Friedman, I want your job

One week gone into my MBA and I have some tired eyes and a strained ankle to show for the week. Not much in terms of achievement but the knock into an MBA has been pretty smooth. The one week of orientation before the actual start of classes ( I did not blog about that...) really got us into the groove for the actual classes

The key lessons learnt
a) Mondays are better than Fridays at B-Schools - What a jerk statement but that is true, all the sleep deprivation during the week, makes each passing day of the week worse. AT work, I could slow down and look forward to teh weekend but at B-Schools, you know that you cannot let down your guard and also with all the strained effort at keeping your weary eyes open, you really need to make up for the previous week during the weekend, than to relax for the next week and doing a One year MBA with all the cramped schedule does not help.

b) Class Participation is balloney - atleast till I figure out how that is measured. What difference does it make, if you are the first in class to blurt out the answer to a factual question whcih is anyways recorded in the Case hand out. Maybe it is just serves as a means to help you keep your eye lids open. I feel the class participation is more appropriate to measure when an inference from the Case Study is made or maybe a live example is cited, not when it is a straight lift off from the Case Study. As I had said in my previous posts, I need to figure this out yet and I hope I do not figure this out the hard way :(

c) The essential aspect of a student life in Germany - shopping at IKEA can be injurious to health in more ways than one. After spending nearly the whole Saturday walking the aisles of IKEA with my wife, I was left with an inflammation of the Achilles Heel - I have my left foot bandaged , making me looking pretty banged up, with all the sleep deprivation. And to top it all, this weekend was screwed till I finally could not take it any more and went to the Charitie Hospital and got a pretty doctor to give me a few painkillers. Anyways, I am way behind my study schedule ... I am here for the experience, not the grades :)

d) Time is a premium and if you want to write a blog, you just do it....

I am proud that I could get this blog post in the state that I am in. I want Thomas Friedman's job

Day 2 and there are butterflies

Today was just one of those days, you just have to live with. I had two classes - Microeconomics and Marketing ... the two courses being typically a study in contrast - one being a little heavy and the other full of energy. So, it is surprising that I went through the two courses with almost the same emotions - heavy.

Microeconomics - The prof decided to go slow today as this was just the beginning and it did seem like the course needs to speed up but then, if it did, I am not sure if I will have the stomach for that. I am excited about Microeconomics - that is my kind of course - cold and rational. But I go back to the days in IIT when I did the Economics course, the only course ( maybe the only other course besides Maths IV) that I regreted. The course was all screwed up, I had three faculty in a one semester course - we had facultys leave our batch like dead flies. At the end, we were combined with another batch and there was a hotch potch and I do not remember even hearing a word in the class and the only that I remember is sitting in one of the back benches with about 60 people, all doing our own things. In this class, only the first two rows had people looking at the teacher and there were about 5 empty rows between the second row and the rest of the class, and the teacher did not seem to bother. All that matterred to us was to get the attendance. So for the course, All that I did was to read Samuelson the day before the exam and I thought I was pretty brilliant as an economist but I did not score enough in my grades as I would have liked and I have not figured out why. Of course if I had studied, it would have helped, but I am still not sure when my answers were wrong and I think that is the problem with Economics - though it is supposed to be cold and rational, interpretation for outcome is determined by the faculty. If there are absolute answers, why is the world not a better place - how can anything be absolute. I have a bad feeling that this would happen again unless I hit the books real hard and I should, as this course is only for a few weeks and I will not have time to make up later.

I have always had problems with Marketing. The problem with Marketing is that there are NO absolute answers but what is important is that you need to be cock sure that what you are saying is RIGHT. I have a problem with that. I do not like to use absolute terms when I know that there are other probabilities. I think this is one subject where how you influence the answer is more important than the answer itself. I had a feeling for that in todays class but Iam a fighter and I guess I have learnt it today and I will be more ready and work on a little more on my communication style.

Hmmm... This is getting interesting

One day and wiser for it.

'Human Life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which are bad is that in any given situation we can only make one decision, we are not granted a second, third or fourth life in which to compare various decisions' - Milan Kundera

This was an interesting quotation put up by our Decision Analysis prof, Francis. How do I know if I have made the right decision in coming to esmt. The answer is that I will never know, just as every choice that I make along my life. What if, I had chosen to give my job application to Citibank or to Infosys or to KPMG instead of Satyam, would I have been sitting here. Am I happier here, rather than at, say, Mckinsey? I do not know since that case would never again come. The issue is not the decision that is taken but the future that is in front of the decision. A decision is made on what the future holds but after that there should be no second thoughts. As Jack Welsh would say, you make great leaps to bring about Paradigm shifts. If you lose, you cut your losses and you move forward, not agonising over how things could have been if the decision had been different.

Back to the decision on ESMT, after being exposed to my colleages and to the professors here, I have no reasons to look back on the decision. I am glad that I made te choice based on all the information that I have and I know I will not regret this. Now, this will mark a closure to thedoubts if any that I may have, as evidenced in my first couple of blog postings. So, this is my life and I move forward.

Not a bad learning for first day in school.

