I am afraid I have bad news!

The Presentation and Communication Skills (PCS) juggernaut continues. As if the press conference practice wasn’t enough during the week, we have another piece of personal development coming up next week. This involves how to give bad news.

Today evening our Blue stream representative Neil Marshall (Britain) arranged for screening a 45 minute video. This video is a taster of what lies ahead of us during next week. This next week’s exercise on building our softer skills revolves around how to give bad news. We saw the video anchored by the person who most likely, shall be with us next week (will not share his identity as of now). There were three kinds of situations involving communication of bad news. While many of us would have undergone academic education on how to communicate bad news in written form, here it will be on a face-to-face situation with real actors.

This diary posting is just to build up your curiosity. I am restraining myself to share greater details now itself. So while we wait with baited breath for the close encounters of the “bad” kind, you all keep guessing what is this all about.

Investment bankers kill “Fluffy” - the puppy!

Our asset management co. has invested in a Life sciences firm that has identified an age defying cream that is being tested on animals. The press is hounding on our AMC and this crisis has to be addressed by us - the board. It was our turn today to be a part of the “kill rate” for the journalists.

We gathered together at 0830 hours this morning to pick up the case assigned to our team. A thick bunch of red coloured papers came out of the sealed envelope that set the backdrop to our Press conference practice today. Our session was due to start at 0930 hours. We had exactly one hour to discuss and prepare ourselves, including assign our roles, attempt a dry run and consider possible bombshells that may get dropped on us. It was our turn to be on the firing line.

As we walked into the TV studio and took our seats, we saw the camera’s starting to whirr and the observing team seated with ear-to-ear grins on their faces. It was their turn to have the last laugh at our cost. We could see “nasty” Nigel, “deadly” Des and “stinging” Steve ready to take their slings at us.

Christian Ward (New Zealand) as the Chairman of the board started with a brief address to the press and then we started taking questions from the press. It was as if the journalists were sitting there bottled up and were let loose on us. Their bombardment started with “where is fluffy?”, “You have killed fluffy!”, “Do you have any pets?” ………… and we were caught off guard. I had not expected such a hostile start but life is not kind. We kept referring to our pre decided position as an investment bank, but the journalists kept coming back on us. One question wasn’t completed when another question shot off from their bows. Suddenly I saw myself on the TV screen behind the journalists …. and I felt my mouth go dry. A question had been put to me. I regained my voice and found myself listening to my answer. They shifted focus to Olivier (France) and he lost his voice. The barrage of questions then again changed gears to move onto Becky (Britain), Dennis (Hong Kong), Chris (Scotland) and back to Christian.

We did not notice that over 18 minutes had gone by. And then it came to a close. None of us could think whether it was truly over or not. The observing team was laughing away while I could not even bring a smile to my lips. Many a times during the conference I had heard my heart beating so loudly, I thought the noise would get recorded in the video.
It was for real but just a practice session. Something tells me that the actual one scheduled for March will be more than this. But I am happy because I am learning.

Face the Press

My first reaction was “wow”. This changed to “oh gosh” afterwards. And it was just a practice session. I am referring to the Press conference our team observed today.

Earlier in this month, we were introduced to the Press Conference sessions as part of Presentation & Communication Skills (PCS) course. This is a feature that possibly makes Cranfield distinct from many other schools of management. In this exercise, each team has to face a situation of crisis. The team has to become the board of a company that is facing a crisis – it could be an explosion in the factory with some casualties, issues of ethics for an investment bank or a tour operator board whose tourists are held captive by militants. The situation could be any possible kind we could imagine. In the session, our lecturer Steve Carver showed us a few video clips of similar sessions in the past. He also made a passing reference of the “kill rate” of the journalists as over 90%.

The task – face the press!
The philosophy behind this exercise is that once we restart our careers post Cranfield MBA, we will come across situations where we will have to encounter crisis and face the press / media. This is an area, where generally no one gets formally trained on. Hence, MBA is the best opportunity to experience such a situation and pick up lessons of a lifetime.

