Adventures in B-School (MBA)

Last Blog Post

2009-10-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

Well - this will be my last blog posting for the foreseeable future because Geeta and I are entering a new phase of our lives and we've a got a new blog to run.

http://werehavingthree.blogspot.com/

It has been a pleasure and I really hope this blog has been useful for all prospective MBA candidates.

All the best in your endeavours.

Sacha Gera, MBA

Back to Working Life

2009-09-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm starting the third week of my new job at IBM. It feels good to be back in the working world although it was a bit of an adjustment the first couple of weeks – Over the summer I’d become accustomed to waking up on my own terms, and going to bed when I felt like it. It definitely isn’t like that anymore! My first client engagement/training engagement is in Mississauga which is quite the commute from downtown (where I live). I’m getting used to Toronto traffic and I can see how people waste a lot of time on their daily commute. I’m trying to beat the traffic by going in early and staying a bit later.

The first couple of weeks have involved training, and some job shadowing to ease me into the management consulting world. It’s been quite the experience so far – keep you posted.

Over the last couple of weeks, I really feel like I’m getting back into a routine. My schedule on Monday through Friday has become pretty standardized with work, home life etc. Weekends are my time to relax and spend time with Geeta. I’ve also started running more often and for longer distances. I try to get in two 5km runs per week and one 8-10km run on the weekend. My goal is to stay as fit as possible both physically and mentally over the coming weeks.

Other than that, there hasn’t been a lot going on. The May, 2009 Ivey class continues to stay close after graduation and we get together at least once a month. We recently got together at a colleague’s place + on occasion we get together for after work drinks. Definitely miss not seeing everyone every day. I’m now starting to reminisce on the Ivey days more frequently. I miss them. What a year it was! I was looking at pictures, and our year book the other day and it really made me appreciate how amazing the year was; from the China Study Trip, to the Consulting Project, to making new friends…what a year!

Winds of Change

2009-08-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

In a couple of hours, my parents are coming to visit Geeta and I for the first time since we’ve relocated to Toronto. I’m excited that they're coming up. My parents are moving to the U.K. (in a couple of weeks) for the next four years as my mother has taken a diplomatic posting with the Canadian Embassy in London. I’m excited for her and my dad. I still can’t believe that they are uprooting their lives at their age (now in their 60’s), but at the same time I am inspired that they are actually doing it. What I like most about it, besides having a place to crash in central London, is that my parents are actually following through on a dream that they’ve talked about ever since I was a child: taking a foreign posting. I am always inspired by people who follow-through on their dreams and make things happen. I try to live my life by this same principal – ‘don’t just talk about it, make things happen’. It is sad that they are moving and that the ‘Winds of Change’ are in the air in all aspect of my life at the moment - but after the MBA experience I feel more prepared to deal with change then ever before.

I spent all of last week in Ottawa helping my parents pack up their household. It is amazing how much stuff can accumulate in 30 years of occupancy. My parents had a hard time departing with many of their antique possessions, which made the move frustrating at times ;) After a few dozen rounds of debates/arguments/boxing we were able to dispose of roughly two tonnes of excess furniture, articles, clothing and junk - the move was finally completed and the new rental tenants were ready to move into my parents’ home on time and on schedule.

While in Ottawa, I also had the opportunity to meet up with a few Ivey classmates that happened to be in town. It was nice seeing them. Since Geeta and I have moved to Toronto we’ve been able to frequently meet up with Ivey friends, which has been really nice and has helped us ease the transition into the big city. Good friends in any city = good times ….in my opinion. Our social senator liaisons recently organized a class get together at a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game, which was a fantastic way for all of us in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) to meet up and catch up on the last couple of months since school ended.

With one week to go before starting my first post-MBA job at IBM, I’m feeling ready and excited to get back into the working world. I feel like I’ve been off of work for far too long now, and I think that getting back to work will help me get into a routine again. Geeta and I have been without an income for about 15 months now so the money won’t hurt either ;) I had a large list of things to do while I was off on vacation, and I’m happy to say that at least half of it was completed. My post-MBA vacation was a great time to do a lot of self-reflection and I think it was quite healthy for me. I realize that I need to work on finding more time to relax especially when I settle back into the working routine – I’ve become quite the restless soul over the last few years!!

Earlier this year I promised myself that I would read a self-improvement book called Crucial Conversations. It’s about learning to deal effectively with conversations that involve high emotions, high stakes, and opposing opinions. I’m almost finally done the book, and I must say that it is well worth the read. I highly recommend it to everyone. It is applicable to your professional life and your personal life, and it will change the way you communicate and handle yourself when it counts the most – both at home, at work, and everywhere else.

I’ll end off with an interesting set of lyrics from my favourite rock band. Yes - I know it has nothing to do with this blog entry, and the topic of 'enemies' is kind of a strange one...but thought I'd share it anyhow.

“Choose your enemies carefully because they will define you.
Make them interesting because in some ways they will mind you.
They are not there in the beginning but when your story ends.
Going to last with you longer then your friends”

~Cedars of Lebanon, U2

Until next time…

Sacha

Four Recent Financial Post Articles

2009-08-04T19:23:00.000-07:00

I've written four recent blog articles for the Financial Post. Enjoy.

High Yield Corporate Bonds - A Safe Short Term Play With High Return Potential?

Timing the Economic Recovery - Maximizing Portfolio Returns with the Sector Rotation Strategy

Nortel: Bidder Motives, Canadian Pride

Why GM & Chrysler but not Nortel?

Three Devices You Ought to Buy

2009-07-19T17:39:00.001-07:00

Posted on the Financial Post site.

First post-MBA blog…Toronto – my new home

2009-06-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

First post-MBA blog…Toronto – my new home

This is blog #36 and my first as an Ivey MBA graduate. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep doing this but it was really nice to hear from some readers that this blog has actually been somewhat helpful to prospective MBA students - So I’ll write from time to time as an MBA grad and Ivey alumni and profile my life in the big city – Toronto.

It has been over a month since graduation however time seems to be passing very quickly. I’ve been busy catching up on all the things I neglected during the year including filing my taxes ;) Geeta and I travelled to Florida for 11 days – Disney World was overwhelming, Miami was not totally as expected, but the Florida Keys were heavenly. Did I mention that we got chased out of the waters by a shark while beaching it up in the Keys – no worries; no one got hurt :)

So how does it feel to be done?

Well besides the flashy/shiny Ivey ring that I received upon graduation, I really don’t feel all that different (by the way the ring has got quite the bling bling factor to it – still trying to get used to it :) ). I do however feel more prepared for the working world and more confident than ever. I feel like I have a toolbox of strategy, financial, leadership, communication, analytical, networking and marketing tools to propel toward my executive aspirations. Guess time will tell.

Life in the big city.

We have moved into our new apartment in central Toronto, and we are really starting to embrace the vibrancy and cosmopolitan nature of our new home – Toronto, Canada. So far so good – really liking the restaurants, coffee shops and walking. Love that everything is accessible and that we don’t have to drive much in the heavy traffic. What’s even better is that we’ve moved to a city where many of our Ivey colleagues/friends are also located. It feels like we are picking it up where we last left off. In the first couple of weeks, Geeta and I have managed to meet with many friends and it has made the transition much easier. Good friends + new city = don’t matter where you are!

In other news….

My brother’s family is the new poster family for Immigration Canada. I think this is hilarious. My niece and nephew have since been enrolled in modelling school. Too funny! Check it out here. Pic on the left.

My niece Sanya turned one! – can’t believe it has been a year already. She was born during module 1 of the program and I am looking forward to seeing her in an upcoming trip to Otown (aka Ottawa). My Californian niece Ayana is now four! – man I feel like I am getting old! Pics below - baby Sanya in her crib and four year old Ayana at her Cinderella-themed bday party.

My dearest parents are moving to London, U.K. come late August! My mother is taking a diplomatic posting with the embassy in London - I am so proud of her and all her accomplishments. She’s always a source of inspiration. The fact that both my parents are still ambitious enough (even in their 60’s) to make big moves and live a fulfilling life is hugely inspirational to me. I hope I’ve gotten some of that in me. I’m looking forward to many wonderful trips to the U.K. over the next four years.

Until next time…Sacha Gera, MBA :)

The night before convocation

2009-05-07T21:42:00.000-07:00

What a surreal moment it is. I’m feeling happy, excited and sad all at the same time. Tomorrow is our convocation and it marks the last day that we will all be together as a class. If only I could have one more class together in Amp A to hear Gerard talk about cuuuulture, to hear Dany make a funny comment, to hear Selena talk about oil and gas, to hear AK sing ‘Journey’, to see Matt B. raise his eyebrows and deliver a Jack Welch quote, to see Ricky playing on his iPhone, to see Alan playing chess, to see Sudha getting riled up about biotech, to see Vikas being an eager beaver, to see Mark T. take his time to answer a question, to hear David Atkinson ramble off a well-polished response, to see Diana and Adwoa correct the professors with the pronunciation of their names, to watch Heather make an intelligent remark, to see Samar look for water, to see Erin talk legalities, to see Jamie sum it all up, to see Zev talk ‘greed is good’, to see Rahul rap, to see Steph debate accounting, to see Sid talk banking, to see Z smile, to see Sabir say !’er, to see Flossie brew up an wicked response in case she gets called, to see Jeff talk medicine, to hear Joy-Ann talk about how cold it is, to see Jimmy serenade a classmate, to watch Waleed rock his chair, to see Pat deliver his roller-coaster speech, to see Matthew John talk politics, to hear Sebestian talk business, to hear Greg’s deep analysis of the situation, to hear Tom talk face-grinding, to hear Mukul talk cricket, to hear Garima talk India, to hear Raghu make a bold statement, to hear Neal talk numbers, to hear Sunny talk ops, to watch Jason B. trade stocks, to watch Anya talk Russia, to hear Karen talk consulting, to watch Andrew crunch some numbers, to watch Sid D. and Somea in deep discussion, to see Vanessa wearing a ‘vote for Vanessa’ shirt, to see Chris talk IT, to hear Will talk law, to hear Nolan spontaneously whip up a response, to see Ramit staring at Mukul, to hear Alykan talk about oil fields, to hear Pierre Mason crack a joke, to watch Joseph fall asleep, to hear Pier Jr. talk about the lab, to hear LP talk French, to watch Justin P. demonstrate his seeds of greatness, to watch Justin W. put himself out there with a vulnerable speech, to hear Gang deliver a perspective from China, to watch Wei’s observant tendencies, to hear Karthik offer a candid perspective, to watch Senay’s ‘Obama-ness’, to watch Mark R. play professor and teach a class, to listen to Manju’s long words of wisdom, to watch Neha’s facial reactions, to watch Somea’s strong will, to hear Khaled quote a section from the law book, to hear Anurag’s soft-spoken intelligence, to see Dev’s perfectly maintained beard, to watch Ashish snap a picture and to listen to myself ramble about Nortel. Oh – and to wonder why all those AMBAs are so smart…..

Today was a busy day. I had a number of errands to complete, and a lunch to attend before my parents, in-laws, and sister in law came into town. I managed to fit in time for a coffee with a good friend – which was really nice. It made me realize how much I’m going to miss hanging out with everyone. At night, Geeta and I cooked up a bbq dinner and enjoyed some good discussions and laughs with the family..

Dis-Orientation Week Update:

Wednesday: We attended Ivey Laundy! It’s an Ivey tradition for the outgoing class to make/show videos, demonstrate their talent etc. What a funny night. There were some pretty awesome videos with imitations, slide shows etc. Some pretty amazing performances too including singing/rapping/dancing from various classmates. We followed up with an appearance at the Barking Frog, an Ivey MBA’s most frequented club. Crazy times, very little sleep, and my body is aching - a last taste of what partying is like at Ivey.

I can’t believe tomorrow is it ;(

‘Disoriented’

2009-05-05T23:22:00.000-07:00

‘Disoriented’

We are only a couple of days away from convocation and we have been spending most of the week getting ‘disoriented’. Yes – we are in the middle of ‘disorientation’ week; a week of decompression and social events to become unacquainted with the daily MBA work load and reacquainted with fun.

Thought it would be interesting to recap some of the highlights from this week.

Saturday: Ivey Formal, aka “prom” night. What a night! Can’t say I remember it all unfortunately ;) Good friends, good company, and lots to celebrate – enough said. I was honoured to be selected by the class as the winner of this year’s MBAA Outstanding Contribution Award. Thank you!

Here are some of my favourite memories from the night: when Gerard Seijts was awarded professor of the year, the crowd chanted ‘cuuuulture cuuulture’ over and over. Here’s the background on this one: Professor Seijts’ most used word during his Leadership course is the word ‘culture’….add on a Dutch accent and you’ve created an Ivey MBA’s favourite phrase; ‘cuuuulture’. At the end of the night, we found a video camera that had been left behind. We got excited and a few of us began filming some pretty interesting videos at a late hour. We had a good laugh watching them the next morning. One particular Doctor (let’s call him Dr. Ethical) tried to convince me to pawn the camera in exchange for some shawarma at Barkat’s. Barakat is a popular shawarma joint frequented by Ivey MBA students.

Sunday: Ivey Circle Goodbye/Hello Lunch + Bowling: Geeta (my wife) was President of the Ivey Circle during the school year. The Ivey Circle is a social group for the partners of those attending Ivey - It’s a support network for our partners and they do all kinds of things ranging from social events to charitable drives. We spent Sunday afternoon socializing with Ivey Circle members; saying bye to those of us leaving and hi to those that are just joining the new May class. Sunday night was all about bowling. Team 5 met up for an early dinner, reminiscing on our year, putting together bowling 101 summary notes for the class and discussing our bowling strategy ;) – Just kidding! Fun times, fun times!

