Busy days

Katty Ooms Suter and the rest of the Career services office kicked off the process of writing our CVs today. The sessions we have had with Career Services over the past couple of weeks have helped us define our individual Interests, Skills, Style, Values as well as the career destination we dream about. Now it is time to compress all of that into the bullets that will get us there. First step is to define our individual 'value proposition'. As simple as it may sound, it is not easy to compress everything about yourself into 3-4 lines. It forces you to really get to the essence of who you are, what you want and who you want to address. I will undoubtedly be writing and rewriting that statement many times over the next weeks. It is great to get started, though. It helps you clear your head.

The marketing cases on Zara, Easy-Jet and Swatch that we have done over the past two weeks have all been relatively simple as the subjects were clear and the companies easy to relate to. Today Marketing Professor Martin Koschat threw a case on Colgate-Palmolive at us and we quickly found ourselves struggling to develop a marketing plan for the global tooth brush market. Not a market we really knew anything about despite we all are consumers in it. I guess there is more to marketing than first anticipated....

I know 90 people in Lausanne that have a very busy weekend ahead of them. Most of the start-up teams are visiting their startup-companies tomorrow. Many students have lined up the first interviews with the therapists that are part of the Personal Development Initiative. I have three interviews lined up saturday afternoon myself. On the basis of these relatively short interviews each of us will choose the one therapist that we will work with for the rest of the year. On Sunday afternoon many of us will attend the Responsible Leadership Seminar that is held on campus. And in between all that we will find time to do the Leadership paper that is due monday morning. That's MBA life!

And now I am off to the train station to pick up my girlfriend. She is visiting for the weekend and I am already late.

Thorsten

Meeting the start-ups

It has been an intense day. We all came dressed up in business attire today as we were to meet the entrepreneurs that we will be working with on the start-up projects for the next four months. It was fun to see the whole classed dressed up like that. It reminded me in a different way of where we are: In business school!

Economicst professor Ralf Boscheck entertained us all morning with an interesting case on the US retail market in general and Walmart in particular. I had lunch together with the rest of the start-up team and Professor Stuart Read, who will be our coach through the start-up project. We just wanted to get aligned before meeting the entrepreneurs in the afternoon.

After lunch Leadership Professor Jack Wood gave a relatively brief introduction to Transactional Analysis, which is a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth. It was developed by Eric Berne in the 1960's and is probably best known for its parent-adult-child ego-state model, which basically says that a person at any point in time is in a behavioral state of either a Parent, an Adult or a child. It is my feeling that many of us in our normal day-to-day business environment would discard such theories as 'too soft' or 'too far out', but because we are where we are and because it is delivered the way it is, it all makes sense.

After a short break Entrepreneurship Professor Benoit Leleux gave presented what was expected of the start-up projects and what had been delivered in the past. The people that have been holding our seats in the past have definitely made some remarkable projects, so the bar is set very high. The tension rose in the class as the time approached 17.30 where we would be sent into the dungeons where the 15 entrepreneur teams waited for us. I think we were a bit nervous.

I will together with Brad Moldin [American], Slava Raykov [Russian], Gerald Lo [Malaysian/Chinese] and Ajay Lakhwani [Indian] be working with a software company on building their business model. We discussed with them for three hours straight and could easily have continued. Although we initially had some difficulty understanding what they actually wanted to sell we left quite excited about the project. There is still a lot we need to learn about it as the software industry is new to all of us except Gerald, but we will visit them on Saturday which will be an excellent opportunity to get another load of questions answered.

Cloud #9

From Chexbres - IMD Outdoor exercises

It didn't take long before my new skills came in handy. Already on the first day of the program we were split into studygroups of roughly 8 people. I ended up in group 9, which (from top left) consisted of
Fadi from Lebanon/USA, Kornelius from Germany, Liesbeth from The Netherlands, myself, Juan from Colombia, Eric from Thailand, Misayo from Japan and Eva from Israel

A couple of days later we were given 45 minutes to come up with a name for the group and produce a small video advertisement for the group. We named our group 'Cloud #9'. The 'Cloud' came from the overwhelming impressions that had hit us the first days at IMD that we could not clearly see through. #9 came from the fact that we were group number nine. It took us 35 minutes to agree to that, so we made the movie in 10 minutes.

The MBA Archway

The very first task we were given when the MBA program started on 7 January was to build an archway over the door leading into the auditorium where we have all our classes. We were 90 people and had 90 minutes to do it, so you can imagine how chaotic it all seemed when everybody jumped into action at once. I have to say that I was very impressed with the result. I had never thought it would be possible to be both creative and get everything planned, coordinated and constructed between so many people in so little time. It was amazing to see the archway come together bit by bit. You could almost see it grow.

