GIBS MBA Test

The GIBS MBA application test is an alternative to doing the GMAT. I wanted to get into GIBS so it was a no-brainer to do a test that GIBS had set up.

My final MBA decision occurred over a short period of time in rapid fire. As it happened I phoned on Thursday to inquire about the GIBS test and the administrator informed me that there were slots available for Friday. "Hmm. Ok, I’ll do it", I said, without thinking of the consequences.

The only thing I could prepare in one night was to get a good night’s sleep.  My wife took our 4 week old son and slept in his nursery. I tossed and swivelled in the duvet and corkscrewed myself into the morning.

I was aware that this was only my second time to the GIBS campus and I wanted to get there early to enjoy the setting, architecture and promise of learning.

Tests have a strange effect on people.  I pretended to read the Business Day while trying to stay calm. My mind was jumping. Everyone else seemed to sway on a spectrum of jittery to bullet-proof.

I believe humans are capable of incredible feats on little sleep and anticipation – or at least that’s what I told myself.

The test was a comprehensive 5 hours and covered the following dimensions:

·         Learning potential

·         Knowledge transfer

·         Numeracy

·         Verbal

·         Essay and writing

That’s about all I’ll reveal on the GIBS application test. I did come out dazed and punch drunk. It was an all-consuming and brain juggling test of skill.

I started to get nervous again as I drove out of the GIBS campus on the way to work. How would I fare against the other applicants?

Eugéne Etsebeth - My strengths and weaknesses

My best days start out with a cycle before most of Johannesburg is awake. This clears my mind and sets me up for a focus-driven day in business. Keeping my eye-on-the-prize is one of my better attributes. I have an advantage of creating a minds-eye picture of the end goal and slowly, but surely the finish line becomes clearer and achievable – every time. I don’t chant in the mirror like Suze Orman recommends, however I could improve on the regularity of my pre-work focus sessions. I find that my most productive and rewarding days are when I have objectives succinctly laid out before I engage with people.

My Outlook task list has all my repetitive tasks colour-coded in grey, like monitoring month-end system runs. They are marked in dreary grey because any business-as-usual activities or repetitive tasks are placed on the back-burner. I would far rather concentrate on removing obstacles in a project team, or leading an analysis and project management session than slink into the daily grind of monotonous tasks. This is an area that I constantly try to reinvigorate within myself. I was brought up with the dictum “that anything you do, you must do well”.

On any given day I hold workshops with key banking stakeholders from across all business silos. I pride myself in having a birds-eye-view of business and understanding and motivating the performance of the group. Having a background with business analyst skills, essentially the go-between of business and IT, I am in a position to understand business problems and to remedy these using business cases, specifications, decision tools  and interactive workshops. The end goal is to find a solution. I have done this many times in the financial services industry and I am good at it. This is my current area of expertise. I am short of knowledge in other industry sectors and I would like to beef up my knowledge in telecommunications, investment banking and medical research.

I have spent two years in the City in London working in multi-national investment banks, however my current employer for over 10 years has a flat structure and is a small-to-medium company that rewards your ability to be a “jack-of-all trades”. The advantage is that this approach has helped me glean skills and knowledge at breakneck speed and to become an enabler and not a blocker of progress. The more corporate style of management is prevalent in business and I need to learn how to lead in these environments as well as adhere, abide and manoeuvre within the rigorous “Chinese-walls” that are often in place in these entities.

I believe there is always a way around a problem. An opportunity always lurks. My perseverance and creative synapses demand that I search for elegant answers in the bramble-bush of problems. The MBA’s strategic and decision making dimensions are some of the tools that I am excited to absorb in order to strengthen my skills. The diverse curriculum including leadership growth, business environment and the electives will also enable me to re-energise my current career plateau.

When I arrive home I am welcomed by my wife and month-old son. It has taken over four years of IVF treatment to achieve our goal of having a family. The clarity of the moment when I held my son for the first time enabled me to see the future. With the full backing from my wife I am looking to improve my career, enhance my business skills and increase my international mobility.  I know the MBA will assist me on this journey. It will also aid me in reaching my full potential.  My creative business mind will be jet-fuelled and ready to understand all business functions and take on global projects in the financial services, telecommunications and medical research sectors.

