The new MBA class is here -yeah!

Maybe you saw that we had a busy MBA Induction Week here last week. I certainly enjoyed it and it’s good to see the new class getting to know each other. Last week was all about introductions, career insights and some fun.

Courses began in earnest Monday morning so a lot of brain power being spent now. For some, those that have been away from education for some time, this may be a bit “painful” but soon they’ll all get the hang of studying again. I can already see the prospect of some exciting relationships based on mutual interests so I’m sure we’ll have a worth-while year ahead. This week and next our Career Development Manager Merri Scotney and I will meet with a number of our new MBAs to talk about careers. My colleague Eddie Cochrane, our Executive Development Manager, will take over from me in the third week as I’ll be heading off for a meeting with the GMAC people at their new headquarters in Reston, Virginia. A busy month actually, October, as I’ll also attend the GMAC European conference (this year to be held at Ashridge Business School) and my long-term friend Anna-Marie will visit as well.

Join us for the GMATCH MBA and Master Virtual Fair today!

Yes, it’s today that we are participating in a trial from GMAC, the GMATCH MBA and Master Virtual Fair. It’s a chance to meet school from all over the World from your living room.  There’s a short break now but I’ll join the fair later so come and meet me. Ohh and please also come to our MBA Open Day next week. It’s on Tuesday 13 April and apart from meeting current students and finding answers to your questions you also have a chance to test drive the class in Corporate Strategy taught by my Director colleague Dr Brad Mackay. Read more about the event at the University of Edinburgh Business School here. I hope to see you!

Next stop Washington DC

This is an invite to come and meet a school representative and alumni at the two MBA Fairs in Washington DC and new York, organised by QS TopMBA. This of course is only relevant if you are looking to join an MBA programme.  If you are then make a note of the dates: 25th and 28th February.

So what is all this about attending an MBA Fair from your living room?  Well, the University of Edinburgh Business School has been invited to participate in the GMATCH MBA and Master Virtual Fair. It is an exciting new initiative by GMAC, the organisation that owns and administers the GMAT® exam.  The event is on Wednesday, 7 April 2010 and you can connect on-line with admission staff of leading graduate management programmes.  Register now so that you can meet us in your own living room.

I can hardly believe it but the students on the MBA in International Business are now already preparing to move on to their chosen exchange partners. It seems like it was only yesterday that they arrived. After that they will move on to their internship so please let me know if you are looking for an exerienced MBA student to work for you for three months over the summer. It can be anywhere in the World.  You can check the profiles of all my MBA students via:  http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/management/msm/student_profiles/index.cfm

No I didn’t get lost

On my way back from Barcelona I mean. I was side tracked by lots of other stuff.

The GMAC European Conference was rather exciting and I thoroughly enjoyed most of the sessions. A temperature on 25° Celcius in Barcelona rather added to the good mood I must admit. As mentioned in my last entry the theme was “Selecting for Success”. Sessions included talks by Julia Tyler and Alex Chisholm of GMAC; Philip Delves Broughton known for his somewhat critical views of the MBA; Professor David Bach from IE in Madrid; Lieutenant Colonel Eilean Cunningham, Head of Operations at the British Army Recruiting Group Headquarters; Alison Parrin, Career Development Programme Manager at Google; Professor Martha Maznevski from IMD; and Srikumar S. Rao, the creator of “Creativity and Personal Mastery”. Julia, Alex and Philip outlined what talent the employers seems to needs while David Bach headed a session where we from the MBA programmes could learn from the way the British Army recruit their leadership talent and also form Google’s way of recruiting. Both Eilean and Alison were very open about their procedures, what they were looking for and how they identified it.  Martha then taught us about bias and gave us tools to identify subconscious bias. Before close of the conference Srikumar explained how things might be seen in a completely different light. All in all a very exciting conference.

But I suppose that you are expeting me to talk about bank bonuses… It has certainly come to light here in the UK again, with rumours of up to £6bn being earmarked for bonuses in banks. Let’s see whether they actually go through with it. Mervyn King was certainly very explicit in his views about the folly of this.

Selecting for Success

That’s the name of the GMAC conference I’ll attend tomorrow and Wednesday in Barcelona. It is of course about schools selecting (MBA) students who are the most likely to succeed during and after the programme. You can read more about the conference here. We won’t just share our own experiences. We will also learn from speakers who are involved in very different kinds of selection processes and see what are the characteristics they look for. And maybe more importantly, how they identify these. I’ll fly back on Thursday and be back in the office on Friday. I’ll tell you more about the conference then. I won’t have any time for sightseeing but it will be a chance to meet the GMAC London team to thank them for their help during our recent succesful membership application. Yes, the University of Edinburgh Business School is now a member of GMAC.

Jet lag – arrgh!

How I hate jet lag! I thought I was doing OK yesterday but round bedtime I was not at all ready to go to sleep. So as a consequence I’m yawning my head off and I feel in need of copious cups of coffee to keep me awake. Good thing that this is not another full day of presentations, as we had last week. It has however been a day full of meetings which is not necessarily better.  It is in this case though as I have had the opportunity to meet with two prospective students. That is such a joy. I’ve also spoken to a third over the phone so all in all a good day. Even if I’m yawning.

So much to tell…

I went t the GMAC Annual Industry Conference in Baltimore and it was a great conference.  I was particularly taken with the two keynote speakers, Dame Marjorie Scardino and Sir Ken Robinson.

Marjorie Scardino’s take on the death of capitalism as we know it was particularly inspiring and so was her ideas about what will inspire business in the future. Her background as a rodeo rider, her law degree, and her career in publishing means that she has seen the multiple faces of the World as we know it so her word ought to carry a lot of weight. Ken Robinson ought to be well-known for his work and ideas about creativity and education. With his statement that education kills creativity he had made numerous suggestions on how to improve the educational system as we know. He explains that we have been educated to become good workers and that this has taken a toll on our creative thinking. I can concur with some of this.  I teach a course in design, creativity and problem-solving and it is interesting to see how students need to be taken out of their comfort zone to perform. Some never manage to do this because they are so focused on whether “this will give me a good mark”.

So now I’m back at my desk and busy catching up with the zillions (it seems) of emails that will pile up in my inbox even after only five days away. Monday and Tuesday last week was busy with presentations of the consultancy projects that the full-time class have been working on since March and there was some good work there that ought to be very useful for the companies and organisations that benefited from the projects this year. This of course means that this year’s full-time class are now focused on their final project, the one that we call the dissertation. This word may seem a bit scary but it really just is a word. We have many models for this final project. Most of the class work on projects that will solve actual problems for real companies while some work on the business plan for the company that they intend to set up after graduation. Such a multitude of inspiration!