A Run

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: