A Run

Module 1 finally got completed with the presentation on Monday. Tuesday was our day off to prepare for module 2 that commenced on Wednesday. This module will take us through the core business foundations of cross enterprise leadership, i.e., strategy, accounting and finance. We started with a strategy case on Wall-Mart where almost all the functional-silos were covered. There were professors from Strategy, Finance, Accounting, Marketing, Operations and IT, team-facilitating the discussion around the case. We learnt about value proposition, achieving cost leadership, macroeconomic perspectives, competitive advantage, etc from Strategy’s view; Accounting Professor introduced as how to measure the performance of the strategy using numbers; Marketing professor on branding, market segmenting, competition, etc; Managing flows that create value from operations’ perspective; IT on the importance of leveraging technology in a complex organization like Wal-Mart and finally, Finance perspectives on performance ratios, inflation, interest rates, etc. On the whole, Wal-Mart highlighted the integrated behavior of various disciplines to create values in the firm. Cross Enterprise Leadership’s business intelligence seems to have started taking its shape in this module.

The Accounting cases introduced us to basic accounting fundamentals and accounting standards. Finance case on Friday, equipped us with the size-up techniques in order to analyze a business from a manager’s perspective to improve processes within the organization (or) a banker’s perspective to make a decision on say, loans.

Module 2 seems to be promising!!!

The last week of module 1; We had the final guest speaker for leadership course, J.-Robert Ouimet(Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Holding O.C.B. Inc. ). Final exams seemed to have arrived earlier than the original anticipation. The decision making course, had a four hour final exam on Thursday. We had to rip apart the given case and provide recommendations on decisions, to the President and Vice president of Analytics, from a consultant’s perspective. Two hours after the case exam, the 24 hour leadership integrative report started. We had to work with our learning teams on a given leadership case for the next 24 hours and submit a report. The following Monday, we had to present the case to a panel consisting of Professors of Leadership, Communications and Career Management, and guests that were Presidents and CEOs from different companies. Whew!!! What a way to finish. Looking back at what we were exposed to in the module, I was overwhelmed with the depth of knowledge that we gained.

Week9’s LPO classes were sort of building more on the Change-Management perspectives. We had Guest lectures from David Loree(Organizational behavior professor at Ivey), Wade Oosterman(Chief Brand Officer at Bell Mobility and Channels), David Estok (Editor-in-Chief, The Hamilton Spectator) and Violet Konkle (former COO, Walmart Canada). In addition to the regular decision making, leadership and career cases and, communications classes, Career Management had organized resume review sessions, and Finance and Consulting industry overview clinics. The consulting club officially kick-started its activities with an introductory session on case interviews. There was also an optional (paid) Financial Technical training workshop (IBI) during the weekend. The most important highlight in week9 was the self assessment report that was due on the Thursday. We deployed numerous self-assessment techniques such as PERSONAL VALUES, MYERS-BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR (MBTI), CRITICAL INCIDENT TECHNIQUE (CIT), DAVID BAUM LEADERSHIP WHEEL, Sigma Testing PERSONALITY RESEARCH FORM, 360* FEEDBACK and CAREER LEADER. Honestly, I found this to be very useful in terms of providing useful insights on my career aspirations and skills. It’s true that the no self assessment tool can be 100% accurate, however, the tools did reasonably predict personal traits and behaviors, enabling me to understand myself better and make better/effective career decisions.

Monday, Week7 started off with a stimulating commitment workshop as part of the Leadership course. Honestly, I was amazed with the learning at the end of the three hour long session. It was all about harnessing the power of persuasion. The workshop primarily consisted of role plays where all the students assumed and played their roles as part of their learning teams. After the individual role plays, students were cold called to play their roles with external guests(these guests disguised themselves as the real people that were mentioned in the exercise and took our nerves away; later we found that they worked for a professional organization that conducted role plays, etc to demonstrate different leadership learning). At the end of the day, we learnt the importance of influence, persuasion, feedback, coaching, etc. During the second half, David Fear - President, Ziff Brothers Investments, Europe delivered his guest lecture on candor and the importance of candid feedback.

Tuesday, in addition to scrutinizing two bidding decisions (DMA cases), we had the first official discussion on tactical career management. Sharon Foulon, the director of Career Management at Ivey facilitated the discussion, along with her team. We were introduced to our relationship managers who indeed have had extensive experience in diverse functions and recruiting. Later that afternoon, we also had a quick introductory session to the community action day.

Wednesday, we explored another bidding decision case and an advanced optimization modeling case. DMA cases were getting tougher and learning was immense. Later we discussed an Managing your career(MYC) case. There was a guest from the Library who delivered a very informative lecture on using the library resources at Western University. We were also exposed to the mammoth of online journals, magazines and reports that we had access to.

Thursday started with a simulation and decision modeling case. We also discussed a couple other cases for Managing your career. The highlight for the day was the Guest speaker: John Furlong, the CEO of VANOC (Vancouver Olympics Organizing committee). He had teleconferenced from Vancouver.

Friday, we had around 20 guests to our class: The prospective MBA students who took part in the class visitor day. They witnessed the DMA case discussion live, where we discussed a real-estate litigation case with the help of regression analysis. Earlier, we had two communications sessions, as electrifying as usual. The day concluded with a guest lecture: Steve Papagiannis - Manager, Solution Specialists, SAS Canada. He exposed us to the advanced data modeling and analytics techniques in the real world. Friday was also the deadline for the first tuition installment.

On Saturday, MBA students from both the cohorts participated in a local community action service. We had been to a farm land near the Fanshawe Pioneer village to help the farmers grow Tomatoes using organic techniques. Watch the press coverage here: