‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane…

​It’s been an insanely super fantastic few days since the weekend….It started with the alumni simulated interviews on Saturday morning followed by the alumni and MBA class networking cocktail. I continue to be amazed by the amount of quality time the IMD MBA alumni spend in mentoring, helping and guiding our class. Just this past week, I spent 2 hours with my mentor talking about my post MBA goals, this was followed by a simulated interview by another alumni and of course the many alumni met from the class of 2012 who I remember meeting last year during the assessment day. I know I have said this before but we have a strong alumni network, strong not purely by quantity but strong by the fact that they are ready to regulary devote quality time to help the IMD community and us…Thank you IMD MBA alumni’s!

On my list of thank you’s, I must also thank my classmates on the Mountain Experience committee (Fabian, Dan, Christophe & Ziv) for putting together an amazing three days in the beautiful mountains of Morgins with activities including Rafting, Hydrospeeding, Ultimate Frisbee, Rock climbing, Mountain biking, Pony rides (for the IMD kids), Family walks, Mountain Hikes and one hec of a party on Sunday night! I am still on the path to recovery…it was great spending time with my classmates and their partners away from the campus and in true vacation spirit!

And finally, I must thank all my classmates and IMD for a fantastic first 6 months of the program…as we embark on our summer breaks, I can’t help but reflect on how much I have learnt not just about business but about people, about myself, about cultures and languages, about leadership and about friendship…it’s been great but now its time for some R&R before we come back to head to South Africa! 

I’m off to Dubai tomorrow and my next blog post will probably come from the Middle East where temperatures are at 41 degrees! Nevertheless, there is nothing in the world that comes close to the excitement of going home!

…………..’Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane…..

Thank you IMD!

Vikas Menon

Media reports, crisis management, PR releases and much more in 8 hours at IMD

Feels good to be back at the blog and I have to thank my fellow classmates for taking the pressure off us bloggers during the ICP weeks….My team and I ventured out to Helsinki and London for our client meetings and enjoyed the opportunity to be challenged but also to challenge and raise important concerns with our client who is amidst a major product launch in Europe! But between the long 16 hour days and some sleepless nights, what I remember the most is all the fun we had as a team and the many laughs and high fives, etc….for this and more I must thank my team for keeping me entertained and for having a light heart even when things got really ugly...

Continuing on my series of “Would you Believe me”​ (aka unbelievable things about the IMD learning experience and environment) – This morning’s class focused on Crisis Management - Would you believe me if I told you that in 4 hours this morning we went through a frenzy of “media attacks” and released multiple press releases on behalf of our “simulated company”…..we fought the press, worked with them, pushed them, sometimes got pushed…we dealt with internal employees freaking out on us and we dealt with a major crisis at hand….we watched in amazement how things can quickly go from bad to disastrous in a mere few minutes while we had to make major decisions…...What did I learn - ”Anything that can go wrong will”

What am I talking about?  Well come to IMD next year to find out about this and more because here at IMD, we don’t simply talk about business frameworks, standards, best practices and 2x2 matrices but we actually see them unfold in all their glory....(or maybe not always!)

Real World…Real Learning……..an everyday reality at IMD!

Feels good to be back,

Vikas Menon

ICP Team 13

It's 5:30am and I just got back from a long ICP night before our final presentation tomorrow and then off to London on Friday for our "final" final presentation.....​Here are my classmates from ICP Team 13 with a great and inspiring blog entry!

Team 13 – The Story matters!

We have entered the final week of ICP project, the stage to consolidate and organize all our findings and to tell a compelling story.  As the driving finish to the racers, it’s the critical time for the team to deliver and to prove our value added to the client.

The scope of our project is to develop a go-to market strategy for a new product, under the context of the uniqueness of the Swiss agriculture business industry. The agriculture business may not been viewed as “sexy” as the Brazilian beer industry. However, when we started diving into the research and industry analysis phase during the first two weeks, we were amazed by how advanced the technologies are in the activities the farmers are involved in, how the dynamic is influenced by different players, and especially by the government policy, and how unique the situation in Switzerland is compared to the rest of the world. Besides the excitement, we also realized the challenge. For example, most of the farmers and stakeholders don’t speaking English, which puts more pressure on the two local team members for gathering information.

