Before the next term starts I thought i'd write down some comments from Term 1. Being 'the baptism of fire' that it was in the sense of ramping up our academic lives again there are many things to talk about. So many issues arose over the term but as I write nearly a fortnight after exams finished many of the small issues fade away. The issues at the time seemed to be really major at the time but time has put everything into better perspective.
I came into this program a very ambitious yet lost person. The big question of what i'm going to do with the rest of my life constantly does laps of the interior of my skull. Six subjects later i'm slightly clearer on where I am heading and also better able to comment on the value of an MBA. I see in the next Economist there will be an article denouncing MBA's. I look forward to reading it.
The subjects in the second part of this term were
-> Corporate Finance - This was one of the main learning topics I wanted to get out of the course. After many years of doing company P&L forecasts but not really understanding what is going on, Corporate Finance helped put all the pieces of the puzzle together. I thoroughly enjoyed the practicality of the subject and the new perspectives it provided. While many in our class boo-boo finance I think it is the key to anything you do in business. We covered the basics of valuation using NPV to do DCF's, we looked at Scenario Analysis and Option Valuation as well as Beta's etc along the way. I think I have commented on our lecturer before but our Rasta friend (Prof Grote) may have set an epically difficult exam but I really enjoyed the course and somehow the torturous exam as well!
-> Organisational Behaviour and Change Management - is a subject looking scientifically at the softer aspects of business namely motivation, leadership styles, creativity, reward systems and groups and team dynamics. Sadly the course was delivered in a very German - dry and theoretical manner. To balance that disappointment the actual content I found hugely interesting. The discussions on motivation helped to frame what I see as valuable in work and what I should look for. As I reflect on my time at the boatclub and Palmerston Projects I can see where I have made some of the typical errors in leadership. These errors I can't necessarily be blamed for I don't think as I didn't know better but I now can learn from that, use the experience and this course to leverage people and soft skills in my next business adventures. The course is actually quite topical due to the huge media surrounding Exective and Banker's pay and remuneration packages. Reward systems do have a huge impact on how people work and motivate themselves. As I said, the course was not well delivered and as a result many in our class made significant yet informal complaints. I was and am still puzzled why there were complaints on the content but have come to think that it is perhaps a reflection on our class characteristics. I have no idea where or what everyone will end up doing, nor do I really understand everyones ambitions however complaints of the subject content may relect that some of my classmates don't value the soft-skills and have not yet come to appreciate the nuances of good leadership, job design and group dynamics. I'm no expert but look forward when I can implement them in the real world.
-> Fundamentals of Marketing - This was a surprising subject in the sense that I have never really differentiated Marketing from Advertising. This course had very little to do with Advertising at all. Thankfully! We covered key aspects of Branding, Pricing and innovation management. In fact we did more technical maths than in Corporate Finance at one point! It was good to find out that I had done a lot more marketing at Palmerston that I may have initally been able to pin-point. It's incredible how powerful marketing in it's complete sense is. I don't know where I read it but the phrase: "you don't need to find employers, you need to find customers" rings in my ears daily. Customer is King, but surprisingly often forgotten. This was a particularly high work load subject. In many respects it was the first course to push everyone in the class - right through to the end of the exam! There was a lot of content to cover. Moreover we tackled six or seven large cases to cover the points. The cases were hugely interesting. They were ways to really understand some of the failures and successes of real companies. Because everything was done in group work, it also became the key niggling point due to everyones comprehension of the English language and also cultural perspective differences. Having question askers in the group are always good but under the pressure of the term it really did push everyone's patience and temperament. I now know who I would want to work with under pressure in the future - and who I will steer clear of after working 12 hours straight on a document. It's not pretty for anyone! I think we are very lucky to be studying marketing at Mannheim due to the influence of Prof Homborg and Prof Kuester. They are both renowned academics enabling world class learning. It's a hugely valuable subject whether you're trading commodities or working on a start-up company it has huge value.
All in all - a great term from the content point of view. I've started drafting something more on the 'other' aspects of the course and will post when I finish it!
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