I was carrying my camera, so I took a lot of pictures and some video clips. I have over the past couple of months worked on getting my photos organized and learning how to share the photos, include them in blogs, make webalbums and so forth. Doing this had made me curious about whether I could make a small movie also. Now that I had both the photos and the video clips from the building of the archway I decided to give it a try. You can see the result below. Not bad for a beginner if you ask me. It is incredibly easy to do this on the iMovie program that comes with a Macintosh computer. The program imports all the photos and videos automatically. You then just cut it the way you want it, drag-and-drop the music and the text into place and you've got yourself a movie.


Tip: Click in the lower right corner of the video if you want to see it in full screen.

An MBA Sunday

I am back in the foyer at the school again. We have just finished a good meeting in my ICA group; ICA meaning 'Industry Competition Analysis'.

I am part of the 'Transports & Logistics' group together with Alexandre Rubio [Brazilian], who has been working for the Brazilian railways, with José Luiz Mesquita [Brazilian], who has been making logistics services in the port of Santos in Brazil, with Myriam Vacher [French], who has been doing distribution and logistics services for the global paper industry and with Simon Sundboell [Danish], who - like myself - is from the container shipping industry. We agreed to scope our ICA project to the Brazilian container shipping market as this will allow us to leverage the knowledge of all five group members to the maximum extent. We also agreed on how we would move forward with the project.

I think most of us still are trying to keep up with all the good advice we got from Jogi Rippel during Wednesdays lecture on how to sustain high performance: Drink a lot of water, exercise, quit the coffee, get some sleep, do powernaps and so forth. Needless to say that this is much harder said than done. I am now on my second cup of coffee since I started writing this entry.

One of the things that Jogi also mentioned was that 'professional athletes get up the same time every day, including saturday and sunday, as the body works best with set routines'. So I set the alarm to buzz at 7.00 this morning. I heard it, turned it off and got up at 10.00 instead. I guess I still need some practise....

This morning was another round of football in Parc Milan. A group of people has gone skiing for the day, so we were only 11 players, but it was still good fun and even greater exercise. I have set myself a goal of exercising twice a week: Football on Sunday and either some running or fitness during the week. Just to keep a minimum level of physical well being. More than that is probably not realistic as things look right now.

Other than that we have the usual pile of assignments and readings to do, so I know where I will spend the rest of the day.

Thorsten

Who killed the baroness?

Today my studygroup - named 'Cloud #9' - had fondue together it my place. It was a great evening! We also wrote an MBA diary entry together as a group. It goes like this:

Todays voyage started with the most rational of all disciplines: Accounting! We went through the most basic elements of book keeping: posting revenues and expenses, creating a Profit and Loss statement and getting everything to add up to zero on the balance sheet! As rational as it may be, there were still many different outcomes.

After lunch things became more focused on the irrational as Professor Jack Wood took us on a journey to explore individual differences in our groups. This was done through a group discussions on a fairy tale about a baroness, a baron and a boatman. The question was the classic: Who killed the baroness? We discovered that individual differences on values and beliefs by far overweighed culture and nationality, when it comes to answering the question.

In the second half of the afternoon we were introduced to the Personal Development Initiative (PDI). This is the subject that made many people choose IMD. Basically you are as a student offered 20 hours of counseling with a professional therapist with the aim of getting to know yourself at a much deeper level. This in itself is not unique, but combined with the personal approach of the Leadership and Career Services streams it gives you the optimal conditions for finding the future that really is you.

As these words are written we are having a break between the Fondue and the sorbet ice cream in our first team dinner. The 8 group members just consumed 1.8kg of Swiss cheese and we could easily have eaten more. Yesterdays fitness test is still fresh in memory so we are taking it easy on the food, especially the ice cream. It was also interesting to see how many people that brought water bottles to class today after we yesterday were told how much dehydration reduces brain performance.

The most irrational event of the day is about to happen as we are now heading to the White Horse Pub, where we have four birthdays to celebrate.

Greetings,

Eva, Misayo, Liesbeth, Juan, Kornelius, Eric, Fadi and Thorsten
CLOUD #9!

Lunch with Stuart

The career services team let us out early, so I am enjoying the view of the lake from the MBA foyer just before the sun sets. Although the only visible movement are the cars passing by it reminds me that there actually is a world outside.

I spent most of the night pulling Economics professor Ralf Boscheck's model for 'Industry & Competition Analysis' (ICA) down over the container shipping industry. I am not sure that I really got it, but at least we will get some feedback so we can start covering the gaps. It is my impression that most of the class had spent the evening and a good part of the night doing the very same thing.