Eugéne Etsebeth - World Cup 2010 - Alive with possibility

A calabash of yellow erupted into a frenzy. Siphiwe Tshabalala had just opened the scoring in the FIFA World Cup 2010 tournament. People in the rows behind me, complete strangers, hugged me. I hugged them back, while trying to jump up a down like a pogo-stick.

When it all calmed down I looked across at the dejected Mexican supporters – all 30 000 of them. I almost couldn’t believe that Mexico, that had already hosted two World Cups, was on the back foot in this opening game. I was also keenly aware that many millions of South Americans and people the world over were having their perceptions of Africa shattered on that famous day – June 11, 2010.

I was proud that the opening ceremony – with a distinctly South African theme and double-decker sized dung beetle – signalled to the detractors and naysayers that we are world beaters. One win, one loss and a draw was Bafana Bafana’s report card. This is not a bad result considering our low ranking going in to the tournament.

In the lead up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup the “alive with possibility” campaign was launched and had important people like Desmond Tutu, Thabo Mbeki and Joel Stransky brandishing the possibilities in South Africa. Margaret Dingalo from the International Marketing Council of SA (IMC) summed up the “alive with possibility” campaign on the SouthAfrica.info website: “South Africa needs to build an image of the nation, both within and beyond our borders, that matches its potential to grow.”

It was off the field where South Africans were scoring goal after goal. A staggering cumulative 26 billion people around the globe watched the World Cup. The images of South Africa’s world class stadiums, classy press facilities and high tech communications remoulded perceptions of the Dark Continent. In another gestalt flip for non-South Africans, we successfully showed 25 matches in 3D technology.

South Africans underwent a patriotic period of flag waving and ululation. Fans of all creeds joined together in single celebration.  I watched the final game in a Johannesburg restaurant. Next to me was a family of Americans. During the closing ceremony I struck up a conversation with them. The dad was a successful fund manager, along with his eldest son. They had travelled to South Africa for the first time and had fallen in love with the country. We all sat mesmerised by the quality of the closing show. The American family and the entire restaurant contingent were incredibly impressed with how far South Africa and its citizens had progressed. 

I knew in those moments during the ceremony at the calabash-shaped stadium that our “alive with possibilities” reality was silently being transmitted to millions of people, one powerful frame after another.

Eugéne Etsebeth - What is Business’s role in Society?

Leading up to the Industrial Age there would have been hardly any distinction between ‘Business’ and ‘Society’.  A person’s livelihood or trade – in these bygone times – would have been influenced mainly by tribal, royal, military or religious forces. It is only with the advent of the Industrial and Information epochs that ‘Business’ has become an established and recognized term.

Today, business and society are intertwined. Business has a symbiotic role within society. For the most part business creates value and enriches societies. But symbiosis, in its ugliest form, may turn into a parasite – one that feeds off another.  The Enron and Parmalat scandals are examples of how fraud can lead to a breakdown of trust in society, and leave ‘collateral damage’ to unsuspecting investors, creditors, consumers and employees.

Businesses tread a thin line in organized societies and are constantly being checked for safety, affirmative action, gender and other cultural issues – predominantly by unions and government. Government’s role in society is normally to create rules in which business can operate like Basel III. Businesses are expected to adhere to these regulations. Trade unions often assume a societal voice in business. The most convivial of these relationships would be for business to set up collective bargaining sessions with the unions.

Lately societies are increasingly measuring businesses openness and trustworthiness. Social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter have a delicate role to play as they hold personal data that often needs to be distributed in order to ‘monetise’ their websites. They need to do this with the explicit permission of its users. If they do not follow this law then the society of users will quickly delete their profile and move to more trustworthy home. In the modern era some business’s can be bankrupted with a click of a button.

Businesses, by and large, have recognized their influence and power within society. Google – with a profit of over US$ 6.5 billion in 2009 – understands the power they wield. The 6th point of the 10 point corporate philosophy of Google says, "You can make money without doing evil.”

The birth of legal persons (proprietary limited, close corporation etc.) is a particularly revealing feature of ‘Business’. A company becomes like a person with its own rights and separate liability. A person and business, legally speaking, share a common body. On this basic level businesses are the people and the people are business.

It has become common practice for businesses to perform on at least two levels. They must enable shareholders wealth maximization and perform in a socially responsible manner. These dual objectives are not always aligned to society’s best interests.

The deeper we travel into the Information Age ‘corporate social responsibility’ is going to become a clarion call for businesses. We are entering into a world of openness. We live in a world where businesses must be trustworthy. If businesses aren’t trustworthy they will face the wrath of a swarm of well-informed and connected consumers.

