's triumph has been the success of its careers placement service. IMD students can expect to earn a basic salary of US$130,000 a year on their graduation—compared with pre-MBA salaries of US$79,000.

Indeed this year was a bumper year all round for MBA salaries. Columbia in New York, for example, reported an average leaving salary of US107,000, while London Business School's graduates can expect US$120,000-a-year. But with the banking crisis leading to job losses in financial centres around the world, this might be the best it gets for business school graduates for some time.

Bill Ridgers, editor of Which MBA? commented: "The financial services industry has for some time competed with consultancies to be the leading recruiter of MBA graduates, offering huge salaries along the way. But with recent failures, a lot of talented bankers are suddenly out of a job. It is likely that current students are likely to find themselves graduating into a buyers' market and salaries will start to reflect this."

To add on to this press release, we just had a 2-week first round on campus interviews with some 60 global companies in altogether 822 interviews for the entire MBA class. A big thank you to our fabulous Career Service team. Bonne Chance!

from Under-prepared to Over-prepared...

Since last Sunday, I had altogether 12 interviews with 9 organizations (focusing on Marketing or Strategy function) and it was only the first week of our On Campus Recruiting. Before that, I actually had an informal interview with an Executive Board Member of a leading industrial company based in Switzerland. It was not only informal, but also unusual. The setting was an bench at the meadow where we had outdoor lunch buffet at IMD, the weather was sunny, and the timing was after lunch. The interview was centered around my motivation & interest, or rather how have I aligned both, one of the trickiest question and the dynamics was not leading to enough "chemistry".

After the interview, I immediately contacted my career coach, an alumna graduated 10 years ago and now a seasoned Executive Coach (of course, she's assigned by our fabulous Career Service Team). She quickly responded and arranged a debriefing session with me, analyzing the interactions of the interview, giving feedback, pushing for preparations, and of course, I was under-prepared. My coach extended the session for an additional 30 mins to help me practice. I was really grateful for that and felt ready for the coming interviews.

Some companies already notified us about the results of 1st round interviews, both good & bad news. One of the rejection letter I received saying that I was a bit "over-prepared", in context of the particular company / headquarter country culture.

The lesson learned, preparation is always necessary & good, but execution has to be adapted according to the context. Look forward to the week II interviews!

Crisis & Conflict

Shepherd - "SupaClean Chemicals? My sheep are thirsty and if they can't drink the water from the river because of your factory leakage, where can they get water?"

SupaClean - "We'll be able to confirm the safety of the river within 2 hours. Can they wait?"

Shepherd - "You don't understand, they are not like human beings, they just can't wait."

SupaClean - "What about you and your family, where do you get drinking water?"

Shepherd - "We only drink alcohol!"

....

That's just one of the telephone calls we've received last Monday (28 July) after coming back from summer holiday. Nice surprise! It's part of the Crisis Management Simulation & Workshop run by Tom Curtin and his team from Green Issues Communications as a start of the second half of our MBA program. It was so exciting & emotional that I couldn't easily forget the "silly" conversations I had with "local communities" who complained to the company after the crisis happened. However, in real life, things could get even worse and we just got a glimpse of what it takes to assume the leadership in crisis management. The next day, we had the chance to hold a press conference in front of BBC presenters to practice Public Relations after crisis, video-taped with immediate feedback.

Not to destroy us but to equip us, we had another 2.5 days of negotiation workshop following the crisis simulation, again run by globally acclaimed experts from Conflict Management (CM) Partners . To negotiate with principles, based on interests and with perseverance.

One of the questions we were asked at the beginning of this workshop was "why children are generally better negotiators?". My understanding is that children are generally fearless, more focused on the things they desire (normally no idea about options) and more persevering because they have more time than their adult counterparts. Unfortunately, as an adult, we have learned about all kinds of fears and we are too complicated to have no option.

"The correct strategy for Americans negotiating with Japanese or other foreign clients is a Japanese strategy: ask questions. When you think you understand, ask more questions. Carefully feel for pressure points. If an impasse is reached, don't pressure. Suggest a recess or another meeting.” John L. Graham, Professor of Marketing and International Business, University of California, Irvine

What a mountain has taught us?

