Amit’s e-world

This is the last piece of writing that I am doing for the day, thats only because the clock is going to strike 12 in a few minutes. I started my day working on my AT-Kearney powerpoint, then the 1500-word Organisational Behaviour report. And now, this blog. Surely, signs of things heating up. As I look at my task list for next week, I can see the predictions of our orienteers about the MBA getting very hectic starting week 4, coming true.

This week was strange in a way that most of us were dressed up twice in our business suits during the week. On 23rd, it was for the Yearbook CV photographs, and yesterday, it was for the ATKearney global prize 2006 simulation interviews. The Yearbook CV will be an interesting reading. We have been with each other for about a month now, but we are still pretty much unaware about the backgrounds of a lot of us…. call it the bane of separating us in streams.

ATKearney is on the top of my mind now. We got to deliver our recommendations in powerpoint slides by Wednesday, and if last year’s presentations were any indication, we are a long way from where we should be. You could visit http://www.private.atkearney.com/events/gp_euro2006/ for more details.

I have spent very little time on anything other than my computer today. So, will you please forgive me for a shorter than usual post for this week?

Sometimes the gloom of being away from home drives you to become more patriotic and more involved as a community, and Diwali @ Cranfield was one example of this. Sunita was the architect of the evening and there were very many others who contributed towards the making of this event.

The dress-code was Indian and it was nice to see so many of our cohort in kurtas, saris and salwar-kameezs. Pallavi was taking care of applying the traditional teekas to all entrants and tying a moli on their right hands.

There were two major programmes:

One, an all-in-all hilarious MBA-versioned International Ramayana. The Ramayana was truly international except for its Director, who was of Indian origin (Rajiv). James gave a fantastic start to the show by the phrase "Jai Shri Ram". Peter was appropriately dressed to represent Ram. And Ian was almost at home performing the role of Ravana. There were references to Boston matrix, game theory et al, and by the end of it, everyone for whom this was the first introduction to Ramayana, would surely have understood how strategy-savvy our Indian Gods were. For those of you who are wondering whether we were right in projecting a funny version of Ramayana would find some solace in the fact that there was a cartoon version of original Ramayana also being aired very close to the stage.

Two, we sang the Tu yaar tu hi Dildaar from Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani. The singing group comprised of Sats, Sj and me - very Indian for a change. But the dance group was fairly international with Flavia giving the Argentinian flavour and Yan, the Chinese.

After quite a few weeks, I got to taste some Indian chutter-butter. And it was quite amusing to observe my international colleagues react with awe after the innocuous-looking Paani-Puris made of teekha paani exploded in the mouth. After all the fun, we then had a Karaoke night - some of the songs that I can remember - Shirley with Hey Jude, Arturo, Flavia & Ricardo with Brazilian Samba, and of course I sang Careless Whisper.

I am publishing this without photos for now, but will surely edit it once I lay my hand on the snaps.

The first week of serious studies has just about ended, and I am very happy that the some of the main features of the program that made me seriously look at the Cranfield School of Management are already unfolding.

When I stumbled upon a reference to Cranfield in the IIM-A site (when they had announced the PGPX program and were trying to draw parallels with other renowned programmes), I very clearly knew that Cranfield was the program very aligned with my learning style. To start with, the 3-day cycle appealed to me the most. Isn’t that the way we work in an organisation. We think about things ourselves as individuals (Day 1), then we discuss it within our teams (Day 2), and finally we present it to the board (Day 3). Why should academic learning be any different? Through this model, we are always well-prepared even before the lecturer actually presents the topic in class (Day 3). Because of this, the amount of ground that we cover in a lecture is huge, and that perhaps is one of the reasons that this program is actually shorter than most others. The way team work is enforced amidst all this is very interesting. The amount of pre-reading that is required is huge. No individual can do it by himself. Almost all learning teams therefore divide the pre-reading amongst each other, and the one who prepares for a particular subject on a particular day leads / guides the team through it (on Day 2 of the cycle). Through this approach, we have already developed a trust towards each other in the team, and believe me it works better than real-life dramas of blindfolding yourself and jumping from a chair, hoping that your team will catch you.

Cranfield is particularly renowned for its Organisational Behaviour module and its easy to know why. At least thrice a week, we are expected to fill in QOITs that summarise how the learning team discussion went and others in the group tell you how you were perceived. Yesterday, we had an hour long appraisal session, and everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.

