Do I Challenge myself?

An imaginative story that I read somewhere - A businessman once had so much failure in his business, he went to a beach in the evening. He sat there lamenting his errors and how rich he used to be all night. All along, he was throwing the small stones that were spread near him. Just when the sun rose, he had the last stone in his hand. Much to his surprise, he realized it was a diamond stone. He had been throwing diamond stones that were left behind by some theives. Imaginative story alright, but most of our lives are like this.

Instead of thinking about what needs to be done, we care much about how good we were and how we could replicate those again. In this ever-changing world, is this sustainable? We often lack the will to learn and adapt changes that happen around us.

Talk about learning, Tom Peters talks about "forgetting organizations". He writes, "Peter Senge's brilliant insight 10 years ago was that companies need to be learning organizations. My campaign: Companies need to be forgetting organizations to be innovative." Peters' idea presents a challenge to many business leaders - particularly those seasoned ones who've been around some - who are usually completely "wedded" to what they know - what they've done before that got them great results. He also indicates that this phenomenon is most found in many newly graduated MBAs. Would we have the guts to forget? and not be "wedded" to our knowledge?

Certainly, this does not mean that we forget our core competencies (now, Hamel and Prahalad won't be happy). But, being attached to what we know and how we've done things in the past can be a huge barrier to staying flexible, spontaneous and agile in this dynamic world.

VJ is a renowned Strategy prof at Tuck. He talks about three boxes (See video below) with respect to strategy - Thinking of past, Concerned of present and plannig for future; he suggests only planning for future relates to strategy. I beleive the same can be applied to professionals as well.


I have seen this phenomenon in many of my friends (myself included) - both before MBA and in my MBA class. We often tend to dwelve in our warm area - where we know how things are done, where we know how to excel, and where we are praised. Rather, we should challenge ourselves by raising the bar. Now, if you hear someone say that you are the best in what you do, think again, it may be time to "challenge yourselves".

Done with 'Hell'ary

Well, the second term is at last over. In Oxford, they have a name for the terms and for the second term, it’s Hillary or.. 'Hell'ary, as my friend puts it. It seemed so long and so tough, it felt like a year. Yeah, yeah, this is what we signed up for, so I shouldn't complain.

Take away? Well, marketing was a revelation. It was more strategic than I thought it would be. In that enthusiasm, I have taken two more related electives for the third term - 'Branding and communication' and 'Marketing communication'. Marketing is now an integral part of everything you do as a business man, and I believe it makes a smart business man; so I don’t fret I too 3 marketing subjects out of the 18. You just don’t see where strategy ends and marketing starts; they are so inter-related.

Technology Strategy elective was alright, but the cases were very good. One case study that will stay in my memory for long is the Nintendo case, where the Japan management plays with other actors in the market to attain a superior position out of nowhere (Game theory).

Operations elective was very good for the way it was taught. The prof taught us more of underlying concepts and cultural differences between US, EU and Asian countries that made up what these countries today are.

We had tons of cases/readings, loads of assignments, and on top, entrepreneurial project work. I am happy it’s all over now. The third term, Trinity as they call here, should be alright, since I have only one exam – in ‘Restructuring and implementation’ elective. This elective sounds like M&A, but for some reason they have changed the topic. I will get to know when I attend.