There are two parts to this assessment. The first part requires each team to observe another team while the latter are grilled by the journalists. Then we have to write up coverage of this press conference in two distinct kinds – a tabloid and a broadsheet newspaper. However, the coverage’s have to be contrasting to each other. In the second part, we are assessed on how we manage the press conference. This practice session is for the first part. We face the real onslaught of journalists in March.

Today we had to observe another team. The case involved a tour operating company facing a press conference because one their pack of tourists had been held hostages by militants. We as observers had no clue of the context and situation. Some of the journalists are actually journalists by profession. To add oil in fire, Steve Carver also joined in as the fourth journalist to add their firepower. A six member team facing a panel of four journalists! Wow!

The press conference lasted just under fifteen minutes as we watched with dried mouths. Charlie (Britain), Gautam (India), Carlos (Brazil), Tim (Britain), Himanshu (India) and Antonia (Britain) faced the bombardment of questions with courage from the fire spitting journalists. For even fleeting seconds, I never felt it to be a practice session. It was as good (or bad) as real. The classy journalists were picking up every word the board said; twisting it exactly the way we see on television. From being called mercenaries to getting personal on their backgrounds, the journalists left nothing un-stoned. After all, for them it is a story and their profession. They even gave a twist to the press conference when one journalist suddenly went away and brought back the news of all tourists as “dead”. This was completely unbelievable.

After the session, they journalists gave a quick feedback to the “victims” – sharing what they did right and where they need to improve. Even a grin is enough for the journalists to capture as part of the headlines.

As we walked out of the TV studio, I could hear myself speaking “oh gosh!”

The celebration of Cranfield’s International day continues

Day 2 of the International week celebrations was here and it was a much awaited day, especially for me. Today we were presenting India amongst other Asian countries.

For almost a month now, I had been actively working on the Indian presentation for the International week. I lost count of how many times I had changed the contents of our presentation. I also lost count of how many hours and days I was investing in the build up to the special day. With ideas galore, it was a tough task picking up the theme for the presentation. I had to ensure that our presentation did not cross the designated 15 minutes. There was so much to tell, so much to share, but so little time.

Nevertheless, after a bit of brainstorming, we closed down on a theme that was distinct. Divya and I had also been working out the plan of Indian taster also. The trouble with being famous is that you lose out on novelty and we were facing similar challenge on which Indian snack to offer. We then were firmed up the option of “bhel puri” – a snack that was unique and not yet experienced at Cranfield MBA.

The evening of Day 2 was buzzing more than Day 1 – students in other courses had also joined in this evening to enjoy the International week celebrations and the Forum was full. Excited voices of students were mixed with the sounds of children running around.

The evening began with the presentation of China, with Kaifeng Zhang playing the anchor’s role to perfection. All the Chinese students – Lily, Lin, Warren, Dennis and Kaifeng were dressed n traditional Chinese attire, which looked so pretty that my guess is they will receive orders for supply from the MBA students soon. With China hogging the limelight in the global arena for its galloping rate of growth, Kaifeng took us through a journey into China with many video clips. Their presentation showcased their culture, cuisines, famous cities and places worth visiting and even included a small quiz on China. The prizes were memento’s that comprised traditional hand made ornamental, designed show pieces. The Chinese presentation ended on a very gracious note with they offering a few traditional gift items in charity – the collections would be sent to support the Tsunami relief work. Soon after their presentation, these gift items were lapped up by the audience.

Our presentation on India was next. We started with a movie clip of a dance sequence from a famous Bollywood movie – the idea was to get the audience hooked up - it worked. Divya took the stage by introducing India and relating it to the dance sequence. She went on to introduce some lesser known wonders of India – Ajanta-Elora caves, Sun Konark Temple, Jantar Mantar, Temples of Khajuraho and Golden Temple. Of course no introduction to India can be complete without the Taj Mahal. Seema took over to introduce the most expensive and luxurious train in the world – Palace on Wheels. Our guess was right – the world (our audience, that is) had never been introduced to these aspects about India. The high point was the introduction to Auroville town-ship in Pondicherry – a place where people from over 35 countries stay together. It is an international town in itself and most Indians are also unaware about it.

