Any dream will do!

Well, this is it. The last entry. The 113th and last chapter for me. At least as the official diary writer. This entry is for the friends I made this year in Lausanne.

After a hectic - but good - week with graduation ceremony, the big ball at the Palace Hotel, a few days of skiing in France with some of my classmates - or fellow alumni as I should call them now - we packed my apartment into the car over the weekend and went to my new home in Genova, Italy. My girlfriend moved from Copenhagen to Genova in July, so this is where the next chapter of our lives will be written.

For the past three months or so I have had one particular time and situation in mind. The time was Monday 14 December - i.e. yesterday - at around 8.15 in the morning when my girlfriend had just left the apartment to go to work. I pictured myself making a cup of fresh coffee and enjoying it on the balcony, while thinking about the past and future. I had been looking forward to that very moment with great anticipation and with some anxiety.

So yesterday that moment came. Susana went to work. I had already prepared the coffee. I put on a jacket - it is only 3C degrees here these days - and went to the balcony. The sun was just coming up and the view of the Mediterranean was stunning. And then I asked myself the question that I learned to ask myself this year: 'So, how do you feel, Thorsten?'.

'Well, I don't know', my first thought was, but as I have learned through the work with my PDI 'shrink', it will come out once I try to describe it. So how do I really feel?

Sad? - Not so much anymore, last week I did, sad to be leaving, sad to give up something unique and special that never would come back. Sad to say goodbye to a lot of really special friends. How can they be special if there are so many of them, you may ask. Well, they just can.

Regrets? - Not anymore, again, last week I did have a lot of regrets. Regrets that I did not get to talk much more to many more people in the class, that I did not go out more, that I did not work even harder, pushed myself further, read more cases, did more work in the groups, etc. I then realized that I gave what I had. Perhaps I could have made different choices which would have given different outcomes, perhaps, perhaps not, but I could not have done MORE.

Sense of achievement? - Not really, perhaps I should say not yet. Logically I should feel it. I have just completed the toughest year of my life, in many ways. I think the real value of what I learned only will show once I start putting it to use.

So what DO I feel?

I feel like in a vacuum, a bit of nothingness somehow, not positive, not negative, just being in this very moment without anything that I HAVE to do. A feeling that there is a world out there waiting for me. A feeling of being prepared to go and grab it, but also a feeling that it will not come to me. If I do nothing, nothing will happen. Most of all I feel an underlying confidence that I both can and will grab it. A confidence that I will figure out how.

While moving I came across an old Andrew Lloyd Webber CD that I used to play a lot, it must be at least 15 years old. As I am writing this Jason Donovan is singing 'Any dream will do'. I could not agree more.

It is time to hand over to the new 'generation' at IMD. Thank you to all the applicants, future students, classmates, partners, parents and everyone else that have bothered to read my scribbles this year and thank you for all the feedback and encouragement, particularly when times were tough. It was a pleasure and an honor to be your eyes and ears in the IMD MBA 2009 class room. :-)

Ciao!

Thorsten

Well, perhaps there was some sense of achievement after all! :-)

Genova from our balcony, the home of a new beginning.

Thank you for making this year such an unforgettable one!

The eternal battle

I managed to get some fitness done today. For the first time in probably a month and a half. I have lost track. Actually, I don't have time for fitness, but around here time is not something you have, it is something you take. The recent MBAT tournament made it clear to me how much I need to get started on the physical exercise again. My body clearly does not like what it has been exposed to the past four months. Something needs to change, but what? What do I cut away to give time for more exercise?

Sleep? No, that is already at a minimum. I think most of us in the beginning thought we just could cut sleep to almost nothing. That worked only for a few days. Perhaps a few weeks for some. But eventually it catches up with you. It hits you like hammer and you find yourself unable to function in the class and in the study room. You change the strategy and start allocating yourself a minimum amount of sleep every night, a deadline where you HAVE to go to bed whether you are ready or not. That works. Sometimes, at least.

Well, if you cannot increase the number of hours your can work every day, perhaps you can reduce the amount things you do. So you start chopping away from the bottom of the list. This is where the least important things are. You make sure that Skype and Messenger does not open automatically on your computer. That way YOU are in charge of when you can be contacted and you do not get caught in random chats. You cut Facebook usage to a bare minimum and you cut all notifications and subscriptions unless they are crucial to your future.

You stop all the friendly one-on-one emails correspondences and switch to one-way mass communication, either through emails or a blog. You fear that everybody thinks you are too full of yourself when communicating that way, but to your surprise friends and family fully understands what you are going through and appreciate whatever updates they get.