Monday: Paintball + Pub Crawl. I haven’t played much paintball (only once before), but I must say that it was quite the experience. I have a few war wounds like many others. It hurts when I sit ;) We pubb’ed it up at night hitting three locations in as many hours. Pretty crazy night to say the least. I can’t say I was expecting it to be a super-fun night after a long, tiresome day of paintball in the forest, but it turned out to be a lot of fun.

Tuesday: Golf + rest time. We played a round of 18 at Forest City National – best ball format. It was awesome being out for the first time this year. I can’t say I played exceptional but I hope to play a lot more during my summer break. Following golf, I came home and fell asleep and I guess that’s why I’ve got energy to write this right now.

That’s my mid-week update. Stay tuned for the rest of it after convocation.

Bitter Sweet: What a year!

2009-05-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

Today marks the first day of my post-MBA life. That’s right – I’m done and it’s bitter sweet.

My value investing team finished off our very last MBA project last night. Ramit, Justin, Heather and I effectively hammered though a demanding final project, pulling a couple of very long tiresome days. It was symbolic of what the MBA was all about: hard work, collaboration, passion, and a sense of accomplishment.

So how do I feel?

I am excited, I am happy, I am relieved, but in all honesty it has been an emotional week for me. I’m sad that the MBA is over. It’s been the most incredible, life-changing year of my life and I’ve made so many amazing friends that I will see less often and will miss dearly. Change has never been something I’ve enjoyed. The MBA has made me far more accustomed to it but I know it’s harder for me than some others. I have one more week of nothing but free time to enjoy with my MBA colleagues before we say adios; we call it ‘disorientation’ week. A number of events are planned including a prom, golfing, bowling, paintball, clubbing, dinners, parties and of course convocation. I am not leaving here without my degree ;)

Most surprising changes in me during the year:

-I’ve become a Facebook addict along with the rest of the class. Prior to the MBA, I never went on Facebook more then once every couple of months. I wonder if this will last?

-I’ve become an SMS texting monkey like everyone else in the class. I never texted much before coming here. I’m proud to finally say that I discovered the iTAP functionality on my phone and can text just as fast as everyone else now. Ok – maybe not as fast as those ‘crackberry’ addicts.

-I’ve gone way more grey than I ever expected. Yup – even the top is going grey and so are some of my beard and chest hair too ;) I know you didn’t need to know that!

-I’m going bald. I was in denial for so long but the receding hair line is here to stay and probably will grow over the coming years.

-I went through that party phase that everyone generally goes through in their late teens and early twenties - at the age of 28 ;)

-I feel like my age again. Prior to the MBA, I always felt like I had to act way older than I was. I’m comfortable with being young again. I know I’m still uptight and intense, but I’ve learnt how to have fun again.

Most important learnings from the year:

-Effective leadership is about so much more than you’d think.

-The power of collaboration and team work.

-Put yourself out there; make yourself vulnerable.

-This quote from Nelson Mandela sums one of my key learnings:

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.”

Favourite quotes from class during the year (names kept anonymous):

“assets are something people eat”

“a large % of criminals come from and go to Toronto”

"why develop a website in Canada for a bunch of farms to click and order lubricant"

“I feel like I’m in a Petri dish of male testosterone”

“errors are ok in general hospitals”

“I wouldn’t perceive BMW as a value but it’s valuable”

“the really smart people either burn out or become crooks and go to prison”

Team 5:

In closing, I wanted to make a special mention of my first learning team from the year. When I look back at this year, I realize how critical those first few months were. It was a time of anxiety, sleepless nights, and stress. Those first few months really set the tone for the remainder of the year and I was blessed to be a part of ‘Team 5’. We wrote a blog about our team earlier in the year in an effort to share our story with the hopes that other teams could benefit from our positive experiences – have a read if you get a chance. What was truly amazing about our team was that it was about more than school and academic achievement. It was about friendship, collaboration, mutual respect, common goals, and having impact. Thank you Garima, Heather and Matt for an amazing year.

I won’t stop writing quite yet. I’ve got a long summer break ahead and I’ll need to fill in my time. I’m not sure what my plans are for blog writing but I won’t call it quits yet, at least until convocation and disorientation week are complete.

Until next time.

Sacha Gera, MBA

You can learn a lot from a pig…

2009-04-21T19:33:00.001-07:00

Yeah – I know it’s a weird title but very true…. I’ll get to that in a minute. Here’s the background on this blog: I am taking an elective right now called High Impact Presenting (as mentioned in my last blog entry). It is one of those courses that has had a big impact on me. Our professor, Dennis Shackel, is a gem. He is truly one of those professors that pushes you to your limits and allows you to explore new territory. How far does he push your limits? Well in the last class, every classmate was asked to recite poetry or sing a song of their choice. Over half the class sang a song! I find this remarkable because I think it’s one of the hardest things to do, but it is proof that he’s pushing us MBA candidates out of our safety zone.

I didn’t think I’d be getting much more out of the MBA program this late in the game, but I was wrong! I’ve gotten a lot out of this class and I’m becoming more comfortable with taking risks and making myself vulnerable during presentations/speeches… which typically leads to a more engaging and captivating performance. Further, I’m learning how to communicate and work more effectively with the four different personality types: Dominant, Consciousness, Influence and Steadiness. Personally, I am in the dominance category and I guess I already knew that. I’ve made a conscious effort over the last couple of years to become more comfortable with not having to always lead and to become more comfortable with delegation and trusting my teammates. I’ve come to realize that a successful team needs all four personality types to excel.

As another exercise we were asked to draw a pig – no joke. Apparently, there is a lot you can learn from drawing a pig. For example, research shows that if it you draw it in the centre of the page you are an optimist. If you draw it on the bottom of the page, you are generally more pessimistic. Based on how many legs you included, how big the ears were, how long the tail is etc….you can determine a lot about your personality type. Below is my pig – I was never an artist as you can probably tell. In fact if I recall correctly I was always a ‘C’ grade art-student in elementary school. Guess you can see why. Here’s what my pig (or perhaps better described as a wolf) tells me about me: I am an optimist, am active, am creative, have a strong sense of detail, don’t remember dates very well, like security, am stubborn and apparently I’m a good listener ;) I admit the listener part is not always true.

On a more personal side of things, the last week has been really difficult in some ways. Geeta and I still haven’t found a place in Toronto, my Value Investing elective has been a bit of an academic stretch for me, I’ve been busy on the personal front and I’ve come to realize that I need to work on my ‘crucial conversation’ skill sets. Crucial conversations is a pretty famous book about how to handle/communicate effectively during those critical moments when your emotions are interfering with your ability to say what you want to say in an appropriate and effective manner. A few years back, I used to feel confident in my abilities to face tough situations – I felt that my ‘crucial conversations’ skills were a strength of mine. Over the last couple of years, I seem to be having a lot more of these moments both professionally and personally, and many of those conversations haven’t gone as I wanted them to. I feel like I’ve lost a bit of confidence in my abilities to conduct these conversations and I know that I need to work on it. I took a course on developing ‘Crucial Conversation’ skills about a year ago and it was really helpful. It takes practice and I know I’m going to be spending some time this summer improving upon this.

Until next time…

Sach

The Party is Almost Over

2009-04-13T19:02:00.001-07:00

I’m two weeks away from completing my MBA at Ivey and I’m starting to feel like the party is over. In reality the party is just starting…literally – the next three weeks are going to be filled with lots of social events as grad is quickly approaching. In fact, we have our very own disorientation senator (i.e. to help us get disoriented with the MBA program :)). She’s done a great job organizing a fun-filled week to cap off the MBA program in style and amongst good friends.

So how do I feel? Well a week ago I would have said tired and stressed. I was writing my very last two exams for two finance/accounting’ish courses – not necessarily my strengths. I worked fairly hard and I think I did ok in both. I definitely don’t feel like screwed up either of the exams and I feel proud of myself for taking on two electives that were out of my comfort zone.

I’m now taking two more electives to end off my MBA, neither of which have exams ;) One of those electives is Value Investing, one of Ivey’s most famous or shall I say infamous courses. Value Investing is taught at only three schools in the world; Columbia, Ivey and I can’t remember the other one. It’s about teaching students Value Investing methodologies and philosophies (i.e. Warren Buffet style of investing; looking for undervalued stocks). I took the course because I am an active stock investor and would like to better my investing performance.

The course is ‘infamous’ because it has a reputation of being Ivey’s most demanding course. I’ll let you know if that’s true in a week’s time. The other course that I’m taking is High Impact Presenting. What a course! It’s the only course I’ve ever been in where you’re sweating the entire duration of the course + experiencing non-stop laughter. It’s one of those courses that pushes you to your uncomfortable zone; where you can be called to the front of the class to recite an impromptu speech, sing, dance or even rap a song. Yes – I said rap a song. In fact one of my classmates had to rap and he was asked to do it three times; each time with more enthusiasm. I don’t think I would ever have had the courage to do that and I was truly inspired by this classmate’s courage. We’ve had others come up and sing and recite poems. Want to know what it’s like? – Check this out. Very cool class and highly recommended for those that aren’t afraid of being pushed out your comfort zone.

Over the last couple of weeks, Geeta and I have been struggling to find a new place to call home in Toronto. I think we have the neighbourhoods picked out but we still haven’t found what we are looking for ;) We are hoping to get the apartment hunt out of the way sooner than later so that we can focus on planning a trip to Europe or the Caribbean post-grad. Geeta is also actively looking for a job and we are both fairly busy these days. We are itching for a trip to perhaps Spain or Morocco.

With a couple of weeks to go, I’m excited. I’m excited about starting a new chapter of my life. I’m excited about seeing everyone reach their full potential over the coming years; I’m excited about leaving this program with so many new friends. In the mean time, with only two weeks left I’m gong to make an effort to spend as much time as I can socializing with my soon-to-be ‘alumni’ colleagues and to soak in the Ivey bubble for just a bit longer.

By the way…I’ve started running again now that the weather is improving. Time to get in shape again!

Until next time…

Sacha

The Secrets of Effective Leadership (Part 3)

2009-03-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

In my opinion effective leadership is partially learnt, partially something that you're born with, and very much something that you can improve upon by learning from others - what I like to call the ‘Secrets of Effective Leadership'. The following is part three of my blog series on ‘The Secrets of Effective Leadership'. Part two can be found here.

"Knowing how to get visibility and give it"

I've seen so many talented individuals who do incredible work, but fail to get the recognition that they deserve. Perhaps they are being modest and don't advertise their accomplishments, perhaps they shy away from the spotlight, or perhaps their boss and colleagues aren't good at creating that visibility for them? Nevertheless, an effective leader will learn the ropes of how to get and give visibility and do so without coming across as arrogant.

Gaining visibility is critical to increasing influence and leverage amongst your peers and subordinates - essential for effective leadership. How do you gain visibility? There's no fixed answer for this because it really depends on the environment you're working in and the type of people that you are working with. Sharing and broadcasting successes, especially when it's a team-oriented accomplishment, is one way of gaining visibility. Taking on high profile projects is also another way. Informing your boss and upper management about your wins, in a manner that isn't considered brown-nosing, is another method. My old manager always used to encourage sending an occasional status update to upper management on a project that was going exceptional in an effort to gain visibility - this always seemed to be good advice. What was interesting was that my boss would always follow-up with an email of encouragement and praise, with my upper management copied on it - those emails would always fire me up and make me want to do better and more.

It's not all about gaining visibility; it's also about giving visibility to those around you. Effective leaders create visibility for those around them. It's not easy for an individual to advertise his/her accomplishments, but it is easy for a leader to advertise it for them. Creating visibility is something that is easy to do and is very much appreciated by others - an easy way to develop a good reputation and following. Further, it encourages others to do the same.

"Managing expectations/Managing your boss"

In part two of this blog series, I talked about quality versus quantity and the importance of not spreading yourself out too thin. Managing expectations and especially one's boss, is critical to getting the right quality versus quantity mix. In my experience, effective leaders are good at managing expectations; they under-promise and over-deliver. They know how to say ‘no' without burning bridges and hurting their reputation, and when they over-deliver on their promise they are praised. How do they do this? I definitely still have a lot to learn on this one but here's what I do know: when you're at that critical moment when your boss is piling on an additional tasks, take a minute to think about things before committing. Think about how it's going to impact your ability to perform on other tasks and whether you have the physical capability and resources to deliver up to your own expectations. A former mentor of mine always used to tell me that it takes a long time to develop a strong reputation, but only one screw-up to lose it all. Under-delivering and failing on a commitment can easily be considered a screw-up and have undesired effects on one's reputation. Another mentor used to tell me that a good leader will protect their reputation at all costs. The point being that effective leaders seem to manage expectations well in order to protect their reputation, and are a good at developing relationships with their bosses such that they can say ‘no' without disappointing them.