Seema then handed over the floor to me and I then disclosed the five passions of India – religion, politics, food, movies and cricket – to the audience. In the back of my mind, I was conscious of the learning’s from our Presentation and Communication Skills (PCS) course. But at the moment as big as this one – I forgot some of my lines and instead, ended up speaking much of extempore content. Luckily, the audience did not notice (I hope). Our presentation ended with music being played from the same dance sequence that we had started with.

Japan was next, but with a difference – Nobuhiro was accompanied by Andrew (British) and Bibhas (Indian). Andrew and Bibhas have spent quite a few years working in Japan and hence were representing Japan. Their presentation also shared much about the cuisines, towns and culture of Japan. Their presentation took an interesting turn when they handed over a newspaper sheet to each one in the audience. Nobu then guided the entire audience through a live step-by-step demonstration of Origami – the traditional art of paper-folding. The audience loved it, as is visible from the picture.

Yandi Irawan and his wife Myra then presented Indonesia. Despite the disaster that their country has faced recently, Yandi did not let such tragedy influence his presentation as he and Myra took us through the traditions and history of their country. They even demonstrated the method of wearing the traditional attire that the bride wears.

Syria and Lebanon were jointly presented by Ammar and his wife Hind and the brother-sister duo on MBA - Rola and Hazem Mikati. Like many others, we were astonished by the beauty of these countries. I mistook the initial video clips to be from some European country. These are amazing countries with beautiful, scenic places and equally beautiful people. It was also a revelation for many to hear about the rich history of Syria and Lebanon.

Peru was accommodated today due to certain administrative reasons and Alex Mita presented his country. He was dressed in very colourful attire and he even gave away some pieces of their traditional wool caps to the audience. We watched a fabulous video that introduced us to the wonderful land that Peru is. The presentation on a country famous for its passion for dance would have been incomplete without the audience being made to dance to Peruvian tunes. Alex also has a reputation for being a fantastic Latino dancer and he got every one to the floor to jig on the selected tunes.

It was a long evening and after the presentations, the crowd thronged to the tasters’. While everyone was relishing the dishes, I wondered – could I have ever, in my lifetime, got to know so much about so many countries? The theme “Connecting cultures” was bringing me closer to many other cultures that I had not experienced before. The learning at Cranfield is not restricted to classroom alone. The international week is a vehicle to one’s learning – so what if it is not management. This dimension of our learning will be remembered and cherished by all of us. Wherever we end up pursuing our careers after Cranfield, these experiences and events will help us relate to our new environments better.

International week - Day 1

There are various attractions at Cranfield MBA. This year too, we celebrate the cultural diversity in the MBA batch with a four day International week which culminates with a Party on coming Thursday.

Volunteers from 19 countries decided to present about their cultures. All the African country representatives - Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and others - chose to present a single show together. Over the past week, the diversity rep's were running around, making sure that each team of students were provided full support and help.

The evening began with Harry potter visiting Cranfield forum riding the broom stick - England & Scotland presented first, being the host country. With Tanya and Ian McDougall dressed in Scottish dresses and with Antonia and Marc speaking out dialogues from Macbeth, it was fun to hear about England / Scotland and know something about their culture.

Mattijas and his wife Maria presented "how to make a great fondue" - using it as a theme to share information about Switzerland. And surprise, surprise. They had prepared Fondue for the entire audience for the tasters’ event after the presentations.

Mikahil Damrin and his wife Natalia presented on Russia, taking us on a virtual trip to their country, sharing certain do's and dont's whenever we visit Russia. Mikhail is organizing the Russian trip later this year in May 2005. As per last estimates, over 40 students have registered for this excursion trip and Mikhail is working on the modalities to ensure the best of trips for us students.

We had Italy next with Roberto and Mattia presenting their country and towns. They were quite innovative in using animated characters including Astrix - to share with us the history and culture of their native place.

The last one of the day was Marieke, who presented on - The Netherlands. Interestingly, she too is organizing a two-day trip to Netherlands later this year.

With tasters from these countries offered to all, the crowd thronged the counters to savour the unique dishes. It was great fun and a fantastic break from the studies routine.

PMI.....continued

I continue with the experience in PMI simulation from yesterday.

