A2 goes Karting :-)

Started the day early today, so that I could complete the readings for 'Business Government and Society' class. And if you think that name of this class is long, you should see the reading for the class tomorrow - it's 60 pages :-)

Anyways, today me and many other people from my section are going for Karting at the Carlos Sainz center. Jacobo, who is a native from Madrid, initiated and planned the whole thing and as the place was a little far from city center, I started at 3:30 PM to reach there. Turned out that Google Map was not accurate in terms of the total time and we reached the place within 40 minutes. So, I spent some time taking pictures of the place before our karting began at 5 PM.

It was real fun with all of us taking three rounds of 10 minutes each. To say it upfront, I was the one who came in last in all rounds. But, I was not really targeting to race anyone and am really happy with the fact that with each new race, I met my targets and from initial time of 43 seconds per lap, I was down to 37 seconds per lap towards the end.

This was the first time I went for karting and I enjoyed the whole experience very much. Thinking of dropping by some more times while I am here in Madrid, so that I can train myself further :-D

After karting a few of us crashed a dinner planned by Nadjya and Ilya with their guests in Sol. Enjoyed the drinks and dinner with this group till mid-night and came home to rest before the new week begins. A fun day, this Sunday was :-)

Holi Run :-D

Well, I had registered for the Holi Run event along with some of my friends in the class. Basically, the organizers have picked up the Indian festival theme of Holi to play with colors and celebrate as a group, and created an event around it. They go around the world to different cities organizing a five kilometer Holi Run Marathon, where the participants basically enjoy being with each other and playing with colors while passing through the 5 kilometer track.

This event today was absolute fun. I played Holi after a real long time, and that too outside India. This event also gave an opportunity to visit the practice ground for Real Madrid team, as the venue was this ground, located a little away from the city area.

It was fun 3 hours spent with lots of colors and then I got back home, took a bath and started working on some of the reading for Monday and the tasks given on Friday.
Tomorrow we have a class event planned, so I am going to be out from afternoon till late. Although my legs are shouting their pain from all the walk and some running done this morning during the Holi Run, I am planning to cover most of my readings today before I sleep :-)

While the photos for Holi Run are already floating all around facebook, for those curious to know how I ended up looking after completing the Holi run, here is a picture of me for your amusement :-)

New term, new teachers, new classes - yet connection with old one remains :-)

So, today began our term three and it began in its full swing, right from day one - three classes of Talent Management, Corporate Finance and Supply Chain Management with an hour in between for group work.
And as the subject line suggests, we have three new professors for these three new classes, yet each of them builds on a class we have already studied before.
Is Talent management same as OB? No, but a part of it does build on OB, not to mention Supply Chain Management is an extension of Operations Management course and Corporate finance will need knowledge of WACC and NPV and excel models. And these are not things, which I am assuming or guessing, these are the things, which we have been told about in our classes today.

Speaking of assumptions, let me start with the Corporate Finance class. I must say we have been lucky to get really good professors for Finance related subjects so far, and term three maintained this winning streak. Carlos Bellon is our Professor for Corporate finance and he is an interesting fellow. With experience in Investment banking, and current pursuit of research, Carlos also has his unique way of convincing others and getting his point across. Today, he gave examples of a shirt problem and his conversation about this problem with his mother, and by the end his example ended, we already knew what he is talking about. Its good to innovate, but there is a learning cost involved; and its good to know how things are done, but its also needed to ask 'WHY' and not just rely on 'because that's how it is done'. I am penalize any statement which says "That is an assumption" was his declaration in the class. If something is on paper, it must have a valid reason.

His slides were full of many examples and characters from TV shows to movies to his family and through them all, he conveyed the message of what this course is going to be all about, what we need to do, what we can expect and what benefits this course will provide us. And yes, he makes "Investment Banker Jokes" in his class :-)
There is a new seating arrangement in his class, where we sit as per our level of understanding of finance prior to the MBA, so that he can interact with the gradient accordingly.
I know there is going to be a lot of work and assignments and number crunching and decision making and modeling stuff for this class, and I am already excited about it.

By the way, the day started with Talent management class and our professor Monika Hamori was quick enough to clarify that this is not an OB class. This class may build on people interactions we learned in OB, but it is a different stream altogether. I found her quite enthusiastic about her teaching and she maintained class participation well by giving chance to new people to speak and at the same time asking people about examples they have seen or experienced in their own past. Looking forward to get insights into that ever eluding stream of HR - who knows when these internal details will help us in our jobs :-)

Our group meeting was fairly informal, no housekeeping and ground rules like the last time although we did prepare a common excel with required deliverables and deadlines for the group.

