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.

Week 16: Business Decision Models, Operations Management, Marketing Fundamental, Finance Fundamentals (Module 5)

Week 16 has ended and I feel like I just updated this blog yesterday. This week we started Module 5 which is comprised of MBA861 Business Decision Models, MBA841 Operations Management, MBA831 Marketing Fundamental, and MBA821 Finance Fundamentals. We have had classes in all but Finance Fundamentals this week.

MBA861 Business Decision Models is taught by Yuir Levin and will cover optimizations models, simulation models, decision analysis and revenue management&dynamic pricing. So far this course has been comprised of symbolic logic with basic math that we then turn into models in excel and use "solver" to complete. Yuir is quite interesting and has a very strong understanding of the material.

MBA841 Operations Management is taught by Paul Roman and will cover decision making, process design, service processes, plant evaluation, change management, supply chain, knowledge management, inventory/consulting, synchronous manufacturing and operations strategy. This course relies heavily on cases with textbook reading which are used in team and individual assignments. This material is then used by the professor to facilitate discussion and teach in class. In addition each team is responsible to organize a field trip to a manufacturing facility and complete an analysis of the plant. Paul is an awesome down to earth professor who knows the theory, but insists on relating things to "real life" and how solutions would be implemented.

MBA831 Marketing Fundamentals is taught by Rob Woyzbun and will cover marketing function, marketing analysis & objectives, core marketing strategy, brand strategy, marketing "mix", product strategy, pricing strategy and trends. This course has quite a bit of reading, but is mainly focused on the discussion and learning that occur in the class room. Rob is an entertaining and fun professor with a strong grasp of the subject material. Moreover Rob is a Porsche enthusiast.

MBA821 Finance Fundamentals is taught by Naceur Essaddam and will cover time value of money, interest rate and bond valuation, stock valuation, NPV and other investment criteria, capital and investment decisions, risk analysis, real options, capital budgeting, return/risk&CAPM, return/risk&capital budgeting. We won't have our first session in this course till next week, but it look like it will be fairly technical with a lot of number crunching. (Note: After the first class we discovered a financial calculator is a requirement for this course. The professor recommends the Texas Instruments BA II Plus since it is the one he is familar with and can assist the students with using it, but any financial calculator will do.)

Already this week has seen more than a few late nights as the course load has come on full blast. I skipped the "point four" social gathering last night to figure out why my excel model was telling me that it wasn't "linear" even though it clearly was "linear".

This weekend some of us are headed out to go white water rafting near Ottawa and the MBA games sports teams are having their first practices tonight. I plan to participate in both of these activities and still get all my require work done.

In other news, the consulting club had an alumni from a previous MBA class who is with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) come in and give a presentation on what it takes to get hired with BCG. There was also a presentation by "MBAs without boarders" earlier in the week.

Next week I have my "mock interview" with the Business Career Center. These are just pretend behaviour interviews designed to help students get in top form for On Campus Recruiting.

I have also been presented with the opportunity to apply for a potential position back in Calgary thanks the help of one of my colleagues here in the program. Of course I have reciprocated by putting him in touch with people I know in the asset management field. Guess networking really does work sometimes.

(Note: The rafting turned out to be absolutely awesome. We went to River Run Rafting and the operations and facilities were top notch. I would definitely recommend this to others.)

Week 15: Corporate Social Responsibility (Module 4)

Week 15 had ended and so has Module 4 on Corporate Social Responsibility. The class is pass fail and the grade is 50% for the in class presentation and 50% for the individual paper. This week has mainly been each team presenting their topic in one hour segments.

One thing that I found surprising was how our presentations have really improved since the program started. Everyone feels compelled to take it to the next level since they know everyone else will be doing the same.

Some of the topics covered:

• Meaning of CSR
• Duties, rights and best practices
• Basic Framework
• Strategic Framework as it relates to CSR (i.e. Michael Porter and Triple Bottom Line)
• Corporate Governance as it relates to CSR
• Shareholder Activism as it relates to CSR
• Stakeholder Relations as it relates to CSR
• Hypocrisy as it relates to CSR
• Volunteering as it relates to CSR
• Fair Trade as it relates to CSR
• Diversity as it relates to CSR
• Philanthropy as it relates to CSR
• Profit as it relates to CSR
• Corruption & Bribery as it relates to CSR
• Human Rights as it relates to CSR
• Science and Technology (i.e. cloning) as it relates to CSR
• Sex (i.e. as used by corporations in marketing) as it relates to CSR
  

The paper requires each student to pick a company that was not used in one of the case studies presented in class and evaluate how their corporate strategy compares to their corporate social responsibility strategy. To give people time to prepare their presentation, the paper is do Sunday evening. So the weekend is pretty much shot.

