Internship Reflections

The 8 weeks internship in the Spanish company completed in mid of August. The project was about M&A in a new sector that the company intended to enter. There are a lots of learning reflection on the internship, about the process, the learning and the contribution to the company. I will describe them in the following 3 categories:
 

1) The process - What went well and what did not
2) The learning - What I learned
3) The contribution - What the company gained from this internship

What went well?
 

- Project Scoping

Thanks to the experience in the NfP and UKCP Project, I have learned that the most vital process to determine the smooth operation of any consulting projects is the “Project Scoping”. As people use to say, “Fail to plan is plan to fail”; for me, “Fail to define a clear project scope is scope to fail”. A smart project scoping has to fulfil the client objective within the available time and resource. This require the consultant to take initiative to understand what client want and what are the available time and resource that the consultant can use to achieve the project objective.

I prepared 2 project proposals based on my understanding of the initial project brief, and explained them during the kick-off meeting. The final project plan, which included the project scope, deliverables and project schedule were prepared by incorporating my supervisors’ comments and agreed within the first week of the internship. The clear project scope that agreed at the earliest stage of the internship had set the clear direction for my research where I can efficiently allocate my time.

 - Overall Project Flow

Again from the experience of NfP and UKCP Project, we were taught to start from the end. What it means is thinking ahead of what will be the possible hypothesis (outcome) of the project, then working backward to formulate the strategy to test the hypothesis. Followed by determining what data needs to be used to support the strategy, and finally only thinking of where to find the data.

The traditional ways of research is always the opposite by blindly collecting as much data as possible, then swimming across the data to find what is relevant to the project. This methodology may eventually lost the direction of what actually is the need of the project.

For this internship, I have broken down the research into 3 stages, where each stage had its own hypothesis. The hypothesis were then further tested by different models as part of each of the strategy. This process has helped me to identify what are the necessary data and hence eliminate the waste of time on finding information which are seemingly relevant but not helpful to test the hypothesis.

- Presentation

There were 2 presentations in the whole internship. One for the interim presentation and one for the final presentation. As we were always trained to do the presentation in the MBA program, these experience had certainly sharpen my presentation skills.

A successful presentation is like an interesting story telling, where the audiences pay full attention for the whole session and take away the key messages of the presentation. In my presentations, I tried to make sure the messages are clear and story line are exist between each slide, to ensure the presentation is interesting and the audience can take away what I really want them to take away.

What I think I should do more

I read an article before that say the best way to train ourselves to be the CEO in the future is work smartly by allocating our time in the 30, 30, 30, 10 rule – 30% time to work, 30% time to interact with the colleagues, 30% time to think like the company CEO of what should be the corporate strategy and remaining 10% time for leisure and relax.

For me, I think I spent my time in the company in a 60, 20, 10, 10 ratio. If I have chance to back to the past, besides busy with the research, I will spend more time to interact with more people, as well as to think the CEO way of how I will manage the company.

What I have learned

I have 7 years experiences in the EPC industry, but in a specific sector. This project has provided a precious chance for me to explore the new sector. This will definitely widen my career option in the Oil & Gas industry after the MBA.

One thing I like so much about the MBS MBA is the so called “Manchester Method” that emphasize “Learning by Doing”. The projects I have undertaken in the MBA program has provide me a strong foundation for the challenges in the internship. This internship was indeed a real life project for me to test the practicality of the skills and knowledge I learned in the program. I have to say that with the experience in the MBA, I can perform the project independently with the least supervision from my supervisors.

What I have contributed

It is hard to tell on behalf of the company of what they have gained. But through the discussion in the interim presentation as well as the final presentation, one compliment that I got from the Deputy CEO was that I have helped them to organize what they have in their minds in a more structure way.
 

The internship report has suggested the most attractive sector in the interested industry in terms of market size, growth, and profitability; as well as the names of potential targets, which supported by structured company analysis. I believe the recommendation in the report can be used as a reference for the Deputy CEO to perform the internal negotiation, and further decide the acquisition target.  

Internship Search

My Spanish friend joked that British come to Spain for 3S - Sangria, Sun and Sex. I kinda of agree with that, nice food and wine, perfect weather and lots of beautiful girls!

5 weeks passed since I started my internship here in Madrid. But before I go into the details of the internship, I would like to share about the internship search strategy. Well, people do think that finding an internship is easy for an MBA student...at least I thought the same when I first joined the program. But the reality is cruel, the Euro economy environment is still gloomy. Unemployment rate remains high. So, why should the company pay to hire you for the MBA internship?

At the time I started my internship in Spain, the statistic of the internship application success rate of my school is still not much encouraging. Only half of the class got an internship at that time. The type of internships available then was changed from a typical internship that require you to work fulltime in a company to a project-based internship which require only certain hours per week. Although this is still a good learning opportunity, but certainly not what MBA are looking for at the beginning.

So, how to improve your chance?

Start early

The first semester of the MBA program is always the toughest semester as this is where the steep learning curve begins. Not only the study loads, but you also need to settle down in a totally new environment, get used to the new language (if you are not a native English speaker), make new friends, and cope with cultural difference...So you will be busy through out the semester, not allocate any time for the internship search as you think you still have plenty of time...

The reality is cruel...chances are always given to whoever prepared. My Japanese friend who started his preparation as early as June (2 months before the MBA start) got his first internship in October, and the second one somewhere in February. Well, the Japanese companies, and also the banking and consulting companies, normally start recruiting earlier at around October, but most other companies open application only from February.

So, if you are not interested in Japanese companies, or banking or consulting, is that means that you can start late?

No! Start early doesn’t means start application early. There are lots more things to do before the application. For example, prepare a MBA level master resume (CV) and a master cover letter (CL), which you can tailor later according to the company requirement, do mock interview training, study the industries, the companies, knowing their requirements, and most important, study YOU as a candidate, know your strength, weakness, what you like and don’t like, how you can contribute and why the company would need you.

When the chance comes, you are ready to grab it.

Know yourself

Repeat again the point I made before. The company will not be interested on you if you yourself do not know well about yourself. I saw friends applied to whatever openings he discovered. He spent lots of time prepare the CV and the CL but sadly he didn’t success getting any of them.

I think there are 3 main elements on knowing yourself.

1) Know your interest

Know where you have interest to work, it can be industry, function or geographical location. But don’t come to conclusion in a hurry before you study them. Attend the company presentation, for whatever industry, function or geographical location. Try to understand first and then make your decision.

This interest will turn out to be passion showing on your face when you are in the interview.

