Brean to Bristol to Bath and home

The day to start back for campus arrived soon. These days had passed by so quickly and made me feel rejuvenated and relaxed.
After cleaning up the caravan we started on our trip to Bristol city where Richard also had an engagement to fulfil. It was a beautiful drive and we soon saw the Bristol bridge.

Once we had dropped Richard off at his destination, we too parked our car and wandered off to see the city. John's familiarity with Bristol came in handy as he had worked here before. It was interesting to see his reactions on the changes that Bristol has seen ever since he moved away from this place. A commercially vibrant city, Bristol offered us peeks into its history as well as modern outlook.
Richard joined us soon enough and we moved on from Bristol to Bath. Unfortunately we reached a little late to catch the ever famous Roman baths in this city, we saw around the architecture and modernity blending in this tourist city, which not surprisingly, was an expensive place. The Roman baths are the best preserved spa's from the ancient world. We visited a church as well to offer our prayers and also absorb the beauty and calmness inside.

Bath is a marvellous city and a hot spot for tourism. It attracts an audience from almost all parts of the world and as we kept crossing some tourists talking excitedly, we were guessing on the language those people spoke. The city possessed not only marvellous architecture, it also had bright hues of flowers all around. At many points, we would find ourselves stopping and enjoying the pristine beauty of flower beds. We had wandered away without any plans and were happy that Bath is a small city with no fear of loosing your way.

Conscious of our plans to reach back Cranfield famous in time, we then started back, bringing with us memories of all the beautiful sights that we saw.

Ah! Sunday morning in a Caravan!

The interest in Wimbledon had died! Caravan experience had taken over my senses. And John added a salty flavour to it by taking out the canoes from under the caravan.

For someone who does not know swimming, it was a scary thought. But the fact that we all had taken the courageous decision to quit jobs and pursue MBA in UK, motivated me to try my hand at canoeing. With lift jacket strapped around, I was given the beginners lessons by John. And in I went, pushed by John, while Richard laughed away to my shouts and soon could be seen sleeping on the rocks, basking under the sun. Little did I realize that John had a hidden agenda - get me to taste the salt. And once I was in slightly deeper waters, enjoying the confidence of John's proximity, I was toppled over - much to John's amusement and my shrieks. Of course I wasn't scared! (hope you believe it!)

After this experience, it was time again for my tasty omelettes in breakfast. The plan for the day was to do some sight seeing and go to nearby town and see around. We enjoyed the games and specially the "crazy golf" course. John also showed us around the place, a few bits of history and background, etc. The we set back to the caravan as the sun started on its descent.
Back home in our caravan, we chatted away well into past midnight.

Caravan Calling - Day 2

The day of the big rugby match - All Blacks versus Lions. John, Richard and I were off at 7 am in search of a pub that was screening the game live. And we found one soon enough to occupy our chairs. I must admit that I was glued to the screen and could sense the disappointment amongst audience on Lions performance.
We were back in the caravan and by now our stomachs had started grumbling. It was time for a quick breakfast and this humble chef offered to make "tasty omelettes" - we had brought the necessary ingredients last night - trust Cranfield MBA's to plan perfectly! Since I will get added publicity by this posting, let me share that John, Richard and Karen were licking their fingers and had two rounds of omelettes. Of course, one's wife is one's biggest critic and wouldn't support my culinary skills at all. So Divya acted as the balancing force by refraining from appreciating my skills in kitchen. Poor me!
Quick plans were made for the day with Richard "The eternal walker" and John chalking out a long walk in the greens.
It was a good long walk up the mountain and a fabulous view or the sea around.
After a couple of hours, we were back to the starting point and then decided to walk on the sands with low tide having taken away the waters away into the sea. The beach is great for kite flying and sand yachting, and more civilised activities like sandcastle building, paddling and swimming.

In the evening hours after watching tennis again, we were out to the local pubs. One of the pubs was hosting a live show by a singing band and hit the dance floor.
Only when our feet refused to support us any further did we budge and came back to the comfortable confines of the caravan.

Caravan calling - Day 1

Term 3 over. Term 4 about to start. A few holidays in between. Who would miss this opportunity! And so we went to stay in a caravan on the sea shore.
John McIntyre (Britain) had the keys of his caravan on Brean Sands, a sea shore near Bristol and 5 of us bundled off in two cars in the evening hours.
The caravan is located at Brean Sands, on a seven mile stretch of sandy beach stretching from the seaside resort of Burnham-on-Sea, to the National Trust headland of Brean Down. On a clear day you can see the Welsh and Devonshire coastlines in the distance.
We reached in the late evening hours after a long meandering drive. Scores of caravans stood in pitch dark with an occasional street lamp showing us the way. Yet, when we arrived, I could see the high tide. The area has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world (the tide frequently laps against the sea wall just in front of the caravan). Settling in was easy and I was astonished to see the caravan to be fully equipped with everything. TV, microwave, comfy sofas, kitchen……you name it, it was there!
With Wimbledon on, it was difficult to move away from the TV but we forced ourselves to go for a simple dinner of fish and chips. But plans were on for tomorrow. We were sure to have a "whale" of a time.

