Leading in times of Change by Jerry Rao

Jerry Rao is a well know figure in the IT industry. He sold the comapany (MphasiS) he had founded to EDS. His still continues as Chairman of MphasiS.

It was nice to hear Jerry talk about the 'Integration' of MphasiS in to EDS and the way the merger went about. Quite an insightful and frank talk. Surprisingly, he even talked about the hard part of being in business and firing people when the personal goals are not in alignment with the companies goals. He meticulously stressed that leaders are not born but made. There are leaders who can outperform under specific circumstances and are not fit to be a leader during other times. A good example he quoted was that of Moses. The God of the Hebrews choose Moses to liberate the Jews from Egypt; but later gave the leadership to Joshua to lead the Jews out of the desert. The followers also have a great role to play in making a successful leader.

I quite liked the frank straight talk offered by Jerry. One of the biggest advantages of being in Cambridge is the chance to listen to talks and interact with folks who have made a difference in their professional and personal lives.

Enterprise Tuesday 2 (Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker)

The talk about "Lifestyle or Global Business" by Eric Baker founder and CEO of Viagogo and StarHub was an inspiring one. It was a frank talk about Entrepreneurial aspirations, markets and global business.

The key factors for a successful entrepreneur according to Eric were
1) Independent Thinker
2) Deal well with uncertainty and risk
3) Willing to take responsibility
4) Tenacious and persistent
5) Passionate - enjoying the journey
6) Ability to communicate and lead

Above all "You cannot succeed if you do not try".

I was really moved by his passion and ability to communicate so well.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

Enterprise Tuesday 1 (Motivation - Why we do it? )

Cambridge offers great opportunities for people aspiring to be entrepreneurs. Judge Business Schools Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning orchestrates the entrepreneurial interest through various programmes. One of the key programme is the "Enterprise Tuesday", where in entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angles take about enterpreneur-ship.

This Tuesday (23rd Oct), we had a talk by Alex van Somersen and Dr. Nicko van Somersen about their motivation to be entrepreneurs. They are founders of nCipher (http://www.ncipher.com/) and ANT (http://www.antlimited.com/), which are listed on the London Stock Exchange. They spoke about their passion and the motivating factors that led to establishing their companies.

The key mantras to take away from their talk were
1) Idea
2) Team
3) Investors - They got their investor by accident at a Hotel lobby in the US
4) Market
5) Customers
6) Advisors
7) Luck

It was a real cool session and I enjoyed it as well. Looking forward to next session by Eric Baker (who sold his company to eBay for US$307m) about "Lifestyle or Global Business" on the 30th of Oct.

For more information, please link on to http://www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/enterprise/timetable.html

The first month

A few pictures to highlight the fun and excitement of the MBA.

Wow !!! We just completed one month of our MBA programme. It's been a real quick month. We have our first exam in a couple of weeks. The MBA is an intense program and teaches the importance of prioritization.

Its been a good week for me. I started attending some of the career events. I attended presentations by Delloite, Morgan Stanley, BCG and Diamond Consultants. Next week I plan to attend a session by the Barclay's Retail arm.

I started playing baseketball again. It's been a while since I entered the court. Enjoyed playing with some of the good players from my college (Darwin). I plan to play at least once a week.

Term-1 : Week-3 (Quick Turns)

Living in Cambridge has great advantages (don't worry too much about the weather:) ). We get a chance to meet a lot of people (academicians/entrepreneurs) who are experts in their fields. The college season has just started and the town is bustling with student activities.

Oh !! Yes !! I have started to do things I have never done before. My friends and I went to the Wolfson college for our first Salsa session, and it was real cool. I enjoyed it so much that I plan to take Salsa lessons whilst in Cambridge.

We now have a our first MBA project called the Cambridge Venture Project (CVP) and it is the first real project we do as part of the MBA. There are two more big ones coming down the lane. We are a team of 5 people working on the CVP and being in a great amount of varied experience to the project. Our team comprises of

Dr. Abel (Spaniard/French who has been working in UK as a Genome research expert at EBML-EBI)
Jaison (Brit who has been working in the mining industry in Argentina and owns a company as well)
Marisa (Malaysian who has been working in the UK for Texas Instruments)
Tao (Chinese guy who has been working in China for a Telecommunications firm)
and finally your truly :)

We have started lesson on Accounting, Corporate Finance, Management Science and Management Practice. Some of these sessions have been real eye-openers and inspiring as well.

We have tons of pre-reading, assignments, career (ad)ventures and events to attend. MBA is slowly teaching me to prioritize things. Its a great adrenaline rush with so many things happening all around me.

The most important thing is that I'm enjoying every moment of my MBA; with so many new friends and new things I'm learning each day.

Week-2

It's just been two weeks and it seems as if we have been together as a group for a very long time. It's cool as we get to know everybody even better at school. So many parties, pub nights and get-together. I'm slowly fitting back into the vibrant college mode.

