Complete Immersion in Management

The CIM has finally come to an end. These past three weeks have been extraordinary. I cannot imagine there is any other better way to start the intensive two-year program at the Kellogg School.

We had a great deal of fun......each of of us were made to memorize the names of the rest of the 76 members in our section (Jive Turkeys) within the first week through namegame and other activities. We did paint our faces and wore the turkey attires and competed with the other seven sections in the cheering competition !! It was like being in a football stadium cheering at the peak of the voice.....the instructions were clear...if you do not lose your voice by the end of the day, you did not stretch your lungs enough !!!!!!!!

And then came the Amazing Race competition. I volunteered to be part of the Evanston team, which is responsible to run all over the city from one clue station to the other as fast as it can. Perhaps, I was overenthusiastic and overestimated my abilities to run long distances at a faster pace. I could have chosen to be on the Northwestern team (which has to run all over the university campus chasing the clues). Though I usually run a lot, I was amazed to see the speed of the other team members and found it hard to keep up with them after the 5th or 6th station. In the race, at each station the team could get the next clue only after all the team members reach the station and are accounted for. And, it felt bad as I was slowing down the team. But then the surprising thing happened. Marcelo, for all his agility and speed could have easily stayed ahead of the team. Instead he slowed down and stayed behind me through the rest of the race and kept encouraging me to run without stopping. At the end of it, I could not help but admire the team spirit among the members who didn't even know each other a couple of days earlier. The Amazing Race truly turned out to be an amazing experience for me.

The Section Showcase and the CIM Olympics were great fun in preparing, strategizing, and executing each and every bit of the competition as one team of 77 members.

In the midst of all this, the Leadership in Organizations course started with daily 3-hour classes for two weeks. With its demand for extensive reading and case studies, people were just waiting for the course to come to an end. But, it was a great learning experience with deep insights into building and leading effective teams, biases and flaws in decision making processes, influence tactics, negotiation strategies, and strategy for implementing changes in organizations. The legoman exercise was truly an experiential learning. Our team did well in using all the 40 minutes allocated for developing the strategy and in division of labor, and finally used only 2 minutes and 3 secs for executing the strategy. The important lesson the class learnt from the experiences of all the teams was that the execution time is inversely proportional to the planning time, and with the execution time being much more expensive than the planning time in the real world, it is absolutely imperative to plan well before the actual implementation starts.

That our section won the overall CIM championship was a nice icing on the cake. Is winning a habit? Because, the Turkeys section have won the championship four times in the last five years, and they came 2nd the only time they lost. Some say, it is not about winning or losing but more importantly about learning. But, we learn from winning as much as we do from losing, if we pay attention and not get lost in the euphoria. Winning presents the chance to build further and improvise the strategy and gives the confidence to execute the strategy.

I am here to learn and also win by reaching my objective. The new quarter begins on Monday, and I am all set to explore the arts of accounting, finance, business strategy, and management decisions. It is going to be twice the excitement for me with the expected arrival of our daughter in the next few weeks !!!!!!