With only a few hours of sleep I was not feeling too fresh this morning. At lunch I managed to get 45 minutes of sleep in the dungeons. What a difference that made! I was completely reenergized. I guess there is something about that old saying that one hour of sleep during the day equals three hours of sleep at night. I have never seen the scientific evidence of that, but I don't really need to. It definitely feels as if it is true.

13 of the students in the class had lunch with Professor Stuart Read today. The 13 of us had that in common that Stuart was facilitating the case discussion on the day we interviewed on campus. For my part that was back in May. There was no particular agenda for the lunch, just a chit-chat on how we had liked the start of the program and living in Lausanne. As we parted Stuart told us that his door and email always was open if we ever needed help or good advise. That has been the general attitude for all faculty members I have met so far. I know Stuart has done several start-ups in Silicon Valley, which I find fascinating, so I might go and poke him a bit more on that one day.

Thorsten

First homemade fondue

Susana was here over the weekend, so we thought we would try out a real Swiss cheese fondue. The kitchen in the apartment is equipped with a real fondue kit, so we didn't think it would be a problem at all. We bought some fondue cheese, which we heated on the stove and then placed on the fondue heater on the dining table. As the picture shows we did have some issues getting the heat regulated properly, so the majority of the cheese ended up burning into a solid black crust at the bottom of the pot. We didn't get much cheese ourselves so we had to eat something else afterwards to get full. The whole apartment still stinks of burned cheese and that will probably last for another couple of days.

It may take a couple of attempts before we get it right, but we will get there. The most important thing is that we got started.

Fish and Feedback

What a day! Actually, what a couple of days! This week has been held almost entirely in the name of leadership starting with classes on what drives human behaviour and interaction; the conscious versus the unconscious, the rational versus the irrational, group dynamics, authority, projections, etc.

Yesterday, we were all taken to by bus to a spot some 30 minutes from Lausanne, where we spent the whole day outdoors doing different group exercises. Each group had their own coach, who would facilitate the exercises and record everything on video. No formal leadership was appointed in the groups, so it was up to the groups themselves to work these things out. The exercises were designed to bring out the dynamics within the groups and they definitely did. After each exercise was a de-briefing where all members could air their concerns with regards to the way the group handled the given task.

After a long day in the Swiss mountains we returned to the school to watch the videos that had been shot during the day. Scary stuff! It is amazing what it does to watch yourself on video. I think many of us realized last night that we are not quite acting the way we think we are. It is not a very nice feeling, but it is better to know. Then you can at least do something about it.
Watching the videos also gave us the opportunity to get the ‘fish’ on the table. ‘Fish’ is IMD language for the things that we as individuals normally suppress in order to keep up our façade and avoid conflict. Fish that are left under the table starts to stink and can eventually spoil the air in the room to an extent where it is impossible to get any proper work done. It is incredible how much fish that can build up in a little more than a week. It is tough to get it on the table, but it needs to be done. And it was being done, was my impression. When my group went home at 01.30 the light was still on in half of the other rooms in the dungeons.

This morning the focus was on giving feedback between the groups and the afternoon was spent giving one-on-one feedback between the individual group members. The last exercise was the toughest of them all. You basically just sit quiet and still, while your seven team members one-by-one in a direct and very honest way say what they like and don’t like about you. Ouch. It is scary, how precise they are after only a week. It was my impression that everyone went home with something to think about. I am definitely one of them.

As I was preparing what I would should say about my team members, there was one line from the assignment instructions that kept ringing in my head: ‘Remember, feedback says as much about the giver as it does about the receiver’. Ouch again.

Tomorrow is even more feedback. This time in the shape of a personal session with the coach that has been facilitating and observing for the past two days.

Staying so far out of your comfort zone for such an extended period of time just drains your energy at an incredible rate. I think many of us are left with a mixed feeling of relief and emotional exhaustion. I look so much forward to a full night's sleep and a weekend that actually does leave some room for other things than homework.

For the first time since we got here the sun finally broke through the fog covering Lake Geneva and cleared the view to the mountains on the other side. It is incredibly beautiful on a clear day in Lausanne!

