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I am issuing a warning to future (and current) INSEAD MBAs. This is a problem across both campuses and I know many people who have suffered to varying degrees from it: Break Out Rooms (BoRs in colloquial speak) are very dangerous places. You think you’re sitting there enjoying the quiet and privacy of a confidential conversation, when BAM! you realize that everything you said is audible to the people in the next BoR over. Sike! There is no privacy!
The illusion of privacy is very strong though, leading people to unwittingly divulge juicy gossip ALL THE TIME. You think you’re safe, but then someone silently slips into the BoR next to you – you have no idea – and goes to work only to hear all about what you did at 3AM on Saturday night and with whom you did it. So while I guess the advice should be “don’t gossip”, I’ll go the more practical route and say: PLEASE just make sure you’re paying attention to who’s in the next BoR over before you open your big mouth! (Not that your mouth is big… I mean other people’s mouths…)
Here’s an example of a bunch of a bunch of gossipy INSEADers giving each other the dirt on their weekend, while another group listens in and is totally appalled. At least that’s my read on this picture.
Break Out Room
*I will issue a disclaimer here: This post is way heavier than I intended, and not fun or funny or any of that. Except for that picture up top, which is ok.*
I hate when people use the overly adapted line from Hamlet that I’ve chosen for the title of this post, but I just keep going back and forth. It’s like being on a swing. One day I want to apply to consulting jobs, the next one I don’t.
On one hand, consulting is great because you get all this amazing experience, it gives you lots of options, it looks great on your resume, and you don’t have to continue to resist the social pressure to apply. On the other hand, the work life balance goes out the window and I’d probably be unhappy. The second one is more for me personally (at least that’s what all the career aptitude tests say), but it really struck me when one of my friends here who’s a consultant was talking about how great INSEAD is because you even see your friends during the week, which he never got to do before. Another one was telling me how great consulting is because you work with all of your friends (note, that’s different from “you’re friends with everyone at work”). Translation: the only people you see often enough to be friends with are your colleagues. Last, and most poignantly, another friend was telling me how when he leaves home for a client site, his pre-school aged son has started asking his mother “when Dad is coming to visit again,” and when he comes home asks “what Dad’s doing here”.
As I look at that last story, I think I have my answer. It’s just tough sometimes when you look at everyone around you, and they are all studying case interview strategies, trying to get hired by McKinsey, which has this aura of perfection. As if it were the kind of place that only psychopaths wouldn’t want to work at.
Don’t get me wrong – consultancies have excellent reputations for a reason. They provide some of the most valuable services that are out there in the corporate world. And if you want to go places, even the likes of Forbes calls McKinsey the “best CEO launch pad”. Wikipedia has a page dedicated to a couple hundred notable people who worked there in the past. My consultant friends are consistently among the smartest, well-reasoned, and fun people here. The firms themselves – not just McK, but Bain, BCG, Booz, and all the rest – undoubtedly give you a great advantage, even after just a couple years of work. I’ve got nothing against consulting per se, just whether it’s right for me. I’m uncomfortable with signing up for a job that seems like it’s going to absorb my whole life while I work there, even if it is just a couple of years.
I don’t lack motivation, and I’m not looking for a country club job where I work 35 hours a week, but I would trade a lot of professional upside for a work-life balance that’s more consistent with how I value work time and free time. This (and the fact that I hate finance) is the same reason that I’m not interested in banking. Michael Brimm’s last lecture in OB2 dealt heavily with this point. He didn’t say not to take these jobs, but he did say to make sure that you’re doing a job that’s right for you – that it’s something you’re happy doing and that it allows you to be happy both in and outside of your work life. Everyone has to decide for him- or herself what the right balance is, and how much they can give up in the present for possible future happiness. (This whole discussion also invites the never-really-answered question of the link between money and happiness, which I won’t even try to touch here.)