Supply Chain Management is yet another interesting class that started today. Although a short class of 10 sessions, the syllabus covers a lot of aspects and Daniel Corsten, our professor for Supply Chain management explained us the overall structuring of syllabus today. He also provided us an outline for group work. Before that, he made good use of the class time to explain what supply chain management is all about and why should we as future managers learn it. When discussing these aspects, he asked us examples we could site of various components he discussed and also examples when failure to manage these components or having knowledge of them has created problems.
Considering the diverse group that we are, many people came up with many different examples, and I am quite impressed that Daniel knew most of them. In fact he actually rejected a couple of them, explaining what happened in those cases and how it was not relevant, and gave some more information about many examples to show how they fit the topic under discussion. This is going to be an interesting class as well.

In a nutshell, the first impression of this term has been great !!

In the evening, I had meeting with Prof. Alvaro and Manan for fellowship related work, and we discussed our way ahead on our paper submitted for one of the upcoming conference.

And then, the EM grade was out. I am not really happy with it, but at this point it doesn't matter anyways - the grade is out already. Went to see a movie to get rid off thoughts about this grade and am writing this post at late hour tonight. Good Night readers. Happy Weekend :-)

The Train the Trainer Marathon :-)

Well, today was the day when finalists for 'Making Change Happen' presented their proposals to the ATK Consultants that were jury for the day.

While each of us identified with certain solutions, we also found some areas that we could have done better on.
Overall, a good learning by knowing what other teams have done.

Found one common theme across all teams - and yes, the teams were made to wait outside the hall before presenting so that they don't know what others have already said and can present and also face the QnA with their own ideas - yet, all of them had the same phrase - "Train the Trainer" approach.

May be it was too obvious to have as a plan, may be these teams did think on similar lines, and hence came out as winners in their respective sections - either ways, I have heard this term so many times today that its still ringing in my head.

During the wrap-up, ATK presented their solution to the case and while the consultant presenting this made it clear that this is just an abstract and not the entire solution, I did feel it was too generic and did not reveal any real details on how they addressed some of the technical issues evident in the case.
Of course, they did get the job and so we have to assume that the original proposal was strong enough to get the job done.

And now, as the 'Making Change Happen' week ends, begins term 3 - our seating charts, work-groups and new group allocation for room bookings are already active and its about time we jumped into the next phase of our MBA :-)

Classes in two days !!

Well, the fun is about to get over. We are done presenting our proposal to IE internal faculty today and got a grade for it. Our team did not go through for the final pitching which is going to be tomorrow.
So, now that we don't have anything to do, for the making change happen, apart from attending the finals tomorrow and peer evaluation submission of course, there was a moment in time, when we felt relaxed.

Soon, I realized that term three classes start right away in this week on Friday and checked our classes for day one. It is going to be a full day, with lots of readings - so, either today or tomorrow, real work for term three has to begin !!
Speaking of work, did I gossip about this person in our section, who has no clue of what work means or how it is done, but he still ended up spelling the word 'work' correctly and not only that, he used the word in a phrase correctly in one of the class chats. This MBA is actually making people familiar with unknown concepts :-P

Stayed back in school for a while to see if I can do some of the reading today and succeeded in at least skimming through the syllabus and cases for day one.

And yes, finally, one of the grades for term two is out. I am not sure when all of them will be out, as it is already close to two weeks since our final exam. Anyways, I don't wish to think too much about this one.

Will try to catch up some sleep tonight as yesterday night ended up with me going to Kristina's birthday party. What tomorrow brings, we never know :-)

Bringing it all together :-)

Well, for almost the entire day today, starting at 11 AM until 8 PM in the evening, our Curie group worked to bring together our individual inputs, have a solution proposal for the case we have been assigned, get the presentation ready and practice it once after deciding who is presenting what.

It was the day to bring it all together, so that we can present tomorrow morning before internal IE faculty.

A good news arrived today when I got an email indicating that our paper, which I am working with Prof. Alvaro and Manan, as part of my fellowship work, has been selected for presentation in the WISP conference.

There are a few review comments and areas of improvements though, but it felt so good to see that all our efforts are showing up good results.

Frankly speaking, this news made my day :-)

It's time to put on the Consultant face :-)

Monday morning, specially a Monday after a week full of relaxing moments. It had to be tough to get myself out of the bed and make it up until the Aula Magna.

Somehow, I managed to do so just-in-time [well, I was a couple of minutes late, but the session had not started yet, so technically, I was on time :-) ].

After the briefing about part B of the ATKearney case and a connecting the dots session by Erik, our group had a brief discussion at Starbucks to decide our plan of action.