Coming back to your own team could be equally disorientating..... especially when you realize that much water has flown and there were some "outsiders" who had come to your project. I am afraid it is not a good feeling, but life is not kind either. And I guess this was a subtle message or learning that the professors wanted us to experience. Simple statement of such facts wouldn't have impacted us as much as experiencing it. And they had hit the nail on the head.

After some anxious moments of recouping, Becky and I got updated of what all had happened in our absence. They had received news from the client on change of scope. An activity had been added midway during execution and it fell on the critical path. So work could now proceed only after taking up this new task immediately. The client did offer a decent price for this task, though. But it meant increase in our execution time and we had no choice.

Soon enough, we erred again on crane allocation. There was no scope to recover from this slippage and we knew our performance would not be upto the mark. A look of disappointment was all over us ...but we had no one to blame. One may say, these were just slip-up’s. But when you evaluate the impact of such small slip up’s and realise that you may have lost over £50k of profits, it doesn’t remain small. Somewhere along the next rounds of decision making, I felt our enthusiasm sliding down. But despite the disappointment vivid on faces, we kept on persevering to ensure that no further errors happen.

The writing was on the wall, though. It set me thinking – how easy it is to just brush our errors away, thinking it to be just a simulation exercise. Would I have reacted in the same way if it was real life situation? I knew I wouldn’t and I was wondering what the project manager would go through. After all, in real life the buck stops at him / her. I was wondering how Becky would be feeling, what emotions she would be going through – but she did a great job of keeping her disappointment within and continued to lead the project, pepping us up.

While we finished our project over the next few decision rounds, we kept hearing sounds of cheers and claps from some other syndicate around. Some teams had already completed their warehouses and had found out their profit figures too. Some teams had made over £100k. A few others had goofed up too, like us, but differently.

The evening saw the batch get together in the lecture theatre for a briefing from the professors. They shared their perspective of the simulation and had some insightful views to offer. All in all, the simulation was a great way to learn Project Management. While the simulation is over, the work does not end there. We are now required to write an individual report per the brief made available. It is a very tough assignment since there are quite a few do’s and don’t’s on the way the report is expected to be written by the faculty. It is more than just a report capturing the “what happened” and “how it happened” kinds. The report goes beyond that, expecting us to include recommendations to the management on what better can be done, and much more.

You bet, I have much to write in it. The problem will be the word limit just like we face in a WAC.

The warehouse was built, finally!

Phew! I was exhausted. PMI simulation was intense and my team survived. We made the warehouse. At the end, we had some profits too, but we barely scraped through. I capture the simulation experience through a sequential narration as well as learning’s derived from it.

The show was set - 21 teams competing against themselves. The challenge was to implement its plan to build a warehouse. Each team had its plan drawn out and roles defined for each of the six members. We too, were prepared, hopefully with our best laid plans. The syndicate area had been set up appropriately to facilitate the workflow movement and the entire partition wall was covered with white paper and grid lines capturing each week and task in a matrix form. Bright yellow and pink post-it notes with activity codes and invoicing reminders were kept ready last evening.

That was my first learning – when a project team works and one person records everything on a computer, only s/he knows what s/he had done. Is it known to the entire team responsible for project execution? No marks for guessing. A pictorial representation of the project speaks the same language and the Gantt chart on the partition board gave the same answer to each member of a team. Lesson one – use tools that are available to every one to feel involved in the project. A project plan should not be confined to the desktop of the Project Manager.

At 0845 hours, we were all smiling with the feeling “nothing can go wrong, we are prepared well”. And nothing did in the first few weeks. The way the simulation works is that each 15 minute time slot is treated as a week in the period of building a warehouse. From the second week onwards, we submit our decisions on various parameters – start of an activity, allocation of labour strength, purchase of consumables, cabins for labour accommodation, cranes, etc. depending upon what progress report we get. The entire simulation is run through the computer software developed by Cranfield’s Project management department. This software has many algorithms and even within each algorithm, different teams may get different results for same decisions.

