"Yes I do..." (1 year later)

...so this week is a week of milestones for me in many ways.....today was my last interview initiated through the on campus recruitment cycle.....speaking about interviews, I have counted that I have gone through 26 instances of interviews so far, fortunately enough not with 26 different companies...and hopefully should make some sort of a decision in the next few weeks.......but the major milestone is that it's my first wedding anniversary this weekend......while my partner has us planned to go to Zermatt....I was thinking about the same time last year....so one hour after our wedding, I was typing a last blog entry to send to the MBA office as a sample to be selected as a blogger....yes, you heard me correct - I said one hour after our wedding.....while all my friends were partying, celebrating, drinking and eating around me on the 24th November, there I was compiling this final entry........it's only appropriate then that I share the below with you.....

"Yes I do..."

As I gear up for holy matrimony this weekend, I find myself reflecting on the various decisions I made (yes believe it or not, I actually had time to reflect between the wedding planning and all that IMD Pre MBA course work and exams) that led me here. Funnily enough, it made me realize that pursuing a full time MBA and marriage have one too many similarities:

1.       COMMITMENT – I have known my fiancé for over 4 years and similarly, I have been chasing the IMD dream for over a year now. In the past weeks, I have found myself chasing a million things, tired and ready to throw out the white flag and that’s when I realized that this is what I have always wanted and it’s up to me to revive my commitment to make sure I stick it through and battle it out when things get tough……and if the pre course work is any indicator, then I better be 100% committed to giving it my best next year!

2.       It all depends on YOU – In my various interactions with IMD alumni, current students and MBA grads from other schools, I have always heard one thing – it’s up to us to clearly identify our objectives and then use the resources provided by the program to derive the best results…so while rankings are great, at the end of the day – it all depends on YOU to make it work for you.

3.       The right CHOICE - You know you are ready for that big decision when you find the right partner. I find IMD’s personal and intimate approach evident in every element of interaction, I mean which other schools personally interview every candidate?!. IMD’s strong connection with the industry fits my goals and aspirations perfectly and the ability to interact with 90 global citizens every day is icing on an already amazing cake!

In a month from now, 90 of us will be leaving a comfortable lifestyle, in some cases uprooting our families or spending time away from them with no clue of what may happen after one year but we all will agree that 2013 is going to be a year of intense reflection and one where we will build life long relationships and I find myself excitedly saying “Yes I do…”. 

Epilogue (November 21, 2013) - So my dear readers, 1 year later I am absolutely thrilled and grateful that I took that leap of faith....yes, it's been a tough year and we have learnt a lot but I wouldn't change for anything else...(and lets pray and hope my dear partner who has been through her share of the adventure feels the same way!)

cheers,

Vikas 

My MBA ROI (Return on Investment) calculator….

As we come to the end of this rollercoaster of a journey and as many of us (myself included) experience the many ups and downs of the career search...I’m often confronted by this discussion of the true value of the MBA….most recently, I’ve also had a lot of potential applicants email me and ask me about the ROI of the IMD MBA…. I think it’s best said by the MasterCard advertisement which I will openly and happily duplicate here (as they say copying is the best form of flattery)!

There are some things a business education can teach…for everything else, there is the IMD MBA! J(Mastercard version: There are some things that money can’t buy, for everything else there is MasterCard)

So a business education can teach you corporate finance, it can teach you strategy, marketing, operations, economics, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, etc etc and lots more….a business education can teach you about leadership, it can help you potentially change your function, industry or geography….now we all knew this coming into the program….

What I didn’t know or what I have thoroughly enjoyed this year is the many things you didn’t expect a MBA to teach you....such as:

1.       Many of us started the year wanting to be leaders and having a finite, well defined perception of what a good leader stands for….but through our leadership experiential , PDE sessions and even today’s elective “Leaders Domain” , all of a sudden we are questioning whether we want to be leaders but more importantly why we want to be leaders and what it means in the bigger picture of our lives… the MBA taught me to be much more open and introspective about leadership...

2.        My ROI for the MBA is not simply that I learnt about cultural nuances and factors that pose challenges in business but simply the fact that I have lived those challenges sitting in the dungeons late at night trying to accomplish impossible tasks with the most diverse groups…..take that for multi-cultural awareness and competency!