(on behalf of the Kili Trio)

06:00 of 7 July, 5895 meters above sea level at the Uhuru Peak, after 6 hours of hiking from Barafu camp (4600 meters), Peter Nielsen (Danish) & Bevan McKenzie (New Zealander) have successfully reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. It has been a long journey since they started from Machame village 5 days ago. Up & down, up & down, all for better acclimatization, and all is worth the 15 minutes' breath-taking view on the "Roof of Africa". It was too cold to stay there long so they started descending. I met them at Stella Point (5745 meters) and continued my way to the summit which happened after sunrise. So the Kili Trio of IMD have all made it to the top, with the help of mountain guides, porters and support from the MBA class, special thanks to Randy Balisalisa (American) who shared with us his first hand experience of reaching Uhuru Peak in 2006. Being in the real world, the marvelous mountain, what have we learnt?

Kilimanjaro has taught us a lot of lessons and I think the key is about respect. We respect the environment even when it meant to carry additional weight before reaching the rubbish collecting point. We also saw it from the porters, the guides and fellow hikers. If human beings don't protect the environment, this World Heritage will be destroyed soon. We also learnt to respect our own bodies. Being it a headache due to mountain sickness or the constant thirst leading to dehydration, we responded accordingly by taking medicine or drinking water. If human beings don't take care of our bodies, they will not collaborate with our minds. Of course, the respect has to be built up among the people as well.

"Pole, Pole" is how people greeting each other in the mountain (in Kiswahili, it means "slowly, slowly"). In practice, it reminded hikers not to rush through but conserve energy for the long journey. In theory, it reminded urban hikers to slow down, taking time, enjoying scenery and savoring nature. I personally benefitted a lot from it. Having headache since Day 2, I had to take pain killer and even lost appetite the next day. With walking poles, I really did it "pole, pole". Fortunately regained appetite before the summit night, I woke up early to start the slow journey. My mountain guide David said I probably set some "pole" record of reaching the peak in 8 hours. Before leaving for Kilimanjaro, Dr. Weiju Hsieh (Taiwanese, a seasoned mountain climber) gave me her insight, "a mountain is not to be conquered, but rather to be experienced and appreciated". So pole as I did, I was happy to enjoy the mountain Safari ("safari" means "journey" in Kiswahili).

This uniquely intimate experience of hiking, camping together for 7 days also taught us to be tolerant because we had to share a lot things taken for granted in a normal environment, e.g. space, clean water, hot water, noise, etc. During spare times, we also shared knowledge & fun including an alternative pain killer which is a card game called "Casino" introduced by Peter's uncle. I learnt something new about the 5 icons of Denmark, Karen Blixen whose memoir "Out of Africa" (the original title in Danish is "My Africa") which turned into a huge success in Hollywood (we actually visited the Safari where the movie was shoot during discovery trip in Kenya); LEGO = Play Well (abbreviation of the two Danish words "leg godt"); architect Jørn Utzon was awarded the project of the Sydney Opera House in 1957, author & poet Hans Christian Andersen whose fairy tales were read out to Peter (my colleague, fellow hiker) by his grandpa; the national bird of Denmark, mute swan. As to the "down under" New Zealand, I asked Bevan for a silver fern souvenir after his successful promotion of the country's symbol. Sir Edmund Hillary who just passed away early this year, is a New Zealand mountaineer and explorer. On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, he and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.

In remembrance of this extraordinary life, it is appropriate to end with his quote, “You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things – to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated.”

Pole, Pole, Karibu Kilimanjaro!

P.S. thanks to Aoife Hegarty (Irish / Rwandan) who kindly lent us her IMD umbrella.

Love, Money, Life...

Since last Friday, the 7 Chinese in our class initiated a fund-raising on campus for the people suffering in earthquake in Sinchuan. We received many warm supports from many friends and strangers until this Tuesday. All the funds will be proceeded to China Education Development Foundation to rebuild the schools in Sichuan for the thousands of students there. A big thanks to the love from IMD community!

There is money out of love, and there is also passion for wealth - a little surprise for our second last week before the building block final exams, we met Warren Buffet in the MBA auditorium yesterday afternoon. Organized by family business research centre, our Organizational Leadership Prof. Ben Bryant and Entrepreneurship Prof. Benoit Leleux gave us this opportunity to interact with Mr. Buffet of Berkshire Hathaway and Mr. Eitan Wertheimer of ISCAR group. For the richest man in world, success simply means how many people would hide you in case of danger. At the age of 77, he still goes to his office at Omaha every morning because he enjoys it as part of his life...

