Last year, while applying to IMD, I had the opportunity to interact with exceptional IMD alumni and today I’d like to introduce to you Mathieu Pointeau (IMD MBA 2008). He is one of the most inspirational, positive and motivating leaders I have ever come across and a role model for everything IMD! As always, he was supportive and excited to share his story and support the IMD community.
Mathieu Pointeau, French and one of 2008’s blog writers, is the author of today's guest entry. He reflects on his experience at IMD and shares some of his first impressions as Alumnus, exactly five years after he started his MBA at IMD.
Try this next time you are strolling on a cliff. Toss a rock over the edge and begin to count. It falls at the speed of a tumbling human so will reach 200km per hour after roughly nine seconds. Keep counting. If the cliff is sheer and tall, you should be able to tick off as many seconds before hearing a distant crack. Now get ready to hop off.
This weird sport is known as base jumping. I am not an adept myself but it is the best analogy I have found to describe my year at IMD. The courage – or is it madness? – required to leap into the unknown. The aspiration to see things differently. The adrenalin rush of the first few days. The short yet intense experience that brings your world upside down. The very personal journey during which you deliberately push your limits to find out more about yourself. Everything that you thought impossible suddenly becomes reality and you start wishing you had developed additional senses to capture it all.
You need time, speed and most importantly timing for the chute to prove useful, though. Pulling the cord too late is the easier and most spectacular way to crash. Falling too slowly could equally be as fatal, as the parachute may fail to open fully. You need to leap into the void with determination and willingness to take risks. Drop your last defences, get rid of the masks. Pick the right time to jump and choose the right moment to deploy your parachute, sometimes as late as a second or two before impact.
An MBA is by no means a guaranteed success story. It does not always bring you what you had imagined. It does not grant you any rights either. It just increases your awareness. To succeed, courage, talent and effort are as much required as humility, timing and a real willingness to take risks. You need to pick the right time to jump, i.e. when to start your MBA and the best time to pull the cord, i.e. end your experience and transit into a new environment in the best possible way.
IMD brought me much more than what I had actually expected. Besides a strong business culture and a renowned diploma which undeniably boosted up my professional career, there are two invaluable assets that it has literally gifted me with: amazing friends and increased self-confidence. The recurring and everlasting feeling that there is nothing I cannot actually do. But I don't forget those [including myself] who have found themselves unexpectedly unemployed despite an IMD MBA and above average performances, or those who are somehow still unhappy at work and struggling to find their path in these difficult economic turbulences. I don't forget either how privileged we all are compared to so many. Compared to too many.
The greatest gift from IMD is probably that you are back on a very rewarding feeling of never ending learning. You start remembering all these advices, comments, feedbacks, conclusions, conversations, examples not to say theories that you thought you would never remember so intense was the pace with which they were distilled. Yet, they are coming back and you are using them. Once again. Every day.
2008 was the best year of my life. A year that keeps on opening doors and worlds I would have never envisaged before. And I sincerely hope that 2013 will bring to this year’s IMD MBA Class the very enriching and life-changing experience I had the opportunity to go through 5 years ago.
Carpe Diem.
Or in plain English: Seize and live the moment.
And enjoy the ride.
Mathieu
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