Haggis and other International culinary delights

Let’s begin with where we left off – talking about the fun stuff between the other fun stuff called exams.  We kicked off Term 2 with the great annual Burns night event and quickly followed it up with International week.   Burns night celebrates the life of Robert Burns, the Scottish composer of poems, lyrics and other pieces that addressed political and civil issues.  Most can recite/slur one of his pieces on NYE when they have an attempt at the famous "Auld Lang Syne".  He used to be celebrated on the anniversary of his death, July 21^st, but the Scottish, being upbeat as they are, switched it to his birthdate of 21^st January, which being in winter makes the traditional haggis, scotch whisky and poetry all the more palatable/enjoyable.  At Cranfield we invite the London Business School to come up and compete in various sports through the day and in Scottish dancing through the night.  A great day and night was had by all. 

We followed it up with International week where all the countries represented by the cohort get to be celebrated one by one through the week.  We got to taste the countries culinary delights, hear the traditional music and experience other parts of the culture.  We started with Asia on the first night, jumped across to Europe and Africa the next night and covered the Aussies, Kiwis and America’s on the last night.  If you ever have an international week always schedule to finish with the South Americans, they know how to close a celebration in style with a Carnival party – great fun.  It quickly became apparent that everyone has great pride in their countries – and why not!  I think all of us have some great future travelling ahead of us as we visit our cohort over the coming decades.  Guys, how about 5 year reunions hosted by each country over the next 100 odd years?  Just an idea.

Other than that the term has been going well.  I am sure we have as much work as last term, if not more, but we are now adept at drinking from the metaphorical 'knowledge fire hose' of the MBA whilst still being able to drink at the social.  The subjects from Term 1 and term 2 are increasingly intersecting.  We could be covering government bonds as part of Monetary policy in economics and then corporate bonds in the next Finance lecture; reflection on Agency costs in Economics, Finance, People Management and Strategy; Operations and Supply Chain as part of the consideration for business recovery in Strategy; the Porters five forces model covered in Marketing being used in an analysis for project decisions in Exploiting Information Technology; director responsibilities dealt with in Business Law relating with business ethics in People Management.  It all comes full circle. 

Speaking of full circle, people are acutely aware of the need to return to a job to apply this great knowledge (and to earn one’s keep!) so there is now a stream of career events and visits from companies.  Congratulations to Lekgotla who was the first from the cohort to confirm a new role, in this case McKinsey’s, after he was flown to Johannesburg last weekend for his final interview for the consulting role.  Nice work mate.  I believe this means that the first 5 year cohort reunion will be held in South Africa in 2018, hosted by Lex.  Bring it on!  

 

Exams, Christmas break, more exams and other fun stuff

‘’Don’t be preoccupied by the exams’’ we were advised by the faculty in our first week of the MBA.  The faculty are obviously too aware of the MBA type personality – put an exam in front of them and they may develop ‘exam-results-tunnel-visionitis’ and forget the main game of being able to apply the learning back in the ‘real world’.  Naturally there is not much use scoring 100% if you can’t go and apply it.  This sentiment is embodied in the Cranfield School of Managements motto ‘turning knowledge into action’.  I took the advice to mean I shouldn’t get 100% for every assessment as that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. 

Of course you can take the advice of not getting preoccupied by exams too far; one always needs balance in approach!  As it turns out the MBA type personality inevitably kicks in and once the exams start looming everyone has their heads down in preparation.

I hadn’t had the joy of a week of 3 hour exams since uni days so I was interested to be reminded on what it’s like, and I was pleasantly surprised.  In some sort of macabre way, I liked the incredible focus one develops in this period where you package together a couple of months of learning and prepare to deliver it beautifully in those empty answer booklets (some use the expression of vomiting the stored up information, but I think that the beauty is in the eye of the beholder).  It was actually a great process to go through, and to recognise how much we had covered in such a short period.

So the exams came and went without a hitch and soon enough we were celebrating at our end of term Christmas party.  In a quiet moment over a drink that night I looked back and realised what an incredible experience it had been.  In a short few weeks, I had discovered this place called Cranfield, met an amazing international cohort, fantastic lecturers, learnt an incredible amount of practical theory and an enormous amount about myself.  These weren’t soppy thoughts in the wee hours of the morning after too many celebratory drinks, but a sober recognition of how truly fortunate we all are to be able to undertake this MBA.