Summer is coming soon, just before 3 papers, 4 exams, 2 weeks preparation and 1 discovery expedition in Kenya!

Humility & Humanity

We've had the "International Political Economy" course for a few sessions where Prof. Jean-Pierre Lehman always started with a "Literacy Test" about the regions we were going to discuss in the following four hours. The topics range from history, politics, economy, literature, etc. It is during such session I realized how ignorant I am of the "Globalized world in 21st century". While most of the class think we are the most international MBA, these literacy tests revealed the truth. There are 7 or 8 colleagues who are ahead of the class in terms of global knowledge.

As Prof. Lehman said, "How often in your lives have you found yourselves or are you likely to find yourselves in an environment of 90 persons from 44 nationalities, with no one dominant, for almost an entire year?"

With such diversity, there is certainly different viewpoints & conflicts. What Prof. Lehman has been trying to facilitate is an open and free environment for discussion. It is a challenging & rewarding experience at the same time! I hope in the end, we would be able to settle in a common ground, which is probably the evolving humanity in a historical context.

Design, Debate & Deliberate

The three new courses we had in Building Block II is about Design - Innovation & Product Design, Debate - International Political Economy, and Deliberate - Strategy. All of them are highly interactive and engaging that we almost forgot 2 weeks ago we were still struggling with the exams. Today, we got the results! Overall performance is better than previous classes, according to faculty feedback. Thank God, i survived through it...

Looking forward, we will have our last team formed by next Sunday - International Consulting Project and more details will be shared then. At the mean time, our program coordinator Celine is busy preparing our discovery expedition in Kenya this summer and many colleagues are sweating for the MBA Tournament preparation.

Exciting April...

Spring in Lausanne

Survived after the whole week of exams, some ran as long as 6.5 hours (Finance interim exam). Thanks to our Program Coordinator Celine who kindly organized (or planned as part of the learning experience in IMD) our first-exam party, it was MAD (the famous clubbing compound)...

No much time to take a break, we had a meeting with entrepreneurs for start-up project today when the 2nd pit-stop is just two week away. Over the weekend, we also had to finish some group work for the NEWly assigned study group. And from Monday, three brand new courses will kick off plus the existing finance, accounting, etc.

The good news is, spring is coming! I didn't have time to take a beautiful picture of the blooming city but I will do it soon.

Rushing for a Chinese-speaking dinner now. Bon weekend!

Saving Hearts - Where Hope Comes to Life

"Baby Heart - International Children's Heart Foundation (ICHF) & Dr. William Novick", this fresh marketing case published before last Christmas by Prof. Domonique is definitely one of my favorite cases in Building Block I. Dr. Novick flew from Tennesse to share with our class of his 15 year's journey at ICFH which is very touching. Being one of the 500 plus children heart surgeons in the world, he had the burden for young patients around the world.

As a class, we've tried our best to contribute ideas of how to sustain this NGO in the long run and how to marketing it creatively. In the end, a CHF 1,500 was also presented to Dr. Novick as a small contribution.

We have one more week before exams and I will update soon after.

Good night!

Good-bye, Prof. LPO!

Time flies faster at IMD! This is already the 10th week into our Building Block I, a whole week of exams have been scheduled at the end of March which leaves us only the Easter weekend to take a break or take a deep dive!

Anyway, most groups survived happily after last weekend's 1st Integrative Exercise which we dug into an interestingly long case of Two-Wheeler market in Pakistan. What's amazing is that Richard's (American) wife Tanya who was a Pakistani availed herself to share with us live experience of her home country. Where else can you find more dynamic exercise than this?

Some updates on-campus, selected interviewees after round 1 application for Class 2009 are already here. LPO (Listen, Pay Attention, Observe or Learn, Practice & Organize) course which spells for Leading People in Organization will finish tomorrow. Prof. Maury is someone you can't forget because he always starts the session by playing some music 15 mins before the class. Today he played two versions of a song from Elton John and asked for critics. It turned out to be his own performances in between 31 years - the lesson learned: how to sustain a life-long learning?