To the simulation now – we started on an optimistic note with the first two weeks going on track as per our plan. Needless to mention, we were happy that our plan was working and were also aware that sooner or later we will have to face our first deviation from plan. It came sooner than we thought. One of the tasks was showing a delay in completion. It meant altering our plans for the subsequent weeks. The changes involved revising the labour, cranes and consumables. It also meant revising our cash flow requirements.

Lesson two – if you have done your planning right, you can face as well as adapt to the changed scenarios. No wonder that successful Project managers believe in considerable planning before commencing execution of the project.
Lesson three – Murphy’s law are a reality – if something is expected to change, it will. Projects included.

Soon, we committed our first mistake. We forgot to allocate the crane to the task it was hired for. As a result, the progress report showed no progress on that task. Clearly, it led to an increase of the project completion period by one week. It was not good news at all. Our safety mechanism had failed. Despite having planned for an audit mechanism before submission of action form, we had missed checking our own job.

And soon a surprise – I and our Project Manager Becky – were called away to the lecture room. Like us, two members from each team had been called for and sent on a “cultural exchange” to a different team in another stream. That was a killer move by the Professors – and it is quite realistic too. Isn’t it normal for a project member to get redeployed to another assignment? The exchange experience was phenomenal. From the very start, I had a feeling of being un-welcomed in the new team – after all, you do get passionate about your team and are resistant to change. Like them, I too felt out of place, not having a clue to their strategy or action plan. I was conscious of the fact that it has to be me who has to get into the groove and pick up what this team had chalked out.
And just when Becky and I had been able to develop comfort in this team, the cultural exchange was over. We were sent back to our original teams.

Biography of a Project Manager

In today’s session of Project management Introduction (PMI), I was wondering how a biography of a Project manager would read like. Will be a comedy, a tragedy or a success story?

If you ask me, I would like to read all such biographies, especially if they are anecdotal. Just three days in a simulated environment of managing the smallest of small projects and I am beginning to lose my senses. At times, I found myself engrossed in the spreadsheet - I didn’t even realize that my team is talking to me. At other times, I was biting my nails, trying to find out alternate scenarios when a specific activity on the critical path gets delayed or is completed ahead of time. Worker accommodation, consumables, cranes, stock holding cost, overdraft, bank loan…..oh gosh! I am drowning.

By evening, I was quite tense. I am managing the consumables for my team. So my role involves keeping a tab on the progress of each task and ensuring that the respective consumables required for each task are available in just the right quantity at the right time. Each consumable is to be ordered as per the minimum order quantity and takes 2 weeks to be replenished. If we go out of stock on them, the complete project comes to a standstill. If we stock them in excess, we pay a huge charge on stock holding every week. I was chewing my own words.

Our dry run in the evening gave away all the weak spots in our plan. The only consolation was that I was not alone. Similar dilemma, if not worse, is being faced by Dennis and Olivier. They are managing financials. In the dry run, they almost forgot to bill the client for a completed activity. Managing cash flows, revenues, expenses and funds availability through an expensive overdraft or a cheap but conditional bank loan is not an easy task. And our mental setup is reflected in the way our syndicate area looks like. I get a mixed feeling when I look at that area – it looks pretty cute; it looks quite chaotic too. Is that how the room of a Project Manager looks like? I wondered.

We retired from today’s activities with just a bit of “hope” – the hope that our conservative approach will help us; the hope that none of us will miss out any critical task or action (but something tells me - it will happen!). After all, it is some consolation to hear that even if a team manages to make £1 profit, it would be a great achievement, given the past results of similar simulations at Cranfield. PMI is a tough subject and being a Project manager is a tough job and I am sure out there quite a few heads will nod when they hear this.

If you know any biography of a Project Manager – let me know. Else, after tomorrow’s simulation, I will be at least in a position to write short stories - on what it is like to be the member of a project. Wish us luck and watch out for tomorrow’s posting.

PMI continues

A guy walked into a table and hurt himself. He was wearing his “stupid hat” and therefore, he sued the table manufacturer for damages. You bet, the manufacturer had not contemplated such a risk.

Strange way to begin a diary posting, isn’t it! Yet, in countries not too far away, it is a way of life.
So what do companies do? The answer is simple - they manage their risks.