"Communicating for your audience"

I am convinced that good communications skills are imperative for effective leadership. What I've noticed is that good leaders not only communicate often but do so with their audience in mind. I always find it humorous when a presentation is made using technical jargon and acronyms that are not understood by 75% of the crowd. Sure, complicated verbiage sounds great and may make you look smart but you may be missing the boat with most of your audience. Effective communication is about getting the message across, about energizing your audience, and about earning trust. Effective leaders understand their audience and will find a way to reach out to everyone - They will tweak their communication accordingly from a content and delivery perspective. What I've noticed over time is that the good leaders communicate in multiple ways, are visible and are accessible via email, town hall meetings, open-door policies, casual drop-by's etc. My old boss, whom I look up to very much, used to walk the floor at least once a day spending at least an hour chatting with all his subordinates; it was a perfect opportunity to voice concerns, give a quick status update, and develop a relationship. My upper management was always captivating at the monthly town hall meetings because they used language that we all understood, and they made sense of complicated business slides in layman's terms. Further, they always understood the morale level of the room and made a conscious effort to find a suitable way to get everyone re-energized.

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As I mentioned at the start of Part 1 of this blog series; perhaps it is premature based on my limited years of experience and young age to have such strong opinions and beliefs about leadership - but I do believe that it is easy to spot out an effective leader because they stand out like sore thumbs. The points mentioned throughout this blog series are my opinion of how and why they stand out and are surely practices I will be carrying forward in my leadership journey.

The Secrets of Effective Leadership (PART 2)

2009-03-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

In my opinion effective leadership is partially learnt, partially something that you’re born with, and very much something that you can improve upon by learning from others – what I like to call the ‘Secrets of Effective Leadership’. The following is part two of my blog series on ‘The Secrets of Effective Leadership’. Part one can be found here .

“Having the guts to not follow the herd”

Do you remember a time when you were confident that everyone else had it wrong, or that everyone else didn’t have the confidence to voice an opposing opinion? Humans love to follow the herd. We gain comfort by advancing in numbers. It’s not easy having the confidence to go against the grain, because you know that you if you’re singled out you may be put on the spot and be completely wrong. In my short career, I have observed that effective leaders have the guts to voice an opinion that is contrary to the masses. Even when they are wrong, their discussion and arguments in support of their view often benefit the rest of the group in some shape or form and are therefore value-added.

“Responsiveness”

It is not uncommon for a leader to be flooded by emails, voice mails and other requests. It’s tough keeping up with it all and not realistic to respond to it all in a timely fashion. What I’ve observed however is that effective leaders are responsive – even when they can’t find the time to respond they send a quick note back acknowledging the message and they provide an estimated time for a response. This ensures the receivers’ comments are valued, and generally a delayed response is not minded if the receiver knows when to expect a response. There’s nothing worse than not hearing back. Being responsive is an easy way to build credibility, trust and respect.

“Priority versus urgency”

Time management is such an important skill as one climbs the ranks – you’ve got so much more to do with so much less time. A former director of mine used to tell me that it was all about priority versus urgency. He was a firm believer in Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and would label every task with an urgency (high/low) and a priority (high/low). I admit that I’ve never read the book but he used to tell me that effective leaders would spend most of their time in the high priority/low urgency quadrant avoiding the temptation of constantly fire-fighting tasks in the high priority/high urgency box. He told me that ‘fire-fighting’ was addictive and often necessary but that it was the high priority/low urgency projects that would gain you the visibility and that would allow you to add value to the organization as a leader.

“Following through on a commitment”

There’s nothing worse then failing to follow through on a commitment – you lose trust from those that depend on you and you lose credibility; a leadership nightmare. Many leaders spread themselves too thin and take on too much. Quality is better then quantity in my opinion and effective leaders realize this and will not be afraid to say ‘no’ to a request knowing well that it may take away from the quality of executing on something else. Taking on too much is often the cause of why many leaders fail to deliver on commitments. It’s also a common reason for why leaders lose their energy and passion and even burn themselves out – which is doing no one any favours. Of course saying ‘no’ isn’t easy and it’s really about managing expectations in my opinion (i.e. managing your boss) – described in part three of this blog series to follow.

Stay tuned for part three…

The Secrets of Effective Leadership (PART 1)

2009-03-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm 28 years old and I have had a total of about 8 years of full-time work experience. That said I feel incredibly privileged to have worked with many incredible leaders. As such, I make a conscious effort to observe those around me and absorb as much as I can in an effort to improve my own leadership skills.

Perhaps it is premature, based on my limited years of experience and young age, to have such strong opinions and beliefs about leadership - I've come to the conclusion that it is easy to spot out an effective leader because they stand out like sore thumbs. In my opinion effective leadership is partially learnt, partially something that you're born with, and very much something that you can improve upon by learning from others - what I like to call the ‘Secrets of Effective Leadership':

"There is no substitute for hard work"

Some folks are creative but have a hard time keeping focussed on the objectives, some folks are book smart but can't stop their analysis paralysis habits, some are gutsy and will push their way through and some can talk the talk but have little substance behind what they say. And then there are some who will work harder then the rest and execute - I'm not talking about those that put in the long, inefficient hours, but rather the ones that learn to work harder and smarter with time. This is a real leadership quality in my opinion and there simply is no substitute for hard work. At the end of the day every project and every team needs one of them. That said, it is important to note that an effective leader will realize that they may not always be the most creative, or have the best analytical skills, or be aggressive enough to solve every problem, or have the communication skills to charm the audience - an effective leader will recognize the importance of having one of each of the aforementioned in order to build a powerhouse team that has all the tools required to excel.

"Are you confident or cocky?"

I am convinced that one cannot climb the corporate ladder without an incredible amount of confidence. Confidence is the key to leadership success; without it one would have a hard time influencing and leveraging others - an essential skill set for any leader. I believe that confidence is not something that you can just turn on; it is something that comes from hard work, knowledge and experience. The problem is that confidence often turns into cockiness and even overconfidence with time. An effective leader will recognize the fine line that exists between the three and consciously recognize when they cross that line. How do you know when you are becoming arrogant? I think it's when you start losing respect and influence from your peers and subordinates. How do you know if you're becoming over-confident? My former boss would remind me each time before taking a trip to a client's site, that if I wasn't nervous about the trip/project then I was overconfident and not prepared. It was always a message that I would ignore at first but then it would scare me enough to make me work harder in an effort to cover off all possible angles of failure.

"Having the courage to shine bright"

As one climbs the ranks, as one gains influence and respect, as one becomes an effective leader, it's hard not to feel shy about moving past your mates, your colleagues, and even your former bosses. It's hard recognizing for the first time as a progressing leader that you've got enemies who wouldn't mind seeing you fail. It's also hard becoming comfortable with the fact that your leadership decisions will never be liked by 100% of your subordinates/colleagues and that you will never be able to satisfy everyone. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that an effective leader needs to find a way to become comfortable with all of this. A quote comes to mind about this. It's from Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech in 1994: "Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you."

Stay tuned for PART 2...

Six Weeks Until Relaxation Therapy

2009-03-19T22:56:00.001-07:00

I finally finished up my preparations for my two cases for tomorrow, so I thought I’d write a quickie before bed. I’m wired anyhow so there’s no point trying fall asleep when I know it won’t happen.

I’m down to the last six weeks of school before grad, and I’m now taking electives. Over the next six weeks I’ll be taking Corporate Financial Reporting, Portfolio Management, Value Investing, and High Impact Presenting. Up until two weeks ago I had decided that I would not take any finance courses for the rest of the MBA program – I can’t say that finance and accounting are my favourite subjects and having taken two core courses earlier in the year I felt that I didn’t need any more knowledge in these areas. But then it dawned on me – finance/accounting are my weakest subject areas. When I asked myself the following questions ~ What is an MBA graduate without a strong financial background, and do I feel like I am confident to talk finance-speak? – ...I realized that I needed more finance/investing ammunition…. So I decided to make three of my four electives investing/finance/accounting-related.

Last week was March break. Geeta and I spent half our time in London and the other half in Toronto. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came up to London, and we later met my brother and his family in Toronto. It was a productive break; I got a lot of personal tasks out of the way and it was really nice seeing family. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the ‘break’ I was looking for. While other classmates came back re-charged from their vacations, I came back drained. I think I needed a quiet week away from everyone, and it turned out to be quite the opposite. Not that I don’t love spending time with family….but I think that after two draining months of school I needed a bit of solitude. I was so burnt out by mid-week that I decided to delay studying/writing my P.Eng exam in April. I just can’t heck it right now.

Recognizing how drained I feel, I decided to push back my start date with my new employer to late August. I’m hoping that a few months off will give me ample amounts of time to recharge, and re-learn how to relax and enjoy life again ~ relaxation therapy. I sometimes feel these days that I’ve forgotten how to relax – I’m restless 24/7 and don’t know how to sit still. There is always a million things to do (school-wise and personally). My Outlook to-do list is almost 60 items long and I just feel overwhelmed all the time. When school calms down, I catch up on my personal to-do list ….which these days often involves banking, taxes, dealing with my rental property, finding a place to live in Toronto, employment stuff, and a few other family/personal things etc etc. The only thing that gets me through is being organized, managing my time, and grabbing a workout when possible. Yes – a one year program will make you a fantastic time manager.

So, with six weeks to go and 3.5 months off before I start my new job I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do this summer. Here’s my list: travel, spend time with friends and family, drive across Canada, get back into sports, discover my new hometown/Toronto, read, use my newly acquired investing skill sets to fix my investment portfolios so I have a chance of recovering from this brutal year, get into shape again, volunteer maybe, do something I’ve never done before, gift myself with a new car maybe….find a place to live.

On a final note, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a good leader. I’m not thinking of the traditional attributes (i.e. strong communication, decision making, organizational skills etc), but rather about the little things, the so-called secrets of leadership success. I think I’ve gathered a pretty good list from my work experience and from my tendencies to observe others. I hope to blog about it soon for my next article for the Financial Post.

Lastly, to my surprise I actually did pretty well last term in terms of marks. I’m happy that the hard work paid off, especially considering that I made it a priority not to focus on marks and rather focus on learning….Luck always has something to do with getting good marks in a case-based school and it wouldn’t have surprised me if things didn’t go as well as they did last term.

Until next time…

Sach

ICP'd Out!

2009-03-05T14:14:00.001-08:00

There’s no better time to write a blog entry then when you feel like you have absolutely no time, you’re under the gun, and your head is about to explode. Yup, don’t ask me why I’m doing this right now – let’s just say it’s therapeutic for me in some odd way.

I’m in the midst of finishing up my Integrative Consulting Project (ICP for short - mandatory component of the MBA program), and my team and I are busily attempting to complete our extensive write-up and presentation slides for this project. We are close but not quite there. I’m waiting on some content from my mates, so I found a quick breather to write this. The goal is to finish up by Friday night so that we can all finally enjoy a weekend to ourselves.

I’m pretty beat-up right now. I must say that this month probably takes the cake for being the busiest month of the MBA program. I’m sure if you ask those around me, including my wife, they’ll tell you that I’m half out of it, dazed, always in a crabby mood, and sleep-deprived. Yup; I say that describes me at the moment. Don’t let me discourage you from your one year MBA dreams – as they say; no pain then no gain ;) I’m only 8 weeks out from graduation and nothing is going to bring me down right now.

We recently completed our final exams for Module 2B; Managing Operations, Marketing, and IT. Wow, three exams in three days! I made it through that busy week with the help of my peers, but I’m not convinced I did exceptional. It’s so hard to tell whether you did well on an MBA exam. Some of my colleagues recently came to conclude that all MBA exams are strategy exams and that realizing this earlier would have paid off. I guess I always knew that it was all about strategy and I hope that my emphasis on this aspect will pay off with these final exams.

On a positive note, the new U2 album is finally out. It’s called ‘No Line on the Horizon’. I’m always biased when it comes to my favourite band but I think it’s their best album since Achtung Baby. Song #2, called Magnificent, is already one of my favourites all time. The band has been on Letterman every single night this week, and it has been a real treat coming home each night after an 18 hour day to watch them on television before bed. Poor Geeta is gonna be stuck listening to them for the next few months ;(

Ok, c’est tout. Until next time…

Oh…did I mention next week is March Break? Thank god! No major travel plans…P.Eng exam studying, trip to T.O. to meet up with my brother’s family, lots of time with Geeta, and SLEEEEEP!

Give me a break!

2009-02-21T20:41:00.000-08:00

It’s 11pm on a Saturday night and I’m sitting in Spencer (building for Ivey MBA students). What a way to spend a Saturday night. Its been a really rough day, in fact a really a rough couple of weeks. School has been kicking my ass lately and I think I’ve taken on a bit too much on the extracurricular side of things. I haven’t had much time at home or for myself and it’s taking a bit of a toll in a few different ways. The thing is that I don’t see a break in sight and I just seem to be taking on more and more. I recently decided that I will write and finally complete my Professional Engineering designation (i.e. write an exam) in April; yet another stress to add on while I complete the last couple of months of this intense program. The next couple of months promise to be insane, and I’ll have to make some changes to make sure that they are sustainable.

First off, I think I need to unload a bit of the extracurricular stuff; I think it’s about time that I transition the bulk of the Ivey MBAA blogging website responsibilities to the newly appointed team. The initiative has been hugely rewarding but it’s quickly becoming a monster; that said a successful monster as the site continues to grow in popularity by the week! Secondly, I need make the gym more consistent to keep the stress levels down and keep me sane. Thirdly, I need learn to limit my unproductive studying time so I avoid my natural nature of slipping into ‘analysis paralysis’; I tend to hit those late hours of studying which tend to be nothing but diminishing returns and a waste of time in hindsight. Most importantly, I need to make my partner more of a priority; I have been pretty absent from home lately and I don’t feel like that’s fair to her nor has it been easy for me.