I’m thinking that consulting may not be the answer. All of this being said, however, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. For the time being, I will end this post by quoting part a recent email from Sandra Schwarzer, INSEAD’s Director of Career Services…
“You have nothing to lose trying to experiment, to follow your passion, to have a dream. You should however be careful not to be running after a dream without thinking what you will do when you have reached your goal. Many have spent years working to get a title, a position, to reach a financial goal, to achieve something their parents, partner, or friends thought important. […] So if it takes you a little bit longer to get a job, or if you want to pursue a non-traditional path, don’t be afraid.” We’ll see where this all takes me.
Mostly because I couldn’t find a good 
image to put on the top of this post, I’m going to fully endorse Ritas Hotel and Restaurant (no apostrophe) on the beach in Narigama, Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. If you’re planning a trip a trip to Sri Lanka and need somewhere to stay, this place was amazing. We got a sick room–the nicest in the hotel–for about $50 (USD) a night. You can even fit three people in it. View of the ocean, etc. And food was similarly cheap/excellent. I highly recommend the prawn fried rice.
In any event, if you want to go, you can contact Ritas at ritas@sltnet.lk.
Anyway, onto the main event, my classes and profs this period. P3 has been more work than P1 or P2, so whoever tells you otherwise is a filthy liar. P4 starts a little bit more relaxation. Meanwhile, as the universe IS a fair and just place, we’re finally reaching the end of our core courses. Good riddance. I’ll cover those first:
Macroeconomics and the Global Economy: MGE is a clunker of a course taught by the dead pan (but hilarious) Turk, Ayhan Kose. For what it’s worth, I have never liked Macro in any of the four or five classes of it that I’ve had to take in my life. IS/LM, Y=C+I+G+NX… it’s just a bunch of letters no matter how hard I try. Anyway, Ayhan’s visiting from the IMF where he’s something important, so that’s sort of fun. It’s nice to ask him real world questions, because in his real life, he’s intimately involved in a lot of it.
International Political Analysis: IPA is our other core course this period and, similar to Macro, is a bit of a clunker. I haven’t picked up all that much from it, unfortunately, but we did have a couple good sessions… one on Egypt just under a week before Mubarak left and the other, a guest lecture from a man running the Indonesian operation for the Canadian insurer Manulife back in the year 2000 when corruption was rampant and doing business was pretty dangerous. Other than that, our proudly kiwi prof Douglas Webber was enjoyable, but I didn’t feel like I got all that much out of the course.
Now onto electives, which are the good stuff. Generally, if not universally.
Negotiation: It has a real name like “Negotiation Dynamics” or something, but most people just call it “Negotiation”. This class is great I think. First of all, it’s taught by an awesome Hawaiian hippie named Brett Saraniti. He’s the perfect mix of disarmingly down to earth and really smart. The class itself involves about 50% negotiation exercises and 50% what-the-hell-was-that-all-about analysis in which we learn to expand the pie and think win-win…-win…….-win. You can just keep adding wins on. If you’re picking electives, I’d give this one a strong recommendation.
Advertising and Social Media Strategy: ASMS to those in the know. Another really cool course, and obviously it does not get more timely/topical to emerging ideas and ways of thinking as we enter the year that Facebook once and for all takes over the world. Although, as Andrew Stephen, the prof, likes to point out, this isn’t Facebook Strategy class. There’s a lot more to social media than that, and in fact, a lot of it isn’t even online. Andrew himself is a great prof. He loves teaching this class (or at least pretends to), he puts a ton of energy into getting real-world speakers to come do lectures and exercises with us, and we all get to work on a real-world social media project with a real world client. Frankly, our project has been a bit frustrating, but the idea and the experience, for many, is awesome. I’d still say all this good stuff even if I didn’t think he was probably reading this.
SPSD: This class has a real name. No one knows what it is. That’s because the class didn’t have anything to do with whatever the name was. This is, without contest, the best class offered at INSEAD, as far as I’m concerned. If you’re coming to INSEAD, be sure to take this class if they’re giving it when you’re here. It’s taught by our POM prof from last period, Karan Girotra, who has developed amazing insights into the development of new businesses, and every student in this class benefits from them. It’s the only class I’ve had so far that has given me an education in business rather than aspects of business. I think this should be a core course that everyone should have to take. I can’t say enough for it.
