Leadership Metamorphosis

This Saturday the GIBS MBA Blue group 2011/2012 class spent the day with Professor Dave Beaty. http://www.2btassociates.com/pdfdocs/Resume_dtb.pdf

His wisdom and knowledge comes from working in a wide range of different posts including the Pentagon and as a professional golf mind guru. He applied his magic on our class. His wand touched our careers as we unlocked our “Career Anchors”. http://www.careeranchorsonline.com/SCA/startPage.do

He deftly manoeuvred the entire class into understanding the importance of co-operation through his Big Foot/Little Foot game.

We learned about a career mishap that befell on the protagonist George, in our first cartoon case study. The parable revealed layers of learning that had everyone in the class promising to make BIG mental notes not to fall into his “Peter principle” syndrome. It cost him his job. Another insight from the case was “where was management?” while George slid into a management billabong.

This is what separates the GIBS MBA from the other MBA’s in South Africa. We are not stuck in silos; we are being elevated to a strategic advantage point high above the day-to-day management idiosyncrasies and ruts. We are undergoing a leadership metamorphosis.

 See you at GIBS.

http://www.gibs.co.za/

www.twitter.com/Etsebeth

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eug%C3%A9ne-etsebeth/27/688/603

3 Day Champions

The first three day session for Module 3 is behind us. What a world of difference good lecturers make. Andrew Abdo takes the angst out of financial accounting and Adrian Saville is eloquently guiding us though the vagaries of macroeconomics.

With another 4 day session coming up we can expect to become even more immersed in these subjects.

Our accounting preparation included a 10 hour computer based learning assignment from Harvard.  If only accounting had been this well explained in first year varsity. Andrew Abdo then used his experience as an MBA alumnus and training expert to use simple graphical methods of relaying complex concepts.

In our macroeconomics sessions we have been covering case studies from a smörgåsbord of countries including the Nordic countries, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam and Botswana. We are being introduced to the complexities of competitiveness in a country.  How does economic growth affect inflation? Will productivity or technological advances reduce unemployment? Will reducing the M3 money supply reduce interest rates? How are exchange rates influenced by the balance of payments?

There are more questions than answers at this stage, but they are keeping me up at night. Within the next two weeks I will have a framework in which to navigate these waters.  These two subjects are incredibly important in the search of financial enlightenment. Without this enlightenment you may well be a victim of recessions rather than a shrewd champion.

See you at GIBS

Vitalstatistix and Impedimenta

Who hasn’t had a voice, either one’s own or someone else’s, raging at you for not being more ambitious?  In Asterix and Obelix comics it is Impedimenta that nit-picks Vitalstatistix to rise above his station and to observe his rights as commander-in-chief.

On Saturday night I had voices cajoling me to improve my statistics, but impediments got in my way.

Sunday morning was D-Day.

8 am: pencils sharpened and calculators at the ready.

Try difficult questions on for size. How about T-statistics for vital statistics? And what about probability … I say it was probably a robbery.

The knowledge we started Statistics 6 weeks ago with and what we had on Sunday were two different views of the data world. Sunday was the pinnacle of our data omnipotence.

We were confronted with mountains of data, stacked in bits of bytes.  We slowly sifted through the data stack. We prodded at first and then unpicked, unravelled, transformed and doctored the sample data.

At 10:55 am on Sunday morning we had a presentable decision: Statistics is vital.

See you at GIBS

Pink Boats and Sisonke Stars

Our case study on Sunday afternoon featured the cool Scandinavian clothing and shoe retailers called “Moods of Norway”. It was a well picked topic for the hour. The company exuded fun and used a variety of novel branding initiatives like buying a boat and painting it pink. They would then sail around the Norwegian coastline popping champagne at every opportunity to spread enthusiasm for their brand. It worked. They have become an iconic brand in their home country and even supply the Norwegian police outfits.

Dawn Nathan-Jones the CEO of Europcar South Africa highlighted the green thread that runs through her company. Europcars “moments of truth” span an estimated 700 touch points with customers. Another dimension of Europcar was how they have created an internalisation program called Sisonke – a Zulu phrase meaning “we are together.” This is a customer centric company that actively looks for new market segmenting opportunities.

Our final session of Analytical Tools and Techniques (aka Statistics) showed that we have come a long way in our understanding of this enigma.

Sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind. Wee-hour assignments forcing us to practice our new techniques immersed us in the material. We came out the other side better for it.