As many groups are working on the leadership essay and trailblazer projects, we'll definitely have more learnings to share. Ciao!

Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Professor!

It was a very emotional day last Friday 29 Feb 2008 and my colleague Mathieu Pointieau (French) has faithfully & truthfully wrote it down in the MBA Diary: http://www.imd.ch/programs/mba/programstructure/diary_detail.cfm?articleId=4171. Enjoy Reading!

P.S. attached is a "painting" from Prof. Ralf Boscheck who just finished our first module "Economics & Industry Competitiveness Analysis" last Friday (7 other modules are still on-going). Tomorrow a new module "Innovation & Product Design" will kick off!

IMD 2008 MBA Story so far...@ YouTube

Thanks to Paul, now we have the first video clip on YouTube from Class 2008. Enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkM0UGGW4Bc

Meanwhile, as the IMD MBA Diary explains, from now until early April, life is going to very very tough with integrative exercises, many assignments and exams. Cheer On:-)

Accounting / Risk / Poem

During the accounting class on Wed, Prof. Stewart shared with us a beautiful poem as the closing of this session on Risk Managment:

Risk - Author Unknown

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental

To reach out to another is to risk involvement

To expose feeling is to risk exposing your true self

To place your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss

To love is to risk not being loved in return

To live is to risk dying

To hope is to risk despair

To try at all is to risk failure

But risks must be taken

because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing

The person who risks nothing has nothing and is nothing

The person may avoid suffering and sorrow

but cannot learn, feel change, grow, love, life

Chained by attitudes he/she is a slave, and forfeits freedom

Only a person who risks is free.

New Year, New Challenge

The 4th day of Chinese Lunar New Year (Vietnam, Singapore, Korea, etc. use the same lunar calendar) or so-called Spring Festival, many inter-groups meetings are going on, thanks to Prof. Ralf. There'll be 6 industry analysis presentation on Tuesday, each combined of two different industries, e.g. Steel & Commodity Chemical, Pay for Contents & Free Media. Each study group has spent hundreds of hours on our individual presentation, the story lines, the contents, the graphs, the colors, etc. After a pre-run on Friday afternoon, now we have to merge the presentation with our neighbouring group to find out the common characteristics of both groups and come up with a combined presentation & report.

This is one of our first major group projects and has presented a lot of new challenges. Different groups adopted different approaches, each has its pros & cons. And it's not easy to avoid being frustrated, no wonder more & more colleagues have signed up for the PDI (Personal Development Initiative) and talked to professional psychoanalyst. Managing emotions, balancing group task & individual reading, we'll keep learning!

新年进步！

Banana, Bicycle & Watch

"Watch out the banana tree while riding your bicycle along Lac Leman...", this is just an old game when we used to play at primary school - making a sentence with the given words, in this case, banana, bicycle & watch:-) I always thought it was just a fun game to play with your own imagination.

However, it can be as creative as a good marketing plan. That's why we've decided to include the 3 words for the coffee brand marketing plan. Some group did it seriously, some group forgot about it during the disucssion. Of course, it's interesting to see how creatively these elements have been incroporated in a serious marketing plan, especially when the presenter was not aware of the game.

* Banana flavour coffee
* Coffe Boutique in high streets of big cities, e.g. where the watch shops locate
* Sonsporing a bicycle team in Tour de France

How do you like this marketing plan? Creativity comes "out of the box" thinking!

The Drawbridge Story

With 44 hours lecture per week and many pre-course reading, group assignments, individual papers & start-up project on hand, it's quite challenging to digest everything, not even to mention pondering upon what we've learned or debated. Thanks to our extremely efficient MBA officers, we have monthly assignments & readings bound nicely before the start of next month. My target was to write down the key learning points on the 1-page assignment for each of the 4-hour module (total 8 modules during Building Block I from Jan - Mar 2008), hopefully, I can remember & try to apply 1 or 2 of the key learnings everyday.