We divided the individual work and areas of focus and agreed to come prepared tomorrow with all the details. We also agreed to put in all our work in a shared google doc by 8 PM today, so that others can read through what we found :-)

All-in-all, the pace was set for all work to be done. And then, after posting the Toledo photos on facebook, having lunch and a brief siesta, I came back to school, my consultant face on, to do the research and analysis needed and 'crack the case' :-)

Its the finale of change modules and we want to give it our best shot :-D

Photos, Coverletters, Readings and the warm up :-)

Today, after having a good rest until noon, when I finally woke up, it was time to start working on the case for next week.

Did some reading of the case material provided by the IMBA team for the 'Making Change Happen' event.

At the same time, batch editing of Toledo photos was in progress. These will be posted on my Facebook real soon :-)

I also did some research for a couple of companies for which we have received job postings from Magali, so that I can write an appropriate cover letter for them.

All-in-all, a day spent to warm up to the next week and to the next term :-)

A day of explorations and voyages !!

12th October, the day when Columbus arrived in the Americas; the day when Spain currently celebrates its national day; and a day in weekend just after the exams for term two are over :-)

So, a though came to me on Friday evening - why not go somewhere and do some sightseeing and what can be a better spot for sightseeing than Toledo - the Imperial City?

Well, it was the Spanish capital city for a long time; it is something doable in a day and it is a place I have not been before :-)

It was me and Anoud who made the plans and when I asked around to a few other friends - some were not too keen to travel on this weekend, most of them had already seen Toledo [Yeah, I know I am a little late to visit this place]. So, it was that the two of us booked our tour with Viator on the Friday evening and decided to go to Toledo.

So, this morning started at 8:15 AM when I met Anoud on Principe de vergara and then we went to the travel office. We took a bus at 9 AM which got us into Toledo in around 40 minutes. There was a English speaking guide accompanying us, so the whole experience was so much better.

I am seriously impressed with the grandeur of the Cathedral in Toledo, the innovative way the local authorities have turned the ruins at Alcazar into a Museum and the historical feel that we get into this city. Both of us enjoyed the Toledo experience today.
This tour concluded with visit to a factory which makes ornamental things out of the old craft here at Toledo, to do golden carvings and decorations on processed steel. The only difference, In olden days, these works were done on sword handles and armors of royalty; in current times, its done in a reduced scale on all kinds of souvenirs :-)

By the time it was 5:30 PM, we were already in Madrid. Stayed around at Sol for a coffee at Starbucks and then took a bus back home.

Exploring the Imperial city of Spain and its history, even while Spain celebrates its National Day and the day of its greatest historical exploration, was a great, great experience, which made our day today - not to mention, it helped us get rid of usual school talks and reset our brains to take in the term three :-D

Not just Change Management .. but, Life Management !!

Today began the 'Making Change Happen' module of our IMBA program. A week of team work to solve a change management real life challenge, prepared by the consulting firm ATKearney and IE.

So, even while there was a briefing about part A of the case, with a great video featuring the IE staff members doing a role play, and a short introduction to how change management is handled at ATKearney, the part which I most enjoyed today was the opening address by our Keynote speaker.

Mr. Frederico Tejera, CEO of NH Hotels, with rich previous experience with Disney and P&G, was the keynote speaker of the day and he started his address by getting right into what change management is, how he has handled it previously and is addressing it currently.

He did mention a couple of books and had some slides on theory of change management, but was quick enough to say that, "this is all what you find in books anyways, so let me not say it here, as I won't be adding any value then". The message was clear - No bullshitting and jargon talks with this guy :-)

I liked a couple of themes he acquainted us with today.
"Change cannot be fake. It has to be honest" He then shared some past experiences explaining these concepts.
"You cannot bring change by giving speeches. you need to show people concrete steps taken for bringing the change, may it be change in working capital allocation or may it be change of marketing mix."
Point duly noted :-)
Frederico was concise in his address and at the same time made sure he addressed us in the right direction. He also connected with the audience and kept them engaged by throwing challenges at us and asking us how we would have handled some of the situations he had faced in his past experience.
All the great skills we learned in communication skills class were demonstrated by Frederico today.

During the QnA, it was interesting to see him comfortably answering all questions including the one where someone posed a question about quality of NH hotels and whether "he knows his products". Frederico gave a convincing reply without any hesitation.
Another such reply which I found interesting was "It is not the crisis that is changing our business [of hotels]. It is the internet. People no longer go to travel agents and pick brochures. They search online and book accordingly. Crisis is never bad, as it helps us to put things in their rightful place."