Last weekend, ten of us took a trip up to Ottawa for the February long weekend. We had a fantastic time checking out the city and enjoying the winter’esque playground. We went snow shoeing in the Gatineau Park, we hit the Rideau Canal for Winterlude and we got a private tour of Parliament Hill and the Prime Minister’s office thanks to an Ivey schoolmate hook up ;) It was a good time with good friends and a memorable weekend to say the least.

Final exams are fast approaching. I’ve been studying most of the day and will continue to do so basically until the week is over with. I need a break but can’t find one. Oh well, c’est la vie. I’ll suck it up. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. By the way, I got my Operations course midterm back. I thought I did horribly, but somehow I did pretty well. I think it’s a testament to working with my former Team 5 learning team in preparation for that exam; we all managed to do well. I realized that one can excel in the MBA program without necessarily nailing the quantitative side of things (I screwed the calculations up on the exam). Having good qualitative descriptions, a big-picture view, and management insight can substitute for those quant marks. Ok..one more quote from Marketing class…I really like this one:

“ ‘Intel inside’ was the greatest brand building exercise before Barack Obama”

Pics from “Iowa, er, Ottawa” :)

Picture 1: Part time at dad's bar

Picture 2: Snow shoeing the Gatineau

Picture 3: Parliament Hill

Picture 4: The Canadian Prime Minister's conference board room

Giving Back...

2009-02-09T17:33:00.001-08:00

Graduation is less than three months away and I’m getting excited. I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to attend Ivey. Not only has it been an incredible academic and professional skill builder, but it has also been a builder on the personal front as well.

When you attend Ivey, there are a number of key buzzwords that seem to revolve around you day in and day both inside and outside the classroom: ‘alumni power’, ‘cross-enterprise leadership’,'leadership’, ‘integrity’, 'case-based method', ‘corporate social responsibility’ to name a few. These buzzwords are probably common in many schools, but at Ivey they are really engrained in you. You realize that these buzzwords form the foundation of all past and present Ivey graduates and that this foundation is a primary reason of why the alumni network is so strong, and why the Ivey brand is reputable.

As graduation is around the corner, I found it fitting to have come across a video narrated by Larry Rosen, CEO of Harry Rosen (a long standing Canadian menswear retailer). Mr. Rosen is an Ivey MBA grad and prominent spokesperson for the Ivey Alumni Society. Watching this video made me think about what it means to be apart of the Ivey Alumni society and how the school’s success has been largely based on a set of common qualities exhibited by most Ivey grads; that we share a common interest in being Ivey ambassadors for life, that we strive to be ethical leaders, and that we understand the importance of giving back to the school that has given us so much. If you have a minute watch the video.

I recently found out about an Ivey tradition called the “Ivey Class Gift Campaign.” In 2001, the MBA and HBA students at the time decided that they wanted to do something to give back to the school and show support for incoming students. They wanted to leave a legacy - Well they succeeded! That initiative has continued ever since and has been hugely successful. What inspires me most about it is the fact that it is completely student-driven, and that despite mountainous debt loads students still want to give back. Since 2001, outgoing MBA and HBA classes have given back over $180k and have initiated a number of improvement programs; setting up new scholarships for incoming students, improving the school’s furnishing, and constructing new lockers to name few. I find that inspirational.

As graduation is around the corner, I’m excited about graduating, I’m excited about taking the Ivey pledge and earning my Ivey Ring, I’m excited about becoming an Ivey alumnus and Ambassador for life, and I’m excited about taking part in the Ivey Gift Campaign and doing my part to continue this legacy of giving back to the school and to future students.

I Can See the Light at the End of the Tunnel!

2009-02-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I last posted. I kept waiting for a time when things would calm down in school but that never seems to come anymore. This module has been particularly tiring, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel; yes – only 3 months to go until graduation. Frankly, I think I am ready to move onto the post-MBA phase of my life but at the same time I already know that I’m going to miss coming to school everyday. I realize more than ever that I love coming to school everyday; socializing with all the great people in this program, listening to the engaging class debates, and absorbing life in an unfamiliar surrounding. I know that life is about to get way more routine very soon as I venture back in the workforce.

On the first day of class following the Christmas holidays, our IT professor took 15 minutes out of the class to ask each of us what we would remember most from our MBA program experiences. It was incredible to hear what everyone had to say. It made me remember so many wonderful moments that I seemed to have forgotten. It also made me realize how this program has provided value to each of us in so many different ways. Common memorable experiences included: the China study trip, Outward Bound/Ropes day, diversity of the classroom, friendship, ups and downs of the program, being there for each other, teamwork, and alumni interaction.

This module (2B) is composed of a Management Operations course (plant and supply chain operations), a Marketing course, and an IT Management course. All three courses offer very different and useful perspectives about Cross-Enterprise leadership, but I must say that Marketing is my favourite course. The professor is incredibly engaging, and the cases we cover are very interesting. I thought I’d spit out a few quotes that have stuck with me over the last few weeks (one from each course):

“The best technical solution may not work politically and the political solution may not work best technically.” ~Nicole Haggarty, IT Management Professor

“When you think of innovation don’t think of it in terms of new products, think of it in terms of new market segments” ~Niraj Dawar, Marketing Professor

“Culture is what people do when no one is looking” ~Larry Menor, Management Operations

Here’s one more from marketing class, but it in fact comes from some professor in Chicago: “All communication between human beings is persuasion.” I couldn’t agree more. I guess with this blog entry I’m trying to persuade you to go to Ivey and do your MBA because it’s so memorable and because you will be enlightened by your professors’ cool quotes :) By the way, I just wrote my Operations mid-term exam yesterday and my brain is fried. It was one of the most tiring exams I’ve ever had, and I’m still not recovered from it.

Until next time…

Sacha

Rude Awakenings

2009-01-13T18:58:00.001-08:00

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m feeling sick to my stomach. Coming back to school after the holidays has been a rude awakening. I’m not used to working this hard again, and I’m craving a day off and a morning to sleep in. I’ve been extra quiet since school started up in the new year. I’ve been in more of a thinking mood lately, and haven’t felt like socializing much. I think I’m anxious to move on with the next phase of my life, which will be a move to Toronto and a new job.

My perspectives on what I want out of the last four months of this program have dramatically changed in the last few weeks. There’s no doubt that having some free time in China gave me an opportunity to think about my goals for 2009, and how I want to go about spending my time at school and with my colleagues, my friends, and of course my best friend; my wife. After a couple of very excellent conversations with some good friends and Geeta, I think I have a much more clearer picture of some of the changes I want to make in the last four months of school.

So what do I want for the last four months?

Out of School…I want to:

-Take the time to really learn and absorb from the classes and not to trade a deeper learning and understanding of the material for higher marks. I like to excel and therefore I like to aim for high marks, but I also know that I’ve sacrificed a bit of learning all year round in order to focus on getting higher marks. I need to get more comfortable with making this trade-off and I know that it will mean that I may not be able to do all the cases and class preparation everyday.
-To make a meaningful impact for the school.

Out of my social life….I want to:

-Spend less time socializing at the bars, and spend more quality time with friends and colleagues from Ivey
-Spend more time getting to know my colleagues that I don’t know as well or haven’t had a chance to connect with during the year

Out of my home life…I want to:

-Spend more quality time with Geeta
-Make more of an effort to connect with family more often

Other than the fact that school is whipping me back into shape, things are progressing: I haven’t been keeping up with my workouts as I would like, I’ve got a new learning team, and I’m working with another team on an exciting new consulting school project for a very interesting client.

Until next time…

Sacha

China Study Trip ~ Hong Kong...Part 4/4

2009-01-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

We flew into Hong Kong from Shanghai on another domestic Chinese carrier by the name of Dragon Air. Once again I was impressed with their domestic airline service. As we pulled into Hong Kong and flew over the mountainous terrain surrounding the city one could see the lit up skyline of Hong Kong. It looked like Manhattan, but with the lights of Vegas. As we landed at the international airport, I remembered all of my friends and family that had told me about the infamous landing approach at the Hong Kong airport. Landing at Hong Kong is quite scary for those that don’t like a bumpy ride due to the positioning of the airport and the local geography. Sure enough as we approached the runway, the plane took a steep dive into an area that appeared to resemble a valley…pretty freaky!

After a 45 minute bus ride into downtown, we reached our Hotel. This hotel was far superior to the dump in Shanghai. I remember being really excited about having landed in Hong Kong and finally having the opportunity to see the city. I love photographing skyscrapers and Hong Kong boasts a skyline that is arguably better than that of New York City. Over the next couple of days I would go nuts with my camera photographing much of the skyscraper architecture present in the city.

Picture: Hong Kong at night

When the day light broke we departed for our first destination, a theme park by the name of Ocean Park. Ocean Park is Hong Kong’s #2 theme park after Disney Land. We met with their Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) who offered a very interesting presentation on how the park has resurrected itself over the years, avoided bankruptcy, and successfully competed against Disney Land. During the presentation, half the class was sneezing and coughing. There were definitely some nasty viruses going around and I had caught it too. By this point I was feeling quite sick. I had picked up a nasty cold and my bronchitis that I had been fighting for the last 4 weeks had come back with a vengeance. After riding a rollercoaster for the first time in ten years (I discovered that I can still handle it), a group of us departed for the Kowloon market which is a ferry ride away off of Hong Kong island. Kowloon is commonly referred to as Hong Kong’s evil twin. It’s run down when compared to the glamour of Hong Kong’s business district, but it offers some fantastic shopping and a really cool cultural experience. The market is busy and fun to walk through (see video below) and there is significantly less bartering which prevents you from having to pop those Tylenol to get rid of those 'market headaches'.

Video: Kowloon Market

After a day in the city I had come to the conclusion that Hong Kong rocks! It’s cosmopolitan and commercial like New York City, hilly and unique like San Francisco, and tropical like Hawaii; three of my favourite places. I think I could easily live in Hong Kong! After taking a couple of cable car rides over the surrounding hills and having ascended the ‘Peak’ (a mountain overlooking the city), I was in love with the views and sights of the city’s beautiful terrain and forest of skyscrapers.

Picture: Hong Kong skyline

On the second day in Hong Kong we visited the Hutchinson Port, which is the third busiest shipping port in the world. We enjoyed a very entertaining presentation from two of the port’s executives. At this point, I was really feeling ill and had a hard time paying attention so I won’t comment too much on this activity other than to say that it was really neat seeing how the port operates and how it is completely computerized. Visiting the control centre was pretty awesome for a techie like me (lots of toys to look at). Did I mention that they were a Nortel customer ;) You knew I had to throw that one in! Anyhow, it was nice seeing a piece of Canadian technology at the centre of their operations (perhaps it will be Chinese technology as Huawei perhaps bids on Nortel in the coming weeks). Hopefully the government will step in soon and save them.

In terms of memorable moments, I will share a funny story with you. I say funny now, but at the time I was pretty peeved ;) I mentioned in part two of my China blog series that this was the first trip that I have taken where I completely relied on others to get around, and to keep schedule. I pretty much just followed the masses to the point that I didn’t even know my own hotel name or where we were supposed to be at any particular point in time. Well it kind of bit me on the butt on one day: A group of us were riding the subway back from the Kowloon market toward the Ivey School of Business (Hong Kong campus) for a presentation. I wasn’t feeling well and it was crowded on the subway. To make a long story short, I somehow wasn’t paying attention and missed our stop and got separated from my classmates. I seriously had no idea of where I was in the city, nor an idea of where to go, or where the hotel was. I think this was the first time in my life where I can say that I was truly lost. Ooops! On top of that I was feeling very ill at the time. As I wandered the streets of Hong Kong, I struggled to remember the name of our hotel; was it ”Nova,” “Intercontinental”? The name “Novotel” finally dawned on me and I was able to find a taxi driver who knew where it was. I got lucky, it was the right hotel. For those planning on doing the China Study Trip in the future, always ensure that you carry a hotel card with you at all times with the name and address of the hotel so you don’t get lost like me!

Probably the most memorable aspect of Hong Kong was the party scene and the night life. The class went pretty crazy in the last couple of nights hitting up lounges, clubs, and ‘Club 711’ often with the many Ivey alumni that inhabit this vibrant city. What’s ‘Club 711’ you ask? Well, 711 convenience stores can be found all over China and in the party district of Hong Kong. Since drinks are very expensive in the clubs, most of us were frequenting the 711 store (which is right outside many of the night clubs), and making our own party on the streets before entering the clubs. The clubs and lounges themselves were quite the experience. Some of them charged $60CDN cover (for men, women get in free) and up to $20CDN for drink…ouch! Not great for that student budget; hence “Club 711” to start things off!

By this point in the trip, everyone was getting pretty tired. There was definitely some excess partying happening, and we were all enjoying life to the fullest (perhaps a bit too much). The last couple of days were filled with ups, downs, and a bit of drama; all events that will make this trip a memorable one! By the end of it I think many of us were ready and happy to go home to our families. Many others were continuing their adventures over the holidays in the Asia Pacific exploring Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand.

Well that about sums up the China Study Trip. I hope you enjoyed it!

China Study Trip ~ Shanghai...Part 3/4

2009-01-05T16:00:00.001-08:00

We boarded a domestic airline to make the trip to Shanghai from Beijing, ‘China Eastern Airlines.’ Wow, did they ever put Air Canada to shame; non-stop beverage and snack service with free alcohol throughout the entire flight. The two hour journey passed very quickly and before you knew it the Shanghai skyline was visible.

