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!