Thursday, September 28, 2006

More academics

The next class we shall cover in the "MBA Under The Microscope" series is "Financial Markets and Valuations". This particular specimen is taught by a German. At the risk of promoting exceptionally poor stereotypes, the similarity between him and a certain character in the bastion of political correctness that is "'Allo 'Allo" is uncanny.

He has a tendency to add a "hmm" or a "yes" or a "good" to every other sentence. For example:

"So we can calculate the NPV which gives us the IRR rate. Hmm. Using this we can reach a company valuation, yes? Good."

The course itself seems to resolve firmly around the principle of Net Present Value. Or in other words how much I have to give you tomorrow to get you to give me some money today. It seems to be an amazingly flexible thing this simple concept. We've used it to find out all manner of things from how bonds get valued to what's a fair price you should pay for a company. In fact only now do I start to feel like I know what all those important banker M&A types actually do at 3AM. In the process I've chalked up yet another reason why I don't want to be a banker.

The morally objectionable bit is that so far every time we've done a case on valuing a company the answer which invariably turns out to have the highest NPV is buying the company and then immediately shutting it down and selling all the assets off. I keep thinking about all these people made unemployed cause a spreadsheet in Excel said so. Clippy has a lot to answer for.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Academic Overview

I think it's high time I devoted some attention to describing the actual courses one encounters on an MBA. I'll try and do this course by course otherwise this aura of intense buzyness I've been diligently cultivating over the past few weeks will disappear in a puff of smoke, which just won't do.

Today, I shall focus on Leading People and Groups. This, in MBA speak, is an Organisational Behaviour Course. It's kind of a one of a kind course when compared to the other ones I'm taking this term. After 4 weeks of it, I still have no idea what to make of it. Every week I start the lecture in two minds. One of them is saying "This is complete and utter bullshit", the other "This is utter genius". And every week I resolve to finally make my mind up once and for all, and every week I seem to fail miserably.

What does the course teach? Well, this is kind of a tough one. We have a session devoted to different aspects of group behaviour. We started by examining self and the different kinds of people you can get in a group. We then went on to look at leaders and different leadership styles. For example, it seems that most people have an instinctive preference to work for a really free wheeling, innovative thinking boss who gives them all the freedom in the world and trusts them to do tasks of earth saving magnitude well. But when it comes to choosing who they would like to have work for them, they'd be much happier having something between an ant and a robot that mindlessly goes and carries out whatever simple task you've assigned to them without asking any questions.

Today we looked at influence, and ways of exercising it. This involved a viewing of "12 Angry Men", which not being one I'd seen before was immensely enjoyable. We ended up going through all of the techniques Henry Fonda uses to influence the jury. Like for example making friends before tackling the strongest opponents, and accepting a gift from someone in order to make them feel like being part of his side.

My problem with it all is most likely related to my background. Every week I find my head swirls in amazement during the course of the lecture, but once I come out of it, I really can't quite pin point whether I've actually learned anything or not. I diligently try and take notes in class, but when it comes back to reading them they seem to make very little sense. So who knows. Hopefully next week I will finally crack the genius or bullshit question....

Friday, September 22, 2006

Wallet

When doing the Myers Briggs lecture last week, the behavioural psychology lecturer conducted a survey of how many people in the lecture theatre had never lost their wallet. I should have known I was onto a loser as soon as my hand went up........

Having spent almost 2 full days looking for it, I finally threw the towel in on Wednesday and declared it properly lost. I am still convinced it is somewhere in the house, but I only have so many hours in the day. I then proceeded to go into the bank in order to declare my misfortune.

The process was so incredibly simple. The guy clicked three buttons on the computer and then made me sign two sheets of paper. No questions asked. Rather worryingly, I then asked to get some cash to tide me over while the new card arrives. This he did without any questions, or even worse any id of any sort being displayed... To contrast, HSBC kept me on the phone for 15 minutes while asking me minute details when I was born accurate to the second and my mothers eye colour preference. I am more and more convinced that the French way of doing things is actually quite good. When you have a job to do, just do it without pissing around. And then go on a 7 week summer holiday. And if anyone has seen my wallet - drop me a line....

Shopping

France is a strange old place. Think of getting anything done on a Monday, and you better forget it. Although the parking in town is free, all of the shops are closed. The same between 12 and 2 on any of the other (few) remaining weekdays.

To make up for this lack of working time though, the zeal with which people work, on the rare occasions that they do, is legendary. Take for example the checkout women at the supermarket. I have never seen anyone perform the task of picking an item with their right hand, passing it through the scanner and then discarding it with their left done so quickly. The bar code beeper makes one single continuous beep for 30s while you're struggling to get the first plastic bag open. Once the beep stops, you have one pile of food waiting to be bagged and one french woman looking at you in that "oh for fuck' sake" kind of way that I always feel I'm looked at when my lack of nativeness is spotted.