Shanghai immediately demonstrated a very different flavour than that of the one Beijing left with us. For one, it was commercial and less historical/political with no soldiers visible on the streets, and it was densely populated. There were roughly the same amount of people in the city as Beijing encompassed in a land mass that was roughly 1/4th the size. The buildings were predictably taller and the city felt busier, despite having 1/8th the cars on the road.

Picture: Shanghai Skyline

The skyline in Shanghai is mighty impressive. It’s dotted with large financial institutions, and future-like architecture that almost puts New York to shame. Almost all the development is new (within the last 15 years). In the downtown area, the sights of the 101 stories World Financial Centre (2nd tallest in the world) and the 87 stories Grand Hyatt steal the show and give a good representation of what the future of Shanghai’s skyline will look like. Already, construction has started next door on Asia’s tallest building. The development scene is incredible. Some estimate that 30% of the world’s cranes are in Shanghai, with another 30% in Dubai.

Picture: Group shot in front of the Shanghai skyline

Shanghai provided an opportunity for us to meet with a number of Ivey alumni, visit a number of plants, and really get a feel for what it’s like to conduct business in China. We had a opportunity to visit Bao Steel, the #2 steel company in the world. Visiting the plant, or should I say city, was eye-opening to say the least. We had an opportunity to witness how steel is manufactured pretty much end to end. We toured a building that was roughly 500 metres in length. It was an assembly line with some of the biggest machines that I had ever seen. These machines were pounding the molten steel, shaping it, smoothing it, and cooling it with water. The molten steel glowed bright orange and one after another a new beam of molten steel would zip down the assembly line giving off strong heat. It almost felt as if you were in a sauna for a split second as the beam zipped by. Visiting the plant was something like experiencing the Discovery Channel in reality. One could almost sense that China’s economic growth was hugely dependant on this plant in order to build its skyscrapers, infrastructure, and manufacturing capabilities. We also had an opportunity to get a presentation from an executive at the company that spoke in Mandarin and had a translator covert to English. I must say that the translator did a great job and the presentation was actually quite effective despite the language barriers.

Picture: Bao Steel presentation

Shanghai also provided us with an opportunity to visit Shanghai General Motors, and take a day trip to a Suzhou. Shanghai General Motors is a 50-50 joint venture between GM and the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation. We had an opportunity to visit the assembly line and witness how a car is manufactured end to end. What surprised me the most in China was how popular the Buick is, and I guess if there’s a bright spot in GM it is that they have a stronghold in China through this joint venture. We also got to eat with the local automotive assembly line workers to get a real taste of work life in the factory. I must say that the meal was delicious!

Picture: Visit to the Shanghai GM assembly line

Visiting Suzhou (about two hours outside of Shanghai) was one of the highlights of the whole trip. We visited a new master-planned high-tech community (as previously described in part 1 of the blog entries) where 6m people will call home. We visited a museum that demonstrated the future plans for this master-planned city and what it will look like. I think we were all blown away by the scale and dream of it. They seemed to be taking the best of all the world’s cities and implementing them into these new futuristic cities. For example, this new city will soon have a replica of the London Eye (Ferris Wheel), and the latest in skyscraper architecture with a number of 80+ stories building dotting a yet to be constructed skyline. Already, dozens of high-tech multinationals call this futuristic city home. On the flip side, we visited the historical side of Suzhou where we rode a boat through a canal that snaked through the village. It was our first taste of what rural China was like. One could see the poverty, and the lack of essential services. I must say though that despite some of the visible poverty, the historical Suzhou and the canal were magnificent. I think that the boat ride will be the part of the trip that I will most remember. It was very surreal, calming, cultural, and beautiful.

Picture/Video: Riding the canal through historical Suzhou

One afternoon, the class hit a popular market where we had another opportunity to barter and buy some souvenirs. The market was lively and came complete with Starbucks, which was a friendly and welcome surprise. Other highlights included dining with Ivey alumni, hearing a presentation from the author of a book on China's Supertrends, and riding the Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev train). The author of the China Supertrends book, Jason Inch, was very insightful and provided a unique perspective on what the future China will look like, and the role that they will play on the world stage (probably the best presentation on the trip). The Maglev runs from near downtown Shanghai to the international airport. There are only two such trains in the world (the other in Germany). The train topped out at 301 km/hr (see video below). What surprised me was that it was not nearly as smooth as I thought it would be for a train that has no wheels and levitates off the ground on magnets? There was a distinct buzzing sound as the train accelerated and it was not nearly as impressive as the TGV in France.

Picture: Visiting a popular market in Shanghai

Video: Riding the Maglev Train in Shanghai

In terms of night life and general entertainment activities, a number of us hit the karaoke bars and night clubs in Shanghai. The karaoke scene was entertaining to say the least: You get a private room with a lot of alcohol, and comfy couches to relax on while you watch your friends sing their hearts out. Other popular activities included massages! Many got daily massages (neck and foot were most popular) in Shanghai, and most of us frequented the many 711 convenience stores to load up on beverages and other essentials. One memorable night for me was when a couple of friends and I visited the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt in downtown Shanghai for drinks. It was a chance to check out the skyline at night, but also have some time to have deeper discussions on the trip, China, and the year in general at Ivey. On anther night, we celebrated a classmate’s birthday at an Indian restaurant where we enjoyed delicious Indian food. Many followed up dinner with neck massages or more karaoke. By this point in the trip a number of students had encountered some pretty nasty stomach/flu/strep-throat bugs and a few were out of commission.

Besides the hotel being a complete dump (in comparison to what we had gotten used to Beijing), Shanghai was a great experience. It probably warrants another visit at some point in time.

Off to Hong Kong…. stay tuned for part 4/4 in a few days!

Sacha Gera: China Study Trip ~ Beijing...Part 2/4

2009-01-02T15:50:00.000-08:00

It was the night before the trip and Geeta (my wife) drove a classmate and me up to Toronto to crash in an airport hotel so that we wouldn’t have to fight Toronto traffic in the morning. We were excited to say the least, and it was tough sleeping that night. The next morning, a number of classmates converged at the Continental airlines gate at Pearson International Airport. You could feel the excitement in the air that morning, although you could also tell that many in the class had been up all night packing and were exhausted.

My flight was composed of two segments, Toronto->Newark and Newark->Beijing. Upon landing in Newark, we had about an hour to connect flights. I sat down with some friends for a quick lunch and somehow we lost track of time. Yup… we almost missed our flight to Beijing. How embarrassing! Having the Continental boarding reps scream at me for being late didn’t make me feel any better, but I admit that I deserved it. Generally throughout my life, I’m the type of person who is quite timely, and relies on myself. I’m also the type that does a ton of research on our destination, follows a schedule to a tee, and often leads the group on a travel trip. This time, however, I decided that I would take a back seat, do absolutely no research on the destination, and would rely 100% on my classmates. I figured that there were enough type-A leaders in this class and that I could easily sit back and relax. Guess I didn’t get off to a good start ;)

The 14 hour plane ride to Beijing was enjoyable. I was sitting with two of my Team 5 teammates and close friends, which made for a comfortable and fun ride. As we landed in Beijing, my neighbour and I observed a puffy cloud that spanned for roughly 100 km around Beijing. It seemed like kind of an odd-shaped cloud as it had a number of pillars (like plumes) jetting out of the tops of the cloud. It didn’t take us long to figure out that this was not a regular cloud, but a pollution cloud engulfing the city. Those pillars jetting from the clouds were emissions spewing from factories! Upon landing, the pilot came on the PA and announced the current weather in Beijing; “cool and smoky.” It was hard not to laugh at that. I had never heard anyone use the word ‘smoky’ in a weather report. The Lonely Planet (popular travel book) reports that one day in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes.

I shared a taxi with a couple of mates on the way to the hotel in Beijing. The taxi driver spoke no English and all we had was a name of a hotel. About 10 minutes into the trip, we realized that our taxi driver didn’t know where to go. On top of that, it appeared as though he was illiterate and couldn’t read the Mandarin title of our hotel (apparently 40% of taxi drivers are illiterate in China). My mates and I struggled to figure out a way to convey the location of our hotel to the driver, and after much struggle we found a suitable method. My friend had an iPhone with an English to Mandarin translator. We would type sentences in English and the phone would sound them out in Mandarin. That seemed to work and we finally arrived at the hotel.

After a couple of days, it didn’t’ take me long to formulate some initial thoughts on Beijing. For one, the infrastructure was far beyond what I expected. The highways were in excellent condition and very new, the airport was efficient, the subway was second to none, and the road system seems to do a fantastic job of handling 4m cars. There was some obvious real big $’s spent on the city in preparation for the Olympics and it showed. It wasn’t just the Bird’s Nest (Olympic Stadium) or surrounding Olympic Park, the entire city had benefitted from the Olympic spend and it showed. The pollution on the other hand was out of control. It appeared foggy and hazy on most days and often times one couldn’t see the sun. The only time I had ever seen it so bad or worse was in India. Apparently, Beijing had implemented ‘Project Blue Skies’ in an effort to curtail automotive pollution whereby only even or odd number license plates could drive on specific days (most families were buying two cars with one even and one odd numbered plate to get around it). Based on the air pollution and particular matter in the air, it was difficult to judge whether the program was effective or not. Overall, the city had a historical and political feel to it as opposed to a commercial one. In some ways it felt like a big, historical capital city with a few thousand military personal roaming the streets, and was less commercialism than expected.

Picture: Beijing freeway and pollution (left), soldiers (right)

What was interesting on a personal level was the fact that after a few days in Beijing I felt more confident about the possibility of living in an Asian city or reaching out beyond North America as a possible place to live in the future. I realized that the city was in fact quite liveable and that I could function just fine independently if I needed too. In some odd way navigating the city via public transit, bartering with aggressive shop keepers, struggling with the locals over language, dealing with corrupt taxi drivers, and getting lost on a couple of occasions, was a huge confidence builder. The trip was already having a positive effect on me and an in addition I felt that I was forming strong bonds and friendships with my classmates. I already knew that this trip was worth it and that missing it would have been a big mistake.

Beijing is a city of 18m in the metro area. It’s expansive and spread out and well connected with infrastructure. The boulevards are very wide open (very Paris-like), and the buildings are spaced out which seem to make the city feel very non-dense. I must admit that I was expecting a heavy population density, and big crowds everywhere, but I found that Beijing was quite the opposite. I still can’t figure out how 18m people live in the city. Where does everyone live? Sure the city is filled with thousands of mid-rise buildings, but few skyscrapers, and it only took about 20 minutes to get into the outskirts of the city. Frankly, in my opinion Toronto appears far more congested, dense, and expansive for a city of roughly 5.5m in the metro or 1/3rd the size.

The following are some of my highlights from Beijing:

On the first night, a group of us hit a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant where we experienced authentic Chinese food and beverages. What a fantastic night it was; one in which we had a nice meal, drank lots of local beer, and shared a number of good laughs with some good friends. The entire bill for eight of us was about $45 CDN; we couldn’t believe it! Definitely a night I will remember.

Picture: Eating out on the first night

On the first full day, a group of us set out to do some sightseeing in Beijing. We covered a wide footprint of the city and nailed most of the top sights: Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and the Silk Market to name a few. I like to do a lot of sightseeing on trips and one my biggest pet peeves is when I’m with a group of people and we aren’t moving quick enough such that we miss seeing out on sights, or if someone gets tired and alters the plans for the day. What I realized on this trip is that most of us in the program are very similar in nature. Most of us have the travelling and sightseeing bug implanted deep within us; perhaps this is a common trait amongst successful Ivey applicants? Not only did we function as an efficient sightseeing group, but there were no expectations of each other. If someone wanted to depart or do their own thing there were no hard feelings. Anyhow, what a great day!

Picture: Tiananmen Square

Hitting the Silk Market for the first time was insane. Silk Market is a famous market in Beijing where you can buy a variety of goods ranging from clothing to jewellery, and where no fixed prices exist. It’s bartering nation! Having Indian origins and having visited India a number of times, I must say that I was used to the aggressiveness and bargaining ways of the store keepers. I think a number of my classmates, however, were blown away and overwhelmed by it. In terms of bargaining, the prices were very elastic! Generally, one could bargain down to 1/8th of the starting price and sometimes even more. A classmate and I spent a number of hours trying to finish up my shopping list that my wife gave me, and it was tough and tiresome to say the least. The two of us recently took a negotiations class and functioned in a good cop/bad cop manner, and it seemed to work very effectively for us. After a couple of hours the two of us were feeling exhausted, and I had a pounding headache from all the screaming and insanity in the market. By the end of it I had so much stuff that I had to buy an extra suitcase. It was only day 2 and I was up an entire suitcase…argh! We decided to grab a coffee at Starbucks (yes: Starbucks is everywhere in China and is a bit more expensive than here) before looking for a taxi to the hotel. Getting a taxi home was a horrible experience. No driver wanted to take us home on the meter (as per law) and instead they were trying to set a fixed price which was roughly 10x the normal amount (they claimed that it was cheaper in rush hour). It wasn’t the amount of $ that they were attempting to charge us, but rather the principal of being cheated: We refused to set a fixed amount. The two of us decided to walk out of the Silk Market district (roughly 15 minutes out), and we finally found a driver that put the meter on (although we needed to repeat it to him in Mandarin about five times before he actually turned it on). I think I speak for most of the class when I say that taking taxis in China is not a pleasant experience!

