Crisis management

It was Monday morning in the study rooms. The external professor was running late (or so we thought) so we were just sitting in the study rooms doing a few emails, a cup of coffee in the hand, no rush. Then the phone rang! Weird, the phones in the study rooms normally never rings. They are used to call out. It was a journalist from BBC! And he wanted to know what we were going to do about the toxic material we had leaked into the river?!?! Huh, say again! What river? What material?

Then the other phone ring. We looked at each other very confused. It was a teacher from the local high school, who wanted to know whether they could still visit the plant despite the accident we had. School? Plant? Accident? You've definitely got the wrong guy, I am just having my morning coffee while waiting for the class to start. Leave me alone.

The phone rang again. Silence, confusion, more silence. Johan slowly picked up the phone, not knowing what to expect. It was the farmer from up the river who wanted to know whether it still was safe for his cows to drink from the river? Huh??? OK, this was not fun anymore. What was going on? Perhaps we should read the papers that had been left on the table in the room. 'You are the management team of Company XYZ..... accident...... possible leakage......'. We looked at each other in horror. For a couple of seconds the room went dead silent. Then we all jumped to our feet at once, two people went to the white board and started scribbling down the information we had, others started working on press releases and emails to the media, the employees, the customers, etc. Johan was immediately appointed spokesperson, a role we didn't envy him as he time and time again was fed to the hungry beasts (journalists) outside the door.

From there on it was just four hours of fire fighting. We were bombarded with phone calls, emails, sms'es from our boss and DVDs with news coverage from the local media. Protesters were hammering on our door and journalists were barging in at no warning. What a mess! What a Chaos! All extremely well orchestrated by crisis management expert Tom Curtin and his team of very, very real BBC journalists.

In the afternoon we saw the videos that had been made during the hectic morning, so we could hear what we really said. Ouch! We would have been slaughtered by the public if it had been the real thing. It was particularly fascinating to hear from the BBC journalists themselves, what they actually are looking for when they interview. In the afternoon it was wrapped up with a session on 'Brent Spar', very much an example of how not to do it.

Thorsten

There was real Swiss cheese fondue for lunch today....

...which was a big hit, as you can see.

Swiss Fondue, the Danish way!

I am SO full again. Again I had too much of the Swiss cheese fondue. The only difference is that this time I had it back home at my parents place. It was my Dad's birthday last week and his four kids decided to give him a Swiss fondue set. I brought it home on Friday together with 2kg of good Swiss fondue cheese. I am out of a very cheese loving family, so I am afraid that we have just started a tradition that over time will add many kilos to the combined weight of the family. We don't have any fondue traditions in Denmark, but we have plenty of traditions for good cheese and I am confident we will find great ways of combining the two.

This 4-day break has been very different than the one we had after the exams a couple of weeks ago. First of all, the after-exam break was spent with my girlfriend in Copenhagen, whereas this one has been spent with my girlfriend visiting my family. This largest difference was mental, though. Last time we had just completed the exams and thereby Building Block 1 and we had only a few new assignments. I really felt very relaxed. This time we are in the middle of everything and the assignments are piled up (4 in next week alone), so mentally I have not been able to leave the school like I did last time. I came home with a long list of things that I wanted to get done, but I hardly managed to get anything done. So the usual sense of guilt has been nagging all the time. The only good thing, I guess, is that I have slept a lot, so the batteries are fully charged. This will give me some extra work hours over the coming week.

Tomorrow is the return to reality. My girlfriend and I will take the car back to Copenhagen. We are stopping by an old friend of mine on the way, just to say hi and get a cup of coffee, but otherwise it is straight to the airport and straight back to Lausanne. To be honest, I don't feel very much like it. I could really spent some more time up here. On the other hand there is only two months left of the Building Blocks and with the pace that times passes in Lausanne the summer break will be here before we know it. To me it is not even a matter of making it THROUGH the exams, though, it is just a matter of making it TO the exams. As I have said a couple of times before, the exams are wonderful peaceful times compared to the daily chaos. I may very soon regret saying that, though, because the first thing that awaits us on Tuesday is our exam results!



I took this picture outside the Copenhagen Congress Center, where a giant wind turbine has been raised in the parking lot. We have several times during the Responsible Leadership Summit at IMD and during the Global Political Economy classes discussed the Copenhagen Summit, which will take place in 2009. Business and government leaders from most of the world will meet to discuss climate change and how we proceed beyond the Kyoto targets that will expire in 2012.

Spring, Sake and Fondue

The spring had chosen to come to Switzerland today with temperatures around 17C. Last time I wrote that the spring was coming it snowed three times the following week, but this time I really believe it is here. The doors and windows in my apartment have been open all day and the fresh outside air has replaced the air that has been trapped inside for too long. It is such a relief to be able to do that after a long winter where everything has been locked up.

My new group just left after we spent a great evening with Swiss fondue, Japanese Sake, a bottle of French red wine and stories from all over the world. It has struck me how different it is entering into this second study group compared to the first one. I cannot help thinking about how much of this difference that is due to the personalities in the group, how much that is due to the fact that we already know each other and how much that is due to what we have been through already. There is no doubt that we are much more cautious and aware this time. First time most of us just plunged in head first without thinking of much else than the task we had been given. That gave rise to many long discussions and - let's be honest - conflicts, that had to be solved. This time we are slowly feeling our way into it one small step at the time. That definitely has its advantages in terms of comfort, but if we are not careful we loose the positive energy of a 'constructive conflict'.

We set out to find a name for our new group. We came up with a large number of different suggestions ranging from 'The Zen Team' to 'Kizomba'. The latter is both the name of Sylvain's dog and the name of a type of Angolan music. We never did decide on a name, though. Perhaps we are still being 'too' nice. Nevertheless, I look very much forward to working with Group 10 over the next three months.


Group 10 around the dinner table. Notice the green bottle of Japanese sake. It is excellent with a Swiss fondue.
Left-to-right: Satoshi Konagai [Japanese], Sylvain Cabalery [French], Fabiana [in front, Brazilian and married to Alex], Olivia Assereto [Italian], Thorsten Boeck [Danish], Simon Brunner [Swiss], Ruslana Zbagerska [Canadian/Ukrainian], Alex Rubio [Brazilian].


The same group of people in their working environment.


Another Lake Geneva sunset picture. This time taken through the window in our study room.

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!

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.