Operations and organizational structure

In Babson we have eight streams covering various aspects of operations in this module. It is a mixed bag. Some classes you love the discussions and in some, you do not. In organization structure and design, we were presenting our restructure recommendation for two different companies, a small auto parts manufacturing company and another a software startup. The first one was the toughest as it was evident from the weaknesses exposed in every one's proposal. Well, how do you lead an age old company, say a mine, where you do not need special skills and every one is hourly paid?

I wonder what if business schools integrate people without any formal education, but with experience, to attend such leadership and management classes. We may have more practical discussion than those 30000 feet hands-off view and impractical recommendations.

I thought I might be contributing very less in class room discussions this module compared to quantitative module II, last semester. To prospective students with engineering background, you have a lot to offer in classes. Instead of apologizing for your background you can really differentiate by explaining how you can contribute your experience to class room learning.

Much ado about nothing

It is funny how we have assimilated as a section with 40 new faces in less than a week is amazing. I guess, we knew lot of folks from other sections in the previous semester itself.

We get one BCAP day a week, Wednesday, to work on our consulting projects. So, once a week I can afford to wake up late.

This module is all about operations! Its about managing IT, executing marketing plans, making decisions, etc. I have a mixed feeling about this module. We have to read lengthy cases and even prepare an outline of cases to hand in for professor's evaluation. I think it is a good idea to prepare in a systematic way before the class. However, I disagree with the over emphasis of such preparation for evaluating a student. Why? Any evaluation that explicitly mandates student participation is bound to make a few people uncomfortable and make some to talk without adding much value.

We discussed about "soul of a new machine" as part of our organization design class. I shall dedicate a separate post for that topic.

Fall review

Following the tradition of year end reviews, I wanted to summarize how things have gone in a semester.

The good stuff:
Babson has been a very good atmosphere with nice classmates willing to help each other. Camaraderie is good.

Integrated curriculum seems to make sense and the modules (Mod I - Creative management in dynamic organization, Mod II - assessing business opportunities) lived up to the general theme.

Creativity stream was really creative and generated lot of enthusiasm among students and interaction among students increased tremendously.

Writing and speech consultants offered valuable feedback to improve respective skills.

Accessibility to faculty is very good and lot of professors are more than willing to discuss with students about anything.

Consulting project was well structured and helped in teamwork. It seemed like a research project similar to that of Forrester's or Gartner's.

There are lot of opportunities to start a venture while at school.

Weather has been great this year. Does not seem like winter at all!

Not good stuff:
Too much emphasis on grades. It was one of the main topics discussed on the orientation day itself! I though fellow students would come out of this consciousness in a semester but even second years continue to give too much importance to grades.

To certain extent, people seem to prefer spoon feeding and hence there is limited interest in exploration.

Very little interaction among students to the benefit of the program as a whole. Graduate student council is busy organizing pub nights and similar events but not collecting students input in developing the program.

Some where in between:
Some clubs are active but not much. I would like to see periodic activities to discuss topics such as business trends, technology, globalization etc. On the positive side, HBS, MIT, Boston Univ etc welcome Babson students to attend their events.

Admission and grad school staff are very co-operative and helpful.

There were quite a few companies conducting info session. But, many of them seem to be region specific. For example, I wish Google or Yahoo coming to campus.

PS: I waited till the last day of my vacation to post this review. It is not complete but stay tuned for updates to this post.