Now, on the electives..

Here comes the third one in this series on the courses and electives themselves. Again, please read the disclaimer section from the previous post and remember that these are personal one-man opinions and may be totally different for each person. You should consider this among lot other factors (new syllabus, if any, courses that suit your career, etc.) before choosing the electives. But, make no doubt, choosing the electives is the most challenging and important part of the MBA.

Michaelmas term:

You would have all core courses in this term. These are the courses that will help you all through the rest of the course - the Profs in Hilary and Trinity will keep referring to these subjects and will assume that you know all these courses and remember the frameworks. These will also be important from job search point of view; for example, consulting cases will require you to follow Strategy and Economics courses closely; a friend of mine who joined an asset management company had to check the health of a company and value it in 2 hours, the same exercise that Tomo Suzuki will conduct in the class in this term. So overall short message, take extra care to understand these subjects; don’t read them for the sake of exams.

James Taylor teaches Regression among other important topics in Decision Science (aka, statistics). A very good course that should be learnt closely since you will end up using this in some of Trinity electives and sometimes in job (finance jobs - stock analyst, etc).

The only course that might seemed a bit cheesy to me was DEM (Developing effective managers), the first of the organization behavior (OB) courses. Try and attend this course (!?) as much and score in the assignments – an easy one to score distinction. Indeed, it will teach you the psychology behind companies and let you get a new perspective. The Robbins book might be too broad for this course and the course notes might make your life pretty easy.


Hilary Term:

Marketing, a core course, is the top course that will again be very useful in consulting case studies. David Arnold will run the course exceptionally well. The cases and the guest speaker are the best portion of this course. Prepare well for the cases before the class and you would be the best to benefit.

Finance management was the other core subject for us. Eric taught the first 4 classes involving numbers mostly, 5th was a mock exam and Neils Dechow took the rest on some theoirical concepts. The course has some fine concepts like Activity based costing (ABC), Balanced Score card (BSC), etc, but was very badly organized for us. Apparently, the previous class had faired very well in this course, the profs indicated that the exam will be tough. Rather than making it just tough, they made it too lengthy that only 2 CAs managed to complete the whole paper. The whole class went berserk and the administrators had to redo the evaluation (they multiplied all the marks by some factor. The few CAs ended up getting 98s and 95s J. A funny story indeed.

The elective Finance II, taught by Han and one more, is one course that I regret not taking. I was adamant not to pursue a career in Finance for various reasons and decided to skip FII, which seemed like a deep finance course. It indeed is, but is mandatory, in my opinion, for an MBA. This nicely builds on F1 and lays the base for the rest of the finance courses. My sincere advice is to take this elective as one of the two that you will select, irrespective of what career path you plan to pursue post MBA.

Macro Economics, taught by Oren Sussman, is another elective that I regret not taking; but I did go through the whole course material on my own during the Hilary break. This is an important course and gives a good overall perspective to see business on a bigger picture. Oren indeed complicates the course in his own way, but will help well before exams.

Technology and Innovation Strategy (TIS) is a technical elective taught by Victor Seidal, and Marc Ventrasca. A prof from another department teaches just the IP portion (class 6, I suppose). They indeed load the course with tons of frameworks, lecture notes and reading materials. I would suggest to avoid this course, as you will see imminent repetition in ETV and MI (see Trinity). But, this is a better option than DEO, but should be the last but
One.

Developing effective organizations (DEO) is the second in the OB series taught by Tim Morris. Tim comes from LBS and has a knack of running classes. He introduced the concept of teams being evaluated by their presentation and Q&A session, which I appreciated. But I do not see you missing anything big, should you decide to skip this course.

This section is running so long, I’ll have to make another blog for the Trinity electives. Its (very) late Sunday night and I have a long day tomorrow. So Caio, good luck and bye for now.

The profs.. the good, bad and ugly

Here comes the details on Profs. The best teachers that I saw all came from Michaelmas term. I dunno why. If any of the teachers are reading this, please accept my sincere apologies for breaking many hearts. I just mean to give a honest picture the new ones…and hey, read my disclaimers from the previous post.