2) Know your strength

What you interested may not be what you are strong at. Company recruits MBA for an immediate contribution in their business. They don’t give you much time to start from zero. Therefore, know well about your strength and shows how you can contribute to the company is very important in the interview. Being say that, if you think yourself have less advantage because of no experience in a new field, try to leverage the soft skills and general management skills that you have gained in some other fields. 

3) Know your want

Everyone wants internship for different reasons. Some want to experience a new industry, function or geography, some looking for a fulltime job, some for money, and some just to do because everyone else is doing. And this will definitely influence your internship choice. For example, if you are interested to start your own business after the MBA, you may want to gain entrepreneurship experience in a start-up company even it is an unpaid internship.

So, these 3 elements make the Venn Chart. The internships that located more towards the center of the Venn Chart, is the one that most suit you, and the one that you have the highest chance.


Rethink your change
Almost everyone pursue an MBA for a change of career, whether a change in the industry, function or geography. It is clear that the more changes you want, the harder it will be. Internship is an good opportunity for you to test out whether the change you want is what you want. However, getting an internship with all 3 changes is equally difficult.

As mentioned before, the company expect you to contribute, based on your previous experience or current skill sets you have. Change of all 3 aspects (industry, function and geography) put you in a less advantage position compare to those who already have some experience in the industry or function or geography, or two, or even all three of them.

Therefore, reduce a change will significantly enhance your chance to get an internship. For instance, for the three internships I secured, I have kept at least an aspect unchanged. For the internship in Spain, I changed the function from engineer to M&A analyst, the geography from Japan to Spain, but keep the same industry in oil & gas. For the internship in Japan, I changed the industry to consulting, function to management consultant, but kept the same geography. For another internship in Malaysia which I have rejected, I changed the industry to market research, the role to researcher but kept the same geography in Malaysia (Well, being a Malaysian although I have not worked in Malaysia for the past 10 years).

However, there are still many success stories among my friends who got internship that have changes in all 3 aspects. And the reason is simple, they have an internship that fit in the middle of the Venn Chart that I mentioned before.

The bottom line is whether you really want the changes!

So, what are you still waiting for? Start Now!

UKCP

Not suppose to come back to this at this moment as the sunshine outside there in the Madrid is calling me. Well, it’s always good to reflect on what you have done before moving to the next stage. So, although the UKC Project already completed last week, allow me to reflect a bit on the learning process.

Our client was a small UK company specialises in boat building. The original project scope was to suppose to be identify potential international markets for its products. But after initial research and client meetings, we found that the business has serious problem in securing order locally, not even to mention the international expansion. Therefore, the project scope was then changed to a marketing strategy in order to increase orders regardless of geographical location.

So, here’s the learning.

Defining of Project Scope

Defining of project scope is the most challenging and critical process of any consulting project. I had bad experience in the NfP project where my teams took almost a month to finalise the scope with client, which resulted in poor outcome due to lack of time for research and analysis. Learning from that experience, I was paying more effort to finalise the project scope with client at the early stage of the project.

However, sometimes clients do not really know what they want. As mentioned before, client intended to find out potential international markets for their product. We were quite excited by looking at this “international expansion” project, but after initial research and client interview, we found out that there was a serious business continuity problem within the organisation. The company has only 3 orders in the past 3 years. Current production capacity is 2 boats annually but can handle up to 6 orders per annum by outsourcing some of the processes. This means that the production facilities was far under utilisation due to difficulty in secure new orders. Furthermore, Client USP is the customisation and customer experience where customer can visit the fabrication yard and give preference for design during the production period which may not feasible for an oversea customers. Moreover, Client did not favor to spend much budget on international marketing.

Based on these factors, we concluded that an international market exploration is not feasible for Client and what really important is to secure additional 2-4 orders per annum regardless of the geographical locations.

We formalised the change of scope in the Project Plan and obtained the confirmation from Client one week after the initial interview. This has gave us enough time to kick start the research directly with a clear project scope and target in mind.

My key learnings are:

• Make assumptions about what client need through the project brief and initial research.
• Verify the assumptions via client interview.
• Understand the fact that client sometimes does not clear about their own problem.
• It is the consultant’s role to scrutinise the problem from different perspectives and guide the client to the right path.
• Last but not least, get the confirmation from client about the agreed scope before starting anything.

Design the Research Methodology

Start with the end in mind. A research shall start with a hypothesis. To verify the hypothesis, we need a model for the analysis; to populate the model, we have to identify what data is necessary; to look for the data, we need to determine what research is required...All seems to be working backward, which is quite contradict with the traditional way, where research started by random data collecting, followed by analysis through whatever data available and finally a conclusion based on the analysis.

I have to admit that working backward was very hard at the beginning of any project, as everything was so uncertain and vague. To form a concrete hypothesis at this stage is very challenging. This again depends on how success we define the project scope and project target that I described before. A well defined project scope and target will give you a clear idea of what need to be achieved, hence a clear idea of what need to be tested.

After forming the hypothesis, another essential skill is to design a model for analysis. This is associated with the variables that we want to test in the project. For example, in our project, the key variables are the customer persona, product USP, competitors and channels. An effective model will be a pictorial explanation of how all the variables can be integrated together to test the hypothesis. Based on the model, what data is required to support the variables become clear and consequently what kind of research has to be done to collect the data also become obvious.

My key learnings are:

• Start with the end in mind.
• Start writing the report with executive summary even no research has been done yet.
• Make hypothesis based on the project scope and target.
• Identify the variables needed to test the hypothesis and design a model to integrate them.
• Based on the model, identify what data is required and finally determine the research method.

Contemplate the Strategic Recommendations

Dollar, Data, Deal and Decision, another MBS terminology for the consulting project, taught by the MBS professor. The outcome of the consulting project should be able to deliver the Dollar, Data, Deal and Decision to the client, which means recommendations of potential market size (Dollar), supporting evidences of the recommendations (Data), potential orders or channels that client can access (Deal) and action that client need to take to achieve the deal (Decision). All recommendations have to be robust with supporting data, and actionable considering client capacity. 

In this project, we have quantified the potential market size based on our secondary research data, we also estimated the potential orders that client will get by adopting the actions that we recommended. However, it was not always easy to make a recommendation that client do not like to hear. We have found potential new customer personas for 2 of client’s product. But we also found out that the other product, which client wanted to push the most, have no distinct USP to compete with other competitors. We tried to convey this message to client through the telephone conference several times but client seemed to be ignoring the fact.