World Class Leaders, World Class Teams

This was a special session conducted by Prof Andrew Kakabadse in which he shared his critical findings from the research work on leadership covering transformational, transactional and visionary leadership. Interestingly, this session was outside the scope of any core or elective course and was organised by three MBA students.
The session revolved around a case study written by Prof Kakabadse for a workshop that he conducted with a top tier financial services organisation. It was a true case study about a manufacturing company and the concoction of issues that it faced - ranging from internal politics to lobbying of factions, organizational structure and lexicon, what a consultant faces which can easily be termed as hostility, the paradoxes that exist in corporate and so on.
This was only the second time that our batch was experiencing the class of Prof Kakabadse, but like the first time, he overawed us all. With his suave class of teaching, he led us through the understanding of the case. The first half involved us breaking into groups to propose our thoughts on what the new organisation structure could be. After the few voluntary presentations of some groups, Prof Kakabadse then shared what happened in reality, who the real client was, what developments took place and where it stands today. The objective was not whether any group got it right; the idea was to explain to us what all dynamic are at play typically for an organisation and specially for the consultant.
Every time Prof Kakabadse comes to lecture us on a case, I have always had this uncanny feeling that the consultant in the case study was him. It is astonishing to note that his explanations come across as so powerful that it seems he knew every heartbeat of the consultant.
While we strive to become world class leaders and world class teams, it is sure that faculty such as Prof Kakabadse is definitely World Class.

My first consulting assignment

Business check up (BCH) is a core course that concluded today with our presentation to the client. I capture the up's and down's of my debut consulting assignment.
I had become part of a new team in the first week of May 2005. Mark (Britain), Lily (China), Yandi (Indonesia), Chris (Scotland) and Miah (Britain / Honk Kong) were the other members of yet another culturally diverse team. We had chosen the project with a niche recruitment agency in UK.
On 4th May, we had an alumni from last year join us together with the client with whom they had done their project. Both, the alum and the client had shared their experiences with us and how this is a brilliant opportunity for Cranfield students to work on a small but live project.
Our team soon enough agreed for Yandi taking the role of team lead. We also chose to keep a single point of contact with the client and faculty in the form of Yandi. Our teams proactive approach helped us as by this day we had already scheduled an appointment with the Managing Director of the firm and on 5th afternoon, three of us set off to meet him. The meeting that lasted well over two hours told us a couple of things - the client had a very expectation from us and his view of the scope was much larger than what we had thought.
This was a crucial point for us, given that we had to work on this project in just 6 weeks while survive the grind of our respective electives, submit reports, et al. In our first debriefing meeting with the rest of the team, we decided to talk to our faculty and get the scope sorted out as there was no way we could have done what the client expected from us. Strangely, we were learning quickly and importantly the first lessons of consulting - know and agree to the scope before embarking on anything. The added aspect was that t was us who had to talk to the client and not the faculty to get this sorted out. Thankfully, Yandi's past consulting experience came to the rescue and we were on our journey soon. The scope was to do a complete business check up for the agency and propose a market entry into a new segment of recruitment.
We divided the functions into pairs of two - Miah and I took up Operations, Chris and Mark took up HR, Lily and Yandi worked on Finance. We also concluded that this market has a substantial overlap of Operations with Marketing and hence the latter would be worked upon collectively.
So during these 6 weeks, each of us were working on analysing information, penning down our thoughts, interviewing the MD and his employees, conducting research with clients and candidates, number crunching on excel files and of course making power point presentations. Adding to our woes was that we had to prepare a draft report and a presentation to the faculty just after 4 weeks of start. No marks for guessing - it was a part of our assessment. This also meant getting together one late night, book a room in the SOM and rehearse for the presentation.
Like the way the past 10 months have vanished, these 6 weeks also winded by and it was this day when the clients came in to be presented our formal report and presentation in front of the alumni. Just the way as a real consulting team would do and face the rebuttal from faculty and client. The only difference was that the consultants get paid for it in currency, we got paid in the form of learning.
We thought we did fairly well. After the presentation when we were chatting with the MD and his business partner, we found that they were testing us by playing devil's advocate role as well. Our proposals were in fact "bang on" with what they had in mind. We had received no hints about this from them.
So many times, I used to wonder - how come Cranfield students are down to earth souls unlike the typical image of MBA's that people have? Such exercises go on to reiterate that each of us have some unique strengths - we just need to explore a bit to uncover them.
A great experience! A great team! And of course, a great client too!