You reduce your grocery shopping to once a week or you buy it online to save time. You start eating bread and coldcuts in the evening so you don't have to spend time cooking. You anyway get the warm meal in the IMD restaurant at lunch.

You can also cut the work you do for you group to a minimum, but that would be very short sighted. You could do the opposite and do a lot of work for the group or even for the class as a whole, but that comes at the price of your individual preparation for class. Not only does that mean risking to fail the exams, it also means loosing a lifetime opportunity to get some real world class knowledge into your head.

Eventually, you have cut everything to a bare minimum. That helps for a little while. Then the school turns the heat up a bit more and you find yourself scrambling again.

OK, so you cannot extend the number of working hours or reduce the amount of work anymore. Well, then productivity has to go up. Although you can walk to the school in 7 minutes, you start biking so you can do it in 2. You set up automatic labeling and filing systems on your mail, so you can flip through it faster. You set up mails on your phone, so you can handle them whenever you may have a spare moment during the day. You try to become more disciplined in always doing the most important things first (instead of doing the things you like the best).

You then discover that you now are so efficient that you barely have time to talk to your classmates. That does not fly either, so you remind yourself not to forget why you are here. Don't loose this unique chance to get to know all these interesting people. So what do we cut then? Exercise?

And so the story goes. Around and around. Constantly challenging your own priorities, borders and discipline. And that is probably the most central piece of learning this year.

It is now 1:30 and I still have two cases to read. I promised myself I would be in bed by 2:00, so I can function properly tomorrow. So do I increase the work hours, reduce the work load or increase productivtivity?

Thorsten

Motor show and movie night

'Accounting' is the word that is on everybody's lips these days. It is the one subject that almost everybody seems to struggle with and the tension is increasing as the Accounting Exam on 21 March comes closer. A group of people, including myself and my girlfriend who was visiting for the weekend, nevertheless took the morning train to the Geneva Motor Show. Since I was a kid I have read hundreds of magazines and newspapers with pictures of the new car models revealed on the big shows in Detroit, Tokyo, Frankfurt and Geneva. Now that I am living right next to one of them, I am for sure not going to miss the opportunity.

The Hummer was there and so was Rolls-Royce, but it was clear that the two main themes on the car makers agenda these days are 'global warming' and 'financial crisis'. Most of the major brands were showing off their latest hybrid and bio-fuel models. It was interesting to note how all these cars were painted white. It is undoubtedly supposed to make them appear 'clean' and 'scientifically advanced'. It was also interesting to note that the old proxy for fuel efficiency 'kilometer per liter' or 'miles per gallon' has disappeared. Now we are talking about 'Grams of CO2 per kilometer'. One cannot help making a connection to the Economics assignment on climate change that we finished just two days ago.

Rasmus Figenschou [Norwegian] has established a movie club that will show a movie each sunday evening in the auditorium. Today was the first show and the movie was '12 Angry Men', an old black-and-white Henry Fonda movie. The movie is also homework for the next 'Leading People for Performance' class and is about a jury of 12 men that must reach a verdict on a homicide case. As the movie starts 11 men find the defendant guilty and one man, Henry Fonda of course, finds him 'not guilty'. It only adds to the tension that they are locked into a room on a warm and humid evening. From there we follow their discussion on how they reach their verdict. A couple of months ago I wouldn't have thought a lot of this movie, but now it is impossible not to analyze and interpret all the things going on between these men, both on the surface and below. I think most of us found ourselves drawing parallels to our study groups.

Change the chip

While the snow was falling heavily this morning outside the auditorium we were presenting our Economics projects inside. Six of them in total, which means that we were nothing less than 15 in each group. The challenge with such a large group is to keep it running effectively and to get a coherent result. It requires a large amount of coordination to get it right, but all six groups pulled it off and gave very interesting presentations. It was big audacious subjects that were on the agenda: Environment, Poverty, Climate change, Intellectual Property and Food Supply. All of them presented in an Economic perspective and all of them with great complexities and dilemmas built in. As he has done many times the past two months Economics Professor Ralf Boscheck reminded us that it is time to 'Change the chip'. This is Ralf's code for saying that it is time for a change of mindset, time to realize that the one-eyed capitalist's relentless pursuit of 'growth, growth, growth' will not give us the world we dream about. Today, he added that if we cannot change the chip, then we can at least 'add a new one to balance the old one'. It is interesting to learn Economics from someone who studied Philosophy before studying Economics.