Another highlight of Beijing was the ‘Cultural Plunge’ activity that we all had to take part in. Essentially, as part of the China Study Trip elective we were assigned to learning teams and had to partake in the ‘Cultural Plunge’ whereby our team was allocated a budget and had to complete a number of activities. As part of those assigned activities we had to engage in a personal service, barter and buy a good, do something kind for a local, take part in a local activity, and visit a number of locations around Beijing (to name a few). One of the memorable parts of this day was meeting a rickshaw driver and having him join us for lunch. He took us to a local Chinese restaurant where I had the best Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life. What a cool experience.

Picture: Lunch with local rickshaw driver

On the last couple of days in Beijing we had an opportunity to listen to a number of keynote speakers including an executive from South African Breweries (SAB), a partner from IBM Global Business Services (consulting), and an executive from Fruits and Passion (Canadian retail chain expanding in China). We learned about the do’s and don’t of conducting business in China. For example, we learned about how the different levels of Chinese government play an active role in influencing business, including taking investment positions in many of these companies and forcing joint ventures on foreign multinationals. We also learned about how joint ventures play an important role for foreign businesses entering China, particularly in the areas of establishing government relations, and setting up operations. It’s was obvious to me after only a few days that China was a force to contend with lots of business opportunity. If you can't beat them you might as well join them.

I guess I didn’t mention much about our visit to the Great Wall of China and the Olympic Stadium Tour. What can I say other than it was incredible and very memorable. Climbing that mountain up to the Great Wall and taking a toboggan back down (almost like a bobsled) was something I’ll never forget. Checking out the Olympic Stadium was also surreal having just watched it on T.V during the summer.

Video: Sliding down from the Great Wall of China

Picture: Olympic Stadium-Bird's Nest (left), Great Wall of China (right)

Stay Tuned for Part 3 of 4; Shanghai.

Post China Study Trip Thoughts…Part 1/4

2008-12-29T22:59:00.001-08:00

It’s almost a week since I got back from China and I’m still jet-lagged (I think). I don’t know what’s up with me these days. I can’t sleep during normal EST night hours and I’m sleeping until 4:30 PM in the afternoon pretty much everyday. My family is starting to wonder what is wrong with me ;) I’ve never gone more then a couple of days like this following a trip to Asia, but I guess the late Christmas family gatherings and partying coupled with the jet lag are playing a part. I’m really tempted to take a sleeping pill to get back on track, but I guess that will be a last resort if things don’t remedy themselves. I guess we’ll give it a couple of more days. All in all, the entire trip was very memorable but I am very glad to be home with my wife and family in Ottawa. I’m now at the point where I’m ready to head back to London and get back to school. I can’t believe I’m saying that but it’s true. Family time is great, but I tend to like it in small doses and I think I’m ready to head home (yes… London feels like home now). I’m ready to jump back into the fire and meet up with my classmates that I already seem to be missing after only a week apart. I feel recharged and I’m ready to put in 110% again.

So how was China? Incredible! It changed my entire perspective on the region, and gave me lots to think about with respect to China’s prosperity, governance, and future role on the world stage. It was also an incredible journey with a bunch of great friends and colleagues. It was the type of trip that had a bit of everything: adventure, spontaneity, fun, sightseeing, sickness, excess partying, ups and downs, and drama. But it was also the type of trip that brought us closer together as a group and I think that this was the single greatest benefit of it.

Picture: My Classmates and I explore Beijing's Historical Sights:

So I figure I would write a series of blog entries to recap the trip. I’ll publish these entries in sequence as I get more time to write. This first entry is a general perspective on the trip and highlights my overall perspective on the China Study Trip. I’ll follow up with detailed blog entries on the specifics of days 1 through 11 spread over two or three blog entries…stay tuned.

It’s probably worthwhile to highlight the purpose of the trip before I go any further. The China Study Trip is an MBA elective course offered at Ivey (yes we get credit for it). The purpose of the trip is to visit China (Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong) and learn about how business is conducted in China, how it’s growing, what the business climate is like, what the culture is like, and perhaps its an opportunity to strengthen your bonds with your classmates (your network for life post-MBA).

So after almost two weeks in China, what are my immediate thoughts and perspectives on the country we hear so much about but know so little about?

-You’ve got to visit it to understand it. We hear a lot about China on the news and in the classroom; communism, human rights, growth to name a few of the dominant topics. I think that the western nations paint a fairly dismal picture on a country that is booming and is sure to have a prominent role on the world stage. Sure China has its problems, but things are changing rapidly and a visit to China is the best way to make up your own mind on how you feel about it rather then agree blindly with what the mainstream media is conveying. My perspective on China is completely changed after my visit. In fact, I almost wander if North America will be left behind in terms of infrastructure, and innovation in 20 years at the rate that China is developing and accumulating wealth and ownership of foreign debt (especially U.S. foreign debt).

Picture: Hong Kong at night (left), Maglev train in Shanghai (centre), Shanghai World Financial building - 101 stories; third tallest in world, and Grand Hyatt - 87 stories (right)

-China is absolutely a force to contend with and will pose serious competition and threat to the continued dominance of western nations. One visit to Shanghai and Beijing will surely demonstrate the economic might and future prosperity of this emerging market. Take a look at the 101 stories World Financial Centre or ride the Maglev train in Shanghai, or the metro in Beijing, and you’ll start to wander how they are doing it and whether North America is falling behind. Their economy is shifting from one that is dependant on U.S. exports to one that is dependant on its own consumption. In fact China’s economy is roughly 25% dependant on its own consumption versus about 65% for the U.S (so they depend heavily on the U.S. as does the U.S depend on them for debt funding). China’s dependence on the U.S. will likely diminish with time as Chinese incomes rise. Take a look around Beijing and Shanghai and the roads are littered with high-end Audi’s, Volkswagen’s, and Buick’s (Shanghai/General Motors ~Joint Venture). People have money in the big cities and with a small credit market it’s mind-boggling when one thinks of where the money is coming from or how families have saved so much to make such lucrative expenditures?

Picture: World Financial Centre in Shanghai at night (left), Hong Kong skyline (right)

-China’s major cities paint a bright façade for visitors, and offer the latest and greatest in infrastructure, architecture, and culture. Visitors are surely going to be blown away when the visit, but the question I kept asking myself was what were the rural areas like where 80% of the Chinese population lives? Do the big cities paint a false picture of what most of China is really like? I’m guessing that the rural areas/tier 2-3 cities are pretty third world. We had a chance to visit a pseudo-rural area one day and sure enough it was quite a different picture than their tier 1 cities. But China continues its cultural revolution and there is much talk of a trend taking shape whereby a mass migration of rural inhabitants will populate large cities, and new master-planned cities that will give Dubai a run for its money. The government is agile and can surely make things happen quickly without having to work their way through a House of Commons or Senate. After a visit to a new master-planned city near Souzhou (a city 2 hours outside of Beijing) I was blown away of how this new high tech master-planned city was becoming reality. I was also blown away of how they were able to preserve their cultural heritage.

Picture: Picturesque Souzhou (left), and Forbidden City in Beijing (right)

-The Chinese government is agile; a perfect quality in today’s world. Just look at their bailout package. Almost $600B U.S. in infrastructure projects announced and immediately approved, and that money has already spawned construction projects within weeks of the announcement. Compare that to the U.S. bailout that falters once, twice in Senate, and will likely take 12 to 18 months before infrastructure projects are kicked off the ground. Are we agile enough in North America? Is China’s socialist republican ways the reason of why they are able to control their 1.3 billion people and set the stage for economic prosperity while India (the world’s largest democracy) struggles to get control over its population and is easily 20 years behind China in development? Did India do it backwards? Should capitalism and democratic ways come after the government gains control and develops the infrastructure it needs (as it appears to be happening in China)? What can India learn from China?

Well that’s a taste of my learning’s and questions from China. Stay tuned for detailed accounts on the trip as I follow-up with additional postings over the coming days and weeks.

Happy New Year’s….Until next time.

Sacha

China…Here I Come!

2008-12-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

I’m done with my exams for 2008 and I’m off to China next week! I’m participating in the China Study Trip along with 50 of my Ivey friends and I’m starting to get really excited. Geeta is heading to Ottawa for a month and I’ll be joining her and my family post-China.

Oh my god, life is passing by way too quickly. I’ve been having way too much fun this year, and I’m already starting to worry that life in the “Ivey bubble” is going to end soon. I know all too well that when I’m back to work, life will get routine again and that I’ll be submerged in my career. I know that this year will go do down in my books as the most memorable one, and perhaps the most influential one in my path towards ‘elderly wisdom’.

I know I’ve had an incredible experience here at Ivey, and perhaps my experience is not totally reflective of everyone else’s. I know I’ve been lucky to get a job six months ahead of graduation. I know that I’ve been lucky to make so many incredible friends. I know I’ve taken an easier path with respect to my course selection and extracurricular activities. I know that I’ve allowed this year to become a game changing one. I know I’ve grown in so many ways. I know that I don’t regret any of my decisions this year. BUT, I also know that not all of my Ivey colleagues have had the same wonderful year as I have had. Perhaps I paint a rosier picture of life at Ivey than that of the one that many of my other classmates would paint. What can I say; I’m a positive guy, an eternal optimist, and a believer in forceful optimism. My positive experience at Ivey may not be the same as yours, but I promise that you’ll learn a lot and that the chances of you regretting it are slim. That said; don’t always take my positivity in these blog entries as proof that you will have the same great experience. Honestly, your experience in this program is largely based off what you make it to be and will vary student to student.

Last week, I had the opportunity to see both Bill Clinton and Paul Martin in one day! What an inspiring set of speakers. I wrote a blog for the Financial Post on my key takeaways from these two leaders. Have a read if you get a chance. Feedback is always welcome and appreciated!

When you enter the MBA program, you’re told that you’ll depart as a more effective decision maker. Of course one would think that this skill set is more applicable in the business world, but it’s amazing to see how it’s very applicable in your personal life as well. For example, in my family we have an inherent problem whereby we have a tough time departing with useless articles and clothing that we’ve accumulated over the years. One visit to my parent’s house and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. My wife is a believer in a non-clutter environment, and departing with all things that are not used within the last year. That said, I was told/forced (sorry honey) to clean out my closet a few weekends ago. I used my newly acquired MBA decision making abilities (that allow me to make quick/effective decisions based on facts) to get rid of all the clothing that I had not worn in the last year. I ended up with a garbage bag full of clothing that will be donated to a good cause, and an organized closet that would even make our resident fashion expert proud. A year ago I would not have been willing to let go of these clothes, but I am now able to effectively make the decisions to do so and I attribute that to my $62k MBA education. See…its money well spent ;)

As one of my key goals this year, I’ve decided to become a less stubborn person. I’ve lost good friends in the past because of my stubbornness, and I don’t want to continue on that path. In the last couple of weeks, I feel really good about some of the changes I’ve made. My wife always tells me that I need to be less sensitive and less stubborn. I couldn’t agree more and I’m going to continue working on that through 2009.

What an incredibly crazy political time in Canada? My classmate wrote a really interesting blog on it that really makes you think about whether the Coalition Government is the way to go. Check it out.

Since I’ll be in China until late December, this will likely be my last posting until then. I promise a full report on my experiences in China; Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Have a great holiday and I wish you a Happy New Year. I promise to keep posting through 2009.

Until next time…

Sacha

From an Ivey MBA Candidate’s Wife

2008-11-23T13:02:00.000-08:00

My wife (Geeta) recently wrote up a blog entry for the Ivey MBA Student Blogging website on a what it's like for a partner supporting an MBA candidate. I thought she did a fantastic job in portraying a realistic picture of what's its been like for her. Here it is.

----------------------
I was so excited when I found out my husband (Sacha) got into the Richard Ivey School of Business to do his MBA. More than anything I think I was excited knowing that we were going to be moving to London for a year. Both my husband and I were born and raised in Ottawa and never lived anywhere else. This was going to be a great opportunity to move somewhere different and expand upon our horizons. I was also thinking that being away from our family would bring us closer to each other.

I think I was more excited than my husband was about the prospect of meeting new people. As soon as we moved to London I got to work making new friends. I tried to find about the Ivey Circle – a group built by the partners (of the MBA students) for the partners. I couldn’t find anyone that knew anything about it (all the people that used to run it had left in the past cohorts), so I decided to start it up again. It was a really great opportunity to meet new people in a new city. It’s nice to have a group of people to hang out with when your partner has a 24 hour report due or when they have exams to study for. I hope that the Ivey Circle continues when we all leave with our partners since it’s been a really fun, and interactive way to get closer to people in the same situation.

When we first got to London I was a working woman. My job was one that you could take up anywhere as long as you had your laptop with you. I had been working at Nortel for over 11 years (the last few years as a Project Manager) and I wasn’t really enjoying my time there anymore - but my husband and I had a deal. The deal was that I would keep my job while he did his MBA and then after that I would quit and go into Event Planning like I had been wanting to for the past 6 years. It was a great plan, but one I was worried wouldn’t materialize because making a career change is not easy to initiate. Anyway, as fate would have it I got laid off (after surviving 24 rounds of layoffs at Nortel) shortly after we had moved to London.