This is what we discussed on day 2 of Project Management Introduction (PMI) course. Whether you consider all risks under PEST (for those lesser initiated – it stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological) or some other definition. Risks are a part of life and “who cares, wins!” The secret of risk management is to remember – It is humans, and not entities, that cause risk. And project management is all about managing risks.

In the first session of the day, all the teams went into a deep-discussion mode. My team – Blue 3 – also went into a huddle; brainstorming about the possible risks that our warehouse project may encounter. In the second session, we worked on the methods of projecting expenses, revenue and cash flow. Soon enough I found it difficult enough to contain myself and together with Dennis and Olivier I starting working on the spreadsheets. Slowly, I was feeling heavy (and it is just Day 2 of Term 2) and found my concentration level at its peak. Numbers were coming to me easily except that deep down there was a fear lurking inside me – anything can happen in the implementation of the project work – we may run out of cash, any of the tasks may take longer than planned, labour may return back if they find their accommodation not ready, etc. etc. There were enough possibilities of the project going haywire.

Is that what a Project Manager faces in real life? How does he survive project after project? Every successful project manager deserves a noble prize. The questions were plenty.

The answer, surprisingly, came from John Algar – our professor and Director of Project Management team at Cranfield MBA. The secret of a project is to plan one task at a time. If you get that right, you can manage the project well. To this, I add one statement from my own understanding – Project management is the summation of sound planning, proper execution and teamwork. While Cranfield MBA will help me understand subtleties of planning and execution, what stands’ tall is the opportunity to experience team work.

It has just been two days when I became part of a new team, but it seems like a natural progression on a journey that should last a lifetime.

Crash course!

This week I shall share a day by day account of how a core course becomes a crash course.

This morning, we started Term 2 with the core course of Project Management Introduction (PMI). The course revolves around working on a project involving the building of a warehouse. Between now and Thursday, we will be working on this course and will finally have a simulation exercise wherein we shall have to compete with the other 20 teams on course.

Oh, by the way, the “we” here is my new family. As an annual feature, each team and stream of Term 1 is reshuffled and new teams made. This enables one to experience a new environment and a new set of people. So my new Learning team and family have - Becky Drinkwater (Britain), Christian Ward (New Zealand), Olivier Alvarez (France), Chris Wyper (Scotland), Dennis Tsang (Hong Kong) and myself. Our team is an exact replica of the MBA batch with an average age of 31 and average work experience of 8 years. As part of the school’s plan, we get to know each other while at work on the PMI project and are not given time to think of settling in first. In real life also, one doesn’t get time to first settle in – one is required to hit the ground running and get to know his peers while running.

There was excitement in the air as the school reopened today after a good Christmas vacation. While I was on campus throughout, many of my colleagues had been travelling across continents. Their excited voices had much to share. And almost every one was happy to be back to school, enthusiastic about having regained their strength to take a dig at Term 2.

The day started with John Algar sharing the basic concepts of Project Management. And like any other astounding faculty of Cranfield, John made PMI such a simple sounding subject. His ability and skill to relate theory with practice and real life “personal” examples of live projects made the subject seem more interesting to even those who (wrongly) considered PMI as “dry”.

We got frequent breaks during the day long session, wherein we had to go back to our syndicate areas and discuss out our views / ideas on the brief. Our warehouse project has just a dozen activities, but in just a small exercise such as this, the learning is immense. I thought I had never been in Project Management but I was wrong. My last assignment as regional head of finance & commercial operations in India had involved setting up of franchisee owned retail operations and in a period stretching over four years, I had been involved in construction and setting up many warehouses. As I sat there in the lecture theatre, I was realizing that you don’t need highly sophisticated tools like MS Project, etc. to become a Project Manager. My team isn’t using one. Instead, what we are using is logic and a whole lot of planning. We have also decided that each of us will take up assignments that are not our respective functional expertise. We want to develop our multi functional skills and hence I volunteered not to pick up finance portfolio for the project. So while Olivier and Dennis will manage the entire financials of payables, receivables, banking and funding, I together with Chris and Christian will manage the procurement, labour and site work. Becky has been appointed as our Project Manager.