The 'Intellectual Property' group used the Music industry to demonstrate the importance of intellectual property rights and showed this video on the future of the internet, which I found very interesting.



The theme of 'Critical thinking' spans across all classes. We have had 'Critical thinking' in very broad terms with Phil Rosenzweig , in Marketing with Martin Koschat and in Operations with Nikos Tsikriktsis. Today Arturo Bris, whom we met for the first time, took us through the overarching philosophy and psychology of Finance. No easy task to complete in an hour and a half in a class where sleep deprivation is taking its toll. This has without a doubt been the toughest week so far and the number of red eyes in the class room are growing. And there is absolutely no signs of the pressure easing any time soon.

Thorsten

Focus!

'Focus' seemed to be the keyword of today although I am not sure that was the intention. Entrepreneurship professor Benoit Leleux kicked off the day with session on 'Opportunity Overload' in start-up companies. The case was about a company who had developed a natural alternative to the chemical compounds used for water treatment. It could just as well have been any one of the companies that we are working with on our start-up projects. My start-up group is no different. We are working with a software company that is facing an abundance of possibilities, but little clarity on the direction. 'Focus, focus, focus', as Benoit said in his usual direct style, 'if you try to do everything then you are dead for sure'.

Whether intended or not, Operations Professor Nikos Tsikriktsis had the same message. Focus helps improve the quality and efficiency of the operational processes within the company. The case was on Canadian Shouldice Hospital that for decades had specialized in surgery of hernias. The case may be an example of the extreme, but the point was clear: The fact that they had had such a narrow focus for so many years had allowed them to optimize their internal processes to the benefit of patients, employees and the hospital itself.

In between these two classes Accounting professor Stewart Hamilton swiftly took us on a journey through the complexities of international accounting standards and why it is so difficult to reach agreement on these. There was also just enough time to run through an example of how multinational companies must deal with taxes across national borders and across different business units.


Naoto Tsushima [Japanese] and Vahid Khamsi [Swiss/Iranian] getting some work done in the foyer.


David Rohan [Australian] and Valeria Pavlyukovskaya [Russian] in the dungeons organizing the piles of paper that we are plowing through every day.

EQ and Karaoke

It is early evening in the dungeons and it is buzzing with activity everywhere. The work on the assignment for Operations is mixed with preparations for the Karaoke party that is just about to start. Teams are getting together either in study groups or in groups of nationalities. I can hear the Spanish speaking group practicing. Sounds like they are having fun. I know that both the Germans and the Dutch also have prepared something. The Karaoke party is hosted by the 5 Japanese in the class, Misayo Matsumoto, Ryo Abe, Sato Konagai, Naoto Tsushima and Tatsuo Sato and is held in the IMD restaurant. This will be the first time we will have a real party together. I am sure it will be loads of fun!

It has been another intense day today. In the morning we were working on our Economics projects. After lunch we were all loaded into a bus and taken to central Lausanne. This was part of the 'Leading People for Performance' class with Martha Maznevski and the object was to learn how to observe and evaluate the level of Emotionel Intelligence (EQ) in both other people and ourselves. Based on some pre-reading we had prepared different ways of observing and interacting with people on the street. My group was asking people for directions or help with something and measured them across a number of parameters in order to gauge the EQ.

Back home in class we discussed the outcome of the exercise and we took an EQ test ourselves. The results gave some good food for thought.

It was amazing to register how sunlight, movement and interaction with other people could completely re-energize the class although we were only in downtown for an hour. A good warmup for the party tonight.

I am already late for the Karaoke.


Waiting for the bus - Left to right:
Stefano Giussani [Italian], John Callaghan [British], Juan Benitez [Columbian], José Luiz Mesquita [Brazilian], Arturas Bumblys [Lithuanian], Fill Niu [Chinese], Carsten Bremer [German]

Staying afloat

I have an old mantra that says that 'stress doesn't come from too much work; it comes from loosing the overview'. That mantra is being severely tested these days. I have spent the entire evening skimming and sorting the seamless stream of emails and papers that we receive on graded assignments, new assignments, upcoming tests, industry presentations, invitations to group work, input on group work from other team members and so forth. The problem is that you spend so much time trying to figure all this out and getting it filed and scheduled that you don't have time to do the actual work. I still believe it is the right approach, so I will stick with it for now, but I might be proven wrong. Over the next 10 days we have five assignments and two tests, so I better get to work and not just sit and plan everything!

