MBA Diary

IMD has an electronic MBA Diary, where two students take turn in writing a daily entry. The entry is then posted on the IMD website and mailed to those who have subscribed to it. You can read more about it here and subscribe to it here. 

I have been reading the diary myself for almost two years, which has given me a good idea of the cycle that each class goes through. So if you are potential MBA candidate or just someone curious to figure out what it is all about, I can only recommend that you sign up and spend the 3 minutes daily reading it.

I have - together with Kristin from the U.S. - been given the honor of writing next years diary. We will be taking turns at doing so Monday through Saturday and on Sundays there will be alternating guest writers. Although writing the diary will add to the already high pressure I find it a privilege to be telling the class' story to the outside world as well as it will be rewarding to jot down the reflections that each day provokes.

I have written a couple of smaller bits about my way to the IMD MBA as well as a guest entry that was posted in the diary on 8 November:

The warm-up

It was mid 2003 in Semarang, Indonesia and I had just arrived a few months earlier from Denmark. We were a couple of people playing Balut – a Danish dice game – in a friend’s restaurant, when Poul started telling me about his life as a young chemical engineer that had been looking for oil for Schlumberger in places as exotic as Iran and Indonesia. I was even more fascinated when he told me about the year he had spent in ‘a business school near Paris’. At that time I had no idea what an MBA was and Poul had no clue what seed he had just planted.Already in the months after that I started reading up on all this MBA stuff. What was it? Who was it for? Who and where were the different schools? What were their individual specialties? How were the programs different in terms of length, location, cost, faculty and ranking? How was the classroom composition in terms of demography, seniority and industrial diversity?As I returned to Denmark two years later I continued my part time studies in order to complete my degree. I would have done that anyway, but now it had the clear purpose of qualifying me for an MBA.It was also back in Denmark that my desire to start my own business started growing again. This feeling was growing at the same time as I was attending MBA exhibitions, talking to old MBA alumni from different schools and reading MBA Diary entries. In the end it all came together in a decision: It was IMD or nothing! Or rather, it was IMD or straight into self-employed life.

The GMAT test
Next stop was the GMAT test. I borrowed some training books from a former colleague and IMD MBA 2008. He got in, so I assumed that those books would be good enough for me as well! I took the entire Easter week off, went to my parents place in the other end of the country and locked myself up with the books. I worked and I worked, but no matter what I did I kept getting a score of 540 or 550 on the tests that came with the books. This is only slightly above the general average of 500 and way below the school average of 680.As the days passed my frustration rose, but the scores didn’t. Who were these Einsteins down there in Lausanne that could keep up such an average on such a hard test? I had always done well in these types of logical tests, but now I started seeing my MBA dreams disappear in the distance.I had already booked and paid the GMAT test in Berlin (Copenhagen was full) and the plane ticket down there, so I decided that I might as well go. If nothing else, then for the experience. The test went no better or worse than all the training tests, so I expected the same result. I remember seeing the result coming out of the printer and the attendant placing it in front of me.690!!! I was so relieved and so much back in the game!!Apparently the training tests had been calculating the scores way too low. I was laughing all the way down Kurfürstendamm as I went to find a place that served my favorite German dish, Spätzle. What a day!

The application

Although I had already made my decision on which school to apply for I still went to visit the IMD campus in January. To me the visit therefore became a part of the application process rather than a part of selecting what school to apply for. As expected I found the place very professional but also very personal, informal and down-to-earth. Having had this chance to absorb the atmosphere of the place and the character of its people made it much easier for me to write the applications.I wrote and rewrote the 9 small essays about myself countless times. When I couldn’t change them anymore I asked friends, family and a couple of old MBA students for input. That made me rewrite or adjust them yet another couple of times. Eventually I shipped the whole thing off together with a load of other documents and an online payment.I was fortunate enough to be invited to the next step in the application process: The interview day! It proved to be a very interesting day, where I together with seven other applicants was evaluated in the arts of group work, reasoning, presentation technique and – I am sure – a host of other disciplines.Then there was only left to wait. My sunk cost consisted of many hours of work and EUR 3000 worth of plane tickets, hotel bills, tests and application fees. On my visits at the school I had met New Zealanders, Brazilians, Americans and Canadians that were touring Europe visiting business schools. I wonder what their sunk cost looks like? If the answer comes out negative then it has all been for nothing. It is a serious game!In the early days of June I got the call. I got in!

Preparation for next year...	November 08, 2008
Guest entry by Thorsten Boeck
Today's entry comes from Class of 2009 future MBA Thorsten Boeck (Denmark.  We wish him good luck and welcome to the IMD family!  Ever since I handed in my resignation four months ago the support from both managers and colleagues have been overwhelming: ’Well done!’, ’Give us a call, when you’re back’, ’I wish I could take a year off like that’ was the common response. Nevertheless, it was still with a weird and somewhat empty feeling that I last Friday afternoon powered down my computer, emptied my drawers and said goodbye to my colleagues of which many had become good friends. It had been 8 years in the only company I ever worked for as a professional; the company that ’found me’, ’grew me’ and sent me in orbit in the international business environment. But that Friday also marked the beginning of a new era. This was so far the most concrete evidence that the journey, which has been in the making for more than five years, is about to begin. Another very concrete evidence was meeting up with Sylvain and Henry in Singapore and with Richard in London during recent business trips. It only confirmed what I expected about the capacity of the people I will be in class with next year. Having spent my entire career within shipping I cannot wait to learn much more from Henry, who has been commanding ships in the Singaporean navy, from Paolo [Italian] who is making black holes at CERN in Geneva, from Simon [Swiss] who is writing news papers and from all the other people that are so different from me. I have gotten a fully furnished 3-room apartment in Lausanne, so I pretty much only expect to arrive with a couple of suitcases and my motorbike. Coming from flat Denmark with no hills high enough to officially qualify as a mountain I look forward to cruising the mountain ranges and the lakesides around Lausanne, albeit time obviously will be scarce. My Spanish girlfriend Susana will be staying in Copenhagen, but will be visiting as often as practically possible. I plan to celebrate Christmas with my family in Denmark and then move to Lausanne in time to attend the New Years party arranged by Albert [German] and the subsequent skiing trip arranged by Ruslana [Canadian/Ukranian]. I thus have some two months to read the books we have been given, apply for scholarships and get ready for the move. Having read the IMD Diary for two years I feel that I have a good idea of the ’cycle’ that every class goes through. Particularly the first 6 months of building blocks will be a tough ’business boot camp’ as Paul Holmes called it in a Diary entry on 21 January. I couldn’t think of a better term to describe it, as there seems to be so many parallels to my own boot camp experience in the Danish army some 12 years ago. You start out at full speed and then gradually increase the pressure while keeping people separated from the outside world (the IMD bubble). It is when you are at the edge of your capacity that limits are moved and comfort zones expanded – Real Learning it is called in IMD language. We have a saying in the Danish army that goes: ’You can do twice as much as you mother thinks you can and 10 time as much as YOU think you can.’ As time will be of the absolute essence during these first six months I am now eliminating or automating everything that unnecessarily consumes time. I am cancelling memberships, subscriptions and newsletters that are not vital, I move as much as possible from snail-mail to e-mail and the last bit that must be handled manually is being redirected to my parents. The aim is to hit Lausanne as a lean, mean ’time machine’. Every hour saved once the school starts will be worth the same as 10 hours today. Now I just hope that both my mother and I have set the bar high enough! Thorsten