Mich term:

The best ones:
Thomas Powell, who teaches Strategy, is the first great teacher I will mention anywhere. Many of us recorded his teaching; I took notes on anything he said. He is great strategist and draws from his personal experiences. I liked the way he started his classed with some Question or something and then kept it under control. James Taylor is a great teacher. As much as Statistics was complicated. He made it very easy and fun to learn. His funny quotes and stats at the footer of presentations were most enjoyed. We made fun o him in class, when he rhymes dome (well there is a case on Dome’s probability on having oil) like a British. Some of us took photos with flash and he never objected. Sweet chap. Tomo Suzuki teaches Financial reporting. For some of us, Accounting is like eating medicine... the inevitable. He makes it very simple with his lemonade store example. He even brings lemon to the class. Great guy, who made our money worth. Alex Guembal is not a basic financial guy, economics I suppose. But he teaches the simple finance clearly. Good teacher for finance dumbos like me.

The okay ones:
Laura taught us Organization behaviour (DEM) – 1 – okay types; I cut most of her classes and never regretted :)


Hilary:

The best ones:
The top name that comes to mind is David Arnold who teaches Marketing... great guy, he taught in Harvard and has now become a consultant... Very good method of case handling. I always thought marketing was the cheesy and softy stuff. He made me rethink; marketing is as much creativity and number crunching as finance or strategy. Go prepared with calculations for his class, otherwise you will not benefit. The Operations Management teachers (2 or 3 of them) were all very good. They were innovative in adding new curriculum on the go (they added some on online advertising logistics, which was very informative for me). They also added a few games which got the point very clearly... I loved those games and the lessons learnt.

The normal ones:
TIS teachers (Victor Siedal and Marc Ventresca) are okay types – not bad, but nothing worth noting. They try to add as much material, text in the presentations and sometimes lack correlation between topics. IBGG teachers – there were three teachers who teach international Business and Eric Thun is the best in the lot; he also will teach Business in China in Trinity. So his examples are very lively. The other profs, Dana Brown and Mari Sako – I have never attended their sessions. I was in Dana’s class and slept the first class. Though this will not work and started attending Eric’s class from the second lecture. The Financial management course teachers (Chris Chapman and Niels Dechow) are alright. Chris teaches the first 4 and Neils the last 3 sessions. 5th was a mock exam to get people hands on the problems – a major waste of time. Both were alright, but nothing was revealing or very interesting. I missed studying macro economics from Oren Sussman, but have heard he is a great teacher. The other elective, Marketing and Culture, was taken by Linda Scott. I didn’t attend her class, but she had invited quite a few practical marketing people from the industry to give a talk. I don’t have other first hand info on her.

Trinity term:

The best:
There were tons of electives and hence profs. I will just talk abt those who come to the top of my mind. Tim Jenkinson taught PE and was applauded by everyone for the way he presented the topic. I attended the restructuring and implementation by Oren Sussman and Duncan Angwin. Oren is a bit complicated and too deep to understand, but is the best in the lot. He simplifies the M&A concepts to simple object game (he loves naming them, A, B C), but it will take a while to like him and appreciate him. Strategic decision making was taken by Brad Killaly, from the US UCI University. Great guy, but he was constrained by quite a lot of Oxford rules. His games and explanations were good. He even spent around an hour and helped me lay my personal career on a Sat. Marketing innovation is taken by Laura cousins from LBS. She is a great teacher and makes learning enjoyable. She included marks for presentation, which I liked very much (and we got the top marks too!).

Now follows the subjects that I didn’t take, but heard from friends. Corporate evaluation was taught by some McKinsey visiting profs and it was very well appreciated all over. Celin rochon took a couple of financial subjects (Risk Mgt and one more). My friends who took the subject, she would basically read fro the presentation and is best skipped. By Trinity you would have your hands full that you need extra time anyways. Entrepreneurial finance was taught by the MBA director (Stephan chambers) and Stephen Duckett – My friends said good things abut these profs too.

