UCD Smurfit MBA Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Day in the life of’

One of the things that attracted me to the UCD Smurfit MBA over other post graduate business courses was the emphasis on personal development (PPD). Above all else, I wanted to find a course that stimulated me, challenged me and gave me new perspectives on the challenges we face in business.

We had the opportunity to do some personality tests back in SEM1 of YR1. I have done exercises like this in the past, which I did not find particularly enlightening. However, this was a whole different ball game. While I consider myself to be quite self-aware, I was surprised by some of the findings that arose from this period of personal discovery that occurs in the first phase of PPD.

Following one of the personality tests called Strength Deployment Inventory, we were put into groups with other individuals with similar personality types. I remember the group members looking at each other with quizzical expressions. We felt we were quite a diverse group and we were surprised that we shared similar traits. The facilitator went through the typical personality traits with us – our strengths, how those strengths could become weaknesses and how we tend to respond under pressure. He outlined factors to watch out for in terms of our interactions with other personality types.

Certain personality types have different preferences in terms of styles of communicating and making decisions. Some people like to have only high level information – they are the types of people who only want the key information in bullet points in an email. Others like to have much greater detail about the process of how something will work.

This type of knowledge about yourself and the people around you is very valuable in terms of how you work together effectively in managing Highly Effective Teams and progress issues.

Kate Healy, EMBA 2010-12

Wednesday 7th December saw the 2011 class being conferred in the O’Reilly Hall in Belfield.  It was a great occasion for all the graduates and their families some of whom had flown in for the day and a fitting event to mark all the hard work and effort put in by the MBA participants from the beginning of the applications process, in some cases year ago, to the handing in of the final assignment and putting the pen down in the final exam.  The conferral was a joint one between the MBA and the Masters in Accountancy programmes.  The ceremony itself was conducted by UCD President Hugh Brady and Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh.  The address was given by Dr. Tony Brabazon, Director of UCD Smurfit Business School.

As usual the run up to the conferral was marked by lots of running around getting gowns and scanning of the hall to locate family, not an easy task in such a large hall.  After the official part of the day was successfully completed by graduates the 670 men, woman and children present adjourned to the O’Reilly Conservatory for the Conferring Reception.  There were lots of introductions of family to class mates, photographs taken with classmates and family with a rather splendid Christmas tree as a back drop and discussion of everyone’s plans for the evening.  A couple of the classes had arranged group meals or events for after family meals were over.   By all accounts some people didn’t finish celebrating until the early hours of the following morning.

Congratulations to the UCD Smurfit class of 2011 from all in the MBA Office.

- RoisinO’Loughlin | EMBA Programme Manager | MBA Office

Networking is one of those words that started out sounding interesting and catchy and came to mean the soulless pursuit of people you can manipulate into thinking you like them and use to achieve your own objectives. Nowadays, only people with fangs and razor-sharp claws participate in ‘networking’.  Even in an MBA programme that is ranked in the Financial Times as one of the world’s best, networking started as a bad word, whispered only in dark corners of hidden corridors.

A wise man (my dad) once told me that he thought that out of all of his clients built up over his more than 20 year career, the ones that ended up staying with him were the ones that, had he just met them in the street, would have ended up being his friends anyway.  After spending several years in marketing, sales and PR, that’s how I see networking.  It’s just meeting as many people as you can to find out with which you might share a connection.  You meet a person, you like them, you might even become friends, and then they are in your network.  It’s easy.  It’s fun.  If you do it right, it will make your life better and happier.  Why then, does the term ‘networking’ get such bad reactions? Read the rest of this entry »

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