The human species is supposed to have 5 senses and a sixth one. But let us not go that far, 5 is plenty to put to test in an MBA. The Global MBA requires you to tweak your natural senses a bit to get your point across to your peers.

Whereas in person, you might have used your charm or visual cues to impress upon your classmates and your professor, doing so over the wire requires you to hone a different skill, that of writing and sometimes speaking over the camera than in person. So, as we go through these courses at bullet train speeds, we recognize more and more that we need to be effective writers. Written communication is a must have for any MBA, more so for a Global MBA. It is not an alien skill. After all, we write more than we speak these days, whether at work or in the social scene. It is simply easier to write an email than to pick up the phone and talk. Social Networking has increased the amount of written content on the web more than anything else. News updates come to us in the form of RSS feeds. Latest breaking news is obtained over Twitter and breaking news or scoops are served fresh over Facebook. Customer service for banks, insurance and other services have moved online, so we either type a mail or chat with a rep. (We are by the way, weighing in on queue models for how a Call center would differ between one that handles just calls and another that does calls, chats and emails.)

The Global MBA format gives adequate rest to your ears since most of the time, you will be reading the professor and your classmates. So, even as you talk about being an active listener, you do become an active reader. Non-real time communication means, you not only listen by active reading, but also thoroughly analyze responses, several hours after it has been uttered.. err.. typed in. But, with written communication come some challenges too. I In spoken communication, you sometimes charge that a person goes selectively deaf to what you say.. in written communication, we are seeing that as selective blindness instead, at times. So, hands have replaced the vocal cord, eyes have replaced the ear. Of course wires have replaced hands and legs that you would normally use to get to class.

What else is in store? Watch this space!

The reason you are reading this blog is probably because you have some interest in IE Business School or on the lives of its MBA students. You have probably come to know and embrace the diversity that IE brings together, under its roof or on to its Video-Conferences. Even in this blog, you see the diversity of the authors, their style of writing, their varied thinking and the different approaches they take during and after an MBA.

There is however, one other dimension of diversity that IE brings together in its innovative format of learning. Diversity in its teaching force! A Virtual Classroom not only means that students from the comfort of their homes around the world can get together to debate Google’s Strategy, formulate a Go-to-Market plan for Zara or to scrutinize Enron’s financial statements, but Professors from around the world can guide their discussions!

Although we are just about a third through our MBA now, we have already had professors whose experience ranges from a Chief Strategist from Cartagena, a Negotiator for the European Union, a General Manager for Cortefiel to a senior Mathematician turned Entrepreneur.

Thus, not only do each of these professors, with their MBAs and Phds bring academic excellence, but also have had a track record of applying theory to industry. This gives us a unique perspective of which methods work in practice, which sections of the textbook are obsolete and which are the most relevant cases to discuss in class in today’s business environment.

Not that the internet or Virtual presence needs any more advocates than it already has, but this is another unique advantage you realize with virtual learning. Geographic and logistic barriers cannot come in the way of you learning from the best minds. IE provides that unique opportunity, bringing together some of the very best minds to educate us. Had I opted to go to a Brick and Mortar classroom, I would have no doubt learned the concepts, but maybe not have known how it applies to the real world in so many different countries or business situations.

Amongst the toughest weeks in the MBA are the transition weeks, i.e. weeks in which you move from one set of courses to the other. In an aggressive program like that of IE Business school’s, there is only a few hours between ending one course and commencing the other. We had the pleasure (??) of that experience two times so far.

For procrastinators, this is a total nightmare. You are busy compiling your final report or taking your quiz in the wee hours, finishing minutes before the deadline! Lo and behold, you celebrate! After all, it is a great feeling to have been done with 1/4 of your MBA! You want to kick back with a glass of wine or play on your PS3 and yes, you even allow yourself that luxury, only to find yourself drowsy eyed and back in class the next morning (early here in California), with classmates up bright and early, speaking things you have only vaguely heard in the news!

Just yesterday you finished preparing a comprehensive plan for a company to change its “Strategy” and today you’re back solving Linear Programming problems in “Quantitative Methods”! Yes, that’s the life of an MBA student! You move from Corporate Strategy to plain numbers, of course in the context of business. From discussing Opportunity Costs to the Economy and Inflation!

The MBA above anything else, teaches you Time Management. It is easy to get faaaaar behind if we don’t adjust our time management and balance everything else in the universe, e.g. work, social life, etc. if they still exist.

As we are finding out, getting into an MBA program is only the start of a long and tough commitment to learn and to work real hard. If your MBA is a shorter duration one, it comes with a tradeoff, you have to work that much harder. In Linear Programming terms, the area of the Time – Effort rectangle is the same in any MBA. In some, like those in the US the time taken is longer and the effort is spread out, but in others, like that of European programs IE, IMD or INSEAD, the effort is intense due to the condensed time! No, they’re not joking when they tell you this during orientation or at information sessions.

Happy New Year 2010!

Let me take the pleasure of welcoming you all to this blog this new year! We at the Global MBA class of 2010 are back after enjoying a restful break. Yes, some of us were missing classes and forums, but for sure we’re going to be immersed full time into this throughout this year, so for me, it could wait until Jan 4th Some homeworks, assignments, presentations and even casitos are due this week and slowly but surely we are heading back to the books.

