Week 17: Business Decision Models, Operations Management, Marketing Fundamental, Finance Fundamentals (Module 5 con't)

Week 17 is over. This marks the halfway point of the team based portion of the program. Time is flying by.

The week has been a continuous steady pace, which has resulted in a lot of work to be completed over the long weekend. Luckily we have Friday afternoon off to get a head start on the work. Overall the class is much more subdued than previous modules as people buckle down and get back to serious work.

In addition this was the last week we have campus to ourselves. The undergraduates are returning next week and that will make booking various meeting rooms much more difficult. A lot of them are already here. Next week is their "frosh" week, which means they will basically just be partying. The MBA's on the other hand will be working our butts off.

Business Decision Models is launching into simulations. This is a little bit more complex than the linear programming models from last week. They pretty interesting, but playing with Excel to get the models to perform just right could take some extra time.

In Operations Management we had a guest speaker from Shouldice Hospital. This was after we had completed the Harvard Case Study. It was really cool to be able to talk with the guy who runs this facility and get his responses to different issues and solutions you considered while studying the case. The teams are also expected to find a plant location to tour and complete an analysis for this course. A lot of business have turned down groups. I hope my team is able to secure a location soon.

Marketing has been interesting, but it is mostly just discussing all the readings and concepts. Each team needs to pick a product or service to "re-launch", design a marketing strategy and present it to the class. The guest speaker we had in this class was from MXI Technologies. It was interesting to see how the theory we have been learning is actually implemented to allow companies to aggressively grow their revenue.

Finance started off slow, but has just kicked in today and yesterday. We are now neck deep in bond valuation and next week will be stock valuation. I am very glad I took the professors advice and purchased the TI BA II PLUS (financial calculator). The slides include explicit instructions on how to properly use the thing, avoiding unnecessary confusion on my part. I'm going to have enough to learn without fighting a calculator.

On top of all the courses the class had high performance team reviews with our team facilitators. Each individual filled out an anonymous online survey about various performance aspects for all of their team members. These results were then reviewed one-on-one for each person in the program with their team facilitator. Afterwards the entire team met with the team facilitator to discuss how they could continue to improve and what they could learn from their reviews. I definitely think this helps since it let people gain a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Overall this is a very good thing to have in the program.

The MBA Games and Case Competition teams are finally getting moving after a month of organizing and planning. It will be interesting to see how it all goes. I am hoping to be able to compete in a few Case Competitions and the MBA Games. This year's MBA Games are in Halifax and start the day after New Year's (Jan 2nd). Ouch! The plan is to fly out and back to help with the commute, but each individual will need to cover their flight.

Finally, while all this other stuff is going on, as if that wasn't enough, people are still ramping up their prep and practice for On Campus Recruiting. Mock interviews are going on and people are sizing up which info sessions to attend in September.

Basically it comes down to one thing:

September is going to be a very busy month.