Getting the balance right

The great thing about Switzerland is that the sun gets up a bit earlier and sets a bit later than in Denmark. The bad thing is that it doesn't matter because you are anyway in a classroom from 8 to 17.30 every day. Today was a bit different as we were released an hour early. I used the opportunity to dig out my running shoes and go for a jog for the first time since I arrived two weeks ago. The mountains around Lausanne are absolutely no fun for a Dane, so I ran the only flat stretch in the city, which is along the lake. I am by no means a natural runner, but I have been running for many years now as I always have found it the easiest sport to fit in with a busy schedule. You are to a large degree independent of time, space and other people. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you are good to go. As a bonus you get to know the area that you are in. Today I discovered that I live 300m from the Olympic Museum. The museum is in Lausanne as the International Olympic Committee has its headquarters here.

It was so rejuvenating to get some fresh air in the lungs and let the body work, while the head for once could take a rest. It is amazing what a difference it does to your mental health. The time spent getting some regular exercise come back plentiful in terms of increased motivation and efficiency. The same goes for sleep, if you ask me. The more we cut back on sleep to get things done the more inefficient we come, and the less we sleep..... and so goes the vicious circle. I don't think I am giving away any secrets when I say that most major MBA programs are built around the notion that the students must be loaded up with more material and tasks than they ever can handle unless they develop smart and efficient ways of getting things done. The IMD MBA is no different. So why is exercise and sleep the first two things we cut away when we get busy. It is definitely not efficient. The funny thing with time is that when we have it, we use it, but when we don't have it we get things done anyway. With that in mind I have promised myself to keep a proper balance this year and to keep exercise and sleep in the equation, when I do my priorities. It is much easier said than done, though, and so far I haven't done very good on this point. I guess this is one (of many) reasons that an MBA is something you need to LIVE and not just read about.

The bubble is building

My stuff arrived from Denmark on thursday. I have finally gotten it unpacked, so now I really feel settled in. I also got my bicycle, so now I can make the trip to the school in a little more than a minute if the traffic light on Avenue de Cour is green. Coming from little flat Denmark with no hill high enough to officially qualify as a mountain I find the steep roads of Lausanne deceiving. Let go of the break for a second and you find yourself blasting down the hill at tremendous speed. 

Most importantly my motorbike also arrived. It is now standing in the basement drained for water and gas. It is still way to cold too take it out for a spin. I can't wait for the spring to be here, so I can get my first cruise in the Swiss mountains. The coming month's schedule does not leave much time for cruising, but then again; time is always a matter of priority.

The class of 2009 officially 'inaugurated' the White Horse pub last night. A big 'Thank you!' goes to the class of 2008 for the gift that they left for us there!! For those readers who may not be familiar with the White Horse I can add that it is the regular watering hole for the IMD cattle. The staff there is very friendly and clearly used to the international clientele. Some students ventured off to other places after the White Horse closed. I went home to catch the first full nights sleep in a week.

I also start getting the idea of what this famous (or infamous) 'IMD bubble' is all about. Since I walked my girlfriend to the train monday evening I have basically not been in any other location than the school, my apartment, the White Horse and the roads that connects these three places. Next week does not appear to be any different. I do not really feel it you yet, but I see how the bubble slowly is lowering itself on us.

Before it really began

Although there is a gazillion things happening around us these days I want to spend this entry telling about all the stuff that happened before it all officially began.

When I was accepted in the program back in June 2008 and got access to the IMD MBA-portal I quickly found that my future fellow students already had started connecting on the MBA portal, Facebook and LinkedIn. Many started meeting in the real world as well. The four Brazilians met in Sao Paulo and the Russians met in Moscow. I had the pleasure of having a beer on Clark Quay in Singapore with Sylvain Cabalery [French] and Henry Low [Singaporean] during a business trip in September and I had lunch with Richard Dove [British] in London a month later. Although short, those short meetings gave me insight into things that I didn't even know existed and got me wondering about what was waiting in Lausanne. Henry is a Singaporean Navy officer. I had never thought that Singapore actually had a navy (I guess I thought it was all about business) and that their history would give them good reasons to have one.

As it became apparent that many of us would be in Lausanne already before New Year Albert Schultz [German] started arranging a joint New Years celebration. What in the beginning seemed like a small get-together ended in a big party with more than 60 people. It all started with dinner in the Mexican restaurant Poco Loco and continued in the bar next door after midnight. Although it was a sit-down dinner in a restaurant it looked more like a cocktail party. Everybody was meeting their new class mates for the first time, so we stood around and talked pretty much all night. When the New Year approached we got ready with the champagne. The radio was playing in the restaurant, but it was all in French so we didn't really understand it. When the time hit midnight on our watches the radio was still playing music. Thinking that there would not be an official countdown, we did our own, toasted and bid each other welcome to the new year. A minute later the official countdown DID actually start. I guess we will just have to claim that we are bit ahead; even ahead of the New Year. Thanks Albert for setting it up!

