What has happened in the last two months.

We are into the fourth and final module which lasts just for a little more than a month. Time really flies and could not believe we are closer to end of our first year in this program.

As I stated earlier, curriculum is pretty interesting as it is well thought through and structured and integrated.

I really liked a joint session between organizational design and cost systems. I was skeptical about the connection before the class. The topic was how an organization divide up their costs among various functional units and the importance of a well established control system to correctly measure the effectiveness of various teams and in evaluating their performance.

In the fourth module, we have gone global. The central theme is in this module is : Managing business in changing global environment.

We had an interesting class on Nations Bank CEO Hugh McColl. We also talked about how to evaluate a company's worth. I wonder how to apply strategic worth such as key employees/engineers/Intellectual Properties.

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.