The end of Cloud #9

This morning we were back in the dungeons and back in our old study groups for one last time. The purpose was to give each other feedback on our behavior the past three months. The basis of the discussion was an online survey that asks you to rank both yourself and each individual in your group. The result gives you a picture of how you see yourself compared to how your group sees you. I guess that it is no surprise that we all tend to rank ourselves higher than our peers rank us, but what is really interesting is to learn where the big gaps are, the so called 'blind spots'. This also include unknown strengths, meaning areas where your peers actually thinks higher of you than you do of yourself.

It is amazing to see what a transformation 'The Group formerly known as Cloud #9' has gone through the past three months. I cannot help smiling when I think back at our first group assignment. We were all so intensely trying to convince each other with hard facts and loud arguments. Within minutes the group split into pieces: Two people were heavily debating and writing on one white board, another person was writing on the white board on the other side of the room, one person was eagerly drawing his thoughts on the flip chart, two people were on the laptop looking into the databases and the last two were sitting behind looking somewhat lost. None of this was coordinated and little of it was ever used in the final solution.

Three months later we are sitting around the table again. We take turns at speaking. The tone is direct but respectful. We explore the differences in our most fundamental beliefs but we never judge. I believe we have had some very unique challenges to bridge and I believe we have every reason to be proud of the way we have handled it. Although there has been very intense moments, we have always had the courage to continue the talk. Along the way we have produced excellent results and some that were less excellent. Much have been learned from analyzing these ups and downs.

We are only one week into the new study groups, but it has already given us a lot of perspective on the old group. I don't think anyone ever forgets their first IMD study group. I for sure will not.


Today's Career Service workshop on writing motivating letters was partly held outside. Here it is (left-to-right) Andres Akamine [Peruvian], Jodie Roussell [American], Chuks Onunkwo [Nigerian] and Slava Raykov [Russian] giving each other feedback on their work.


My own workgroup for the afternoon consisted of Johan Jansén-Storbacka [Swedish/Finnish], Cathinka Scheie [Norwegian], Fadi Sbaiti [Lebanon/USA], Ilya Syshchikov [Russian].



Back: Stefano Giussani [Italian], Stelious Vytogiannis [Greek]
Front: Seif Sieshakly [Saudi Arabian/German], Misayo Matsumoto [Japan], Kornelius Thimm [Germany]

An inspiring day

Jogi Rippel from Tignum, the man who taught us the fine art of powernapping was back today. Back with his message on how to maintain a 'Sustainable high performance'. The keywords were still Movement, Nutrition, Recovery, Energy levels, hydration, etc, but this time with less focus on the individual and much higher emphasis on how to work with these things in a team or an organization. We were amongst others given the task to build a model that could calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) on initiatives that create 'Sustainable high performance'. The accounting definition was pretty straight forward as the accounting exam still is fresh in our memories, but defining the value of such subjective items as 'Improved innovation' and 'Better working enviroment' was no easy task.

We had lunch together with some of the participants from the school's Program for Executive Development (PED). This was arranged by our 'new' Innovation professor David Robertson and the aim was both for us to get to know some of the other participants at the school and for us to probe the customers of our 'Innovation Challenge'. The Innovation Challenge will run in late April and is about designing a bag. Each MBA team will design a bag and the PED participants will choose the winner. Similarly, the PED teams will design a bag for the MBA class who will decide on a winner. Sounds like a lot of fun!

Most of the afternoon was spent in the company of the Career Services team. Katty Ooms-Suter gave an update on the current job market. It is tough times 'out there', but there are still plenty of companies signing up for on-campus recruiting, so we should be in fairly good shape as a whole. Céline Beaurain-Casemi followed up with instructions on how to write a good cover letter when applying for jobs and asked us to have the first draft ready next week.

Then followed a quick meeting in my 'old' study group. As we enter into the month of April the group officially ceases to exist. As its very last assignment the group is preparing a presentation that compares and contrasts Brazilian president Lula and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. This is for Thursdays class on Global Political Economy with Professor Jean-Pierre Lehman.

After that classmates Alejandro Salcedo [Mexican] and Gerrit Sinderman [German] held an interesting presentation on 'Search Funds' for the self-established Entrepreneurship Club. This was followed up by a live video conference with Alejandro's cousin Gustavo Fernandez and his partner Eduardo Clave. They are MBA students at Harvard Business School and are currently setting up a Search Fund together. A Search Fund is basically a fund that is set up to give an entrepreneur time and money to search for a company to acquire. You will normally get two years to find the company plus a bit of money to keep you going while searching. Once you have found the company to acquire the investor then submits the bulk of the committed capital. The concept, which was completely new to all of us, is relatively unknown in the US and is non-existing in Europe. It was nevertheless a thought provoking presentation.

Thorsten

Releasing tension by massaging yourself with something as simple as a tennis ball. Part of today's session on 'Sustaining high performance', which also included breathing techniques.

Video conference on 'Search Funds' directly from Harvard Business School.
Cool technology by the way. It was a first for me.

Study group no 9, better known as 'Cloud #9', as it looked in 2009 on Building Block 1.
Left-to-right: Kornelius Thimm (standing) [German], Thorsten Boeck [Danish], Misayo Matsumoto [Japanese], Fadi Sbaiti [Lebanese/American], Eva Hubsman [Israeli], Juan Benitez [Colombian], Liesbeth Bakker [Dutch] and Eric Vergara [Thai].

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.

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!