During our project, one of the magic moments was two hours before the mid-term presentation and workshop, when our program director walked into the study room and gave advice to our storyline. Using the same supporting material we had already gathered, he helped us to come up with a different story, linking all the evidence and making a conclusion with great depth. The transformation teaches us an important lesson. Often in the project, instead of lacking information, we have more, but fragmented information. The key to deliver a good project is not to seek for more information, but to integrate and make sense of each element to tell a coherent story.

Besides the knowledge of the agriculture industry, the more important thing we have learned during the ICP I is people. Business is all about people. Given the time constraint we keep reflecting on how to interact with the client, how to communicate with the program director and how to work efficiently as a team. In the real world, dealing with ambiguity, making decisions under time pressure, and fast learning–and-applying are part of daily practice. We are not perfect but we keep improving. 

Towards the end of the ICP I journey, in the harvest season, we will tell a great story, to the client, and to ourselves!

ICP Team 8

Todays blog entry comes from ICP Team 8 detailing their challenges and travels! 

Irena @ 18:00

I am on the train returning from our client's site. We just had our mid-term presentation and Rodrigo, Stephan, Thibault and I are discussing the challenges that await us in the following days. Part of the challenge is that Hagit and Vincent are already on their way to Zurich, from where they fly on to Stockholm.

In my mind I keep returning to our Friday's meeting with Shawn, our learning manager. We shared with him the first draft of the presentation. Back then the presentation lacked clarity and we had too many logical jumps between the slides. It needed drastic improvements. The day after we would share our second draft with Margaret, our ICP director, and I struggled to see how we would achieve that. But we did. There is certainly great potential in 6 dedicated people sharing ideas and redesigning the story. Margaret saw a completely different presentation and really liked our flow of thoughts. Finally, her comments greatly helped us when working on final touches of our presentation.

I again focus on the discussion with my team-mates on the train and just catch an observation that I would like to share with you. As Stefan said, it is pretty amazing that we just had a high-level discussion with top management of one of the biggest companies in its industry, but three weeks ago most of us had no knowledge on the environment in which they operate or the industry itself.


Vincent @ 21:00

"What would you like to drink Sir?"

Concentrated in the writing of this blog, I almost forget that Hagit, my Israeli team mate, and I are flying to Stockholm for a two day business trip. The objective? A "deep dive" within Swedish subsidiary of our client's organization. Contrary to other ICPs that focus on customers' interactions, we are indeed mainly dealing with internal  stakeholders of our client, a leading American company: we have to come with a new operating model in line with the external changes around the industry.

Today has been a big day for our team as we have presented our mid- term presentation to our client's top management. After long days in the dungeons, we have been able to show some good insights that generated deep discussions on our client's side. In the train to Zurich, after the presentation, our client project leader gave us good feedback and that was the best way to confirm that we were on track. Now we have to work hard to fulfill the high expectations and we only have 10 days until our final presentation.

It is incredible how fast you get to know your team mates within two weeks: we got to deeper know each other's personalities, pizza tastes, sources of anxiety and of energy, defense mechanisms and their goldfish side as soon as someone comes to a room to disturb us... In short, we are like members of the same family accepting the good and bad sides of each of us.

"What would you like to drink Sir?"
We had a transfer in Berlin on the way Stockholm...

Long summer days in Helsinki & Chasselas!

​I returned from our first client presentation for the ICP yesterday from sunny, warm Helsinki where the sun refuses to set until midnight! The week that led up to the meeting was the week from hell with us working until 2am most nights and getting back to school at 8am….but it all paid off and the client was extremely happy with our work so far….looking forward to a busy last 2 weeks of the ICP but before that a Sunday with a few friends visiting from out of town (Friends who were at INSEAD to celebrate their 5 year reunion) visiting the beautiful vineyards at Lavaux and enjoying a rare breed of Swiss wine – 'Chasselas' 

So…after a day of hiking over 15km through small ovillages and the lavaux vineyards, it’s time for so much needed rest before ICP week 3 kicks in!!

Goodnight,

Vikas Menon