3.       We love to think about business in silos and as individual practices because functional expertise is comfortable….try one integrative exercise and the boundaries between different disciplines disappear forever! Try one ICP project and you will understand how there is never an easy, simple or single answer to a business challenge...

4.       Ahhh….the job search……I have learnt to be patient, strategic and optimistic through the various up’s and down’s but I’ve also been challenged to think about what I REALLY want to do with my life and to be authentic to who I am…..its not about another job…its about what I want to do….it also teaches you to enjoy every moment of your life without having to anticipate external validation…

5.       The business of business is business………so what does it mean to create value and welfare for others…. whom do you have to make happy at the cost of others…..and most importantly, are you ready to be disliked for most of your decisions which might be in the best interest of one group vs the other?

6.       People are people irrespective of where they come from and when you experience 45 different nationalities every day, you slowly realize that across cultures, everything is the same and everything is also different…..my friends back home ask me how I can be so close to some of my classmates I know only for a year….well….try sharing some of the experiences we’ve had and its difficult not to be so connected!

Sorry, I know I probably don’t make sense….but this is exactly why the ROI question for a MBA will never make sense…..the learning’s I have this year aside from my business education itself will take me a lifetime to digest and process…….this is probably why my ROI calculator for the IMD MBA will have far more inputs than any calculator can process!

Cheers,

Vikas Menon​​

T-28 and NOT counting…

Hello everyone…it’s been a while since we’ve gotten back to the regular schedule of blogging or any regular routine for that matter…

As my fellow bloggers have mentioned we are busy with the various electives…for me it’s been super exciting so far with an elective this past week with Prof. Nuno : Managing International Growth: A Strategic Finance …if you had told me in the first three months of the program that I would be willingly selecting another finance course,  I would have laughed! …but this is life, you start enjoying new things you never thought you could like and you start realizing what you don’t like…next week, I have an elective with Prof. Benoit: Special Topics in Private Equity and Venture Capital ….but beyond these electives what has really kept me excited is a case I am writing under the guidance of Prof. Benoit focused on entrepreneurship….a group of 3 of us are writing a case on the restaurant Eat Me in Lausanne, an innovative concept-restaurant opened and managed by an IMD MBA alumnus - Serena - last year and I’m sure you would have read about it a million times in our various blog posts….

Every afternoon the group and I put together pieces of the story of the Entrepreneur (Serena) we have collected through our various interviews and interactions with her….we conduct 2-3 detailed interviews with her every week where we learn in great detail about her challenges, ideas, the restaurant business, funding and what it feels like to live life on a roller coaster aka “The life of the entrepreneur”….as part of the case, we are also conducting video interviews which can hopefully be used by future MBA classes for the entrepreneurship course just as we have witnessed many interesting and inspirational case interviews during our classes….what makes it special for me is that I have always wanted to get into the restaurant, club or bar business at some point in my life and hearing first-hand about how menu items are priced or about how affinity financing works or about how important it is to drive consumer experiences is learning everything about the business first hand from the entrepreneur….what more can you ask for!!!

 So on one hand, I am living the entrepreneurs dream through this case and learning so much about the business, on the other hand we have the electives but wait what about the job search and the interviews I am juggling…..you see at IMD, just like in life, the learning never stops and the learning for this phase for me is patience, patience and more patience….Why? because  I am still in the interview process for some of my potential jobs and probably won’t have a decision till the end of November…now those who know me including my lovely partner know how much I hate waiting and how much I hate leaving things in other people’s control….but this is life and this is also part of the IMD education…at the end of the day, you try your best and hope for the best!

But the education is not simply about waiting but it’s also being able to live in the present and enjoy life for today and the now and not for the dream job (or any job) that may happen tomorrow or waiting on a positive response…so I am also trying to enjoy the fact that I have one last month as an IMD MBA student, I have one last month amongst my IMD MBA family and friends and I am  trying my best to learn how to cherish these moments ….

Super excited about the last leadership experiential tomorrow…

Have a good weekend!

Vikas