During the leadership class last week, Prof. Jack told us a very simple "Drawbridge Story" involving 6 characters: Baron, Baroness, Madman, Lover, Boatman, Friend. Since the leadership module is very experiential, we were asked to do a quick ranking test "who is most responsible for the outcome of the story?". Jealous baron, lonely baroness, irresponsible lover, greedy boatman, self-righteous friend & the madman, sounded interesting! After that, each study group had to reach a collective ranking based on consensus. To give an example of the group diversity, my group during Building Block I includes a Canadian, Indian, Italian (San Marino), Russian, Mexican, Swiss and myself, Chinese.

When all 12 groups returned to the amphitheatre, Prof. Jack shared with us a comment from his artist friend. "It's not surprising that most business people would agree that the boatman is least responsible for the outcome, the death of the baroness. You may argue he's simply doing his job by asking for money before riding her through the moat. In another word, the boatman is the only one in the whole story who didn't offer an help to the baroness because of economic interest. That's typical business people, b-school students and many people in this materialized world".

We might have not thought of that while defending for the boatman, but I have to admit that is probably the reason beneath and I simply thought being greedy was not the cause of the baroness' death. The reality is the same test conducted among nurses or social workers, boatman is often ranked highly responsible for the tragedy.

However, I'm not that hopeless as I've seen 5 or 6 out of the 90 class did rebuke the boatman for being greedy. Many of the rest, I believe we have taken the lesson seriously and will try to make a difference in the community we live!

Name a Wish - The GREAT Outdoor Exercises!

Wednesday morning, 12 experienced Group Behavior Consultants flew from overseas to IMD. They were introduced to the 12 study groups in the afternoon at our leadership class. The fun started!


"Gentlement's Club #1, Quest, Tangram, Bungees, U.F.O. (United Fishers Of...), The Screwdrivers, bbb7, Magic 8, 9 United, 1 World, The Country Club, 12 Monkeys", above were the names of 12 study groups presented to the entire class with a video advertising & a logo explaining the names. All the preparations were done within 45 mins! It's interesting to see how the different names correlating to each group in terms of characteristics, directions or wishes.

7:45 am, Thursday morning, all 90 MBAs met at the foyer to board on the bus leading to Outdoor Exercise Centre in an old chateau. Competitions, group tasks, each session was video-taped and followed by a debriefing with coach. Finishing the whole exercise at 5 pm, delicious Chinese dinner was awaiting us at IMD. There was a 4-hour video for each group to review & discuss which is the highlight of the day. Emotions, retrospection & questions all came out, expected or unexpected, most groups ended at midnight, some 2 am.

Understanding how drained we were, Prof. Jack Wood kindly started the class 30 mins then the usual 8 am. Each group was given 90 mins to summarize key learnings, select a video clip and present a picture metaphor. It was kinda shocking when we realized how powerful the emotions were functioning in some groups! All in all, we've tried our best to be sensitive & honest with our feelings. In the afternoon, we had the opportunity to provide feedback to group members in both oral & written forms. More than 2/3 of the class headed to the White Horse pub, due to either too many positive / constructive (negative) feedback or too much stress / psycho talks. Some even saw a few consultants there as well:-) Saturday we had the 1-on-1 session with group consultant for an hour each. They all flew back later that day.

This is our first GREAT outdoor leadership exercise and I'm happy to tell The Gentlemen's Club #1 more or less stayed true to our names with openness & solidarity.

P.S. the mokey picture is our group metaphor after the outdoor exercises & key learnings found out. We realized the problems and want to see more, hear more & talk more whenever appropriate so we can grow more in the long run!

What are you selling?

What's so unique about IMD (http://www.imd.ch/)? After the orientation programme early last week, I confirm that the slogan "Real World, Real Learning" is what being practiced here.

Career Service team shared with us their mission & passion to establish the platform between us (the 90 MBA students) and potential employers (67 companies conducted on campus recruiting events in 2007 plus many posting job offers online). Class 2oo7 has done a great job, within 1 month of graduation, 96% has at least 1 job offers (preliminary results).

An interesting question was posed to us, "since the participants have an average of 7-year working experience which means a quality network around the globe, should we focus more on selling the school or selling ourselves during networking?" Of course, marketing for IMD is mainly the MBA office (career / marketing / admission)'s responsibility. However, to let others understand what kind of training we've been through here at IMD definitely helps. So my answer would be: selling myself as an IMD 2008 MBA!

Catch up in week 2...Bonne nuit:-)