Before concluding today's post, I would also like to mention this one quote by him, which he emphasized a couple of times, and stated that he believes in it the most.
"Change management is no longer a limited-time-period thing. Today, change is everywhere and change is needed everyday for any organization to survive and compete and stay ahead. Change management has now truly become life management"

The Beacon of Term Three ...

Well, for some time in morning today [while I was still asleep after staying up late watching movies last night], IMBA team published the term three work groups on Campus Online. Those who were awake, posted them on our section's whatsapp group.

And then don't know why, but the group link disappeared !!

Nevertheless, the short time for which it was available was good enough to sound the beacon of term three for all of us. Greeting new group members, forming new whatsapp groups and other rituals soon began all around and this short publication surely created a buzz on a day when we are all enjoying the last day of our vacation a.k.a. the career fair :-)

Tomorrow onwards, for a week, we get to be consultants, and we will 'Make Change Happen' :-D

Chores time :-)

Well, there was no company today at the career far that I was interested to go for. So, a day spent at home, buying grocery, doing chores from washing clothes to doing dishes.
All at a leisurely pace :-)

But the real chore which starts today, and I am hoping to enjoy it rather than doing it as a chore, is that of exercising.

Yes, my gym membership starts today and I am hoping that I find enough time everyday to enjoy it. Else, I will do it a couple of times in the week [mostly on weekends] anyways, but then that would become a chore, which I am not too much in favor of.

Time to inspire myself and make sure that the subject line for today 'Chores time' changes itself into 'Fitness time' :-)

A day in Madrid with no reason to go to MM31 .. really ???

No exam, no classes, no submissions, no events, no agenda to go to MM31 today !! Yes, there is the ongoing career fair which is based out of Serrano 99, but MM31 has got nothing to do with the event !!

So, did that stop me from going there?? Nah~

I went there anyways and sat in the launchpad preparing some cover letters and researching companies :-D

Yet another thing which I noticed today. When walking towards the school, I made a stop at Zumus as usual to get a chocolate drink  [it was almost noon, so not really a time for the regular coffee :-) ] and a croissant - and then I began walking towards MM31 sipping on my drink and eating the croissant as I walked.

And then, suddenly I realized - I have no rush today - I don't need to eat this croissant and sip on this drink as I walk - I can go to the school, sit back and enjoy my breakfast sitting calmly in the launchpad !!
But then, sometimes some habits catch up with us so much, we never realize all of this :-)
As I had already eaten most of the Croissant when this thought occurred, I decided to finish it on the way anyways :-D

Another term concludes ..

With the Technology and Innovation exam today, another term concluded here at IE. I also wrapped up the technology blog some time back to officially be done with all the work for term two.

Exam today was very similar to the mid-term, where we had to answer two of four short answers and six of eight multiple choice questions. I think I like this flexibility, as it ensures that we submit answers for the topics we know best, and this improves chances of everyone putting their best in the exam. Of course, the curve will form itself anyways :-)

Today is also the day when Career fair began. After having a siesta in afternoon, I reached to the venue at around 4 PM. It was a decent crowd of students all dressed up to impress and that included me as well ;-)

Anyways, of those companies I was interested in and had done some research, two turned out to be hiring for Spain - so needed working visa for Spain, two had international openings and the representatives told me to apply online - and there were two which I was most curious about - where I could not only talk about various aspects of the company and positions available, but also succeeded in exchanging contacts and handing over my CV. Not bad, I would say.

Key take-away from day one of career fair - when a company is hiring for Spain - you need to have a valid work visa for Spain - language is not a rigid constraint, as the hiring managers know that we can and will pick it up in next few months - if we really want to work here in Spain :-)

Anyways, had a group dinner with lots of variety of Egyptian style fish recipes at Yehia's place. I supplemented the dinner menu with chicken curry I made, Chris got her specialty Brazilian Desserts and Jon n Sara came with the best Chocolate cake in Madrid. Sophie got wine and beer to complete the menu - overall a fun filled last night of term two spent merrily with my term two group :-)

Wanted: Big Data Processor :-)

Seriously !! Yesterday, I didn't even think of reading anything about Technology and Innovation, partly relying on my IT background that I can manage this one, and partly because I assigned a higher priority to research of companies coming down to Madrid for Career Fair at IE.

Anyways, after I opened the folder of documents that I had downloaded for the subject, and saw the sheer number of technical notes, slides, reference readings, videos and webpages I needed to go through, I knew it's going to be another looooong day and longer night.

Speaking in technology terms, I just wished that I had some Big Data processor installed in my brain, which will take in all this data from various sources, merge and integrate it and make it ready for me to use in exam tomorrow.

By now, you must have guessed by my lingo that I have been reading too much about the subject already !!

Anyways, last exam of term two tomorrow, so looking forward to it :-)