Exams and assignments are now the buzzwords.  

See you at GIBS.

Definitions

Statistics – it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma

Regression Analysis – study of how far an MBA student can regress in statistics

CHAID dendrogram – a highly visual and cascading decision tree. (The CHAID technique was developed in South Africa by Gordon V. Kass)

Sisonke Stars – Europcar staff

p-value - is the probability of obtaining a test statistic at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed, assuming that the null hypothesis is true

t-statistic – about 45% of the Blue group MBA 2011/2012 drink tea

Grandmas’ Waffle – dough-based cake or MBA students’ unprepared reply

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A Tsunami of Symbols

On Sunday evening when all was said and done there were a number of MBA students that felt as if they had been pummelled by a Tsunami.

When the going gets tough the tough go shopping. So we went shopping on Saturday.

Our task set by Nicola Kleyn was to ascertain the validity of the statement: “World class service in Jozi – myth or reality?”

Our group chose Cramers Coffee on Main Street in Jozi. We were delighted with the results. The resident Barista called Lekunutu said: “I pour my heart out in every cup.”

And he did.

On top of my smooth, creamy and flavourful latte was the shape of a heart.

Lekunutu defined the Cramer experience as “to be frozen in time, to be transported to a safe oasis.”

Cramers Coffee was a wonderful experience shaped with superlative, world class service that exceeded expectations.

Down the road on the way to the Carlton Centre we found another coffee shop. It was chalk and cheese. Coffee is coffee – right?

No it isn’t.

Our coffee maker was not well versed in the art of coffee making. The experience was average. It felt unnatural, replicated, mass produced and un-special – in a word, forgettable.

Back in the classroom things were not as clear cut. The symbols of the Mean, Mode and Median were clashing with the Product, Price, Place and Promotion over four days of rigorous learning.

The collateral damage is still to be defined. However, the devastation was apparent.

Definitions:

Throw the baby out with the bathwater – what SAB did with the Lion brand

Monster – the Afrikaans word for sample. May be used interchangeably in Afrikaans or English

Hypothesis testing – to be defined

Marketing – in the process of being defined

Normal Distribution – an abnormal invention that defies meaning

Mean – an invention that obeys normal logic

StatTool - a swear word for 20% of the class who couldn’t install it on their laptops

See you at GIBS

Sore wrists and beautiful minds

Any exam where callous-free knowledge workers need to write frenetically for 3 hours is unfair. But we have been taught life can be unfair on this MBA course – so we get on with it.

The Human Performance and Behaviour exam this last Sunday had the GIBS students scrawling over 15 pages in 180 minutes. Some of us hadn’t written an exam for a decade. Nerves and lack of wrist strength played on everyone’s minds. Three questions in three hours.

 On your marks (hopefully top marks), get set (open book test equals tough questions), go (hold on, what is this first question all about – please Ma’am may I have another test paper – this one is too difficult).

Saturday was the Microeconomics paper. In a space of 5 weeks the entire class has become mini-Keynesians and we all developed “Beautiful Minds”. Well finding the Nash equilibrium was tough – and was there or wasn’t there a Prisoners Dilemma? Now when I see the Libyan oil price shock I have mental Supply and Demand shifts springing around in my head. OPEC does this, Egypt does that. Demand curve shifts. Is OPEC a cartel or not?

In a strange way all this is put to bed. These two subjects that we snuggled with for over 5 weeks are about to drift off. On the cold light of this Monday morning the twin subjects of Marketing and Analytical tools and techniques has become top of mind. Is my wrist ready for this?

See you at GIBS

Sunday Theatre

A full matinee of videos and live theatre is not what you would expect from GIBS – even on a Sunday. The trick was that it was us – the students that made the performance. Each of our  10 syndicates expertly crafted a 15 minute production showing various HR issues for Prof. Margie Sutherland.

Our topic was “Challenges in implementing Employment Equity in your organisation.” Dipping into our toolbox of theories and models we used Pless and Maaks’ 4 stages to a culture of inclusion as our main approach to solving EE.

What made the afternoon special was that there was a growing camaraderie in the class as we each peeled back layers of our characters. Professional actors and motivational speakers have it tough. But it didn't take us too long before we all packed a powerful performance.

Mike Holland finished up our Micro-Economics course with the good news that he will schedule a review session next week off his own bat. Wow, that is a remarkable act of kindness.

See you at GIBS