Exam results are going to published next week instead of yesterday as planned. Having convinced myself that I didn’t care I suddenly realised that actually I do. We did get our group’s finance coursework result though – an A – a real relief as it was the kind of thing that if you got wrong you could get really wrong. Thankfully there were enough financial minds in my group (that does not include me!).

I have begun reading my first fiction book since starting the MBA. Normally I read quite a lot of fiction but so far have avoided reading anything that isn’t directly related to the MBA. This is not a sign that I have less to do; it is more an attempt to begin my transition back into the real world in October. I can’t live the rest of my life only focusing only on work after all and I need to get back to real world standards of managing work/life balance.

Just in case you’re interested I am reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It is roughly part of the science fiction genre but when I tell people I am reading science fiction I get a look that says: “Oh, I didn’t know you were a geek.” I  read Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle last year and absolutley loved it. Having studied English Lit at uni first time round, people sometimes ask me what I’m reading hoping to get some high brow injection of literary magic. My answers usually disappoint, though that is usually because many people’s conception of great literature does not include any crime fiction, or sc-fi – which is grossly unfair. Having read Joyce, Delillo, Dickens and Eliot, I can tell you that Stephenson is up there with the best. Read the Baroque Cycle and find out for yourself!

On the designing and innovating services elective we had to split into groups and do a presentation on a solution to a key service challenge. We were meant to use the tools and approaches we have been taught during the course. It was assessed and forms a significant part of the overall grade. We chose the challenge of “designing out obesity”. Obesity is what is known as a ‘sticky problem’ – very hard to fix.

Our team ‘won’ the competition – we didn’t realise it was a competition until the end when we told we would get vouchers for the gourmet cheese shop, la formagerie. On the team with me was Vlad, Emily, Francesca, Su, Rui and Richard. I’ve attached the presentation: Final Group 4 Obesity Presentation master.

In previous blog posts I mentioned that I find it hard to discuss my post MBA plans. If I say I’m interested in one career or company, and I change my mind, then I don’t want my apparent lack of focus in the public domain. Similarly if I say I really don’t want to work somewhere and end up wanting to that won’t be helpful.

So, it is with great deliberation that I am finally plumping for a particular career path. Well, I say particular career path I really mean sector: public sector management. That could mean in consultancy (like I used to do), or as a public sector manager myself.

I figured that I have lots of experience in that area (seven years, including a year as deputy manager of a SUre Start programme, the rest in consultancy). I love it – I love the people, the culture (it’s not all about bureaucracy, it’s about helping people and getting value for money for the public). The money ain’t great, I could definitely earn a lot more, especially five years or so down the line. But my wife and I decided that money isn’t everything.

It means that the financial case for doing the MBA is pretty thin, but I’m on it now, so it’s a sunk cost and therefore shouldn’t form part of my decision. The benefits of having an MBA should be substantial for a career in the public sector. I don’t buy the usual cliche that the public sector is full of hopeless managers that depserately need some private sector discipline (I think the last couple of years have put the kibosh on that crap). But an MBA will be very useful nonetheless and will hopefully make me stand out from the crowd.

Although this decision feels like a great step forward the irony is that I’ve just come full circle to where I was last summer. My application to Imperial describes my current plan almost perfectly but I spent the last few months exploring lots of other possibilities.

Hello all. Too many blog posts start with an apology for not blogging enough, so I won’t do that. Although I’ve blogged very little this term my average is still reasonably high after my hyper actvity last term, and absence, after all, makes the heart grow fonder. Do you feel fonder?

This term is a lot less structured than last term, a bit more like the real world, though still a long way off. Every full time MBA student has to do six ‘electives’, the business school’s term for the courses you choose from a large selection. My choices are:

Managing Negotiations

Designing and Innovating Services

Hi-tech strategy

Corporate Social Responsibility (though the description makes it look more like an intro to the theory of public policy)

Strategic Management Accounting

Managing Change

I’m midway through my third elective. My choices are all bunched up early in the year – some people finish their electives in August, I finish mine in June. Coupled with the IED project (workshop 2 completed, workshop 2 on the horizon), finding a good summer project and finding a job after the MBA I am very busy.

I wrote so many blogs last term because I spent so much time in the library looking for things to avoid working, but this term I have not been in the library anywhere near as much so have not had the inclination.

I am trying to live the seven habits of highly effective people, as propounded by Stephen Covey. I have a love-hate relationship with this kind of thing. The English Literature student in me is sniffy about the corny, sometimes superficial and shallow style dressed up in depth and deep thinking. But they can be damn useful. I like that book because it doesn’t give easy solutions but does give a few handy tools. One of them is the quadrants for self-management:

Basically the very sound advice is that you should be trying to do things in the non-urgent but important quadrant as much as possible. I’d like to think blogging was in that quadrant but there are times when it gets pushed down into the not important/not urgent quadrant I’m afraid.