Applied Corporate Finance: Or ACF for short. More than anything else, this class is a TON of work. Like, a lot. Someone from our group has been up until 4 or 5 AM the night before each of our cases was due. It’s divided into two halves, one taught by Denis Gromb and the other by Pierre Hillion, and I strongly feel that the course itself should be two mini-electives (0.5 credits). Moreover, I would suggest that they call them “Managerial Applications of Corporate Finance” and “Applied Finance” because the first half was great for people who aren’t looking for finance careers, while the second half goes deep into finance theory with extensive use of the CAPM model and beta estimation and things like that. I’m not good at this class, but I am glad I took it because it’s a nice cementing of the concepts of FMV and CFP. That said, if they did divide it, I (personally) would only take the first half.
Okay, so that’s that – and now, in fact, I have ACF and I have to present the a case that is the spawn of dark financial demons entitled “Refinancing the Western Harbour Crossing, Hong Kong”.
A bunch of the other bloggers here are doing it, so I’m going to get involved also with acknowledging that we are officially half way done with the MBA! It is pretty unbelievable. Can’t wait to see what the next half has in store. Also, I’ve named this post “51%” because I think 50% was really, like, yesterday or the day before or something. Anyway, my point still stands.
I promise some posts coming soon on P3 classes and Profs as well as my thoughts on all this “DIVORSEAD” business.
If you're not familiar with the term "Hump Day", it's just Wednesday. The middle of the week. Get your mind out of the gutter.
So the Financial Times just released the 2011 business school rankings. I know they’re a totally one-dimensional measure of notoriously hard-to-measure, -weigh, and -summarize facts, but generally speaking they give you a good idea. It’s the first one I’ve seen that combines US and non-US schools. INSEAD came in a respectable fourth place, just between of our friends at Harvard and Stanford.
Click:
Business School Rankings from the Financial Times
Okay, I’m going to be honest. I hate that they call them Singy and Fonty. I do it too, but really it’s just a little cutesy for my taste. I kept thinking, “Maybe I’ll get used to it. It’s not so bad. Everyone’s doing it.” But I just can’t get used to it. I’m just like Singy? Fonty? Come on! They have real names! What’s the Abu Dhabi campus going to be? Maybe just Dhabi? Anyway – I’ve got that off my chest. Maybe I’ll start using Sing Sing and The Font or something.
Anyway, I arrived in Singy/Sing Sing/whatever a couple of days ago after a spectacular flight on a Singapore Airlines A380. It was a pretty spectacular plane. As I was describing to some friends, I kind of wish the flight were longer than the 12 hours it already was. I know that’s sick, but it’s just such a nice time to catch up on pleasure reading and movie watching (I finally saw The Social Network – if this were a movie blog, I’d offer a review, but alas…) and they just keep bringing those Singapore Slings…
The whole move was pretty hassle-less. I packed up a bag and a half, left the rest of my stuff in my wonderful friend Irene’s storage room back in France, and headed off. This time, there weren’t even any massive piles of junk to photograph for the blog like there were in New York. I was a bit over the weight limit for one bag, but the friendly SingAir check in guy let me slide – I think it’s because I complimented his watch.
I do really need to hand it to these folks though. The Singapore campus is totally gorgeous. Beautiful high ceilings, new construction (relative to Fontainebleau), exquisite waterlily garden, guards, automatic doors. The whole she-bang. And the housing isn’t so bad either. I’m in Dover, but both Dover and Heritage have swimming pools and tennis courts and views and everything. I’m totally loving this setup. Here’s what Dover looks like…
Yeah, so that’s pretty sweet. Classes this period seem pretty good, but more on that when I have more info. People already have trips to Kuala Lampur (“KL”) and Thailand and other places planned. I need to get on the ball and make some plans. The one place I realllllly want to go is Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Besides that, I’ll probably visit a diplomat friend in the Philippines at the very end of February. P3’s looking pretty good.