But enough of the MBA for a couple of weeks, we were now on a well-deserved Christmas break where we were told we could relax and forget about study for a while as long as we got the pre- work done for the first week back! The faculty obviously kindly want to make sure we don’t experience withdrawal symptoms.

Xavier (now 8 months old and going strong) and I shared our first UK Christmas and it was Becky’s first Christmas back home for several years.  Xavier of course had nothing to compare it to however I assured him that it rated highly.  It was actually the first opportunity for all of Becky’s family to be together with the four grandchildren, which was fantastic.  I thought it was strange that we didn’t all go down to the beach for a swim before Christmas lunch, but I didn’t think it was my place to introduce new traditions.

Before we knew it Christmas was over and we were back on Cranfield soil ready for Term 2.  It is a nice reflection of the friendship between the cohort to see the excitement of everyone being reunited after only a couple of weeks.  First week of term two at Cranfield is dubbed the week long WAC as we complete a whole topic (project management) within the week.  At the end of the week we got to test our knowledge with a well-developed, day long, simulated project where a week of resource decision-making was time-lapsed into about half an hour.   The objective being to complete the project on schedule and on profit despite any project ‘curve balls’ being thrown our way.  It seems MBA’ers are good at handling the curve balls as the majority of teams were ‘in the black’ at the end – a good sign.  It was a fantastic learning week, particularly those new to project management.

After the ‘WAC of sorts’ in week one we were treated to another exam in week two and an exam in week three.   We were indeed living the examined life!  Of course in the first weeks we didn’t just sit around doing exams – we managed to fill it up with six new core topics, a full assessment centre day, sports competition and Burns night with London Business School, external speakers and an international week celebrating all 30 odd countries represented in the cohort.  But more on that other fun stuff in the next post!

A whack from a WAC

Another month has flown by, and what a month it was.  It started off with a WAC.  WAC’s are infamous at Cranfield and will either raise a cold sweat or a warm smile from the Alumni who have had the pleasure of doing them in the past.  A WAC (a ‘Written Analysis of a Case’) is a 1,500 word business report that is allocated to us at 2pm on a Friday afternoon and is due 25 hours later.  We had two for the month: one for Economics (which required a recommendation to a firm on their remuneration strategy) and the other for Accounting (which required a financial ratio analysis of a publicly listed company for a firm considering making a takeover).  There are generally two approaches – stay awake until it’s complete, or get a start, then a sleep and then make a final burst to the finish line.  It is a highly valuable process to go through. 

So that covers 50 hours of the month - what about the rest?  Well apart from the usual lectures, case study’s, tutorials, readings and team meetings which fill most of the days we have also had

·        a statistics assignments (which included creating a dummy variable for a sick cow – don’t ask);

·        two reflective reports on our experience working with our teams and of our own learning’s throughout the term;

·        multiple evening talks;

·        a fantastic Operations and Supply chain simulation (where we had to design an operations process that would allow us to make 3 different indicator modules in the right order, on time, as per spec whilst maximising profit.  A fascinating exercise.      

·       And of course there has been the usual sports practice for coming inter business school competitions and celebratory events including Guy Fawkes night; Indian Diwali  where yours truly somehow managed to win best dressed male; Thanksgiving night (where the cohorts fantastic band ‘The Diminishing Returns’ debuted)

·       We were also had an information session on the choices for next year’s IBE trips (International Business experience).  The choices are China, Brazil or Japan or a field trip to a developing nation where you advise and assist chosen local businesses.  Everyone is pretty excited by the prospects and are now waiting to hear the outcome.

I finished the month with a trip to London for a Finance night hosted by the Cranfield Careers service at the great Ironmongers Hall located in the square mile of London City.  It was fantastic to get down there with some great talks from Andrea Ward, MD of AMT Training, OBE Sue Vinnicombe; Andy Vallings, Director of Global Cost Management, Barclays and Jason COO of Asset Management Risk function, HSBC. 

It’s been a full month but the fun really starts in December where we will have the three remaining assignments and four exams - more of that in the next post.    

Well I think this post deserves a mention of the weather, afterall I am based in England - in summary it is getting very cold, there aren’t many day light hours and we actually have snow forecast for this weekend.  Perfect weather for the coming exams but nothing to be jealous about for those in Australia who are waking up to the start of a warm sunny weekend as I sign off.  Please enjoy a swim for me!