As the main duty of a consultant is to solve client’s problem instead of just telling what client would like to hear, we decided to honestly present our finding in the client report as well as in the final presentation. We suppose that this decision will help Client to know better about the position of their products in the market.

Again, My key learnings are:

• Dollar, data, deal and decision - the model for a consulting project recommendations.
• Recommendations shall be robust, realistic and actionable
• Tell client what he need to hear, not what he like to hear

As a matter of fact, the Diploma stage of the MBA ended last week with the completion of the UKC Project. My MBA stage currently started with an internship in Madrid. Lot's of excitement and happening here in Spain! Will update you more about the internship in near future!

M&A

Manchester seems to know that I am leaving soon. She shows up with sunny face more frequent and more longer than anytime before. Still not used to the bright day at 9pm. People started wearing the short sleeves shirts with short pants, lying on the lawn, enjoying the sunshine out there. But I don’t have the luxury to enjoy it, at least until today.

This few weeks have been another busy peak in my MBA life. Working on 2 big projects simultaneously, exchange preparation, internship application and I even started the fulltime job application. Schedules filled up my diaries from Monday to Sunday, morning to night. Knowing that this is the capstone of the Diploma stage of the MBA, and realise that after this I will be leaving MBS for at least 6 months for internship and exchange, the remaining moments here with friends, the schools and Manchester became so precious.

Just finished the negotiation of the M&A project yesterday. I have to say that this is the course that I enjoy the most in the MBA so far. It was very practical project that you will see what you learned before in accounting, corporate finance, marketing, operation, HR and strategy, all fit together so well to form a powerful tools in the real-life application. That’s the Manchester Method, learning by doing.

The M&A projects started with a series of lectures on valuations, targeting, screening, due diligence, deal structure and finally the negotiation. In the project, we were hypothetically represent a real leading food processing and retailing company in UK looking to acquire another company as part of its corporate strategy for inorganic growth. The project is divided chronologically into 3 stages.

The first stage is the valuation of the food company itself. Not intend to describe the details here, but it was basically the assess of the business performance, forecast the future growth, revenue and other financial data, and estimate the enterprise value based on valuation method like DCF, DDM, Abnormal Earning Model etc.

Second stage is the ranking exercise where the group needs to identify target company for acquisition. This again involve the investigation of the corporate strategy of acquirer, market attractiveness, strategic fit, financial performance, synergy as well as ease of acquisition of target companies. Based on the criteria, the group to ranked the top 3 target companies and presented the rationale to the faculty.

The last stage came in twofold - with the preparation of a justification document; and a negotiation with the target company. The justification document is a report explaining the plan for acquisition, that to be submitted to the top management of acquirer company. The rationale of acquisition, expected synergies, deal structure, management plan after acquisition are the key subjects in the report.

The climax came in with the role play of the negotiation, where we have to negotiate against the faculties who played the roles of the directors of the target companies. It was a long process with 4 separate meetings spread through 2 days. Some groups finished earlier due to walkaway in the middle of negotiation. Our group somehow managed to stay until the last for a deal. The faculties were really hard negotiators. Although we managed to close the deal, the benefit that we, as an acquirer can enjoy after acquisition remains quite thin. Nevertheless, it was a exciting and stimulating process which I gained a lot of learning.

That’s the end of the M&A project. How about the UKCP? Tell you later.
    

Exchange

The naked tree in front of my apartment starting to sprout with little buds. Not sure whether the leaves will grow to its fullness as the time I moved in last August, before I leave. Leaving UK for internship as well as exchange program from June, which means I will not be back till the beginning of IB Project in next January...

A friend from the Class of 2015 (enroll this summer) knew that I was selected for the exchange to CEIBS and asked me about the application procedure. For his reference, as well as for any future MBS MBA candidate that have interest for exchange, here are the procedure and advice for application.

The school will publish the partner schools list together with their fact sheets in late January. Normally only 1 place is offered by each partner school, but some offer up to 3 places. Students are allowed to choose a maximum of 3 schools for application. The application is done with a written exchange proposal with no specified format. Students are free to use their creativity in the exchange proposal to impress the selection committee which consisted of the MBA Centre and Program Directors.

After the submission of the exchange proposal, MBS Centre will then publish the school list with corresponding number of applicants but anonymous. From there, the applicants can judge how competitive the schools they apply to and be allowed to make changes if they would like to avoid competition. The popular partner schools this year were Chicago Booth, CEIBS, HKUST, Cornell, and McCombs, which shows a strong trend of either US or China.  

All applicants will be called for an 20minutes interview and the questions are basically a check and verification of what written in the exchange proposal. The selection committee will then make the final decision of who go where by late March.

So, what are the deciding criteria? I suppose the key factors are:

1) Future career impact (Be sure you have a concrete reason/story that the exchange will help you in your future career, rather than just saying you want to learn a new language or to experience new culture)
2) Academic performance up to date (so, work hard in the first term!)
3) Role as MBS ambassador (register as a MBS embassador, be active in the extra-curriculum, know well what is the strength of MBS)

No additional tuition fee is required to pay to the partner school. But be prepared for expenses in the logistics to the exchange country, insurance (which can be very expensive in the case of US), and may be some administration fee and text books cost. The living expenses will depend on which country you are going to. As I will have my exchange in Shanghai, though the most expensive city in China, I do expect a lower living expenses than Manchester.

Hope these information will suffice and good luck in your application next year!

Project and Project

Awakened in the morning by the sunshine seep through the blind, surprising found my back was sweating. The spring has finally come!

Looked at my phone and it showed 9:00. Still remembered that's a big argument last night with my fellow Japanese course-mates about whether Japan action on the eastern countries in the second world war was an invasion or liberation. Also remembered everyone tried to helped one of Japanese friend to date a Thai girl by pouring lots of weird advices.

That's the fun of talking with people from different background and ideology, not merely at the level of weather, or football match result, but at the level that you can argue about the sensitive issues yet do not ruin the relationships.

After a one week spring vacation where I spent mine in Italy, the spring term started with the launching of 2 ambitious and demanding projects - UK Consulting Project (UKCP) and Merger & Acquisition Project (M&A). This term, except the guest speaker series, we don't have any sit in lectures, all 60 credits in this term are accounted on the two big projects. The school schedule specifies Monday and Thursday for UKCP whereas Tuesday and Wednesday for M&A. But it is all depends on the capability of the group members and the efficiency of the group work to determine how much time required for the projects.

So, what are these 2 projects about?

UKCP

We have done the NfP project in the autumn term in 2012, this is the second real-client facing consulting project in our program, and the third one will be the International Business (IB) Project which will be the capstone of the MBA program in winter term next year.