Statistics

I somehow appear to have landed in a statistics course. As someone with a degree in Electrical Engineering, the learning value being imparted is minimal. So much so, I'm half regretting not taking the exemption exam. But then it's good to have an easy course as a buffer for when the work kicks in in all the other courses. And anyway, had I exempted the only thing I could have done instead was a course on Business Ethics, which in my mind is simply a box ticking exercise for the school, lest one of us glorious MBAs pulls an Enron at some stage in their career.

The Statistics professor, however, is a an absollute joy to watch. He's one of these passionately passionate Italians with a thick Italian accent and makes use of large voice amplitude variations to command your attention 100% of the time. I am informed by a large proportion of the female audience that he is simply to die for.

Today we watched the most delightful little clip about sampling. It was one of these 1970s cheesy education clips done in America. It starts with a boardroom meeting of a corporation thinking whether or not to launch the X5000 razor (which ironically is a 5 bladed razor). And all of a sudden this dashingly handsome statistician dives in and convinces everyone it would be a folly to do so, but only after getting his bit in about the Central Limit theorem and customer surveys. The last scene involves him quietly walking out and driving away in his yellow Ferrari, while everyone in the boardroom is left saying "Wow. Who was that guy" and staring longingly into the distance. Just great.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Examus Maximus

Like an unwelcome mouse in a larder full of cheese the first performance measurement of the MBA is upon us. And what a palaver that was. The recipe for exam stress goes something like this.

300 Parts uber achieving MBA students
1 part microeconomics "quiz"
Allowance for one A4 cheat sheet

It's a simple and potent mix. Being the first assessment of any sort in the year, everybody is super keen to impress. And when I mean super keen, I am being polite. People start seeking all possible means of competitive advantage. One housemate stayed up till 3 (although admittedly he hadn't been to any microeconomics lectures yet, so perhaps that was wise). The talk of the campus turned to cheat sheets. How good is your cheat sheet? Mine was a handwritten affair with 5 formulas. Others, however, seemed to have discovered new techniques of microprinting and managed to squeeze the whole of Microeconomics theory discovered to date on a single side of A4. It's not clear whether those things are readable, but the feeling of efficient use of the cheat sheet space must be overwhelming. Never mind that we've only had about 5 lectures so far, so there just isn't that much things one can be tested on.

The professor's protestations that the quiz was really an exercise to see whether you're awake went completely unheard. In the event it was 7 questions that were so straighforward I didn't even use my cheat sheet. The likelihood of anyone scoring less than 100% is almightily slim. The important lesson for me - don't get sucked into the herd effect. Or else you'll have one almighty headache on your hands.

Monday, September 18, 2006

The Night Google Came to Town

Last Friday was the Google recruitment presentation. For the uninitiated this is a company that is almost mythical in the eyes of those in the Technology industry. For me it was a breath of fresh air after getting a bit worried that by cutting out Consulting and Banking as post-MBA career paths I wasn't leaving myself with much open.

Sadly, the guy doing the presentation was mind blowingly uninspiring. Although for me it was quite refreshing. It made you realise that Google is just another company rather than this godly creation. And in fact the little people that actually do the kind of work I'd end up doing there post MBA were all pretty good - of the razor sharp brain variety. So there is some light at the end of the career corridor peeping in.

In other news I've decided to leverage the MBA faculty as much as possible and have started pursuing a lunch with one of the entrepreneurship members of faculty. First attempt was not as successful as hoped - I was referred to the "Entrepreneur-In-Residence". However, I am sure I shall be able to seduce him with my charms.

Mailing Lists

Most of my readers have probably worked at some large company or another at some point in their lives. Which means that they should be more than aware of the ease with which the upper echelons of management are apt to use the "Reply All" button.

Now stop for a moment, and spare a thought for those of us who are at school with the next generation of the upper echelons of management. A school which very kindly integrates lots and lots of distributions lists under Outlook's address book. You might think high GMAT scores and general levels of high intelligence would mean people know how to use these things. Sadly not. Not a day goes by without some idiotic mail exchange involving who knows how many people e-mailing everybody and their brother about something utterly irrelevant.