My first day back in School - OB

Not bad, I am back and still in one piece. I am impressed with myself for having done well, after so many years of professional life. The key will be to sustain it over the whole year. But I know, I am here for the learning and Learning I will.

We discussed the Jack Welsh case study in the Organizational Behavior (OB) class. A very interesing question popped up, would Jack Welsh have been as successful in Europe as he was in the US.? The answers were predictable, it talked about the Workers Council and Union issues in Europe, making it difficult for Jack Welsh to work miracles in Europe. I think the question should be different, Would Jack Welsh be successful in Europe as he was in the US? and my answer is 'YES'. If Jack Welsh is a good leader, he will know what works andwhat does not and that is the hallmark of a good leader. A quotation from today when he was asked what he would differently, his answer was that he did not move fast enough initially. One way of interpreting this would be to think of him taking time to explore what he could get away with and when he realised that, he could get real fast.

Where am I taking this response? If Jack Welsh were to manage a company in Europe, he would have modified his approach enough to see what fits Europe and then he would go the whole way as it takes for him to transform the company to be a world beater. It will not be the same as what GE is today, but it would still be a world beater. An example inpoint is Carlos Ghosn when he went to work in Japan on Nissan. What he eventuallydid in terms of breaking up the Supplier cartel, aggressively advocating Layoffs, etc are not practiced in a close fisted Japanese business culture. But he became a legand, a comic super hero and post Ghosn, even the flagship Japanese company, SONY had a non Japanese boss. People respect what is achieved and if Jack Welsh were to achieve in Europe, I am sure that he would have been given the mandate to go the distance (or maybe a little less than in the US). Imagine what that would have done to the face of European Business.

Closer to the turf - What Thatcher did in UK was unthinkable before or for that matter what Sarkovsky (when he gets time off from his girl friend) is trying to achieve in France. These require leaders who can cause paradigm shifts. People may not accept the neutron Jack but then he may not be a neutron Jack in Europe, he may be someone else who still created a World Beater Business.

The difference is that leaders are leaders regardless of the culture they are in. The true leaders can make the rules work for them.

The D- Day 21 Jan 2008

Today is the start of my classes at ESMT. I await with a excitement and fear as to what the future holds. Right now, I am not thinking of life in 2009, post ESMT but the life in 2008, life in EMST. I had a small inkling yesterday - a Sunday, the day before the classes

I finally got an apartment near my school on Friday, after a week of living like a nomad in Berlin. I read the course materials and did not see any pre reads for the Monday classes. So, I spent Saurday at IKEA to find stuff to furnish my apartment. I did not buy much, there is no way that I can do that when my wife is not there. It is her RIGHT to decide the furniure and i think that is right too - she has better taste than I do and possibly that will be a good practice for the time when we do buy our own house and need to furnish it. So, most of Saurday went into furniture watching. I slept in late on Sunday, went to mass and walked around a bit to see the places. I finally decided that I should go into school and catch up on emails and a few personal stuff. Boy, am I glad!!!

The studyrooms were filled, there were people sitting and reading stuff. I thought they were out to go one up on their classmates and I was okay with that. It is better that they are better prepared so that I can learn more from them. That is when Stefano, who was sitting in my study room, started talking about something in Decision Analysis and some survey to be done. I was scared, I rushed through the course work and I realised that for the DEcision Analysis, here were a few things to be read. I quickly glanced through what I need to read and Phew! It was not much. SO, I read through Cricinfo and savored India beating Australia at WACA and read about the BCCI decision to drop Ganguly and Dravid for the ODIs against Aus and SI. That was crap! Anyways, I had my bases covered and I also did read some stuff regarding using the Excel - no, I have used Excel through all my Professional life and actually that was all thatz I used, besides Word of course during the last 4 years, but there is still lots to learn. As I was slowly finishing up and thinking about where to go for Dinner, someone walks into the room and talks about a CAse Study about Jack Welsh. Crap! what was that. It is a pre read for Organizational Behavior (OB). SHoot! I decided there is no way I was going to read this sitting here and I picked p the Case STudy and decided to go home and read.

AT Home, drifting between sleep and wakenness, I read the Harvard case study which looked like a copy paste from one of his books. There were a few questions that I needed to answer, I readt hose questions and just above them was another Pre Read, Chapter 1 from 'Essentials of Organizational Behavior' by Stephen P. Rbbins and Timothy A. Judge (Robbins). SHoot! I had left the book at school. SO, Now, I was fully awake! I quickly analysed the Jack Welsch Case Study and set the alarm for 6 am . I did not need the alarm to wake up and rushed through my morning chores and was in School by 7:15 am. Picked up the book, fearing the unknown - maybe 40 pages to read. Thankfully hat was the introducory chapter and did no take much time to read and you can see, gave me enough time to type in this blog.

So, I start my classes in 30 minutes. Ihave 5 course in the first module
MicroEconomics - Michal Grajek
Organizational Behavior - Konstantin Korotov
Decision Making - Francis de Vericourt
Introduction to marketing - Erik Schlie
Accounting - Jochen Zimmermann

Wish me luck!