I like how MBS designed the projects in the MBA program. There were series of lectures teaching us the "soft" and "hard" skill on consulting, followed by real life application in the NfP, where clients were generally more lenient as the projects are not-for-profit; then the UKCP which we are doing now, with both UK and international clients focus on UK markets, where the project budget is covered y client; and finally the IB with multinational companies looking for expanding business globally, which unavoidable required a higher budget. As you can guess, the more money the client spend on the budget, the more demanding the project will be.

We are now in the bidding stage for the projects. Each group can bid for a maximum of 3 projects and the companies will then shortlist 3 groups for interview. One group will then be selected to implement the project. There are wide range of project topics covered sales and marketing, HR, operation, supply chain, and so on. Some project briefs are quite vague where the project goal and required deliverable are not clearly stated. This added the difficulty to the project yet a challenge to investigate what really the client want.   

The grade of the project is assessed by initial client meeting and negotiation, interim presentation, group report, final client presentation and 2 statistical business research assignment using the SPSS.

As said before, the quality of the team decide the quality of the work. The group members were assigned randomly by the MBA center. My team consisted of an Italian Consultant, a Japanese Asset Manager, an American Chinese Real Estate broker, an American Indian Business System Analyst and myself. Let's see how the team will gel.

M&A

Although there is no real-client facing in this project, the team has to analyse possible acquisitions for an acquiring company where both the acquisitions and acquiring companies are real. Therefore, the real-life and real-time data like company reports, analyst reports, current news and trends are the main sources for the analysis.

The project started with the valuation of the acquiring company which will due next weekend. Then the team has to rank at least 3 possible acquisitions, of course based on the merging synergy analysis. A negotiation for the acquisition will be carried out between the team with MBS faculty who will act as the manager of the acquisition companies. Finally the team will write a justification for their offer to acquire.

Since the analysis involve a lot of corporate finance and accounting analysis, the groups were formed with at least one of the group member is from finance background, who can lead the valuation task. My team, with 1 banker, 1 marketeer and 4 engineers seems to be a bit less diverse. But the project is really interesting and thought provoking, which I believe I will learn and enjoy the most in this term.

Where is my spring?

Now I know why besides sports, weather is the other most popular topics for chatting in UK. Well, it is now the end of March, which is the best season to see beautiful cherry blossoms in the fast east, but here I am still suffering the temperature around freezing point! But thank god! The sun has replaced the rain and continuously sharing the warm sunshine since mid of February. A luxury to enjoy the "indoor sunbathe"  especially at the corner seats in Lecture Hall 4.37.

Sorry for this late update. But I have been busy since the middle of February. Being quite relax for the first half of Term 2, the second half became a roller coaster with due dates of all the assignments and presentations of the term. The tasks are of course an addition to the usual classes, guest speaker series, career management activities, networking, partying... etc.

With the completion of the last exam paper of Term 2 yesterday, it marks the end of the term and the start of the Easter holiday. So, what do I think about Term 2?

Well, I have to say that most people, including me lost the excitement and motivation that we had at the start of the program. Partly due to the nature of getting used to the MBA life, and partly because people are shifting their priority from study to internship hunting. Most people spending most of their time searching for internship, which the outcomes are still not encouraging. Some did secure splendid offers from their dream companies but majorities are still struggling. This cause an uncertain atmosphere that people started to ask themselves "Why am I here?"

Nevertheless, the school did offer a great help to the students in securing internship. The CMS staffs are working hard to attract more potential employers, helping student with review of CV, cover letter, mock internship etc. However, economic condition here in UK is still gloomy, and the key success factors are actually depend on individual fit of experience, skill sets and background that companies are looking for.

The classes we have this term was designed as 3 hours per slot instead of 1.5 hours as we have last term. This change give flexibility for the professors to design the class with mix of lectures and case studies. However, the long hours of same subject sometime cause boredom among students, and some lectures were just too slack in 3 hours. This is especially true for the new subjects of "People Management and Organization" and "International Business and Innovation Management". The professors did try very hard to make the subjects interesting to students, but students tend to lose interest the half way of the classes.

OK, enough of the negative views. Let's share something cheerful in this term. Well, MBS won the second place in MBS MBA Football Tournament as well as the LBS MBA Football Tournament (Not surprise as we are the Manchester)! MBS also won the first place in the Sustainability Venture Capital Investment Competition (SVCIC) held in Kenan-Flagler Business School, US recently. And the Class of 2013 successfully completed their International Business Project last week, which means a successful graduation from MBS!

How about myself in this term? Secured an exchange to CEIBS, which is my first choice, and confirmed a summer internship with a management consulting company in Japan! So, I am leaving UK this summer!

Although the spring may not come, the summer will for sure!    

Elevator Pitch

"To be honest...our business will not make money...at least for the first two year...

But if I tell you that our business will make the world cleaner, will make the people happier, will make them  prouder of themselves, and ultimately bring millions in revenue, do you still reluctant to put in your money?"

This is the opening speech of my elevator pitch for my business idea in EBPY (European Business Plan) competition. Tried to be catchy to grab the attention of the judge at the first few seconds. The night before, when I was practicing it in front of my wife, I lost the lines several times in the middle of the pitch, which certainly will be embarrassing if the same thing happen on the real stage. Fortunately I somehow managed to memorize the whole script and conveyed the pitch naturally in front of the audiences.

So, what is elevator pitch?

According to Wiki, an elevator pitch is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a person, profession, product, service, organization or event and its value proposition. The name "Elevator Pitch" reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, or approximately thirty seconds to two minutes.

Ya, the big bosses, the rich guys, and those who can help to start/expand/rescue your business are always busy with little time to talk to you. So, your message need to be very sharp, precise, and "seductive" to stimulate their interest when you "accidentally" meet them in an elevator.

For EBPY competition, the elevator pitch scoring criteria is based on

1) Impact - whether you can grab attention in first 20 seconds
2) Content - idea is clear, superior, addressable target market, existing customer, evidence and traction, quality of the team, money required, exit strategy, likely financial return
3) Delivery - simple and fluent

Quite happy to be selected as one of the top 4 presenters in my cohort, but the judge, a VC criticized the profitability of my business idea. Well, it is true, my business is more on social contribution rather than profit contribution.

Forgot where I heard this from, "Don't care about money making at the first place, when your business are doing good for the society, the money will follow..."

May be I should target an angel, instead of a VC for my business idea...

Reborn!

