4 week summary, Consulting here I come

Its clear from the BCG presentations and general consulting overload since beginning INSEAD (we've had, at last count, "personal" letters, cds, sponsored parties (kudos to Bain), corkscrew (wine bottle) openers of the expensive kind and books....) that the "famous" consultancy firms value brevity.

So on that basis (and with one-off overdose of bullet points) here is a KPI of P1 (not fully in context, but hey it’s my blog).

Courses:

• FMV (aka finance): Our professor is the former dean of INSEAD (he has the garden on the campus roof named after him), who is very knowledgeable and pretty funny. He likes shouting, boy does he like shouting, but he makes the subject more interesting and watching him move across the amphi waving his arms is not unlike watching John Travolta showing his moves in Saturday Night Fever.

• P&M (aka Microeconomics): We have a surfer dude professor from Hawaii. He has a penchant for Hawaiian shirts, shorts, flip flops, the words "Awesome and Aloominum" and Tiger beer. But he knows his stuff and whilst I am not sure I totally get it, the real life element is refreshing. Just in case you are wondering, he is clearly incredibly clever and was smart enough to leave HBS, Stanford, Kellogg et al and head off for a quality of life in Hawaii most of us can only dream of.......I hate him.

• UDJ (aka Statistics) : Imagine the stereotypical smooth Russian from a cold war movie or the sports stars of the USSR and you have our stats professor, including a brilliant accent. However, this man is a bona fide genius because he makes a 1.5 hour lecture fly by and actually makes statistics fun (yes I do hold my head in shame at that confession). The use of articles, M&Ms and cold calling has been inspired.

• Financial Accounting : To be fair, this is less about the mechanics of accounting (although we have covered this) but more about understanding the accounts enough to decipher what the hell a company's management team are up to and how well the company is doing. I'm not the biggest fan of this professor - but he knows his stuff, can be amusing and cold calls mercilessly.

• LPG (aka knowing me, knowing you as ABBA would say). This is mix of trying to understand yourself, while trying to understand your impact on others and trying to understand them. The professor varies from boring to insightful and the whole range in between.
  

Week 2 and 3

• Lots of career counselling, finance presentation, getting to know each other (i.e. parties and barbecues) and our professors. Oh and we are travelling like mad each weekend - Malaysia and Thailand with the P1/P2 break looking like a choice of Cambodia or Vietnam. Oh and the potential IBers are working around the clock on their CVs and covering letters as European IB internships deadlines are now.
  

Week 3

• This was Iberia week and it was good. The amphi storming was funny with the bull fighter scoring extra points for smoothness and clever use of socks. The party was excellent, t-shirts were cool and the drinks flowing - these national weeks are going to be a lot of fun.
  

Week 4

• Mid-term tests - now my view on these is that you do a bit of work and then walk in and do the test. However, it seems that the professors do not see it that way - oh dear.......

• Interviews for the IBers are coming in - mostly video conference call interviews with London staff -oh the joys of the 21st Century. To be fair the poor buggers and bugerrettes are being really stretched and to some extent the famous "INSEAD community spirit" has kicked in with non IBers stepping in to help out. As one man, who could be described as a larger than life human happiness machine says "two teams, one dream." (copyright NH-L)

Week 5

• 3 day week due to Chinese New Year. Most people just used the break as an opportunity to travel or just relax in Singapore. (I refer you to my fellow bloggers Phathu and Wordly for more details).
  

Week 6

• Workload is reaching insane levels with pre reading being an interesting concept that is ignored. Assignments are coming from all directions and then there is the P&M game. I will not tell you more but it’s interesting to bring the theory to life, as well as prove some of my classmates really need the P2 class in strategy.

• But still time to arrange valentine’s night poker and invite our P&M prof. A lesson to be learnt is that if your prof attends poker, then make sure you have done the pre reading for the next morning in case he cold calls anyone (perhaps anyone who he played poker with?)
  

I am back in the saddle, but let's see how long this lasts....

INSEAD Singapore

13 January 2008

(See three posts below for explanation for the strange chronology)

So week 1 of my life at INSEAD is over.

First impressions? Well, for once the hype may well be justified. So, as any good potential MBA graduate should do (other than a top power point presentation or excel wizardry), I will comment on various elements of the INSEAD experience.

Classmates

My classmates are, as expected, as diverse a bunch of people one is ever likely to meet. We have backgrounds ranging from the traditional (Consulting and Investment banking), to the different (Entrepreneurs and NGOs) to the way out there (a monk).

The best thing is that everyone seems to be friendly, witty and quite happy to laugh at themselves. A promising beginning.

Also the P3s (i.e. those that joined in August 2007) have been remarkably friendly and have really made an effort to make us welcome.

Campus

The campus is superb. It has been open about seven years and the design has created a modern, open and comfortable facility that has a very warm/positive ambience. All the staff are incredibly friendly and helpful (except, perhaps, the IT staff - although they may suffer because of the ridiculously high standard set by the other groups). Oh and the canteen is inexpensive, tasty and provides a variety of dishes.

