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!

In Transit

I am back on the balcony, back in Lausanne. Thinking, thinking, thinking. I feel much better than when I left Lausanne three weeks ago. The batteries are recharged and the connection to the outside world has been reestablished. At the same time it is also clear that mentally I never managed to leave Lausanne and IMD behind. Questions about what actually happened during the first half of the year kept swirling in my mind. The feedback from peers and professors - received the day before we went on vacation - kept popping up. Some of it was encouraging, some of it was not. And why was that? What situation was behind each message. Are there any regrets? Yes, definitely! It is clear that I have missed out on some obvious opportunities. That cannot be redone - that time will not come back - but I can make sure that I find a better path for the second half. I have boiled it all down to a few points that I want to improve on. A few goals that I want to reach.

I arrived in Lausanne yesterday after a week on Malta with my family. It was very hot and humid on this little island in the Mediterranean, so I have enjoyed the chill of Switzerland for a change. The last 24 hours have been spent unpacking, doing laundry and catching up on emails, so I am ready for the next trip. We are leaving for South Africa in a couple of hours.

In Johannesburg I will be working with Eric, Shibu and Stone in a small company (10 employees) that produces hydraulic hose fittings!!!! I wonder how a trader of financial derivatives (Eric), a sales guy from Procter & Gamble (Shibu) and a shipping guy (myself) will get our hands around that subject. We will probably be relying quite a bit on our only engineer (Stone).

This complete lack of knowledge of what awaits us is also what thrills me. We will just go and see what hits us and then take it as it comes. This is an experiment, a first ever for a business school as far as we know. I hope it becomes a huge success and one that can be developed further in the years to come. I can not wait to take the plunge!

I better start packing.

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]

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!