"Reborn with new management after 5 years stop of operation"

Sounds like a news headline in the business press...

Well, it is... if you are
1) Well verse in Japanese (pre-requisite)
2) Interested to pursue an MBA degree in MBS
3) Interested to recruit Japanese speaking MBA students from MBS
4) Interested to networking with Japanese speaking MBA students from MBS
5) Simply interested on life in Manchester or any football teams in Manchester

OK, what is the big deal?

The website of MBS MBA for Japanese speaking students revived!!!
Eventually after 5 years!!!

So, if you fall into one of the categories above, access it now!

http://mbs-mba.jimdo.com/

Thanks to the initiative of students in Class of 2013! We Class of 2014 will sure take good care of your baby after you saying bye bye in April!
 

Sem 2 Started!

Snow continue falling from the sky since last night, when I was walking home together with my EBPY (more detail below) teammate. Feeling the first time that Manchester can also be so romantic, when the first slice of snow unexpectedly fall on my coat the moment I step out from MBS entrance.

This was the second time it snow in Manchester, but the first time it fell long enough to cover the part of the ground. Ahhh... this is the winter that I was looking forward! Hate the winter without snow but only uncomfortable cold. That's why I love Hokkaido so much, with a temperature of just below the frozen level, you can enjoy a scenary of whole-white neverland. And of course the quality of the snow is so good, so soft that you can lie on it comfortably.

2 weeks passed since the 2nd Semester started. Quite few things happened but a relatively relax pace compare to last semester. To some extent, we already used to the demanding MBA life. To some extent, we know better how to deal with each other in the group works and hence more efficient. And also to some extent, we know what to prioritize and therefore can just ignore what we think is low priority.

Grumbling among us on the slow feedback on our last semester academic performance. 7 weeks passed since the final exam but still the scores and the feedbacks on some of the courseworks are still pending with the academics. Wondering why they pushed us so hard for studying and completing the courseworks within dateline, while slacking on returning the feedback. Though taught in one of the class, prompt feedback is the key in learning process...

So far, only grades on 2 subjects were released. Got a distinction for Accounting and a merit for SfSM Module, which 80% of the module is the NfP Project. Not quite surprise for the grade on Accounting (Module of both Financial Accounting and Management Accounting) as the assessment is purely paper exam. For SfSM Module, for which I have been worrying about failing, as our team scored really bad in initial stage, luckily survived the passing mark, and being pulled up further to pass the merit line by the individual reflective report and final exam. Still waiting for Marketing, Finance, Economics...

So, Sem2 started. What we have for this sem?

Core Subjects
1) Strategy
2) Operation Management
3) People Management and Organization (PMO)
4) International Business and Innovation Management (IBIM)

Curriculum was changed from last year. For our senior in Class of 2013, they had Strategy, Operation Management, and a subject called Designing International Competitive Enterprise (DICE) which combined both PMO and IBIM. Due to their feedback that combining 4 subjects (HR Management, Organization Behavior, International Business and Innovation Management) into the single subject of DICE made the subject complicated and hard to digest, the school changed the curriculum this year by dividing it into 2 subjects - PMO and IBIM. 

Continue from last semester
1) Weekly Speaker Series
2) Career Management
   
2 alumni came so far. One talked on B to B Marketing and the other talked on leadership consulting. As before, it opened our horizon for an industry or a field that we may otherwise never come across.

CMS (Career Management Service) organized a career week that invited several companies to visit the campus for recruiting, both fulltime position and internship. Companies came included Hilti, Google, AT Kearney, Essar Oil, Admiral, Amazon, and BCG. All sessions were filled up with well business-dress students as this semester is the critical timing for both fulltime position and internship hunting.

Competition
1) EBPY (European Business Plan Competition)

An Europe level entrepreneurship competition, which we need to submit a business plan, give an elevator pitch and present the business idea in front of real VCs. MBS is so kind to design a series of lecture and workshop to prepare the participants for the competition. We had talks from the Academics as well as outside speakers like the Entrepreneurs, VC, Taxation Accountants and so on.

Have a business idea in my mind, not sure whether it can win the competition. But to my surprise, I'm so passion about it when I tell it to other people. Kind of uncover the entrepreneurship spirit that long 'hidden' in me! Still looking for my team members, hope fully can gather a bunch of bright minds who can share my passion!

Preparation lectures for nest semester projects
1) UK Consultancy Project
2) M&A Project

The classes will start in next few week. Mainly cover the topics on Quantitative Analysis and Financial Analysis, to enable a smooth kick-off for those 2 projects in next semester.

That's all?

Of course not!

Internship search, preparation for MBAT (MBA Sport Tournament), preparation for Asian Night, mentoring program, stock trading competition, house parties, networking sessions...lots more to go in this semester.

So, refill the fuel and keep moving!

Dec. 21 - End of the World

After sending the NfP report to client tomorrow, my first MBA semester will officially come to the end. Not sure whether the end of semester also meaning the end of the world, as the rumor of December 21, the end of the world according to Maya Calendar was here and there. Not so much in UK, but the people in the the Fast East, including people in my hometown which is located near the equator, scrambling to buy the winter cloths as rumor says that the temperature will drastically change from above 30 degree Celsius to below 30 degree Celsius. Some even made a joke that if the end of the world end up didn't come, there will be another baby boom next year September!

Anyway, whether the end of the world will come or not tomorrow,  it is still worth a celebration for me - I survived the first semester of my MBA! Phew...can't imagine that 4 months have passed since the course started. Still couldn't enjoy the city especially the weather, but the MBA is really something worth coming for. Looking back the 4 months, can't tell how much I have learned, how much my perspective have changed, and how much new experience and new skills I have gained. To summarize it, 4 core subjects - Accounting (both financial accounting and management accounting), Corporate Finance, Marketing, Business Economics; series of soft skills lecture in Skills for Successful Management Module; one big real-client project - the Not-for-Profit Project, weekly guest speaker series, career management sessions, supplementary English classes, numerous group works and presentations in the core subjects, company events, networking events, internship research, internship interviews, private social events...

Wow, I have gone through so much things in just 4 months! So, what did I really take aways in these 4 months. Here are the 5 main GAINS!

1) Equiped myself with the basic business knowledge
Accounting, Finance, Marketing and Economics are the most basic business knowledge that a manager, or at least a senior manager should know no matter which profession you are or what industry you are in. Even as an engineer (like me), if you are in the manager level, you should not only well-verse in your engineering problem solving, but also the basic business knowledge that enable you to articulate the company business performance and strategy to your subordinate, evaluate the efficiency and profitability of the project (or at least your own team), market your company to client externally, or market your team or department internally, judge whether you are still in the right industry considering the change in economic environment etc.    