I have to say that this sudden change in our lives, not to mention in our finances was a stressful time for us. Add to the fact that Sacha was in school day and night didn’t help the situation either.
After a lot of anxiety and not having Sacha there to talk to all the time, I decided that this was the best thing that could have happened to me. I embraced it and within a few months signed up for a number of Event Planning volunteering opportunities. I even got an opportunity to help plan the first Canadian MBA Leadership Conference at Ivey. Now I’m well on my way to transitioning into my new career and I am very excited about doing Event Planning full time!

These past 6 months have had their ups and downs. It’s always a strain on a relationship when you don’t get the time to be around each other all the time. During the times that I’m busy with friends or an event, I find it easy to be in London. During the times when I don’t have much going on, I find it hard being without my family. It’s tough to be home all day and not get any interaction with people. I guess the key is to keep yourself really busy. I found it a real treat to be at home in the beginning, but after a while there are only so many books you can read and only so much television you can watch ;-)

We always knew that Sacha would change as a person due to his MBA. It really is a personality challenge as well as an academic one. Being a part of this Ivey MBA “bubble” as they call it, has really brought out the social side to my husband. I like that but at the same time I realize that it takes time away from “us.” I used to get a lot more quality time with my husband and now I get time with him and his friends when he does have free time. I like the group thing too but after a while a little alone time is needed. We both find it much easier when his school work is lighter, but we have to make a real effort when school is demanding.

I know Sacha has learnt a lot about himself during his MBA program but I find that I have learnt a lot about myself too. I’m learning, for the first time, that when I don’t have a lot of interaction with people I really miss it. I learnt that when I like what I’m doing as a career I’ll put a 150% into it and that I can get so motivated. I’ve learnt that I was in the wrong career and I am so proud of myself for making a change now instead of regretting it for the rest of my life. I’ve learnt that I love meeting new people and making new friends. I’ve learnt that I really do miss family when I am not around them. I’ve learnt that whatever it takes, Sacha and I will work it out. But most of all, I’ve learnt that moving to London, getting out of our shell, was the best investment we made in ourselves.

Half Done!

2008-11-15T16:51:00.000-08:00

It’s Saturday afternoon and I find myself back in Ottawa. Geeta and I decided to take a spontaneous trip back home after my team presentation (which was on “religionomics – the impact of religion on economic growth) concluded on Thursday. I’m currently sitting in a walk in clinic, surrounded by plenty of sick people….I’m paranoid that I may catch another horrible virus. My regular doctor in Ottawa doesn’t work weekends and I was forced to come into a walk-in-clinic. I’ve been sick for almost 2 weeks. What started off as a soar throat, and a weak voice (which is probably good for me because I talk way too loudly), has turned into chest congestion and I’m thinking that I need antibiotics? I haven’t exercised in two weeks and am dying to run again and get into shape for my upcoming China trip.

The drive up to Ottawa was quick. We listened to a dance club mix on the way up…my favourite lyric these days: “Daddy-O, you got the swagger of a champion.” You’ll never guess where that one comes from. …It’s Britney Spears, “Womenizer.” Wow, I’ve got a Britney Spears song stuck in my head …that’s pretty sad, although I do love the line. I’ll have to incorporate that one into a blog entry somehow ;)

Coming back to my hometown/Otown has been very refreshing. I didn’t realize how much I missed home over the last couple of months. It’s been really nice spending time with family, my nieces and nephews, and friends. Geeta and I have been splitting up our time here in Ottawa; she’s been living at her parents and myself at mine. I enjoyed a boyz day out with my dad and brother yesterday; we went out for Thai food and caught the new Bond flick (by the way I wasn’t too impressed with the movie). The family hooked up for an extended family dinner last night in the popular Byward Market after having pre-drinks/snacks at my inlaws…fun times. I’m looking forward to coming back here for Christmas after the China trip. My baby niece Sanya is growing up so fast and I feel like I’m missing out.

Unexpectedly, coming back to Ottawa made me realize how much I was being missed at home. I didn’t expect that. It made me realize how important it is to me to be close to home and close to my family. My parents are undergoing household renovations, and my dad has been taking on a lot of extra physical activities that I normally would have helped out with. My mother is recuperating from back injuries after a nasty ‘freezing rain’ fall. I wish I was here more to help them out. My brother told me a few weeks back that I should consider staying close to home in the future especially as our parents get older. That kind of hit home with me and I think it is important for me to be close to home no matter what endeavours I pursue. Moving to Toronto post-MBA is closer than London (4 hr versus 7 hr drive to Ottawa) so I hope I can be home a bit more to help out.

On a sadder note, I was disappointed to hear that a few of my Nortel colleagues were let go after last week’s dismal news, including two of my favourite executives Lauren Flaherty (CMO) and John Roese (CTO). As you may recall from my previous blog entries, Lauren Flaherty was going to come to Ivey in October to do a talk on leadership but had to cancel last minute…I guess I know why now. Last week, I published a blog entry for the Financial Post. That entry has been read by thousands of people around the globe and I’ve been getting lots of email and feedback on it. It’s amazing how far blogging can reach out. On the positive side of things, the article stimulated a lot of debate as it was picked up by other websites including allaboutnortel.com and others. It even prompted a counter blog to be written against my pro-government intervention view point. The Financial Post/National Post wanted to publish it in print last Tuesday but I opted not to go through with it for personal reasons. I have enjoyed the Nortel/Government debate and hope that I continue to write more about controversial topics such as this one. Thanks to everyone for your feedback and encouragement.

So what else is going on?

A couple of weeks back I had the opportunity to attend an Ivey Alumni Award Gala in Toronto. The alumni chapter in Toronto was honouring the Ivey Business Person of the Year (given each year to an Ivey alumnus from Toronto). This year’s recipient was the CEO of Manulife Insurance. Attending this gala was a surreal experience; there were CXO’s and EVPs from pretty much every major Canadian corporation. Its pretty cool being apart of the ‘Ivey club’ and to be apart of an alumni network that has so many prominent names. In fact part of our student group sat at the Harry Rosin table, where CEO Larry Rosen entertained us. When you come to Ivey, you often hear about how three out of every five CEOs in Canada are Ivey or Harvard grads…its one of those useless facts that you kind of just kind of shrug off. When you get an opportunity to attend a gala such as this one, that fact becomes deeply engrained in your mind…as you start to wonder if that will be in your own fate fifteen years down the road. Another notable event worth mentioning is that ten Ivey students got to go down to Toronto to see/meet with former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair, Alan Greenspan. In a couple of weeks, I will get the opportunity to attend a Bill Clinton talk in London…keep you posted.

Speaking of Toronto, I was back in Toronto last weekend to attend another MBA fair with some of my student ambassador colleagues. It’s always an honour to represent your school at these fairs and its kind of neat talking to prospective applicants, especially since you were in their shoes only a short time ago. The fair was successful and fulfilling on a personal level and I hope to attend many more in the future.

On a side note, I wanted to quickly mention my MBA learning team, “Team 5.” If there is one thing that has made my Ivey MBA experience it’s my learning team. I am a true believer in collaboration and team work and I was touched to come into class on my birthday with a gift waiting on my seat from my team. …it was a book on collaboration…how fitting and how touching. Our team just wrote a blog entry on "The Dynamics of Team Five" on the MBAA Student blogging site. Give it a read if time permits.

I thought I’d end this entry with an update on my ‘networking’ activities as my brother likes to call it (aka “partying” activities). Yes I’ve calmed down on the partying scene and typically go out once a week, and only if my wife is willing to join ;) I admit that one of my primary personality changes this year is the fact that I like to party now. I know it’s been a tough adjustment for Geeta, but I guess I know that it’s only going to last another six months and I want to make the most of the “ivey bubble” experience and ‘network’ it up before heading back into the routine working world. The last few weeks have involved some pretty crazy ‘networking’ activities. I celebrated my 28th birthday like it was my last birthday. I celebrated Halloween like it was the last time I would ever dress up….and next weekend I will celebrate a “bollywood”/”Iveywood” theme party in true Indian fashion and bhangra it up until my feet hurt. What can I say…I’m having a blast at Ivey and it’s definitely going to go down as one of the most memorable years of my life.

Four weeks to go until the China Study Trip….can’t wait.

Until next time,

Sacha

28 and counting…

2008-11-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

It’s my birthday today and I’m 28 years young. I’m feeling 20 these days, and I think I look it too aside from the greys that I can’t seem to hide anymore …I recently shaved my head, and no more goatee for a while now ;)

Wow a lot has changed this year, and despite the many ups and downs, 27 was a great year for me and I’m happy with what I’ve accomplished. I feel like 27 was the year where I got out of my routine and out of my shell, and explored unchartered territory. It was year where I made so many great friends, and took risks…definitely a defining year for me and one that I’ll remember.

Geeta has been spoiling me rotten all week and she definitely made my birthday a special one. I missed not being around family today to celebrate and I’m looking forward to seeing them at Christmas after a class trip to China! Speaking of China, I just attended a class preparation seminar for our China MBA study trip. In that seminar we got a few mandarin lessons and it turns out that accents are accentuations are really important in the language. As a learning exercise, the class was taught how to say ‘da’ four different ways using the four mandarin accentuations...it was pretty funny hearing the class repeat ‘da’ over and over in different tones.

When I was born in 1980, President Ronal Reagan was elected into office that day as I’m told by my mother. Today, on my birthday President-Elect Obama is elected into office. I feel like I’m living through a historical moment…kind of like all those folks that lived through the first man on the moon landing, the JFK era, or the Vietnam War. I guess it isn’t entirely true (that I haven’t lived through historical moments); I mean I did live through the fall off the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, the dot com boom and bust, and 911….but somehow, Obama takes the cake. It almost feels as if the world took a deep breath today and expressed a sigh of relief….like everything is going to be ok :) Just wish the damn stock market felt that way today! It’s still paining me to look at my portfolio.

What were my key takeaways from year 27?

-Genius comes in times of adversity.
-Don’t give up hope when things look hopeless.
-A conservative person can become a conservative risk taker.
-Successes are nothing if you don’t have friends or family to share them with.
-Negativity is contagious but so is positivity.
-Don’t take all the good things you have for granted.
-Don’t let friendships slip away as a result of stubbornness.

I mention that these were my key takeaways, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve learned to master them :) I still have a long way to go on embracing many of these takeaways. Let’s face it: I hate adversity, I have downer days, I’m conservative in nature, I love family and friends but in doses, I love to bitch about things on occasion, I definitely take things for granted, and I can be one of the most stubborn asses you’ve ever met on most days….but hey... I’m working on it ;)

So what’s 28 going to be all about? I want it to be about successful new beginnings in a new city (Toronto), successful partnership with my wife, good friendships, keeping it good with family, making a difference, and having impact.

Thanks to everyone for you warm birthday wishes….means a lot to me.

Until next time….

Sacha

Blogging...blogging...blogging

2008-11-03T07:56:00.001-08:00

I didn’t get much of a chance to write an entry this week. I’ve recently extended my blogging activities and I’m now blogging for three sites including this one! I can’t possibly write three different entries on a regular basis so here’s how I’m going to do this:

http://sachagera.blogspot.com: will be my personal blog highlighting the ups and downs of my MBA experience and will have a realistic and more personal feel to it.

http://iveymbastudents.blogspot.com: will generally be the same entry as this blog site but minus the personal stuff (since its audience is primarily for prospective MBA students). Sometimes, I will add MBA specific stuff that I won’t be adding to this site.

I’m also now blogging for the Financial Post along with two other Ivey MBA students. Check out my blog entries @ http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/executive/default.aspx . These entries will be focussed on business issues as well as MBA related articles.

Since I don’t have a formal blog entry this week, I thought I’d attach a link to my latest posting on the Financial Post. It’s about a topic I’m really passionate about ;)…can you guess? Yes, I get made fun of a lot in school for constantly referring to Nortel during our class discussions and this article is called “Why Ottawa Should Save Nortel.” Even the professors poke at me about Nortel to the point where it’s getting a bit annoying! Hope you enjoy it and I would love to hear some feedback on it:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/executive/archive/2008/11/03/why-ottawa-should-save-nortel.aspx

Until next time…

Sacha

Inspiration from Passion

2008-10-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

Its late Saturday night and I’m writing a blog entry...Don’t ask me why. I stayed home tonight which is pretty untypical for a Saturday night in the Ivey MBA program. Geeta joined me late in the evening after she put in a long day helping out with the Canadian MBA Leadership Conference (more on that later). We decided to keep it low key tonight and so we rented ‘Harold and Kumar’; pretty funny and silly….exactly the type of movie we were looking for tonight. Geeta fell asleep during the movie (she’s been on her toes non-stop for a number of days) and hence I’m burning off some excess energy as I write this. Today was a weird day. I think I got really bored! Life passes by really fast in an MBA program with school work, friends, and all the related class social events. Many of us call it the “Ivey Bubble”, a year of unprecedented learning, socializing, networking, and classroom drama. The truth is that I haven’t really sat at home doing nothing in a really long time. I almost feel like today was a bit of a detox session from life in the Ivey bubble ;) The weird thing is that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tend to become restless when I’m doing nothing. The good thing was that the Senators were playing the Leafs. The unfortunate part is that the Sens lost again! It has been pretty depressing to watch them this year (so far). I hate it when my team is on a losing streak.

I thought I’d mention that I’m now an uncle for eighth time over. My sister-in-law delivered a healthy baby boy at 9lbs 8oz in London, U.K. Baby Adrian is doing great and hopefully we’ll get to see him soon!

