INSEAD Singapore Review P2

Thinking back this was a strange 8 weeks. I was disappointed with the academic experience – see below – but in terms of getting to know both the section in Singapore and bonding I suspect I will never have as much fun.

The positive side was the group dynamics in both your personal group and the sections as a whole. We got up to loads of things other than the studying, parting and travelling. We played “lyric” bingo in class where I heard (but do not expect to hear again) someone drawing an analogy in a Process Operations Management (POM) class between a bottleneck and their own personal needs - “…so can you describe this as something where I touch my self rather than….” However, the real genius was that the professor did not fully appreciate what was going on and began to use this analogy (managing to score some bingo hits himself) to make various points. Other episodes were walking in to an 8:30 am class all dressed in nightwear (for example some people only had a robe on, others half shaved while someone brushed their teeth as the lecturer walked in); having a glass of vodka each at 10am and storming the other sections amphi.

The climax was in a Leading Organisations lecture on cultural diversity where we managed to make the professor wonder if he had entered a parallel universe in which INSEAD students were the exact opposite of what they are meant to be. The Dutch attacked the Germans for their lack of cultural awareness; our US classmates got it big style but managed to respond by offending various countries (viva Freedom Fries); an American accented Indian managed to launch the ultimate put down to a Brit of Indian origin; a Brit commented that they could not believe they were being lectured on colonialism and cultural integration by a white South African; a black South African in turn piled in to defend his country man from the Brit. By this stage the lecture was watching on in horror as he tried to prevent this train wreck. There then followed a walk out by a Lebanese classmate before the professor was asked what date it was. He responded “April 1st” and smiled as he realised he had been. I have rarely laughed as much as I did in that class and thanks to Fabrizio for taking it so well. What that class proved was how close we had become as a group as the outline of an idea (discussed pre-class between 5-10 people) was taken up organically by the whole section and where everyone trusted their classmates/friends enough to make outrageous comments that no one would take offence at because they knew the person saying it did not mean it.

Unfortunately, the courses themselves were the least enjoyable of my time at INSEAD. In order of enjoyment:

1) LO – Professor Castellucci was a top guy who really tired to get us to understand the skills we will and do need as well as accelerate their development now.

2) CFP – the legendary Professor Pierre Hillion. The guy is a finance guru who can simplify the most complex concepts. After a period with him you realise the whole world is just a set of Options – in fact everything is an option. He also has the best French English accent in the world – all the native speakers spent the first lecture wondering what a “stack” was (perhaps a new financial instrument we had never heard of) only for it to later dawn on us that Pierre was talking about “Stocks”.

3) Strategy – Professor Constantini – an Englishman who according to my Italian friends speaks Italian with a Rome accent. The Prof was ex-Mckinsey and really knew his stuff. Perhaps an acquired taste for some I thought he was great.

4) Managerial accounting – Professor Jake Cohen (now Dean of the MBA). Certainly a prof who knew his stuff but one I did not gel with. Although he made the subject real world I did not appreciate his style or arrogance – but to be fair, others loved him.

5) Marketing – Professor Klein was trying a revamped syllabus with us that involved an about to be published book – “Momentum”. Unfortunately despite her best efforts the course did not work and a lot of us felt disappointed in the quality of the course and that we could have got far more out of the course were there better material.

6) POM – Professor Girotra was a star who had clearly done his best to make the course more interesting and valuable. However, for various reasons the course did not work, particularly in my case, and it was difficult to bring the lessons into the real world that many of us plan to inhabit post INSEAD. Having said that understanding a bottleneck is certainly a useful concept to have in my armoury.

The worst part of P2 was the end as a lot of people decided to head off to Fonty. Suddenly, these brilliant people who in 4 months you had become so close to were heading off and you may not see them again in 2008. I think this is where the strength of INSEAD i.e. its intensity and pressure, becomes a liability in that if you had another period together then perhaps you could truly explore the full boundaries of friendships and become a far more effective network as well as a close set of friends. Either way it gave a very good example of what P5 would be like…