Well, can't say that I mastered all the knowledge within 30 hours session classes for each subject. But the key ideas and how to apply these ideas are efficiently taught through the well-designed curriculum. I think this might be the strength of Manchester Method - the so called "Original Thinking" and "Learning by Doing". The course stimulated your independent thinking in the lectures, made your hands dirty by lots of case studies and group works. As people used to say, "Knowledge in your mind is useless if you can't articulate it or put it into application".

2) New exposure to other industries
Have no idea at all what is the different between an investment banking and a commercial banking. No idea what really Private Equity and Venture Capital do. No idea how a strategy consultant can advise a company CEO who has more industry experience than him. No idea how to establish a start-up. No idea what is a content business. No idea what is arbitration...

Well, when you get to know more, you will know that there are more you don't know. The finance industry, the consulting industry, the entrepreneurship, the media industry, and lots more that I think I would never not know in detail if I didn't come for the MBA. There are lots of fun and bright people out there in different industries, which broaden your horizon and again stimulate your thought. Looking back my previous years as a civil engineer, professional interactions were confined to other disciplines engineers and architects, which somewhat help you to think deeper but definitely not wider.

And it is just feeling so good that you can talk the talk whether you are in a group of engineers, or bankers, or entrepreneurs, or consultants, or accountants or any other professions. And most important, you enhance your chance of employability in a different industry if, let say your industry is heading down the slope.

3) Team work in a multicultural context
Talked about this in my previous blog. See NfP.

4) Ability of multi-tasking
All MBA schools assume that you come to the MBA with aims to become a future leader. And they also assume that requisite quality of a leader is ability to handle multi-task at the same time. So, they designed such a curriculum that make you do everything but you just can't finish everything to perfect. You have to attend the classes, pre-reading of case studies, solve the after-class assignments, participate in the group works, attend the company events, socialize in the networking events, etc. all in one day!

So, everything is about efficiency. Efficiency in your pre-reading so that you can grasp the key ideas after your first reading. Efficiency in the lecture, for me is more on staying focus. Efficiency in the group meeting, pre-determine the agenda, prepare before the meeting, set the time limit. Efficiency in assignment and efficiency in so and so and so...

Sometimes the situation is just not possible for you to handle both at the same time. So, you may need to weigh which one is more important, rather than which one is more urgent to you. Choose the more important one and drop the other one.

5) 114 great friends from 29 countries
For sure, this will be the greatest take away from the MBA and even after the MBA. Thanks to Manchester Business School evaluation system that emphasize on collaboration rather than competition, we can observed generous knowledge and information sharing among us. The friends with accounting and finance background particularly helped us passing the exams! Not forget to mentioned also since everybody has different industry and culture background, you will find a lot of fun and learning in this diversity. And of course the after-study, after exam parties, trips, all contributed to the unforgettable memories of the MBA!

Those are the key gains in the first semester. So, what to do with the end of the world???

Well, we can't really do anything to prevent it if the end of the world is really coming. So, why not just stay calm and think that, if it didn't come tomorrow, how should we live a more MEANINGFUL LIFE hereafter...   

NfP

Just completed my personal reflective report on the NfP (Not for Profit) Project. Here are the points.

Team Working
Our team consisted of 6 MBAs from different countries and different background. With a team of such a diversity, one may expect that the team work will be interesting and productive as the team has access to a range of perspective and skill.   

In fact, diversity can actually hinder integration and may increase the occurrence of conflict within the team. This was exactly what happened in the meetings. Everyone had their own interpretation of the project needs and own ideas to implement the project. But hard to achieve an agreement as everyone had different point of view. As a result, the team spent long hour in meetings yet no concrete conclusion. Sometimes, the conclusions were made recklessly due to tiredness and frustration of further discussion. Obviously, the outcome due to these conclusion was undoubtedly poor in quality.

The team was aware of the severity of the problem only after half way of the project We received our first score in their MBA program, the score of the project interim presentation. The score was below passing mark and everyone was shocked. Our ego as an MBA student was badly hurt and after a reflective meeting, we committed to put more time and more effort into the project.

Later, I learned about the Belbin Team Role in the Skills for Successful Manager class. Interestingly, our team members are obviously in different team roles. Since the result of the SHL psychometric test was confidential, I could only guess my team members' team roles based on my observation. I guessed there were a "Shaper," two "Plant", a "Finisher-Completer", an "Implementer" and a "Monitor-Evaluator". What lacked in our team were a "Co-ordinator", a "Resource Investigator", and a "Team Worker". No wonder our team has a lot of ideas, but no one try to coordinate between us, no one try to explore resource outside the team and no one being diplomatic to support the team.

With the commitment and better understanding of each other, we started to split the work according to the strength of each members. We set a limit for the meeting time and tried to carry out the meeting efficiently with better preparation before the meeting, threw ideas and discussed but let the person-in-charge of the work decide the final decision, and ensure all action items decided in the meeting were carried out in action.

As a results, our work was gaining momentum and we managed to work efficiently and harmoniously compare with before. We managed to finalized our study results and gave a presentation to our client confidently.

Key learnings:
1) Recognise strength and skill of each members is important at the first stage of any project.
2) Understand interpersonal style (for example the Belbin Team Roles) of the team members can help to achieve better efficiency in team.
3) A team work efficiently when the team has a balance of all team roles.
4) Diversity can help as well as hinder the efficiency of team work. 
5) A meeting without clear objective, time limit and a decision maker is doomed to be fail.

Consulting Skills
Another problem in implementation was non of us had consulting experience before. We were unclear about what need to be do, and how could we do in a consulting project. Therefore, due to lack of experience as well as delay from client side, we could finalize the project scope only almost one month after the project launching. 

After finalized the scope, we had long discussion about what data is required and how we could gather the data. We thought of carry out survey but later found out that within limited time and resources, the limited numbers of questionnaire that we could gather would be statistically insignificant. We carried out several interviews but the responses were not encouraging.

Nevertheless, we gradually understood what need to be done, and how to carry out our study. We prepared a project structure breakdown to visualize the whole process. As taught in the Consulting Skills class, "Begin with the end in mind" by visualize the end, the deliverable to client in mind, we could actually think backward of what need to be done in order to achieve that. Based on the project structure breakdown, we divided the tasks and work independently but supportively.

I found that newly learned knowledge from Financial Accounting and Corporate Finance class was quite useful in the analysis of the project.

