Posted May 18th, 2010 by almartine
I seem to be having a lot of conversations about ‘getting an MBA’ with various friends. My conversations normally consist of the following themes:
- Take the GMAT – it’s all fluff until that’s taken care of
- Pick a school that is respected
- Pick the school that is the best fit for personality
- Don’t sleep during it
The benefits part of the conversation is pretty standard as well. I was able to change industries and jobs, great experience, loved the travel, yes London was great; hard to believe I got to sit beside some of the most remarkable people on the planet (my fellow 2007s and those who attended the school during my time there).
I’m in the process of realizing that the value of the MBA extends past the obvious learning about business and helping me become a better thinker. The value also lies in the wealth of resources at your finger tips three years later. I’m doing some work right now that requires diving into some of my second year classes to find models, good approaches and ideas.
And, it’s all here. The notes, the templates and approaches. In fact, I’ve gotten more out of some of the course designs right now then I did during the class. Good stuff.
Posted May 11th, 2010 by almartine
I’m in pursuit call hell. The fires are currently scorching my toes but that’s okay because I’ve passed out after beating my head against my desk for the first 5 minutes of the call.
The first five minutes included on conference call code change (due to echo); waiting for people to join; waiting for people to follow-up with those who should have been on the call but haven’t. And finally, and this is my favorite, a long detailed conversation looking for the correct version of the document we’re reviewing.
Oh Google Wave people – hurry up, will ya? My call screams for your collaborative tool.
1. One centralized place for all the support data, which doesn’t require uploading it to a highly structured interface (I’m looking at you SharePoint) just an agreed structure before everything starts.
2. Working document in one place that tracks all changes and allows you add notes and ‘reasons’ (Yo, Wave you’re up here but it requires this functionality turned on for more than just the demo and it has to work perfectly with MS Word.)
3. A project leader with the gumption to require the work to be done in a new way and punishes (read: fires, throws off the project, notes their work practices during year-end reviews) not following a more useful and logical structure.