Today was one of those days with four different and short classes instead of the usual two. That always means a lot more preparation as the amount of work for each class is independent of the length of the class. We kicked the day off with Martin Koschat and a case study on how companies can use data bases to track customer behavior and thereby approach the customer in the most effective way. There is definitely a lot more going on behind the scenes than you realize as an average customer.

Martha Maznevski followed up on the personality tests we did last week with a session on the importance of matching personality and job and what you can do - or cannot do - when they don't match. The subsequent accounting class with Stewart Hamilton was spent scrutinizing Carlsberg's annual report for 2007. For a non-accounting person like myself it takes quite a bit of energy to get a meaning out of all the different ratios and abbreviations that the accounting world is so full of. Last, but not least, Phil Rosenzweig had the ungrateful task of taking us through the afternoon shift. He did a brave attempt, but by the end of day like this the fatigue has taken control and the energy levels are just close to non-existing.

Live from the White Horse

This is your diary writer reporting live from the White Horse Pub. I don’t know whether it is a first in diary history, but it is a least a first for me. We are good part of the class gathered here today to celebrate the birthday of Liesbeth Bakker [Dutch]. This morning our study group surprised Liesbeth with cake and champagne in our study room, so it is a natural extension to end the day with another bottle of champagne here.

It has been snowing all day today, but as Benoit mentioned sunday the snow never stays for very long. It did stay long enough, though, for it to fuel a major snowball fight in the afternoon break. In the usual innovative style a few people immediately invented more advanced weapons such as umbrellas that could be used as shields. It did make much of a difference, though, and quite a number of people continued the class with wet clothes. Nevertheless, it was great for the energy level in the class. And it was great fun to watch.

The music is hammering through the loud speakers, the beers are flowing and everybody is talking and enjoying them selves here at the White Horse. It is so great to see that we still have the ability to kick back for a few hours in the middle of Economics projects, cash flow statements, start-up projects, CV writing, grades on Leadership papers and the growing anxiety over the upcoming integrative exercise. In the end, what really matters is what is happening here.



Here is one of the two teams during todays snowball fight. Left-to-right it is Nicolas Denef [Belgian], Ajay Lakhwani [Indian], Adrian Smaranda [Romanian], Shibu James [Indian] and Paul de Hek [Dutch].

Sunday in the snow

It had been snowing all night. That is naturally great for skiing, but not quite as fortunate for the five players that showed up for sunday football in Parc de Milan. Although we were skating around like Bambi we played for an hour and had good fun.
Top row, left to right: Peter Grissmayr [German], Your Diary writer, Yury Vasilkov [Russian]
Bottom row, left to right: Andres Akamine [Peruvian] and his son David, Ryo Abe [Japanese].

The 'Transport & Logistics Group' spent almost the entire Sunday in the dungeons working on the ICA project on Container Shipping in South America. Here it is (left to right): Your Diary writer again, José Luiz Mesquita [Brazilian], Myriam Vacher [French] and Simon Sundboell [Danish]. We are wrapping it up as these lines are written.

And now I better get home and start reading the two cases for tomorrow.

Thorsten

Economics marathon

Today was an 8.00-to-18.00 Economics Marathon with Professor Ralf Boscheck on center stage all day. The morning session went with 'Institutional Economics'. This gave a great insight in the theories behind how you decide which functions to outsource and which ones to keep in-house as well as what decisions you should make centrally and which ones that are best done locally.

The afternoon session was on the subject of 'Regulation' in an economic perspective. I will never look at our politicians and legislators the same way again after that session. Now I have an idea of the dilemmas they are battling. The session was vividly illustrated by examples of the consequences of deregulating the US airline industry, UK water and electricity supply as well as the health care sector in general. I can see why it is practically impossible to come to a clear definition on the optimal balance between regulation and free market forces in these markets.

Today was just a warm-up for next week, where we combined have economics for almost four full days.

Thorsten


Economics Professor Ralf Boscheck in a nutshell. He has filled in seven blackboards (two more outside the picture) and continues on the flip-chart. I think it would make him feel empty inside if he ever was to leave a class room with empty space on the blackboards.

It is finally warm enough for an outdoor ping-pong game after lunch. At the first table it is (left to right) Bruno Portnoi [Brazilian], Stefano Giussani [Italian], Shibu James [Indian] and Yury Vasilkov [Russian] that are showing the hidden talents. In the back is Seif Shieshakli [Saudi Arabian/German] and Ilya Syshchikov [Russian].

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.

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

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.

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