So this is what an MBA is like

Five weeks down and we are well and truly into the MBA with lectures, case study's, team learning, team presentations, career workshops and business competitions all in full flow.  Well at least it has felt like full flow (the proverbial fire hose at full flow!) however we are gently assured not to worry as it will get much busier - but we will all learn to handle it!   I will of course report on that in the future but in the meantime, let me take you through a typical week so far.   

In this first term we are completimg six subjects: Accounting, Microeconomics, Organisational Behaviour, Operations and Supply Chain, Strategic Marketing and Strategic Decision Science (statistics). I also have the pleasure of doing Spanish as everyone needs to graduate with at least two languages.  Me llamo David. Vivo en Cranfield. Soy estudiante! 

We work on a perpetual 3 day cycle. Day one, two days before the lecture, we do our own reading/preperation for each subject independantly. Day two, we meet with our learning team of six to go through the content and assigned case study's. Day three, we have the lecture.  With the continual rotation we effectively have lectures, team work and our own reading each day and we are also now beginning to work on the coming assignments.  Lectures are 70 minutes each.  There are usually a couple of evening speakers or workshops a week as well.  All work and no play makes for dull students, so there are a couple of sports evenings each week (from 9-11.30pm - about the same time as my home town Manly beach is heating up for a day of sun and surf but I try not to think about that and instead embrace the looming winter and shorter days that inspires focused study!) 
 

It all makes for a busy day, night, week and weekend.   It is actually impossible to to do it all yourself - and that is the idea - it forces you to become much more effective and efficient.  Ultimately you need to rely on great team work, precise organisation, ruthless time-management and being really effective at identifying, quickly, the crux of every piece of information presented.   

 

There are about 75 full time MBA students and an equal number of executive MBA students (who cover the MBA over two years in addition to working). It is a truly multicultural group with over 30 countries represented in the full time cohort.  We are split into two streams, Blue and Red, and attend lectures in our designated streams (although some workshops and lectures are combined).  Within the streams we have been further divided into learning teams compirising of six people.  To give you a sense of the diversity within my working team of four men and two women there are six nationalities: Slovakian, Brazilian, Nigerian, Indian, Welsh and of course an Aussie. The team also has an equally varied career background such as IT, Banking, Management consulting, Accountancy uditing and Law.  As you can imagine, It makes for a great mix of cultures, experiences and knowledge.  Overall there is incredible camaraderie between the cohort.  After only a few short weeks everyone feels like life-long friends. No doubt the onslaught of the pending assessments and increasing workload will test our friendships, but we all feel very lucky to have already built a solid 'friendship' foundation which will hopefully be able to withstand the upcoming pressures.   
 

The content is excellent and the Lecturers are absolutely world class.  While there is of course the theory, there is a much stronger focus on practical application to the business world.  I have particularly enjoyed being able to apply the knowledge back to the many businesses I have worked with over the years.  The greatest and most challenging thing is digesting, and recalling, the vast quantity of knowledge.  It has been a very full first five weeks and we have not even commenced assessment work.  For those who enjoy a touch of schadenfreude - I can confirm assessments start at the end of this week with a WAC!  What's a WAC you ask - you will have to wait and hear with my next post but from what I do know, it sounds like it would be more appropriate to spell it as Whack - I will confirm whether this is the case next time.
 

Before I sign off, I'd like to give an update on the two most special people in my life - my wife Becky and my son Xavier.  Xavier has just turned five months old and is learning much more than an MBA 

without having to take notes, study or seemingly try.  We are very impressed with his aptitude and 
application! His latest trick is rollling over - which is apparently much harder than the strategic decision science that his dad is trying to get his head around.  Behind the man and the little man is Becky who is doing an extraordinary job in supporting her two men.  Becky gets to experience the full force of the MBA of Managing Baby and Adult, without having applied for it.  She has been quite extraordinary.  Xavier and I are very lucky men.  
 

See you after the WAC!

Ohhhh week!

I have just come to the end of a busy and fantastic week – the Cranfield Full time MBA Orientation week – hosted by the finishing students (14 of them) for the new students.  I hardly remember my first O week at the University of Sydney 20 years ago – it flew by as the new world of University life washed over me.  This O week was quite different.  It was still a huge amount of fun, but the emphasis was about getting to know our fellow cohort with whom we will be working with closely, and understanding the ins and outs of the year ahead.  I was discovering new bits of information every session so it was really the 'ohhhh week' for me.