Overall I have learned a lot and I recognize that it is these softer skills that will differentiate between a good manager and a great one.

This week's point four has been moved to this evening and it will be a Karaoke cruise on the lake! Should be a blast! In addition some of the MBA administration staff are coming too.

Next week we dive into another 4 course monster module that will see us take Operations Management, Business Decision Models, Marketing Fundamentals and Finance Fundamentals.

Week 14: Career and placement prep week

Week 14 was a pretty easy week, but still busy. Monday was a holiday so we only had a four day week. In addition, Tuesday started off with a continental breakfast. That made for a nice easy return to school after having a week off.

The week was complied of different sessions to prepare the students for the events surrounding the On Campus Recruiting (OCR) week in October. We had:

• "mock interviews" sessions
• "finance" and "case" interview sessions
• "finance" and "case" customized resume sessions
• a dinning and etiquette session
• a cover letter session
• an effective communication session

There was also a trip into Toronto on Thursday evening where students attended one of four events:

• IBM Global Business info session (directed at those interested in strategic and IT consulting)
• ACQUIRE (directed at those interested in investment banking and private equity)
• TD Women in Finance (directed at the women in the class interested in finance careers)
• BMO info session (directed at people interested in knowing more about specific finance position with a major Canadian bank)

The school bussed the class to and from Toronto. For some of the events undergraduate commerce students were also invited to attend.

Attendance was mandatory for pretty much everything with the exception of a few students who already had jobs secured. Also, if students wanted to make arrangements to meet with particular people regarding employment they were allowed to skip out on certain sessions.

On the whole it was good and I definitely feel more prepared for OCR and job hunting in general.

This weekend will be taken up with some R'n'R while reading the text book and cases for next week.

Week 13: A break at last

Week 13 is at a close and I find myself in New York City.

Monday was the final test, which I completed in 2/3 of the time. This was unnerving since I seem to take up the majority of the time given to write tests. This was made stranger since just as I returned to my team room, my cell phone started to ring from the drawer I had left it in prior to heading to the test. As luck would have it, the head of oil and gas trading for a major Canadian bank based out of Toronto was calling me. Seems that their HR people were going through the online CVs that were posted and my background was of interest to them and they would like to discuss what their program has to offer successful candidates. Got to hand it to Queen's, they did a good job getting our CV's up there at least a month before anyone else. I was excited at getting the call, but since I wasn't at my best, I asked if we could delay the conversation until a later time.

After checking my schedule it seemed that meeting in person on August 7th would be the best option. Queen's is busing the class to Toronto for various events concerning employment in consulting and banking on that date, so it would work out. After a few e-mails everything is set-up. As luck would have it the bank in question has offices just a few blocks away from where the event I chose to attend.

In addition, we all returned to our desks in our team rooms after the final test to find a book that needs to be read for the module after this next one called "The Goal". On top of that we still have prep work to do for next week's workshop on building our full customized resume. Even when we get a few days off there is still stuff to do.

Tuesday the class headed to the beach near Picton. It was awesome. Beach volleyball, laying on the beach and swimming in lake Ontario took up most of our time. Everyone who went really enjoyed their time.

Wednesday my wife and I drove to New York City. On second thought, it would have been better to drive the hour and a half to Syracuse, NY and fly, but for some reason I got it in my head that driving would be a welcome break from the stresses of studying and a chance for us to spend sometime together.

Whoops.

Driving in New York City has got to be one of the more stressful experiences of my life. After fighting to get into the Lincoln Tunnel, I mistakenly missed a turnoff and ended up driving through Times Square at night. There is a reason people take taxis everywhere in New York and now I know why on a very personal level.

So, after fighting the crowds and touring around the city for a few days I find myself updating this blog. Classes resume next Tuesday and I am enjoying the time away from Kingston, even if I'm finding New York a little too involving.