MBA application at GIBS

After deciding, with the support of my wife, to complete a MBA I narrowed down the choice between WBS and GIBS. GIBS was my numero uno choice. Just how GIBS was going to receive my application was uncertain. I was battling against the top candidates. Sure, I can handle my own in complex and intelligent company, but how I was I to fair against the crème de la crème?

GIBS has a rigourous application process that includes essays, tests, interviews, questionnaires and more:   http://www.gibs.ac.za/academic-programmes/the-gibs-mba/application-process.aspx

My first hurdle was to generate sparkling essays. This played into my sweet spot - writing is my hobby. I am a published writer and have been doing freelance writing gigs that range from sports journalism to pregnancy articles for almost a decade. Like public speaking, the more you practise the better you get.

In my next posts I share my three essays:

1. What is business's role in society?

2. World Cup 2010 - Alive with possibility.

3. Eugéne Etsebeth - My Strength and weaknesses.

Selecting a MBA programme

Life comes down to some very big choices. These choices will impact your life in such gigantic ways that they have to be well thought out and constructed. Choosing a life partner, choosing to emigrate (or not), choosing to make a difference (or not). Choosing a MBA is one such choice. It is a choice to be made with gravitas.

After deciding to study a MBA (in order to increase my personal skills and career growth with the end goal to become a Product Manager) I needed to sit down and choose a MBA in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Only two options sprung to mind:

·         Wits Business School (WBS) http://www.wbs.ac.za/degrees/mba/

·         Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) http://www.gibs.ac.za/academic-programmes/the-gibs-mba.aspx

I looked closely at both programmes and their respective credos. I examined them further by reading, as well as discussing the course with some alumni from both schools.  For my years of study - 2011/2012 - it became clear that GIBS was the better option for me. The things that impressed me were:

·         Purpose-built campus

·         A stone’s throw from Sandton

·         The faculty is world class (a lot of lecturers moved  from WBS)

·         It is internationally accredited by the Association of MBAs (AMBA) http://www.mbaworld.com/

·         Part of the study is in intensive syndicate  groups – this will allow me to improve my team building and leadership skills

·         It is globally relevant and cutting edge

·         GIBS is not complacent and constantly engages with business and government in the form of presentations, lectures, course improvement etc.

·         Compulsory global module (overseas)

In my working career I have met two GIBS alumni and they had nothing but good things to say about the programme.  The WBS was in a state of flux (based on reports from the press) related to changes in Rector’s and faculty members.  GIBS, on the other hand appears to be a rising star. I chose GIBS.

What now?

 I had made my choice after much thought and deliberation. Now all I had to do was apply.

 What lay before me was the formidable GIBS test – all 5 hours of it. A number of essays and some other administrative hurdles also needed to be vanquished.

Oh, and also needed to vanquish other applicants. I needed to be better than most of them, otherwise I would be sitting on the bench (only about 150 applicants are accepted into the modular course).

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MBA decision

It was the birth of my son that unclogged my decision mechanisms. Seeing his perfectness and realising that this little guy was going to be dependent on me - it cleared up my thought patterns.

About a week after Sven’s arrival into the world I started to revisit the idea of self improvement and career growth. The MBA had been an idea of mine for a while, but I always dismissed it as a testosterone inducing course. After re-looking at the programme and the objectives of the MBA degree I was impressed and rejected my previous theory. I mistook the MBA’s purposefulness as arrogance. It was my mistake.

I looked hard at myself and identified my need for personal skills growth, career progress and international mobility. This dovetailed perfectly into the learning opportunities that the MBA offered.

The role of Management Consultant or Product Manager is my end goal. I have the skills toolkit and experience to do well at both. The MBA will give me the edge in the strategic and leadership dimensions and broaden my knowledge on the business environment and business functions like marketing.

A magazine article also gave me enormous depth and breadth on the MBA. It was published by Financial Mail (www.fm.co.za). “Ranking the MBAs” is the title and it’s written by David Furlonger. You can find the article here: http://www.fm.co.za/Article.aspx?id=121231

What I realised was that I was at a crossroads in my life. My career needed a boost. It will be my re-birth - my son’s birth will be mirrored by my own. We will grow together.

Now all I have to do is to choose a MBA programme in Johannesburg, South Africa. My preference is a programme that will provide a part-time or modular course.

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