We were allocated into one of two streams and then introduced to our working team of six for the next 3 months.  We were given presentation and assignments as warm ups, team competitions and advice.  We were brought up to speed on the team work, content and assessment/examination requirements.  Our diaries were completely full – an indication of the year ahead!

The week also showcased the many and varied extra-curricular activities we can get involved in if we find we have too much spare time.  It seems that we get to operate in some sort of time warp this year where we complete two years of MBA content in one year, learn a second language (compulsory if you only have the one), embark on an international business field trip, compete in European MBA Business competitions, train for a marathon, join a music group etc etc.  The main message from last years MBA cohort is to push your boundaries and make the very most of this valuable opportunity.  The team of fourteen from last year were quite the example for us - they had really made the most of the year and it showed in their knowledge, they way they held themselves, their presenting and their sincerity in ensuring we are well set up for the year ahead.  If this group of 14 are a product of the Cranfield MBA then things bode well.  A big thanks to Catherine, Anna, Lana, Henry, Hilario, Inaki, Peter, Ric, Saquib, Simon, Gareth, Adnan, Shoumi, and Pankaj for a great week.  

Ohhhh week is now over and we start in earnest on Monday with Accounting first class!

Firstly, by way of a background....

I am hoping the corollary of the wise Socrates’ statement, “An unexamined life is not worth living” is correct, as it will make my coming year of intense examination all the more worthwhile!

On Monday, 1^stof October 2012, I commence my 12 month Full-time MBA at Cranfield School of Management, UK. If it delivers on its promise, it is going to involve a lot of examination! Not just examination in the conventional meaning of the word, but also perpetual self-examination aimed at developing the whole person. My international cohort and I are clearly in for quite a year, and we hope we are ready to overcome the academic and psychological challenges of one of the top European MBA’s available. However, before this new MBA starts, let me give a quick explanation of how a Sydney based Aussie found himself in a small UK town called Cranfield, just north of London and a long way from home………

This time last year I began to consider doing an MBA. I had had many years of success and fun in my role as a specialist working within NAB Business Bank, but I wanted to have a fall back plan if the enjoyment waned or circumstances changed. The experience from being on the 2011/12 NAB Talent pool had also opened my thinking and made me consider how else I could add value within the organisation. With these thoughts at the back of my mind, a work email mentioning the Cranfield MBA caught my attention. I opened the email and a few hours of research later I quickly became incredibly interested in what this‘Cranfield MBA’ had to offer. it was International (I particularly valued international exposure), UK based (great for my English wife, Becky, to be close to her UK based parents, sisters and friends) 12 months full time (my ideal) and was incredibly well regarded and highly ranked (3^rd in the world for 12 month full time MBA’s according to Wall Street Journal 2009 ranking). What’s more, there was a full Scholarship available to “a talented Australian, passionate about this country with the desire to contribute to its future”. Before I knew it I had forgotten about my heavy work load and was picturing myself studying by an open fire with a warm flat English beer in hand and Becky with my future baby (born in May 2012) kicking back enjoying a bitterly cold English winter! As Sydney headed towards summer, an English winter seemed too far away to be of concern, so I pitched the concept of a UK based MBA to Becky. Being the loving supportive person she is, she gave me her full backing and so the application process started in earnest.

A few months later, after going through the rigorous Scholarship requirements (a successful GMAT, 2 essay based applications and 3 interviews) I was awarded the 2012 Cranfield Australian Alumni Scholarship. I was absolutely elated to not only receive one of the most valuable open scholarships available in Australia, but to also soon have the opportunity to develop personally and professionally though this extraordinary MBA. Even better, I learnt I would also be attending Cranfield with my fellow Australians, Benjamin Elias and Aashlesha Venkatachalam, 2012 Scholarship awardees.

Before we knew it our newly formed family were soon flying off to the UK. Now, almost a year after first hearing about this place called‘Cranfield’, myself, Becky and our 4 month son Xavier indeed face an English winter but also no doubt one of the greatest years ahead. I hope to take you along for the MBA through this blog – sharing insights gained from lectures, wisdom from the experiences and ultimately answer the question of whether the examined life is indeed worth living.