Day 8 & 9: A New Beginning

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A New Beginning

The Advanced Management Program (AMP) has switched gears and is now into what can probably be called specialized subjects. Our professors who initially taught us the basics of Finance and Accounting are now teaching their subjects of expertise. In these two days we covered a pretty wide area, yet the richness and depth of the subject was not at all compromised. These are:

• Leadership and Corporate Accountability
• Leadership in Organizations
• Strategy
• Business Government and the International Economy
• Financial Management

While there has been no deterioration in the quality of instruction and the richness of the learnings, my brain is slowly turning to mush. I have gone passed burning the midnight oil and I think it won't be long before I burn the lamp itself. I've been getting an average about 5-6 hours of sleep daily and I've been skipping breakfast and dinner. Breakfast because I'd rather sleep and dinner because I have not been getting enough exercise and since I cannot burn calories, I figured I'd manage my intake.


Key Learnings

The campus provided residence of the Dean of HBS

On the first day of class, our Harvard Business School Associate Dean and Executive Education Chair, Prof. Das Narayandas, did warn us that we will be learning a lot in this course and he compared it to drinking from a fire hose.

Unfortunately, trying to capture what I learned and transcribing it into this blog is a rather similar exercise. If I am either saying something incomprehensible or even the obvious, I can assure you that the reality is far richer and provides richer texture. To prove the point, I already have nine leather binders containing all the notes I copiously reproduced and filed staring at me at this very moment.

• Similar to the Du Pont analysis, a country's GDP, C+I+G+(x-m)=C+S+Tx, captures the different areas of economic performance. Measured against a country's context and strategy reveals a lot about a nation's health and future, allowing business to accurately capture opportunities and threats.
• Strategy is about asymmetry. It is about evolving through time to make yourself constantly relevant across all your constituents.
• Leadership is the perfect balance of ethos, logos and pathos. Parenthetically, it sounds so simple yet I feel that this whole topic will unravel and reveal more of its mysteries as the course continues.
• Appropriate business behavior is the convergence of economics, ethics and law.

Case Method

The case method continues to amaze me. The professors here at HBS have a nasty yet intellectually mystifying way of teasing out key learnings from the tapestry that are the cases. They teach and untangle the case with such passion and energy that as a student, you cannot help but get caught in it. Yet there seems to be order in this madness. I notice that they will spend the first 30 minutes of the class establishing the basics of the case, another 30 laying out the correlations and then the last 15 minutes throwing the core principles for you to take and absorb.

As a part-time educator, I cannot help but be amazed. The method is quite different from what we have back home. For starters, our educational system is anchored on a question and answer methodology but for those universities who have used the case method, I find that the treatment seems a bit bland or clinical. I suppose the way they do it here in HBS asks so much from the professor. Not only does it demand mastery of the case and expertise of the subject but also the ability to think on your feet and lead the discussion.

Talking about cases, I will have to sign out and read 2 more cases. Ciao!



Baker's Circle with its view of the Harvard campus in Cambridge, across the Charles River