The lessons I learnt today were an amalgam of small pearls of wisdom that may seem miniscule but make a big difference to the success or failure for a project. I am sure this term will be more exciting, more fun and more demanding than the previous one. And I am also sure that the next three days will be very demanding and full of learning for me and others as well.

International week at Cranfield MBA

As the holidays come to an end soon, I have hit the panic button. Every morning I remind myself – I have spoilt myself rotten and I need to set my calendar. There is a pile of activities to be completed. And included in this is the preparation for the International week at Cranfield MBA.

The international week is an annual affair and is celebrated in term 2. This time it is in the second week of the course and is celebrated with much fervour and fanfare. After all, not many schools can boast of diversity of MBA students as that of Cranfield. With over 60% international students, a week of celebrating diversity is an essential aspect.

Before the school closed for vacations after term 1, I was appointed to work on the presentation on India. Each country gets a 15 minute time slot in which the students have to show-case their country to the entire batch, partners and the faculty. During these vacations, I had been toying with a few ideas and collecting inputs from all Indians on campus. Sometimes, you do enjoy the benefit of having a sister in the market research field and I even sent off a few SOS messages to my sister back in India. I needed some items that I wanted to use in the presentation and had to get these items before the term 2 began. I was lucky enough to get her into action (much to her chagrin) and made her run around the streets of Delhi to find out the specific stuff which I wanted. I was double-lucky because Sameer (Indian) was visiting India during the vacations and kindly consented to carry the items back to school.

As I was working on the presentation, I realized that I am becoming my own critic and continued trashing my own ideas. I was also realizing how difficult it can be to describe your motherland in just 15 minutes. There is so much you can share about your country. But your perspective changes when you remind yourself of whom your audience is. So while India may still be occasionally referred to as a land of “snake charmers”, I wanted to share the fact with my audience that “yes, my country can charm anyone”. An equal if not stronger desire was to learn more about other countries. The international week will tell me much about many other countries – Switzerland, Russia, Italy, Lebanon, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Greece, China, Denmark, France, Africa – just to name a few.

As the term begins, the challenge for me will be to strike a balance of studying PMI, that is covered in week 1 and preparing for the Indian presentation as well.

Ring out the old, ring in the new………..and stop that clock!

I wish a very happy New Year to all readers.

This morning, as I woke up, nothing had really changed. It was bright and sunny out there and the clock had just ticked past 10 am. I had enjoyed the New Year party at Anthony’s place, playing party games, joking while having wine and champagne and apple juice. Another year crosses over and a new one begins.

It was just 12 days ago that we had seen the end of Term 1 and ……..what 12 days have gone. Only 9 left! And in pity (for myself) I plopped back in bed only to pull myself out of my cosy bed a few moments later. Much as I may want to laze around, there was work to do. I had to clean up the mess I had created in my room…..after all you do begin a new year with a resolution, don’t you? So what if the resolutions are forgotten within next few days.

By lunchtime, I was kind of awake, having completed my daily chores and forced myself to cook an omelette. Then I sat down to make a list of things I need to do for the coming week. In 5 minutes I had written down tasks that seemed to be requiring 5 weeks for completion. And that’s when I really woke up. Gosh! I had allowed time to slip by me for all these days while I was lazing around, addicted to net and movies on my laptop. All my plans of reviewing PMI, French lessons and finalizing electives had been on the back burner while I was recouping after term 1. I was even due for a hair cut. After all good habits take time to develop, but bad habits can set in so quickly. I was reminded of Prof. Richard K mentioning in the very early OB lectures – “………during the term break, most students would be off campus; those who are on campus would be mostly found sleeping……..” And we had just laughed that away, not realizing that it would eventually be proven true.

This is how time flies by at Cranfield. Four months ago, I had arrived here wondering how the next twelve months will be. I here am, having covered one-third of the journey. Have a covered some grounds? The answer is a definite “Yes”. For one, I came here with some stereotypes and they are fast disappearing. I am doing things I never imagined I could do. And above all, I am learning new lessons of life. But there is only one thing I can’t control or do much about – and that is Time.

I don’t want time to pass by so quickly. Some one stop that clock, please!!!!!!!