This was the first break since our program began and only first of two significant two breaks we enjoy during the program. It gave me a good chance to reflect on the time that has been, how I have managed my time, work-study-life balance (if there is one) and if there are ways  I can change or improve things this new year. Sure enough, lots of resolutions emerged and the top one from there was time management, especially on the asynchronous portion of the program, that is the discussion forums.

Now discussion forums at first glance don’t immediately make sense when you consider that emails, web forums and the like are quite informal, haphazard and irregular as such. But IE brings in some good deal of structure to this format and uses it quite well to enhance learning throughout the week in between online lectures. Forums are an integral part of the course and this makes it very different from other face to face MBA programs.

For one, you have assigned readings and need to be prepared well before the forum begins;  and second, you have continuous access to your professor and classmates as though they were your colleagues at work, who sit right across from you, but send email. Only here, they are almost always helpful Now which full time or Part time MBA guarantees that you get atleast 4-5 opportunities to speak in each class and the ability to converse with your professors each day in the week?

The forums are moderated continuously not just by the professors, who facilitate the learning, but also by students who read and respond to other posts. Each week in the forums, we discuss a specific concept, which keys off from a HBS or IE Case Study. The professor asks leading questions, which the class responds to, bringing in their global and industrial diversity. Unlike in a real class, where the time between the professor posing a question and the first answer coming up is a few seconds, here, you can take even an hour to think about the issue raised, t o process the information and to relate to your own experience, how you have dealt with an issue of this kind in the past. Then even as you are typing, a classmate posted his or her view on the subject and that makes you think differently and add a different angle. In class, I am sure 5 or 6 of us would raise our hand and one of us gets to speak what all of us wanted to say. Have you been there?

We are there too… there is the Hermoine from Harry Potter who always answers first and the Ron who never wants to answer and everyone in between. But the thing is, there is no Professor Flitwick who just rewards points and moves on after the question is answered and certainly no Professor Snape, who deducts points for answering out of turn or a Prof Trewalney who does not even listen to your answer Here, each professor we have had so far, takes the time to read each response, address us directly and indicate the key learnings for each question posed. There are no strict right or wrong answers like we see in most cases in life. Some professors even take the time to post multiple PDF files with contributions from us, from them and from useful sources and articles from around the web. I am a strong believer that all this strongly enhances discussions. For instance, when we are working on a Marketing case, it helps immensely to look at different examples of advertising or positioning products from Youtube.  How many times would a professor teaching live in a classroom like it if you tell her that you are browsing Youtube for good examples to share with class?

The fun part of the forum is that it is always on! Just as it is getting time for me to get to bed after reading the last few unread posts in the forum and then add my own, there’s my classmate in Europe that has just woken up to read the messages posted from the Western and Far Eastern hemispheres. Similarly, when she winds up for the night, folks in Japan and Singapore are having their morning Coffee while reading the forums. The forum addiction that many of my colleagues have spoken about in their posts is simply caused by the fun and amount of learning that is attained through this medium. I believe this is a very valuable mode of learning and if you are lucky to have  a class and teaching staff as good as I do, you’ll be always on your toes, pushed to do better, to think longer between posts and enrich the learning for one and all.  Most posts in our class are as good as reading an article in the newspaper or business journal. I would write more, but time to post my next entry into the Strategy forum, so I’ll see you later!

Hello to one and all! Where ever you are reading this from, one thing is for sure, you have no doubt realized the convenience that the internet has brought to all of us in several facets of our lives. Whether we’re shopping for Christmas gifts, as many of us are doing at this time, on another tab in our browser, or if we’re looking to see which school is the best for our child and several other “applications” including researching for a good school in which to do an MBA.

Such a search, brought me to IE Business School, a Continent and an Atlantic Ocean away from the Western United States where I live and work. I am now  a proud member of the Global MBA Class of 2010. Our class has just completed the first quarter and are relishing the Christmas break and I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the months that have gone past like a blur that you would  see riding the Shinkansen Bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto, the ICE from Berlin to Hamburg or TGV from Paris to Nice or even the Rajdhani from New Delhi to Bombay!

Through this blur, I recollect T-accounts, the five forces, Multi-party Negotiations, the 4Ps & 5Cs  and the art of Networking! We have been through it all with plenty more to come, as a class of 65 this year, effectively twice the previous class sizes. More classmates means a  magnification in  diversity,  collaboration, experience and of course thoughts.  Although I have met people from several countries, cultures, sectors and backgrounds in my 10 years of professional experience and 30 years of living or working in 3 different continents and some 7 countries, no where have I seen the diversity that I experienced at IE Business school, first via the virtual introductions and then for real in the Aula Magna that bright Monday September morning in Madrid.  How often do you find yourself in the same room as others from 34 countries? Unless you work for the UN or as a Foreign minister, there are but a few chances that you would get this luxury. Add to this, the ability to share experiences, work on mini-projects, to have a drink with and it goes beyond luxury into a “Once in a Lifetime” opportunity, in this case, one that lasts not one day, not one month, but a full year and a quarter.

And so it began, the Global MBA, the transformational experience, about to shape the lives of 5 dozen people by engineering,  welding, molding, crafting, chiseling, designing and painting their experience with the color of diversity and experience not erstwhile experienced! And so it begins… my series of blog posts via which I hope to convey the “Real Life Story” of a Global MBA class and its constituents.  My predecessors and compatriots in this blog have been a source of great inspiration for me to write this blog and I am really standing on their shoulders as I draw from their experiences during their MBA and Specialized Masters programs.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010!