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!

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.

Hello everyone. Apart from the last post (which I wrote ages ago and forgot to post), this has been my longest gap between posts. Since my exams finished 10 days ago it seems like several weeks have passed.  We’ve begun our lecture course on innovation, entrepreneurship and design. Great lecturers so far, but it’s hard to regain my motivation knowing that they won’t be directly examinable. (the exams went okay I think – I’ll let you know when we get results in March)

I am now in anxiety-causing sight of the real world. Having turned the calendar corner that was new year, I can see my money running out and and the need to have a job looming large. I have begun networking, tapping up old contacts and exploring what I might do afterwards.

Do I do what I did before, but in a slightly better role? Maybe.

Do I attempt to make a big change? Maybe.

Do I make money a goal and try to recoup some of my sunk costs? Maybe.

Do I go for what energises me and makes proud of what I do? Well, duh, yes, of course.

I’m in a bit of a pickle because given the fact that when you google my name, this blog comes up, I need to avoid writing anything that might jeopardise future career prospects. So I can’t write that I couldn’t imagine anything worse that working for XXXX company, because i’m changing my mind so fast I might want to work for them next week, and someone might read my blog.

In fact I can’t imagine working for quite a lot of companies. I dearly wish I could abuse them on this blog. I think it would make good reading. But I must stay cool and collected.

Now career development is obviously a major factor in choosing to do an MBA. And Imperial has a careers service that supports you right through the year. I have a dedicated careers coach and access to all sorts of opportunities and resources. And of course the content of the courses will help me in my career. Etc Etc

But I hadn’t realised the stuff I learnt on the MBA would provide careers advice in itself. For example:

Macroeconomics (BTW we do this class mainly as background – it was separated from business econ only this year in the light of the recession etc) – we have been learning about ricardian comparative advantage – usually applied to countries but equally applicable to individual career development. Essentially this fundamental principle of economics suggests that I should devote my time to where my relative opportunity cost is the lowest compared to my ‘competitors’. This sounds sensible enough but often doesn’t happen. I think I’ve spent a lot of the last seven years not playing to my strengths and am resolved to play to my strengths in the future.

Strategy - lots of careers advice here. Firstly industry analysis techniques suggest that I should be finding professions with high barriers to entry – so I need to go places where my MBA is valued and people without MBAs find it difficult. What kind of strategy should I follow? Well I don’t want to be a cost leader – no one wants that I guess, but I need to be a differentiator. But the best advice from strategy class is to focus on your core competences (similar to the comparative advantage point) and also focus on preventing imitators through a hard to copy approach.

Marketing - well the focus on shareholder value in marketing emphasises long term, durable cash flow, and a focus on customer satisfaction.  I think this means that I shouldn’t operate a slash and burn strategy, hopping from job to job – but build long term customer (employer)  relationships that will reduce the cost of sales (job hunting) and open up new opportunities.

Accounting - what does accounting have to tell me about careers? Well it’s all about depreciation – the cost of assets should be depreciated across their working life. The cost of my MBA, including opportunity costs is into six figures.  But discounted across a long period it becomes much more realistic. Key lesson – renew your assets to meet future challenges.

Organisational Behaviour - well there’s been so much careers advice here I don’t know where to start.

I’m beginning to think I need to do something much more interesting than the usual opportunities. I would rather shoot myself in the knee than drift into bureaucratic nonsense. Hmmm, need to think harder about what I want to do when I finish…

Just had a class on social networks. The lecturer, Jonathan Pinto, gave us his personal tips on networking. His emphasis is not on the strategic, slightly cynical approach typically associated with MBAs. He is about spreading the net wide, getting as much diversity and depth in your networks as possible. He prescribes taking advantage of every situation, whether it be on a tube platform or in more obvious networking locations. It is more about personal fulfilment than getting ahead, but he also argues that from all this networking can come the 1% that will get you ahead. Here are his tips:

• Networks power can supplement/complement/substitute for other power
• Never turn down an opportunity
  • Work expands to fill time available
  • Necessity is the mother of invention
  • Opportunity-provider may never offer you another
  • You may never know what it could lead to (butterfly effect, domino effect)
• Exploit ‘dead’ time ie waiting in queues, on bus train
• Take risks
  • Try activities you have never tried before e.g. art, theatre, dance, music
  • Initiate conversations
• Listen to / engage with anyone and everyone
• High energy / high cheerfulness almost always a big positive
• If you make a promise, keep it
• Being strategic i.e. schmoozer  or working the room could backfire

It’s got very busy. Half way through the first term we’ve  started four new courses. For strategy, we have to prepare a different case study before each class. In any of those classes there may be a surprise test that counts for 30% of our overall assessment. Before every finance class we need to have completed an online test (also assessed). As well as keeping up with the reading we have three exams at the end of this term, then another four at the beginning of the next. Oh and two major coursework deadlines just before the four post new year exams.

Why is it so much work?

1) it’s good to learn stuff! Why else would we be here? It’ll be useful and good for its own sake too.

2)  One year MBAs need to assert that their courses are just as credible as the two year ones.

3) It’s a badge of honour – at the end of it (hopefully) we’ll be able to say we got through it.

But at this point I have to decide on my strategy – do I just want to pass, do really well, or somewhere in between? What do employers care about? Will breaking my back to try and get a distinction really make a difference? Is it worth it considering the very high probablity I don’t get one? Could I spend the time I save by not going for a distinction on something useful like learning a language or careers development or networking?

Is it worth doing really  well on some papers? (and badly on others) Will I care? Will employers care?

I have to admit to being very lazy during my first degree (9.5 years ago). I think my main driver to do well is wanting to do it differently this time. In subsequent years after my first degree I felt a bit silly for not making the most of the opportunity to learn from some very clever and learned people. So that’s why I’m going to do as well as I can.

I’ll let you know if I actually follow through on this. (clue: it’s unlikely)