The Okay ones:
Doug Holt teaches branding. He is one of those Profs who is great subject matter expert, but cannot run teach proficiently. He calls his course as Branding, but actually it is cultural branding – a weird concept which is his own finding. This is an advanced branding concept and great technique for companies that have money to spend. But, I was looking to learn basic Branding techniques and was greatly disappointed in his class. Most companies appreciate him and laud him; some student did too. I and my friends could not. Enterprenuerial and technology ventures (ETV) was taken by Victor siedal and the comments above (in Hilary) would apply. Eamonn Molloy took the Portfolio subject for us. A nice guy, but is not a great teacher. Well, he is not a teacher at all; he is more into organizing other speakers, games and stuff. But he makes it easy for the students to score marks, which may not be great thing in the long term.

until the next one on the actual electives to take, miss and audit... Ciao.

How to select electives? for future SBS MBA students and probably others too.

Well, I have been meaning to write this blog for a while on the MBA electives. Mates from the new class indicated that the SBS elective presentation pitch happened earlier this week. I hope this blog will benefit some or all of these folks.

A few disclaimer to start with: I am an Indian, had a IT background, did Business development and management for around 5 years, before going into MBA. So, my mind tends to think about technology and company strategy all along while choosing these electives. Moreover, my friends call me geek, although I don’t agree (well, no geek or psycho agrees he is one), so scoring marks was one of the main criteria that made me choose what I choose. I realized this was a wrong strategy well into the end of the MBA. Last but not the least, see, everything is perception. All of these are my hones thoughts. Some of the courses that I didn’t like might just be my perception. It might have been a great course, great teacher, but not for me..

A few pointers towards selecting electives?

• Don’t select something that you already know. Say, if you are marketer, don’t grind the wheel with marketing subjects over and over again.
• On the other hand, choose subjects based on what you want to become. A friend of mine is from legal background and wanted to pursue a career in marketing – she choose many marketing courses.
• Don’t choose for the sake of scoring marks. Marks are alright, important; distinctions are worthy, but learning a new subject altogether is very very important. You will not get another chance to learn a PE or an M&A subject again, that too to this extent. So choose those subjects that you don’t know, not those that are easy to score. Take this scoring marks criteria out the equation. Unless you are really crazy and lousy, you wont fail. Oxford SBS and many other B Schools has a normal distribution methodology, where they place 5% students above 70, and 5% below 50; of the rest, 60% of people will be placed in the 58-65 bucket. So most often, you will get a mark in this bucket and you should be okay. If you are exceptionally well knowledged or well read, or had some cool funda in your final exam/assignment, this will take you to the distinction.
• Consider how well the Profs teach, not their reputation, while choosing the course. I wonder if James Tylor is as famous as Doug Holt, but I place James Tylors teaching way above Doug Holt. So is Tomo Suzuki – great and simple teacher. See profs section for detailed review on the profs.
• Finance subjects are not scary. I used to run away from Finance subjects from most part of the course and take tech related courses. If you don’t know ABCs of finance, this is a good time to take. Many of these are not entirely number crunching, but involves heavy strategy component – example, Finance II in Hilary, Private Equity, restructuring and implementation (M&A) are should-never-miss kinda courses.
• Don’t take repeating themes. For example, technology and innocation strategy in Hilary and Enterprenuelria and Technology ventures in Trinity are 60% reptetitive. So are derivatives and risk management (I think, I didn’t take both tehse, but my friends say so); so are Strategic decision making and negotiation skills. If you take two of these, you just wasted tons of precious money and time.

Hey, I gotta go… I willcontinue this topic with details on the individual profs and courses as another post.. probably after hours Mon. Cheers and good luck choosing electives.

MBA and Job Update

Well, well, well… I cannot blv it has been a few months since I wrote a blog. The first term in MBA was quite okay (and I thought that was the toughest).. it only got worse. We had to manage classes, projects, assignments – all at once. The days ran into 18 hours and that is when you cut down your chats and blogs.

Quite a few of my friends pinged me and asked for update.. here it goes. The course was completed successfully :D on Sep 15, 2007. As a part of the program, a team of four, we did a 2-month consulting project in Intel at Portland, US. It was a great experience going back to US and analyzing strategy for a company that big. And I returned to India for a 2-week break. From Oct 1, I have joined the Cognizant London office, report to the VP/Country manager, and look after business strategy.

Well, the first two weeks have been quite busy, and I suppose this will continue.. But I ill try to write more… until then stay warm. Its getting colder here in London.