This week started with a session with Kevin Roberts (CEO, Satchi and Satchi), wherein he highlighted the importance of doing things differently, rather than just falling into the eternal follow-the-leader mentality.

We finished our course on Economics (wow!!! that fast). We even started working on our CVs and case interviews.

I guess the highlight of the week has been the large number of pub-nights and celebration of the Chinese Full-Moon festival.

The first week

The first week is now over and I enjoyed every bit of it. It was a slow start with introductions and a few classes. Most of the time was spent in interacting with class-mates and knowing each other better. Even though I cannot remember the names of 149 of my class-mates yet; I can remember something (e.g., name, country, industry or background) about each of my class-mates.

The three most inspiring and cool session during this week has been

1) Team building - Complex High Performance Teams with Mark de Rond (JBS Staff who worked closely with Cambridge's rowing team): A wonderful insight into teams and performing in very difficult situations.
2) Branding a City through Olympics with Lois Jacobs (President International Operations - Jack Morton) - An inspiring talk about how Jack Morton managed the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Athens Olympics with about 4.5 million people watching the event.
3) Simulating Innovation for a More Competitive Europe by Prof. Around de Meyer (JBS Director) - The presentation had some very interesting numbers about outsourcing and how Innovation is viewed from the European perspective (Even though I don't concur to some of the finer details presented:)

The first two weeks will be a bit slow, but after that it going to get really busy starting October.

We had an Alumni meet on Saturday (22nd) and it was a Black-Tie event (The first black-tie event of my life). I chipped in £48 to attend this dinner. At first I was a bit sceptical about the huge amount (especially when you are student) for a single dinner. However, after attending the dinner and meeting the people at the dinner, I realized that it is not about the food. It was more about networking and getting one-self acquainted with formal dinner events. There were about 30 odd people from my batch who had attended, and it was real cool to see everybody dressed so wonderfully. I will post some pictures of the event at a later point of time.

Next week we have a few Case Study boot-camps conducted by the Career Services team.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how things have transpired so far. So much fun and what a wonderful batch of new friends.

MBA: Term-1: First Day at School

My first day at school (today) was real fun. We got to meet the entire batch and get a brief introduction about the whole programme.

The day started at 8.30 AM with registration and formalities. It then moved on to introductions and welcome notes. The whole day was spent pretty much in introductions, getting to know my fellow class-mates and collecting course-ware. We even had a few students from the previous batch come over and provide us a few practical tips.

Our batch consists of 149 students from 45 countries. We have people from very varied and different industries (from Plastic Surgeons to Investment Bankers).

I found it a bit too difficult to remember the names of all my class-mates in just one day. It is so much fun and a great learning experience to be amindst such a talented and diverse group.

Aidah (my wife), had also come for the tea session, where in partners were also invited. Some of my friends had even got their kids for the tea session. The kids were all over the place and having a good time as well.

At the end of the day(6.30 PM), we were quite exhausted and a few of us headed to the pub near the school.

I now look forward to head back to school tomorrow and get into our first session on Economics.

MBA-Prep (Settling down in Cambridge)

Aidah and I reached Cambridge on the 4th of September. Since then we have been busy settling in to our new environment.

Cambridge is a wonderful city. A wonderful place to relax and study. It took us about a week to get an Internet connection. On my visit to HSBC Bank today, they completed the paper work for the student loan in 30 minutes (that was very fast by Cambridge standards).

Our one-bedroom house is on the 3rd floor. Nothing fancy, nothing great......but just a nice house to spend a year in Cambridge. It is about 1.5 miles from the business school, and there is a beautiful bi-cycle/pedestrian path leading towards the school/city.

Please find below the list of things we did to make our lives a bit more comfortable (in no particular order)

1) Took the National Express from Heathrow to Cambridge (with a lot of luggage -the direct bus was very comfortable)
2) Signed the tenancy agreement for the house/flat
3) Purchased a bi-cycle
4) Got a pay-as-you-go mobile connection from T-mobile (got myself a new phone as well)
5) Got the Internet connection (Virgin media - took us a week to get this)
6) Got ourselves registered with the GP (medical doctor/surgery service)
7) Purchased a lot of house-hold items (e.g., microwave, utensils etc.) - mostly moving sales
8) Had a wonderful lunch out with 25+ of my future classmates and their families (a great occasion to know each other)
9) Made a trip to Sheffiled to meet friends
10) Got a JUSTVOIP.COM id to make cheap phone calls to friends and family across the globe


Class begins on Monday (17th Sept) and I'm now going to do some pre-reading that was recommended earlier.

MBA-Prep (Last Day at work)

Today is my last day at work. I have been part of a great organization (HSBC - Global Technology Centre) for 4 years and 4 months now. It was a pleasure managing and leading a number of challenging projects during this period.

What makes organizations really work is the people. I was fortunate to have talented and motivated folks on my teams. My managers were "cool" mentors as well.

The curtains are coming down on a wonderful and satisfying period on my life; as I look forward to newer and more challenging adventures in the future.