Two months into the Ivey MBA experience

School is getting progressively busier with each week's passing. Now that we are more or less getting used to the rhythm of studying we are getting career stuff thrown into the mix.

First, I want to mention couple of words about the courses that we are taking as part of the second module. The courses are: Managing Financial Resources, Accounting Control for Managers, and Designing and Executing Strategies. I always thought Strategy to be quite interesting subject so I was definitely looking forward to that class. Moreover, I was always fascinated by financing activities of companies and as the result was also looking to forward to Finance course. Lastly, to be absolutely honest, I had mixed feelings going into the accounting course based on my undergraduate experience.

I remember taking the introductory accounting course as part of my management minor and having to spend hours figuring out if financial transactions were either credits or debits and then recording them in company ledger. So now you can imagine a bit of skepticism I had when David Sharp, our accounting prof, told us that he is going to make accounting fun... yet somehow in my mind fun wasn't the first synonym that came to mind when I thought of accounting.
We are now about a half way through the module two and my biggest surprise, so far, came from the fact that I'm actually finding accounting FUN. Let me explain myself here, before you think that George has finally lost it. The type of accounting that we learning is a managerial accounting, the type which looks at assessing health of businesses, whether or not banks should grant a loan to a business, and all kinds of other neat things that I can actually see being applicable to the real world. Moreover, professor Sharp has a unique ability to make accounting material seem much more interesting and indeed fun.
Strategy and Finance courses are even more interesting and informative than I originally anticipated. That is not to say that I'm finding either of them easy. There's lots of reading and studying for each one of those courses. So far I've been finding that the best way to stay on top of coursework is to spend 4-5 hours on a typical weekday, working on the next day's material, and 6-7 hours on each Saturday and Sunday to do some career related work and pre-reading for the week ahead.
As a closing comment I would like to leave you with a following thought: Trying to differentiate yourself in an MBA based on marks is probably one of the hardest ways to do it. More on this later.

Team as a functioning unit at Ivey:

In the first week of classes we all were assigned into learning teams of 6-7 people. Each learning team got a nice mix of cultural and educational backgrounds. On average each team has two international students, one female student, and the rest of composition is pretty random. Learning teams are designed to maximize learning experience in the program by helping to digest the material before the class.

As experience has shown, diversity in learning teams has both its strengths and potential weaknesses. The main strength of diversity lies in the ability to leverage individual strength to achieve results beyond just a simple sum of work by each member. (Ex: Think Bob and John can do a case analysis in two hours each. However, chances are that their case analysis results are going to be quite different because they made different assumptions based on their past experience. Now if they will work together, the result is going to be quite a bit more comprehensive as it will consider both of their insights but might not include some of the information that they would have included in their individual report) One potential weakness of diversity lies in the fact that the difference in backgrounds might make it harder to reach a common ground. (Ex. Lets think back to Bob and John example: if it takes them individually two hours to do the case it might take them now up to three hours to do it together as they will have to incorporate consideration for their join analysis into the report)

General rule of thumb: Each additional team member might add up to an hour for a team to reach consensus.

That being said, majority of teams gelled well together right from the start. Of course there was some natural tension during the first couple of weeks as teams figured out the best way to function as new learning units. It was interesting to see that over the first module each team adopted a unique working style. Some teams meet to brainstorm ideas and other teams meet for couple of hours a day to work through all the cases together.

To help each team bond better Ivey puts us through “trial by fire” by creating common challenges for each team. One of these challenges was the goal to win in team sport competitions during our orientation week. Our first module started to build team strength further by including two team presentations for the communications class. The biggest test of how well each team functions came during the 24 hour report at the end of Module 1. Read more about on this in an upcoming 24 hour report post.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments about this or any other posts on this blog.

Till next time,
George

First Module

It's hard to believe that we've been here for more than a month already. The time is flying by faster and faster further we get into the program. We have our first round of exams next week for Module one courses. Module two courses start the day after we are done with the exams for this module.

First module courses were: MDU - Making decisions under uncertainty (Quantitative heavy course with lots of Statistics material), LPO - Leading people and organizations (Leadership analysis of difficult management decisions), CM - Career management (Self-analysis of our career goals, strengths, weaknesses, etc.), CE - Communicating effectively (Works to improve communication/presentation skills), TCM - Total career management (Course with Career management geared to help us build our resume/cover letters).

Our exams consist of a 24 hour report for LPO. 24 hour report is basically a case that gets assigned to our learning team and then we have 24 hours to put together a report. And then present it to a group of managers. MDU has a separate in-class three hour case exam. CM has a final paper that we have to put together based on the results of all self-assessment tools. CE has a final presentation.

First month @ Ivey

Come to think of it, it’s been a month since our MBA experience has started. What a ride it's been so far, and it only seems to be picking up more and more every week. With a full mix of social and school activities the experience has met and exceeded any of the expectations that I had before starting the program.

The program is definitely an intense experience, considering that we barely had a month of classes we already have exams coming up in short two week. So the ramp-up period doesn't really exist and yet majority of students are caught up to all the material through either working within groups of students, individual study, or working one-on-one with professors. At Ivey I came to realize that one of the most important parts in the one year program is the support structure that insures that nobody falls through the cracks and ends up missing part of the material. Part of that support structure is a continuous feedback loop with our professors. For example, it's not a rare occurrence to get an email from a professor thanking a student for an excellent point made in class.

Another unique feature that I came to appreciate even more in the month that I've been here is the interactive nature of the program. Professors don't lecture at you; class learning is a collaborative process that resembles a multidirectional conversation. It's really fascinating to see the learning lessons unfold right in front of you, as the result I find, to my own surprise, the retention level is a lot higher than in any course that I've taken before.