UCD Smurfit MBA Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Background’

It is 7 PM, Just finished reading a chapter from competitive strategy on “Analyzing resources and capabilities”, one more to go and then two articles to be read followed by a case-study. All this is to prepare myself for tomorrow’s strategy class. Can I afford to sit quiet and trying to hide myself from Professor Gibbon’s cold calls?

From my 14 years of career in IT and telecom, I can’t quite remember how many technology solutions I have architected and how many clients I have consulted. But did I know how tightly coupled are the IT strategy and the business goals of an organization? Did I know how Conway’s Law works while developing an IT strategy? Everything that I have done so far in my career was based on my industry experience, common sense and intuition. Did that work? Yes it did. However, with this new knowledge that I am gaining, I hope not just to make things work in future, but to make things work the best way possible.

It’s not all about reading and assignments, here at Smurfit. Last week we had a Career Leader workshop and a week before that we had a 16PF workshop. I was little shocked and equally thrilled to learn some of my unexplored career interests from the Career Leader report and some personal attributes that I myself was never aware of.  Can’t really say how much of these workshops are going to help me in my future endeavors career-wise, but they certainly helped me knowing myself better than before.  And an MBA after all, is not only about learning from books and earn a credential, but also to learn about yourself, come out of your limitations and to challenge the heights.

- Nihar Panda, FT MBA 2011/2012

Six weeks into the MBA, I am still trying to find my feet on this program. Speaking for myself,  I truly enjoyed the hard work, fun of group work, excellent class discussion, international atmosphere, the positive energy and a lot more. Its only when I listed them down I found there are so much being offered in my MBA class from both lecturers and classmates.  While it seems it is unbelievable that six weeks have passed, I am still trying to juggle among articles, case studies, reading, assignment, presentations and my beloved sleep. We were told on day one of the foundation course, the rule of this game is “how much you put into it, how much you get out of it”. I can now totally see the point. As suppose for everything else you do in your life, this rule always holds true.

I feel spiritual today, so I will continue on this track Read the rest of this entry »

Three weeks in and it already feels like we’ve been here for months. With my Science/engineering background, and having been cosseted away in a Biotech company for nearly 10 years, I’ll admit to being a (little) clueless as to what lay ahead of me academically. In fact if encouraged with the black stuff I may even admit to not having a clue as to what some of the subjects were about. So I am happy to report that the first few weeks have been a very pleasant surprise; Financial reporting- it sounds so sterile and austere, but nothing could be further from the truth.  After just a few lectures we can all spot “jiggery-pokery” (copyright: Niamh Brennan) in a financial report from a considerable distance and have intermittently felt the simple satisfaction when your balance sheet lives up to its moniker. There are even some parallels with the science world; I’m amused to see an intelligent design vs emergence argument raging amongst competitive strategy boffins and I have a niggling regret that I wasn’t around in the mid-seventies to single-handedly rescue the British motorcycle industry.

But that’s just the academic stuff, far more interesting has been getting to know my classmates. It has become obvious to us all by now how much we are going to rely on each other this year. Thankfully the good folk at Smurfit were aware of this from the start and tailored the first weeks to help us bond with one another. We spent a revealing session learning about different personality types which will hopefully stop our group work degenerating into an episode of the apprentice. Luckily our class has an unbelievably diverse range of skills and backgrounds to call on; we have a former tank commander in our ranks, although hopefully those skills will not be required. I’ve been introduced to TED talks (how did I miss these?), the vagaries of the on-line poker industry and heard the first-hand accounts of an unlucky classmate’s two instances of being robbed at gunpoint. Oh and we beat Australia in the rugby, so yeah, a good few weeks!

- Fergus O’Dea

Women of the MBA 2011: (Left to Right)- Nargiza Kalmamatova (Kyrgyzstan), Blonde Beauchamp (Boston/Haiti), Yvette Grave (Germany), Anh Pham (Vietnam), Lindsey Keefe (Boston), Gemma Ginty (Ireland), Megan Molloy (Washington), Megan Hayward (New York), Amneet Jhiete (India), Toan Do (Vietnam). There in spirit, Diana Vincent (India), Tham Nguyen (Vietnam) and Barbara O’Beirne (Ireland).

As part of the MBA we did a course in Negotiations where we learned about expanding the pie and creating ‘win win’ situations. As a final gesture towards the meeting of minds and cultures, the MBA women of 2011 translated this idea into the ritual of creating a dish and sharing it together at the table.

Thirteen may be considered unlucky, but in this context we are thirteen extremely skilled and confident women who have just qualified with an MBA. We certainly feel lucky to be in this position and with the world at our fingertips.

For us, this small but unique microcosm represents the world and it’s differences. The table acts as a common ground no matter what our religions or nationalities. For each of us, the act and art of making food gave us an opportunity to represent who we are and where we’ve come from and we did this with pride. Our menu ranged from Vietnamese fried spring rolls and chicken fried rice, Kyrgyz beef noodle, American brie in pastry and macaroni cheese, German potato salad, Haitian Curry, and Irish apple tart.

The ‘table’ represents the symbol of engaged exchange. In the future we will gather around different tables dotted around the world developing strategies, designing products, managing teams and deciding our own future. Although we will be in different contexts, we will continue to bring the same enthusiasm and creativity to our future challenges as we brought to this table.

As a unique group of Smurfit MBA graduates, we recognise our differences but also realise our future experiences will be similar, dealing with the challenges as young woman in business. These will range from our family expectations, stereotyping of our roles, how we fall in love and how we fulfil our dreams. We will also need to balance how society dictates how we should live, how we should behave, what our remuneration should be as business women, and how we will cope with raising children and doing the work that drives us to be successful.

We have promised each other we will meet again at another table in ten years’ time. But before we re-unite with our stories of work and life, it would be great to keep the idea of the metaphysical table intact, where we could advise and support each other as we meet our individual challenges. As we look to the future we hope to bring the same enthusiasm and engagement to our future tables, as we brought to sharing this last meal together as Smurfit 2011 MBA students.

-Gemma Ginty, FT MBA 2010-2011