Another Cranfield exclusive (can’t be sure of this) is the WAC (Written assessment of a case) - A detailed yet brief description of a case that has to be completed under two real-life constraints: time and length. I haven’t really been through this as yet, however I am eagerly looking forward to one. And lastly we have case studies: Unlike some of the B-schools that I know of, the case studies here are shorter in length. The ones that I have encountered are 3-6 pages long. But there are many such case studies. And they are really fun. Many a times we are tempted to come out with a solution through our gut feeling ( a luxury that we can afford only when we are CEOs), but for a middle manager who has to convince a senior manager there can be nothing better than arriving at your answer through the use of decision-making tools.

I feel like writing a lot more, but I know that I have already written a lot. Keep reading !!!

As I sit to write my first serious post about the Cranfield orientation week experience, I can’t help feeling that waiting for a Saturday to write down a week’s experience at Cranfield is going to be like travelling around the world in 30 days. The sheer amount of stuff we did over the week is huge. If I had not spend this week at Cranfield, I probably would have never known that so much could be done in a week.

Sunday: We had a social nite. There were some of us from the pre-MBA who already had spent two weeks at Cranfield, there were the new entrants like me, and there were a group of last year’s MBAs, called the orienteers. Orienteers drive the O-week & have very little given to them in terms of schedule / events, etc. This was a great opportunity to know each other, but it wasn’t enough.

Monday: The highlights of the day were a briefing by Michael O, John Glen, a guided campus tour, registration and another social night in the evening.. this time at Stafford Cripps. We got our laptops too today. We were divided into three streams red / blue and green for the first term. So, it will be about 40 of us attending the academic sessions together.

Tuesday: I got my learning team today. This is the team I will have to discuss my case studies & WACs with. We had a nice little presentation about us as individuals and as a group. To talk about diversity, my group has a few engineers like me, one gentleman from the Royal Air Force with an experience of 31 years, a British lawyer, a management consultant from Mexico, a British-Nigerian Head of Investments to help us with Accounting and a manager from the Indian Oil Corporation. I took some time off in the afternoon to get all my loan formalities completed without any hassles. I met up Barbara Green, HSBC. In this short trip, something that was very conspicuous was the quality of customer service provided in this part of the world. We had an intenational evening with everybody dressed up in traditionals. Amazing night. Some photos are up here.

Wednesday: A lot of presentations to start with, from the Cranfield trust, disabilities, SA, etc. All this was followed by a very lively sports afternoon. And boy, was this competitive. We had a series of events, football, rugby, a relay race and the decider was a tug-of-war. It was only appropriate that the winners were decided by the last evet of the evening: tug-of-war. At we had a tie. Red and green jointly sharing the honours. We also had a barbeque night in the evening.

Thursday: The big nite: Cabaret. For the last two days we had been actively preparing for this event. Red, Blue and Green all had to do a 40-min fun-filled stage show. I was the MC for the Reds. Despite being a RED, I must admit that the highlight of the night was the almost full monty act by the Greens with Cranfield on their undys. I am sure that will live as a legend. We also had our stream reps and diversity reps selected.

Friday: Just another day for the freshman’s batch. But a very emotional day for the orienteers. They were finally leaving. As much as I am tempted to write about the Lift-Off which was the last session of the day and the kind of awakening that arose in us with it, I would rather let that remain as a mystery that you should experience when you do the Cranfield MBA next year.

In these five days, I have got a very good taste of the Cranfield experience and as we are told by people aware of happenings in other schools, it truly is unique. A big thank you to all my orienteers: Paul, Sunil, Sourabh, Nigel, Kristina and David. You guys have given us a great start.What - a - week, or rather what - o -week !!!

Before I start, I just wanted to thank all of you at Accenture for your encouraging responses to my farewell mail. As much as I am overwhelmed by your comments, I just can’t reply back to all of you given the sheer number of responses- so I thought the best way would be to do it openly through the blog.

By the way, I safely arrived at the campus on the night of 30-Sep. Cranfield Univ is about 55 miles from Heathrow, and pretty remote. There is almost nothing around for about 3 miles near the university. Having said that, the University is pretty huge and to a large extent self-sufficient. My room is very neat, however the only hitch is that it is on the second floor with no escalators / elevators. I don’t mind walking up & down, however it was a bit inconvenient to transfer all my luggage to the second floor. For those of you who are coming to the UK any time soon, just a few tips. Do pack in all your home-made dishes (preferably dry-stuff). It gets passed through without any problems. Also, if you don’t mind a wait of 15-20 min at the airport, there is no need to carry a chest X-ray. Chest X-rays are done for free here during immigration.

The MBA formally begins tomorrow. I am eagerly looking forward to it.