World Sojourner : 3760

My posts are a little out of order, but oh well,  the last week or so has moved quickly.  Frankly, in hindsight, the entire experience moved quickly.  It seems like yesterday that I was walking into the bureau and getting acquainted with my new blogging location.

* Before I forget, thank you Nolan - I never met you but thanks to your poor WIFI security I was able to continue to live the wireless life I’ve come so accustomed too, while in New York. 

* My t-mobile wireless connection in the United Airlines lounge comes and goes so who knows when this will be posted. 

I think it’ll take a while for me to completely digest the last four months, 8 months, two years and hopefully when it all comes together I’ll be near a computer and write about it.

A few take-aways from my trip & time at NYU

* The teaching at NYU is excellent

* I met a lot of really nice people there

* I see very little difference between London and New York.   Both are nice places, but … (sorry DMN, oh wait I can write Natasja - err Suzy, wait did you reveal that too??)

* I repeat, I met a lot of great people at NYU

* Strategic problem solving should be done without bias and the process should be followed.  Period.

* Bring on Beer Blast Sundowners

* I liked NYU; but love London Business School where Global is global and it doesn’t take a project to build a relationship.

I’m tired and time is running out before my flight.  I had a good time, but my home and heart is in London (until August at least).

{editors note: this was finally posted once back in London}

My time in New York is quickly coming to a close.  Thanks to the end of term demands of most classes including three more papers and one presentation (today, not too bad) plus the pace of our second year project picking up life is pretty hectic.

I’m trying to do things in little clumps and move a lot of projects along slowly rather than focusing on one project for a long amount of time.  My packing is a good example.  This trip to England, thanks to my future move back to the US (have I actually written about this??? Hmm, another day), does not require me to bring home any cold weather clothing, nor some of the more obtuse books in my US collection so those things are heading back to WV.

I bought one of those ‘I’m going back to “my country doesn’t have as nice of things as London”‘ bags (if you’ve ever spent any time in Heathrow you know what I’m talking about) that will fit a small automobile or 10 little people.  I filled this one with neither.  Instead, it has books, clothes, jackets, and one of the chairs I really liked from the apartment.  Actually no, it was a table.

Anyway, so far so good on keeping everything moving along.  I just need to get to Thursday, on that plane, and home so the final chapter of this MBA can start to be written. 

Recently, thanks to the nearing of deadlines, each weekend has been dedicated to finishing or working on projects for classes.  Last week it was Brand Strategy and this weekend Competitive Strategy.  Comp Strat, or Consulting 101, has been a great class. 

For those of us heading to Consulting after graduation, it’s almost a must-have.  The first part of the class is lecture around different types of analysis and concepts that can effect a business and how they can help a person develop an effective strategy.  The second half of the class consists of teams of 4 presenting their analysis and recommendations for cases that were assigned during the first week.

Our team’s case is Bernard Matthews (giant turkey company in the UK).  We have to make recommendations on where BM should go in the future.  Should they continue to expand only in the UK or move on to the European Community (time line is 1990)?

I’ve enjoyed working with our group.  We work well together and that’s a good thing considering that over the last 2 days we’ve been together approximately 18 hours.  Two meetings, one around 10 hours the other 8; thank goodness we get along reasonably well.

The deck is essentially complete.  We only have a little more analysis on the valuations to do, but all is good. 

The professor takes the presenting teams out for a drink at the end of the class.  Now that will be time together well spent.

This week is presentation week at the Stern Business School.  Tonight an hour training on ‘Creativity and Innovation’ followed by a 30 minute brand strategy presentation.  The Management Skills training is going fairly well, the Brand Strategy project, on the other hand, is more of a case study in group dynamics, and the pitfalls of not following a strategic problem solving approach.

 What’s great is that thanks to my Judgement and Decision Making and Management Skills class I can actually diagnose the exact problems for the group.  It’s like knowing how Titanic Ends but not being able to find a way off the boat.  The group is going fairly well, but due to some serious flaws in how we approached the entire project it hasn’t been the easiest project.

Oh well.  I’ve learned a lot from the process.  Lots and lots and lots.  Someday, in the future, I’ll have enough time to write about them.