The first three weeks of August passed by so incredibly fast and the 25th of August, the first day of the ESADE 18 months MBA program had arrived in no time.
The Introduction week was there. All students received a schedule of what they were about to experience during the upcoming week – a mixture of getting to know each other, getting to know the most important organizational issues, getting to know ESADE Career Service and the next steps we had to do in order to go for an internship application for summer 2009. The whole week was amazing. All new students were present, people from 34 different countries from all over the world and everyone with at least 2 years of working experience in the most various areas. Motivated, open minded, curious about the others, but at the same time somewhat insecure of what will lie ahead of each of them. First issue on the schedule: the welcome by the ESADE officials and a “Get to know each other” round where everybody of the 120 students was asked to tell a bit about him/herself. Amazing and refreshing, this is the best way I can think of to describe how this was like…”I worked as a portfolio manager for a famous investment bank.”, “I had my own business in the diamonds industry.”, “I used to sell drugs for a pharmaceutical company.”, “I have a degree in literature.”, “I was a priest”…I could easily continue. It was just astonishing, how many different characters had been gathered in one place, every single one with his/her very individual story and history. Some speak more than five different languages; others had been travelling and working over almost half of the world. And there was I, having lived roughly 28 and a half out of 29 years in one country, speaking three languages, being equipped with some 8 years of work experience in the German banking industry as well as in the consulting business. I was curious of especially two things: how much will I be able to learn from my new colleagues and how much will I be able to share my experience with them? That really excited me!
Two other things I want to emphasize that were really good during that first week of introduction. First, there is ESADE Career Service. Even though the real MBA program hadn´t started yet, one thing had been driven into us right away from the very beginning: THIS IS NOT JUST FOR FUN! THIS IS SERIOUS! PREPARE NOW! IF NOT, OTHERS WILL AND YOU MIGHT NOT GET THE JOB YOU ARE LOOKING FOR! Not only did Career Service tell us that all over again (and by the way, I strongly believe in those words). They guided us from the very first day and provided us with tools of how to best do so. Although our internship is supposed to be during the summer break in 2009, we found ourselves right in the middle of the application procedures, updating our CV´s, writing Cover Letters and listening to recruiter events, all provided and supported by Career Service. Furthermore, each one of us got his/her individual Career Service advisor. Very professional in every way and always . I definitely was more than surprised.
Another thing definitely worth mentioning was the two days Offsite in Cardona, a small town two hours away from Barcelona. We went there the second and third day of the Introduction Week, not knowing what we had to expect. But we´ve heard that others before had been doing a Dragon Boat race. And having done that before and considering it to be an amazingly funny event, I got excited as soon as I heard about it.
The whole event in Cardona actually was about getting to know each other better, especially the groups of six to eight in which we should be put later on. The idea behind it is to be put in small groups that stay together until the end of the first term in December, having to solve all given group works together. The groups were assigned by ESADE so that no one could just choose as wanted, to guarantee the maximum learning experience for every one of us. Another goal was the start of one course of the program called LEAD. This is the Leadership Assessment and Development course that is crucial part of the MBA program. It is all about personal and leadership development, doing self assessments about your personal strengths and weaknesses, future vision, preferences considering professional life, private life, ways of learning, an external evaluation of people you know from private and business environment and so on. In short, a huge and all-embracing evaluation of oneself, a definition of how to best reach ones goals and what to do to get there by means of personal development. It sounded like there was a lot of work upfront but that definitely seemed to be worth it! Cardona was the aforesaid start of all that, and what a nice and funny, but also instructive start that was. We basically had to do two major team exercises during the two days.
The first day, two groups were put together at a time to form a large group of about 13 people. We were informed that a huge accident had occurred. A huge amount of “toxic waste” had to be disposed as fast as possible. To do so, each group had to select a team head, six “helicopters” and six “transporters”. The transporters had to, surprise, transport the waste blindfolded, solely guided by the instructional voices of the helicopters and not allowed to directly communicate with the team head. The helicopters on the other side worked as intermediates between the transporters and the team head, forwarding his instructions to the respective transporter and the other way round. With that setting given, the “toxic waste”, a plastic ball, had to be transported with a vehicle; a plastic bucket put upside down and hung up on with three ropes that equally balanced the bucket. Each transporter had to grip one end of the rope. In a combined action, transporters coordinated of what to do by the helicopters communicating of how to best transport the waste from point A to point C passing point B (a distance of roughly 50 meters in total) with the team leader had to physically transport the ball on the bucket, being blindfolded all the time. The ball wasn´t allowed falling off the bucket. If so, the group had to go back to the very beginning and start again. And I tell you, having been both the transporter as well as the helicopter, it is really difficult to get the ball on top of the bucket. Too confusing? Well sorry for the moment. However, feel free to ask me of how it worked in detail individually, if interested. The essential point out of it: through a quite simple and very funny exercise, we simulated a situation that can easily occur in an organization and were able to extract several learning points during debriefing. Simple but effective!
In the second outdoor team activity, randomly formed groups, different from the ones mentioned before, had to build a real car and participate in a race tournament against the other teams at the end. Each group was given certain restrictions regarding the minimum safety requirements and a certain budget to buy material needed to build the car. It had to be either pushed or pulled by man/woman-power, carrying along one person. My team consisted of almost every background: engineering, politics, finance, literature and disaster management…the last one probably to be seen as some kind of omen. We actually succeeded to build a two-wheeled car that was pulled by three people in front. But, sad but true, after having been involved in a crash with another team during the race, our beautiful car fell apart into its components. Tough luck for us, but most funny overall indeed. We all were exhausted afterwards, for the temperature had risen up to about 30 degrees Celsius until the end of the event.
The stay in Cardona was made perfect by an awesome come together of all students and ESADE staff during the first evening. I can hardly think of a better way of getting an MBA started! Thanks ESADE!