Oh, and one more note on the continued applause study – it’s not an exclusively Fontainebleau thing. They do it here too. The mystery grows.
"A French Act" went on strike, so they outsourced to two brilliant Indians
I have so much more to post on this blog, but I HAVE to do a post immediately on the INSEAD Cabaret. It was super awesome and amazing. While not officially a secret, I’m bound by a sense of decorum and morality to not disclose the details of ALL of the acts. That said, the rest were equally amazing. We were treated by the unbelievably talented students of INSEAD to a live reenactment of Super Mario Brothers, a Shakespeare monologue, the Fonty Wondergirls (who characterize themselves as the Asian Spice Girls), amazing singing from two of my friends, a full-blown synchronized swimming display, and of course the P5 Men’s Ballet. And that literally wasn’t even half of it.
A COUPLE HIGHLIGHTS…
The Fonty Aqua Boars' Synchro Show
The elegantly choreographed P5 Men's Ballet - a demonstration of dexterity and grace
In addition to all this, it’s traditional for Singapore to make a “Hello to Fonty” music video and for Fontainebleau to make a “Hello to Singy” music video. I’ll give them to you in the order we saw them. First – Singapore’s “I Went to B-School”…
Truly an inspiration, those Singaporeans. What excellent craftsmanship. Then we saw the Fontainebleau campus video, entitled “Fonty State of Mind”. Now I’m sure from time to time, Singy makes the better video. With all due respect and admiration to my colleagues in Asia, who I will be joining in a few weeks, this wasn’t one of those times. Here goes…
Following this whole event, we all went back to my home sweet home, Villa Vivante for the Official INSEAD Cabaret After Party, which was a full-blown open bar, packed, dancing, drinking, pancake-eating extravaganza that went at least until 5AM. Personally, I couldn’t make it until the end, but some strong souls carried on long past my bedtime.
Business Week just put out their new rankings and they wanted me to let you know about this:
CLICK IT! –> “INSEAD Ousts Queens from the No. 1 Spot”
I totally forgot to post anything about how finals went after the whole “calm before the storm business”. Well, there WAS a storm. The good news is that as far as I can tell it didn’t spare anyone. And this is the good news about INSEAD. In addition to the whole no grade disclosure business, they also do all their grading on a z-score basis. I’m not going to explain UDJ/stats right now, so if you don’t know the terms just ask me sometime and I’ll tell you in person.
Not what I got.
Basically though, what they do is the following:
1. All tests are scored 1-100.
2. Those scores are presumed to be normally distributed, so each is then assigned a z-score.
3. All the scores are arbitrarily increased by 2.5 (basically, it sounds better that an average student gets a score of 2.5 than 0).
4. Anyone who’s above a z-score of -.5 passes. -.5 is three standard deviations from the mean, which means that only .2% of the class fails (99.8% passes). In a section of 70 students, that means that frequently, literally no one fails. Cool? Cool.
All that being said, they weren’t easy. Of course that works in our favor (lower mean and higher standard deviation are good things, remember). Accounting was a massacre, as far as I’m concerned, UDJ was so-so, P&M was good, and OB was fine. For Accounting, I’m hoping for the gods of the z-curve to save me. We’ll see.
Also, I’d like to take a moment to amend my previous post on “Classes and Professors”. 1) There’s a woman named Michele Hibon who teaches the UDJ tutorial, she is a hilarious French genius who will single handedly cause you to pass UDJ and there is a very high “pro-bah-bee-lee-TAY” that you will even enjoy the tutorials. 2) Harald Hau is the comic genius of INSEAD. The man is incredibly subtle, but just pay attention in FMV. When he does the rocket ship or they “how my family lost their fortune” speech, or best, when he derives beta and ends with (total deadpan) “how convenient”, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I think most of the INSEADers who had him will know just what I’m talking about.
Spoke to a visiting prof from NYU. They do NOT clap after every class at NYU. Evidence suggests this is European. Will report back with further research.
For Business and Pleasure - INSEAD '11J 