Hello fellow scholars,
My current status: 2nd year standing, Telfer School of
Management MBA program.
Time flies, but not when you are up to your neck in
assignment and readings. The MBA program is very engaging and requires you to
perform multiple, high-end mental gymnastics that taps into your accumulated
work-related experience and intellectual database. In order to tread
successfully (and sanely) through this demanding terrain, I have identified three
key success factors a student can use to nurture themselves and apply as a foundation
to successfully support themselves throughout their MBA (or any other study)
journey.
1. Team cohesion:
The majority of your assignments are team-based. The material you use and the products
you are producing are based on overlapping sections. You rarely submit or work
on a stand-alone segment or section of a report that does not touch upon or is
influenced by another section or project. Furthermore, the analysis of the data
and the application of the theories learned affect the whole product. What this
means is that the machine that runs this project (your team) needs to be well
maintained and optimized. To ignore this fact would result in one or a
combination of the following syndromes: increased
work redundancy, episodes of personality friction, or incoherent final project (whether
that may be a presentation or a paper). The Telfer School of Management at the
University of Ottawa conducts a number of personality and team-based exercises
before and after group formations. Moreover, feedback sessions were held during
the first semester to ensure that each member gets a 360-degree view of oneself
in relation to the team body. Lastly, a team constitution is put in place. The
constitution helps identify key factors in governing the group dynamic and set guidelines
for the operational tempo. Now, I must admit that the constitution was rarely
consulted; however, as all constitution, they are not there for daily readings.
Instead, they are used in time of need, such as sessions of conflict management.
2. Harmonizing
the work-social-intellectual experience (see my Golden ratio Post here: http://telfermbajourney.blogspot.com/2011/03/golden-ratio.html
for the individual aspect relating to this point): Every member must ensure a
balanced life style, and all members must understand the needs of each member
and the pressures they all fall under in their daily processions. As a result
of this epiphany, team mates come to the understanding that sometimes one must
work harder or exert more effort to support a friend in need. Trust me, what
goes around comes around – your helping hand today will translate to respect
from your team mate-in-need, and will help harmonize your team’s spirit. Also,
a time might come when you might need a helping hand with a segment of your assignment
due to a family emergency or an over-time work commitment; your team mate will
be there for you.
3. Outside-the-box
Reading: Make sure to add a variety of books and articles to the MBA tomes
you are currently dissecting. The MBA material is great, and the way that
knowledge metamorphoses into one’s own life and into the work environment is
fascinating. You can observe the theories at work in each of those environments
and, in turn, you can react more effectively to and perform more efficiently in
future circumstances. However, diversifying your reading portfolio would help
you view business models and theories under a different light. Non-business
material infuses your imagination with the wonders of philosophy, quantum
science, religion, psychology, and political science (to name a few), and this
accumulation of knowledge would highlight hidden gems into the human psyche and
the social world through which you would be able to strategically forecast
events and become more in tune with the cultural and human subtleties that vibrates
throughout the human consciousness. These benefits extend beyond the MBA
program, of course. As for the short-term ones, your presentations and papers
would contain a touch of humanity that would give you the edge in your academic
pursuits.
I hope you found these pointers useful. I look forward to
hearing from you and would love to know more about the success factors you
might have identified throughout your own journey.
Take care of yourself,
Haider