Ruslana [Ukrainian/Canadian] arranged a great skiing trip in nearby Champery in the weekend of 3/4 January. Around 20 students and partners joined. We stayed in the small and cozy Grand Paradis hotel, which is run by Paul and Rhonda, a British couple that had decided to try a new and better lifestyle in the Swiss Alps. We had the whole place to ourselves and got an excellent and personal service from Paul and Rhonda. The weather was excellent and the snow was perfect, so we had two days with lots of sun and fresh air, while getting to know each for the first time. Thanks Ruslana for arranging it!

Thorsten

First Diary Entry

As mentioned in the blog on 18 December I will be having the honor of writing the IMD MBA Diary this year together with my new American colleague Kristin Sherwood. What this basically mean is that I will be writing an entry every tuesday and every other sunday. Kristin and a number of other guest writers will write the other days. I will be posting my entries on this blog, but if you want to get the full (daily) story then I recommend that you follow the Diary on the schools website or sign-up for the daily mail. 

In the coming months time will be the most scarce resource I have ever had and almost everything I will be doing will be related to the school. You should therefore expect that most of the entries on this blog will be identical with those of the Diary. 

Here is my first entry:

Dear Diary Reader,

Welcome to this very first entry on the 2009 MBA diary. Today, 7 January 2009, is the official first day for the class.

I have together with Kristin Sherwood [American] been given the honour of telling the story of this year's MBA class. I read the 2007 diary with Roland and Kudzi and the 2008 diary with Cat and Mathieu, so I know how high the bar has been set.

I am Danish, 32 years of age and have since 2000 been working with international container shipping. My thoughts of doing an MBA goes more than 5 years back, but it was only about a year ago that the time became ripe to do something about it. It was particularly the focus on personal development and entrepreneurship that brought me to IMD as I see that as the general direction of my future.

For most of us in the class this past December will be remembered as the month where we all were working frantically to pull our roots out of the ground (again, some will add) and move to Lausanne. On top of that came the Christmas and new years celebrations for many. When I think back on how much time it has taken me to get everything in place I can only extend my deepest respect to those people who have moved their entire families; some even from the other side of the planet. I have left my girlfriend at home in Copenhagen, so we will be forming one of the ‘Skype/EasyJet-couples’ in the class.

Although today is the first official day the campus has been buzzing since Monday. Actually the first people started connecting and meeting up more than 8 months ago. On top of that came a New Year party, a skiing trip and a number of meetings at the famous White Horse pub. More about that in a later entry.

Thorsten

Christmas in Madrid and New Year in Lausanne

It has been a busy couple of weeks. After celebrating christmas in Denmark on 24 December, we got up at 4.00 the next morning to catch a flight to Madrid, so we could celebrate the Spanish christmas with Susanas family on the afternoon of the 25th. Actually Christmas is not that big of a deal in Spanish. They make a lot more out of the 'Three Kings' celebrations on 6 January, which also is where they give each other presents.

It was the first time for me to meet Susanas family and friends for real. Despite some differences in languages I got an impression of the warm and welcoming Spanish mentality. It doesn't take long to feel at home there. Susanas sister, Mar, had gotten us all tickets for Cirque du Soleil. A fantastic show with absolutely amazing acrobats. I have never seen anything like it!

On 29 December I went to Lausanne, where I took over my new apartment. On 30 January my three Indonesian friends Anya, Binky and Adi came to visit for 4 days. In that very short period of time they managed to go as far away as Chamonix, Jungfraujoch and Zürich. They really utilized their Swiss railway-pass to the max!

They also joined for the New Years party that was held together with almost 60 of the new MBA students, partners, friends and children. The whole thing was arranged by Albert, one of my new German class mates. It felt a bit like being a MISE trainee again with all the new people from many nationalities meeting for the first time, but the atmosphere was great!

On 1 January Susana arrived from Spain. The next day we said goodbye to Anya, Binky and Adi over a great Swiss fondue. A love fondue, but it is a dangerous invention that definitely is going to cost me some kilos this year.On 3 and 4 January a skiing trip had been arranged by fellow student Ruslana in Champery, about 2 hours away by train. We had fantastic weather and great snow! We stayed in a small, hotel run by a British couple. We (20 people) filled the hotel, so we got an excellent service and really enjoyed ourselves.

5 and 6 January was information sessions, where we had to get a lot of practical things done before the school officially kicked off yesterday, the 7th of January! Busy days!

Michael Jordan

My brother Bjørn made me aware of this Nike commercial with Michael Jordan. I like what it says.