Key learnings:
1) Identify the business need and finalized scope with client as soon as possible.
2) Work up a clear and realistic work plan.
3) Begin with the end in mind.
4) Quick understanding of client's issue and add value with the implementable recommendations.
5) Financial/Management Accounting, Corporate Finance, Marketing and other MBA subjects are the fundamental knowledge to support any consulting work.

Presentation Skills
The comments on our interim presentation were no clear structure, lack of logic in content development for the presentation content and not appear confidence, no eye contact, reading slides for the presentation delivery. No doubt our score was below the passing mark.

To improve our presentation, we got the feed back from our supervisor, and carried out peer assessment on our presentation style. While complementing what done well, we also pointing out what need to be improved in each other presentation. We scrutinised the logic in content, we checked the necessity of each and every slides, we made sure all slides carry clear messages to the audience.

Our final presentation was quite successful, at least to our own perception. We appeared confident in the presentation and managed to articulate our ideas and recommendations clearly to the client.

Key learnings:
1) Use eye contact, appear confident, speak with passion in presentation.
2) Make a logic, a story line to link up the whole presentation.
3) Bring the finding forward to the beginning of the presentation will give audience the whole idea of the presentation.
4) Ask why you need the slide - eliminate any unnecessary slide.

Financial Accounting

Phew! A new word learnt from my British friends to express relief from fatigue. Ya, the Financial Accounting exam is just over. Hardly imagine that within 5 weeks of 15 hours lecture, I eventually managed to understand the substance of the mysterious accounting statements, read the financial statement of any of the listed companies without frowning and at least capable of some general analysis of the company performance.

It all owed to Peter, the lecturer of the financial accounting class. A British gentleman with lots of sense of humor. He made the dull accounting numbers a series of interesting stories. He made the seemingly complicated concepts easy to understand. And he made us (or some of us) the accounting beginners comprehended the tricks and the so called creative accounting behind the book.

As Peter mentioned in the first class, the course aim is not to teach you how to prepare a bookkeeping. It is all about how to understand the financial statement, analyse it, and use it for management decision as a future manager. The course is to demystify the financial statement, so that you won't be scared away by the accountants that speak to you in the accounting jargons which seems to be a foreign language. You can talk the talk and finally you will learn to love accounting!

Well, I don't know whether I have fallen in love with accounting, but at least accounting is no more a boring subject for me. It was so delighted that unconsciously I able to discuss about some company business performance using the accounting knowledge learnt from the class in the chat with friends. That's super cool! 

The course covered of course the 3 main financial statements, the balance sheet, the income statement and the cash flow. But not much discussion on how to prepare those statement. The emphasis was more on how to analyse them and what are the tricks that some companies use to disguise their profits. A more detail discussions were done on topics like tangible assets, intangible assets, leasing, employee benefit, and group companies.

A 5 weeks lecture, 15 hours, plus 3 workshops for the preparation of exam, and 2 thick textbooks, numbers of powerpoint slides. That's the speed of a subject in an MBA program. Looking on the piles of other text book, I realised that the journey is still long away. NfP project submission and presentation, Economics presentation, Marketing presentation, Economics, Marketing, Finance, Skill for Successful Manager exam will occur subsequently in next 5 weeks.

Not feeling "phew" anymore...but at least I am enjoying the learning process. I don't aim to be an accountant, an economics, or a Finance or Marketing expert after all these courses, but if I can talk their language, understand their tricks, and may eventually manage them (haha!), wouldn't it sounds great!  

Weekly Diary 24-30 Sep

Monday

The first day of MBA stage! Although the courses started a month ago, but they were merely the pre-MBA courses. (But I' was already busy like hell!) Started the first class in Marketing, Corporate Finance, Economics and Research Method. Since large volume of content (equivalent to 2 to 3 chapters in a 1000 pages thick text book) has to be covered within the each 1.5 hour classes, the lecture can only touch on the key messages that the professors wanted to deliver. Without pre-reading before the class, and revision after the class, it is quite hard to follow the pace of the teaching. Several take-aways from the class:

Marketing: Do the right things, not the things right, especially in a recession period

Finance: Finance is about making investment decision (where to invest) and financing decision (where to get money)

Economics: Phenomenon before the sub-prime crisis: bank lending to bank, lending to household for real-estate speculation, and less lending to business which incur less genuine revenue generation.

After the class in the evening, continue with meeting of Non for Profit (NfP) Project. Followed by VCIC launching meeting which finally finished by 9:30pm! Oh hell, what a long long day!

Tuesday

Again a long day, Economics and Financial Accounting in the morning. Energy Club launching in the lunch break. Career Management Service Workshop, Guest Speaker Series in the evening and NfP project meeting with Client. Finally decided the project scope with Client. A big advance in the NfP project!

Wednesday

Marketing, Finance, Accounting, NfP meeting... Finished the Guest Speaker series report.

Thursday

Skill for Successful Manager (SfSM) - Class in Project Management and Working in Team. Quite impressed by the speaker to cover everything in Project Management in just 1 class by taking the example of a project to start a car race team.

"Working in Team" as the name sounds discussed about how to work in a team. Interesting points in the discussion of the disadvantages of a team work:

1) Team loafing: people tends to work lesser in a team than if they work alone.

2) Poor decision: group decision is better than average member decision but not as good as that if most competent member.

3) Dominant voice: decision may governed by the dominant voice which may not be the best decision.

4) Conformity: follow the majority which may sometimes misleading

5) Production blocking: individual will generate more ideas well if they work separately and combine ideas than if they work together. Conclusion -> brainstorming is not productive.

A game was introduced to test our team type. 5 minutes to figure out what to bring to a desert island for survival after your plane crash into the sea. Our group picked 4 correct items but a last silly choice which is SALT!

Friday

A good off from the school. Revision, pre-reading, revision, pre-reading...now only I know what GDP exactly is…

Saturday

Appointment day with the Talktalk internet installation engineer. I have subscripted this internet a month ago but the installation can only be a month later (which is ridiculous to my sense). Heard from friends that they didn't get the connection on the appointment day, either due to the reason that they didn't receive the router package, or the installation engineer didn't turn up the day or some other technical issues. Worried about same thing happened to me, I tried to email and call the customer service few days ago. But the Talktalk customer service was just suck, no reply to email, busy hotline which kept me waiting and ate up my handphone credits. As expected, I didn’t receive the router package by that day and although the engineer did come, he couldn't open the connection box for the installation. Felt really frustrated and disappointed with the impotence of the UK internet providers!