My pet hate last week was a saga of about 20 e-mails emailed to the entire class by some guy getting together a group buy of business cards for people, and thus saving the princely sum of 5EUR. Sadly, it looked like it would be too much work to combine all the e-mails of the minority who consider this a worthwhile use of time, and so the distribution list was used. Yesterday's flurry involved a protracted vote where people e-mailed the entire school their Instant Messenger application preference. Woe betide the e-mail servers of the businesses that end up hiring the leaders of tomorrow.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Nice things Scary things

Nice things
when you do lots of psychometric testing and are constantly coming up with results that tell you that you really need to go and be an entrepreneur otherwise you'll never be happy.

Scary things
(i) Observing 100 MBA alpha males in dark business suits lined up in a perfect line 2 by 2 queuing to enter the BCG recruitment presentation. Reminded me of the Daleks.

(ii) Going to an investment banking presentation and being told that 8-9PM are really easy hours (which strictly speaking they are compared with 8-3AM).

Monday, September 11, 2006

It's started

And by that I don't mean the course - that was last weeks' news. Keep up. I mean the endless Cambridge-like cycle of work, work, some more work, guilt following 5 minutes of slacking off, following by more work. The amount of pre-reading, problems, group work and all the rest of it you have to do is quite obscene. And being the second week, everyone's really keen.

Went to an Investment Banking presentation today. Reminded me that that's one thing I won't be doing. I just can't see myself in the alpha-male-telling-100-people-it's-great-to work 9-3AM including weekends for your first year category. Important to keep doing these things though, just so you know where you are.

The career thing kicked off in style last Friday. My highlight was when in class of 200 the advisor started by asking people to raise their hand if they've changed jobs already. Mine went up like a rocket. Then she said to keep it up if you've changed jobs twice. By 4 I was the only one up, though going a bit limp. I think strictly speaking it should have gone down at 5. I got one of these quiet-but-knowing looks from the rest of the class I didn't quite know what to make of.

Did a Myers-Briggs type thingie today. Apparently I'm an ENFP. Which is nice.

Highlights of warm weather - top down motoring through the forest. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

The fun begins

It's now the first week of proper lectures. Which is a bit of a relief after the complete and utter waste of time that Outward Bound was last week. Given the aim of "getting to know your group" and a budget of who knows how much, I can't help but feel the exercise was a complete and utter failure. Getting tennis balls out of rope circles, while fun, is not my idea of a grand day out. How much better it would have been to just go out for a meal together and spend an afternoon talking.

Academically, last week consisted of an introduction to general management, which was given by an old professor of the type that everyone wishes they had as their grandfather - full of charisma and wisdom in a charming old man kind of way. For myself that combination is lethal - I spent the entire 5 hour session with a jaw dropped in amazement at just how good he was at making points of life changing importance while keeping you entertained with a finely interspersed repartee of jokes. The end result of it all is that I'm now not so sure I'm cut out to be a general manager. Which in some way is good - it's one less thing to think about when I finally start the process of narrowing down what it is I actually want to do yet.

Today the courses got rolling with full steam. For some reason MBA course names seem to have a penchant for being completely misleading. As an example "Prices Markets and Markets" means Microeconomics, "Uncerntainty, Data & Judgement" means Statistics. "Financial Markets and Valuation" seems to mean applying the NPV rule to anything that moves (for now at least).

And for anyone who has any doubts that an MBA is anything but capitalism in its purest and unadulterated sense, the pre-reading for the first day was set to Hayek and Friedman. In fact, the Finance professor's response to "What about externalities?" was "Well, they exist sometimes, but you can usually just ignore them". I'm sure Mr. Smith is very proud.

Mushrooms

Stick 6 strangers in a new house in a new location and I'll bet my top dollar it will take them a while to settle into a routine. Supply chain problems (I am doing an MBA after all) in the food domain are particularly apt to appear in the first week. Combine this with the French aptitude for generally not working whenever possible, and the odds of the house being out of food on the first Sunday become almost certain.

And so it was - on the first Sunday there was no food. Having got up mid afternoon with a mundo hangover following a 5:30AM party effort, it was too late to purchase food. So one of my compatriots suggests - why don't we go to the forest and pick mushrooms. Then we can cook them and eat. I thought, why not indeed? And so off we went.

Now the thing about forests, and particularly forests of the "2nd largest in Europe" type is that they are well, large. Not just large, but uniformly large. Not a good combination with two intrepid mushroom picking explorers. After just 30 minutes we were what an MBA might describe as "without a positional strategy". I however, have not yet got one of these important bits of paper, so shall just refer to it as bloody lost.

And we remained lost for the best part of the remainder of the day - or almost 3 hours. By some stroke of luck we managed to stumble on a road that looked like it might go somewhere which has been inhabited in the past millennium and managed to exit the wooded nightmare about 3 km down the road from where we started.

At least we had enough mushrooms for dinner - it was much needed.