The location is good with an MRT (metro/subway/train/underground station - choose your language) station a 15 minute walk from campus and a 15 minute taxi ride to central Singapore. Also the two main residences of choice for INSEAD students (more details later) are a 10 minute walk from the campus.

We also got given a very nice personalised gift from INSEAD - a small, but very nice gesture.

Academics

This has been an induction week, so while full of lectures, its been mostly about informng us about the next 12months and helping s to adjust to Singapore an INSEAD.

We did have a one day case study described as an "Intro to General Management" which was utterly brilliant. It encapsulated everything I hope that the INSEAD MBA is going to be about. A fantastic professor guiding us through a complex case, challenging us, drawing out a wide range of class experiences and then beginning to teach us how to approach and deal with problems. Just a very good day at school.

One interesting angle is that there was a quite focus on "Ethics" and the challenges we will face when we graduate. The professor raised some testing issues and elicited a debate that was surprising in the wide range and vehemence of views expressed. People are always aware that there are large personal and cultural differences between us as classmates, but this debate brought home the magnitude of those differences. Also, perhaps most troublingly, it made you look at yourself and wonder how much you will compromise your personal ethics in the future.

Singapore

I shall devote a whole post (well its more likely to be a eulogy based on how I am feeling at the moment) to describing Singapore. As an indicator, the climate is lovely (well sure beats a North America and European winter), the place is green, safe, efficient and welcoming.

Activities

There is no shortage of opportunities to do things at INSEAD. Whether its professionally driven, social (the social scene here is mental - parties, bars and travelling) or personal, this year is going to be packed.

My Fonty classmates have gone through an almost identical week - the only difference being that we are all walking around in shorts, t-shirts and sandals in a tropical climate, while they are in sub-zero temperatures in the French countryside. It’s a tough life……

Wish you were here......

"If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning."

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Yet more INSEAD and ranking tables

8 January 2008

(See two posts below for explanation for the strange chronology)

Given the obsession with rankings (see previous posts) I thought, dear reader, that you may be interested in the below.
http://rankings.ft.com/exportranking/european-business-school-rankings/pdf

How rankings are put together:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fa44d838-9ef1-11dc-b4e4-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=ca0d89c8-9f5d-11dc-8031-0000779fd2ac.html

World rankings

http://media.ft.com/cms/9753d360-a6ee-11db-83e4-0000779e2340.pdf

The latest FT rankings come out at the end of the month and I am sure that will be another excuse to re-visit this.

As a final caveat, rankings should be taken as a guide and are no substitute for serious research on the individual school, its culture and its unique selling point. For example, for me if you are serious about working internationally, then INSEAD should be near the top of your list.

Have fun.....


"Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree that it works, but not on them."

Eric Clark

MBA Delusions of Grandeur......

5 January 2008

(see below post for explanation for strange chronology)

As part of my ongoing research (and my tendency to over analyse), I was drifting around the FT.com and found the below.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7ed1600a-b174-11dc-9777-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=02e16f4a-46f9-11da-b8e5-00000e2511c8.html

I do find this amusing and I like its honesty; but what else would you expect from an INSEAD alum (ah....the reflected glory of being at INSEAD).

I suspect the sections about people not believing that they are the Global business leaders of tomorrow is very accurate. Most of us have healthy egos (although perhaps what makes INSEAD special is that most people realise this and are willing to laugh at themselves) and believe that business school will help mould us into what we aspire to be. However, based on meetings with my class over the past few months, another factor that unites us is uncertainty as to where we are going in our careers and the need to make a change. Nevertheless, part of the make-up of a graduating from a top MBA is to believe that you can succeed and that is a very dangerous assumption if not allied to a a healthy dose of private cynicism and self-awareness.

Of course, when applying to the MBA make sure that your career essay says the exact opposite of the above and instead lays out a credible, achievable and reasonable career plan. They are not testing your honesty, more your ability to put a credible career plan together so that they have the raw materials to work with. Call it the "bluster successfully" test (acronym "BS").

Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul.

James Allen from As a Man Thinketh

Catching up.....

I seem to spend half my time on this blog apologising for not posting and so I am proud to maintain this tradition by, again, apologising for not posting.

In fact I have commenced a number of posts that I then leave in draft with the express intention of returning to complete the post "later that day". As with all the best intentions something generally goes awry and of course what is a day, week or month between friends? Therefore, I am now faced with 3 draft posts that were commenced on various days in January, but have yet to be published. So in order to assauge my conscience (which conveniently is very small in this matter) I have decided to publish them now with the date they were originally created.

On a more serious note, when researching INSEAD I know that "delayed/incomplete" blogs used to be a tad frustrating, and that is partly why I started this blog. So its doubly galling to realise that I have been much worse at this than many of those I quietly criticised for their lack of organisation. Any one wish to join me for humble pie?

Apologies again

Accipiter

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

Jessamyn West