Sunday

Day off to Liverpool. Known to be poorest and dirtiest city in the past history of UK, but it really changed to a well-developed and clean (cleaner than Manchester at least) city. Visited the Liverpool Museum, Tate Art Gallery. Maritime Museum, Liverpool Cathedral, St. George Hall, World Museum, and Walker Art Gallery…all in one day! Amazed by the size and architecture of Cathedral, as well as the ancient and cultural collection in World Museum. These 2 are the must visit in Liverpool. Lazy to upload the photos, but I believe Ma Rui will, so please have a look on her Blog (the link at right) if you are interested.   

Pre-MBA is over!

Can't imagine how fast the time passed. Being still puzzling and struggling about the tremendous amount of learning in the first few weeks. The Pre-MBA stage is over! The so-called honey moon stage in MBS MBA program is over! Oh my god, is me the only one couldn't enjoy the honey moon period, or someone else also share the same experience with me. If I felt hard in this stage, how do I going to survive the remaining 18 months?!!!

Nevertheless, I still have a lot of take aways from this stage. The pre-MBA stage not only provide a chance to learn about those basic theories in the business subjects, which is essential for people with no business knowledge background at all like me, and most important, a chance to reflect, to scrutinize my personality from my own as well as from the feed back of fellow MBAs that worked together for the past few weeks. It is really a precious chance to know not only how you see yourself, but also how other see you as a team member, or as a person. Well, I have to admit that I have fields to develop as well as fields to keep.

Some of the highlights of the Pre-MBA stage:

1) Launch of NfP (Not for Profit) Project

115 of us are divided into 23groups with 5 to 6 people in a group to work on the consultancy projects in Not-for-Profit Organization. The projects cover wide range of business issues like fund raising, branding and marketing strategy, new service development and launching etc.

Our group consisted of a Brazilian Finance Manager, a Peruvian Innovation Office Director, a Korean Banker, a Indian Healthcare IT Consultant, a Russian Automotive Project Manager, and me, a Malaysian Civil Engineer. Being a group with such a diversity, the meetings were always full of argument

The real challenges are how to define the problems from 6 different perspectives, draw out the best ideas from everyone, and achieve an agreement on what is the best solution. So far, we were quite ineffective in the meeting as it was really difficult to come with a conclusion satisfy all 6 people. Nevertheless, those meeting outcomes are slowly and slowly transforming into something more tangible, which may be our first piece of deliverable in the MBA!

2) Skill for Successful Manager

The so-called soft skill course which cover courses in consultancy skills, presentation skills in this stage and will be followed by subjects in project management and negotiation skills in next stage. There are also 2 psychometric tests (Hogan & SHL) to check the individual personalities. The results really mirror myself, the weakness that I knew it for long but never take initiative to improve it. No more excuse to run away from it. Now is the time to fix it right here, right now!     

3) Brathay

The seniors told the excursion in Brathay will be the best days in the MBA. Can't judge yet as I was only went through the first month in the MBA. But the memory in Brathay is definitely unforgettable. At the famous Lake District, beautiful landscape, blessed with the sunny sky at the last day (raining the other 3 days!), challenging outdoor activities, reflective group feedback, interesting and funny group performance, really a perfect temporary run-away from the stressful MBA study. Here we built our rapport, our team work and our self-confident!

4) Career Management Service

MBS really put a lot of effort in the career management. It might due to majority of the students are here to seek a career change. Career related workshops are held regularly just like the other core course in the MBA. So far, we have the CV workshop, business etiquette workshop, alumni panels, career safari, guest speaker series. More and more on-campus company presentation will be held in the near future.

 

5) Time Management

Not a subject in the pre-MBA, but really a essential  skill to survive in the MBA. All courses have projects or assignments, case studies as well as pre-reading for each class. And it is just impossible to do everything perfectly. Think of your MBA objective, set the priority, and allocate the time efficiently, you may miss some of the works, but you won't miss your big objective...this is what being told...

Talk is always easier than do. In fact, I am still wondering how the hell to go thru this 18 months...

Drowning...

MBA is tough, it is what MBA students or alumnis used to say. I knew that and psychologically prepared for that. But I never knew that it is really that TOUGH. Only 2 weeks passed, and I seems to be drowning in the overwhelming workloads, the pre-readings, lectures, revisions, feedbacks, group works, group discussions, projects, social events...oh my god, how could I manage all these things?

Sense a smell of crisis whether I can live through the remaining 18 months. Nevertheless, this is my own choice, which I made up to stretch myself, and to discover the unknown me. And that's why I'm here, so I should stop grumbling and work on what I should do. One of the lecturer told that there are 3 types of students: the performer (aim for good grade), performance avoider (less study, more party), and mastery (care about what really learnt). I consciously trying to be the third one, to learn something, to take away something from each lecture, discussion. But experience told me that when there are a due date for everything, and they all come in the same time, you tend to ignore the learning and just try to finish everything for the purpose of submission.

"Don't forget the brief half way through the project", this is the advise I get from the Consultancy Skills class. "Start to write the report with executive summary" , similar advice by the lecturer on our Not for Profit Project. I think it is applicable for my MBA journey as well. "Don't forget the original motive (to get an MBA) half way through the study", "Start to plan the journey with the final ambition in head". And the project is about scoping, research, analysis, interim reporting, final reporting and presentation. While MBA journey is same thing like scoping (identify what you really wanna do), research, analysis, interim reporting (self check with original motive whether it is still on track), final reporting & presentation (final check of what have been achieved and what have not).

The study is tough. Luckily the lecturers and professors that I met so far are all very good in teaching. Unlike the classes that I have back in Asia, the classes here are more interactive, provocative and reflective. And this is the backbone of MBS method, the so-called Learning by Doing. Students have the hands-on chance to learn through projects and group works. What's more is the classes on soft skills, the skills that I wanted the most. As the lecturer on Presentation Skills say, "Without a good presentation/communication skill, what inside your head is just nothing, because you just can't express it". And expression itself is just not enough, it has to be impressive, effective, in such a way that the listener will take away only the key messages, nothing else, that you wanted to tell.

Sell attributes, not products. Another take away from the Introduction to Case Studies Class. Whether it is a marketing strategy, product development, or even job searching! We are selling our attributes. No company will hire you if you don't have the attributes they are looking for. Therefore, MBA study is kind of process to add attributes, valueable attributes to yourself.

Again, MBA is tough, and I'm feeling kind of drowning. I don't whether I can survive till last. But the goal is clear, and I just can't let it go.