When Geeta (my wife) lost her job at Nortel earlier this year, she was as happy as could be. I didn’t understand why. I had just taken a leave from work to pursue the MBA and we had gone from two good incomes to zero in a relatively short period of time. In honesty I was a bit scared. She told me that she wanted to do a career switch; that she was done with tech and that she wanted to become an event planner! She had talked about it for years and I guess it was a good time to explore it… but I’ll admit that I was a bit sceptical. I’ve always been a believer that anyone who is passionate about their job will be a success at it. I never really understood Geeta’s passion for event planning until she took on a volunteer position to be an event planner for the first ever CMLC (Canadian MBA Leadership Conference), which was hosted at Ivey this past weekend with students coming in from 13 Canadian MBA programs across Canada. Our MBA student council here at Ivey were pleased to have Geeta helping out and warmly integrated her into the role. Geeta did a fantastic job in helping to plan and organize the event, and it was a huge success. Above and beyond everything though, I realized how passionate Geeta was about the role. She’d been working really hard at it for a couple of weeks now and I hadn’t seen her like that in a long time. If there’s one thing I get inspired by, it’s watching people’s passion for things they love. My wife’s passion for event planning inspired me this week, and I’m really proud of her. I know now more then ever that event planning is what she’s meant to do. For those of you contemplating a post-MBA career; don’t lose sight of your passions despite the $$ that other careers may offer in the short run. I truly believe that following one’s passions is a long-term gain perhaps in exchange for some short-term pain.

Speaking of the CMLC conference; it was an initiative originally conceived by some past Ivey MBA student councils (now graduated). This current MBA council actually made it happen and it’s a testament to the strength of the students in this school. The American schools have been hosting conferences like this for sometime now; sharing best practices and strengthening the MBA experience across their country and across many schools. Hopefully, the CMLC will achieve the same objectives here in Canada and will continue on for years to come.

Brian Tobin, former Premier of Newfoundland and Minister of Industry & Fisheries and Oceans kicked off the CMLC conference on Friday with a heart-felt speech. He spoke candidly from his experience, and offered many wise words of wisdom. He was polished, honest, and simply a fantastic speaker! I guess I know where his daughter (a classmate of mine) gets it from ;) The one thing I will take away from his speech was some of his words about what constitutes a successful leader…it went something like this: “A good leader is someone who can sail the ship through the rough waters and is not afraid to jump into tough conditions. Any leader can sail a ship through calm seas.” I couldn’t agree more. He spoke highly of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his work ethic as a leader. He shared accounts of how there was never a bottleneck in Chretien’s leadership (i.e. his desk was always clear at the end of the day and all his work and decisions were made before he left the office). He spoke about leaders that navigated through the rough seas and that had to make tough decisions that weren’t popular; Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Brian Mulroney in Canada with the introduction of the GST. He talked about achieving the impossible; Canada eliminating its $42 billion deficit in the 1990’s and producing ten consecutive surpluses. It was a fascinating speech to say the least, and you could really see the passion come through from all that he’s done in life…inspirational to me!

I wanted to share a quick story from class this week. Last Thursday, our Professor came down with laryngitis. We were studying a case on the 2004 NHL Hockey strike. As a solution to the problem, she asked a classmate to lead and teach the class. One particular classmate stepped up to the challenge and did a fantastic job that really blew us all away. This student actually worked for the NHL Players Association at one time (the union side of the strike). What impressed many of us wasn’t so much his in-depth knowledge on the case (which was incredible), but rather how well he did acting in the role of a case-based facilitator. The role of the professor in a case-based school like Ivey is not to lecture or to provide answers but rather to facilitate a class-led discussion by probing, challenging, and pushing the subtle intricacies of the case. It’s this method that makes the students think in new ways and consider new angles; the perfect method to developing an effective decision maker. It’s amazing how well this student did, and its further evidence of the depth of the students in this class.

Until next time…

Sacha

Check out other Ivey MBA Student Blogs @ http://iveymbastudents.blogspot.com .

The MBA Pays Off....

2008-10-20T17:01:00.001-07:00

October has been a good month for blog writing ;) As you can probably tell, I’ve got a lot more time on my hands these days. We’re currently in the GLOBE module studying economics, technology, and demographics amongst other topics and it is definitely less intense then the first 5 months. I find myself free most nights which has given me time to watch some t.v.; something that I haven’t really done since I’ve started the MBA.

Lots of news to report! First off, I’ve decided to take up a job offer from IBM!! I still can’t believe it myself. I’ll be working as a consultant in the telecommunications sector of IBM’s’ Global Business Services division, and yes that means that I will be leaving Nortel after six years of service ;( As many of you know, I am a Nortel loyalist and it was an extremely tough decision for me to make. I’ve loved every minute of my career at Nortel and its company that is very close to my heart. Many things have changed over the last month at Nortel and I feel that IBM will be a good move for me both from a career progression perspective, but also from a security perspective. Working as a consultant in the telecommunications sector will give me a first hand look into the business operations of our primary carriers in Canada including BCE, Telus, Rogers and others. Having spent the majority of my career in the technology and networking side of telecom, I am sure that it will be a wonderful learning experience for me to work to understand how the carriers operate and the business issues that they face day to day. I feel like the consulting position is a good fit for me as it aligns with my strengths, and I feel that it will allow me to enhance and fine tune the skills I will need in order to achieve my long term goals (to become an executive one day). Geeta and I will be moving to Toronto in May! Its kind of nice having a job locked in six months before graduation, and I think its proof that Ivey has a great brand/reputation and that there are always jobs out there even in a bad economy.

I thought I’d mention something about negotiations while I’m still on the topic of accepting a job with IBM. I recently completed a negotiations elective course in the MBA program and learned a number of invaluable tips. Despite not doing very well in the course from a grading perspective, I did find it very useful. I attribute my offer negotiation success to the some of my key takeaways from that course as follows: firstly to hold your cards close to your chest (i.e. not being too eager to give away too much information about what you want), being patient (i.e. taking a couple days to think about offer/counter-offer), knowing your starting point/resistance point/low point and a best alternative before engaging in talks, framing your case positively, and using a number of negotiation tactics including the ‘flinch’ techniques and ‘vise’ technique. I won’t elaborate on all of that because I don’t want to ruin the course for prospective students, but I will say that I was able to negotiate a better package as a result of my negotiating efforts. Furthermore, during the course itself we had to partake in an offer negotiation simulation with a classmate and we also got to watch our Ivey recruiting director, Sharon Irwin, engage in a simulated job offer negotiation with some lucky volunteer classmates. Both of these exercises were very valuable. What worked most effectively in my case was my patience, the fact that I had a job in my hand (at Nortel; which gave me ability to negotiate confidently), and understanding my value/being well-researched (Vault message board site rules!). The toughest part of the negotiation was when I wanted a one level promotion above where they were coming in at. I didn’t like the level IBM was bringing me in at based on my experience. This negotiation point was a deal breaker for me if I didn’t get them to go one level higher, and I had to really fight for it. I had to justify my position by positively framing my prior experience, and by sending in additional information including a more detailed resume. Ivey’s recruiting office typically has students put together a one page ‘business resume’ that makes it very difficult to squeeze in all your experience in. The ‘business’ one page format resume is great for many MBA jobs, but in my experience I found that tech companies typically preferred the two page detailed resume. Anyhow, I am very pleased with my negotiations and I’m happy to be joining IBM!!

I haven’t really mentioned the market turmoil all that much so I thought I’d comment on that. The stock market has erased 42% of Geeta and I’s portfolio over the last month. It hurts and our spending habits have been affected! I just count my lucky stars for not investing my tuition money ahead of the MBA ;) Prior to the MBA, Geeta and I sold our rental property in Ottawa in order to finance my MBA (amongst other reasons including a string of bad tenants). I decided to keep most of that money in cash on the advice of a very good Ivey finance professor (thanks Prof. Hatch). Some recent good news is that the LIBOR rate spread (the spread between the Central Bank interest rate and the rate that banks lend to each other) is coming down, which is an indication that the liquidity crisis is hopefully being resolved by the interest rate cuts and bailout $$ injected by the world’s governments. Now we just have to deal with that pesky recession that we’re in ;) I have a feeling that markets are at their lows and I’m envious of anyone that has the cash to jump in now. We recently had a special class on the credit crisis (delivered by Prof. Hatch), and I find myself far more knowledgeable about what’s going on. The other day, I flipped on CNBC and found myself understanding the economics lingo of the credit crunch…which was really cool. Ever heard of “jingle mail”? That’s when someone forecloses on their house (i.e. decides to go bankrupt and abandon their mortgage) by mailing their keys to the bank…hence the ‘jingle’ of the keys in the mail ;) I guess excess ‘jingle mail’ is part of what started this mess.

I recently participated in the CIBC Run for the Cure. It was my first time fundraising and doing something for a good cause. I ran 5km for breast cancer. Who knew that it would be so fulfilling? I felt good about the whole thing and I know that I will continue to participate in more events like this in the future. The Ivey Circle team raised over $2700 for the cause. If you haven’t done something like this before, I promise you that you’ll feel good about yourself after you do it.

On a side note, we’ve recently been talking about AIDS in Africa a lot in class. In particular, we’ve learned about how severe this pandemic is and how 30% of the African continent has AIDS and will die in the next 20 years. This is wrong and we must do more as a generation to rectify the situation. Bono is one of my idols and I particularly respect the work he has done to raise awareness on the issue. He is using his celebrity and power to lobby governments to open their wallets and minds to work around the political corruption in many African countries and to ensure that help is reaching the people. Bono was recently interviewed on CNN. What blew me away were the facts about how the work everyone has been doing over the last decade has made a difference….something we don’t hear as much about. How has the world’s efforts helped Africa over the last decade? Debt cancellation (i.e. rich countries cancelling the debt of poor African countries) has resulted in 29 million more African children in school! In addition 2.5 million Africans are now on AIDS/HIV drugs as result of initiatives like the ONE campaign and Project Red. It is estimated that $25 billion would put almost every African in school, would eradicate malaria, and dramatically increase clean water supplies. That’s not a lot of money considering the combined $3.1 trillion that the U.S. and the EU have recently announced as part of the credit crisis bail out. I know that money is not the entire solution to this problem; dealing with political corruption in Africa, and educating the people are also keys to this puzzle….but I’m blown away with the progress and I’m more confident that we can help beat this issue down. Check out Bono’s CNN interview @
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14lXAy_9vKc .

Last Friday was the Indian festival of Karwa Chauth! Karwa Chauth is a fast practiced by Indian wives around the world to ensure the well-being, prosperity and longevity of their husbands. Based on the website http://www.karwachauth.com/ , it’s also a festival that provides an opportunity for all married women to get close to their in-laws. Having been married for four years now, Geeta (my wife) has taken part in this festival four times…thanks for wishing me long life honey! On the day of the festival, Geeta didn’t eat all day until the moon comes out. When she sees the moon, she does a little prayer with me and then opens her fast. It’s really fascinating to take part in the festival (especially since I was born in Canada and haven’t done a lot to keep in touch with my roots). I never knew much about the festival until I was asked to explain it to some of my peers at school the other day. Of course the first question I got was why the men don’t have to do the same thing for their wives….good point….I guess its just tradition ;)

That was a long one! Until next time…

Sacha

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-10-12T10:32:00.001-07:00

Its Thanksgiving weekend and I’m sitting in a coffee shop in downtown London called Coffee Culture. It’s one of my favourite spots to chill out at on a Sunday. I often come here to prep my cases for Monday’s class, or just to catch up on email etc. It’s become a bit of a habit and its one of the things I’ve come to really appreciate while living in downtown London. Of course tomorrow is a holiday and I’m exploiting my time off to the fullest; 10 hours of sleep per night baby!

When Geeta and I took the plunge to accept the Ivey MBA admission and make the move to London, Ontario, Canada we came down twice to scope out locations to live at. Neither one of us had ever lived in a downtown core before. We are both more of your suburban goers and taking the decision to live in downtown wasn’t an easy one. Coming into the MBA, Geeta and I decided that we wanted to live out of our characters; to take more risks, and to try out new things/experiences. As part of the motto we decided to take up an apartment downtown and we love it. If you’re considering Ivey for your MBA and if you have a car, be sure to consider living downtown. Most of our social events are downtown and you rarely need to drive anywhere except for class! Furthermore, its quieter then typical downtowns in bigger cities and you are privileged to be within walking distance of a number of great restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, and food markets. While we’re on the topic of ‘living outside our character,’ I guess it’s fair to mention that the two of us have become far more outgoing this year. For example, Geeta and I grew out of the clubbing/partying scene many years ago and were more of the hang out at home with friends/dinner/occasional drink type of people. With 70 new friends in the MBA program, we find ourselves clubbing it up, attending theme parties, and doing things we stopped doing so long ago. We realized that when you have so many good friends, things that we didn’t typically like doing become super fun! We are already worrying about the end of the program when this fantastic experience will come to an end. Since over half the class will end up in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) post-MBA, there is definitely a huge incentive for us to move to Toronto so we can continue living it up.

The last week has been really interesting. I’ve been interviewing outside Nortel and I’m faced with some tough decisions on whether to leave Nortel and go elsewhere. Moreover, I’m being faced with a dilemma’s around $$ versus passions/interests versus job security. The stock market crash and pending economic crisis are weighing heavily on my mind. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to hold out for that perfect post-MBA position. I’m a believer that the perfect job lies in the intersection of where one’s passions intersect with one’s strengths. If you find a job in that sweet spot, the $$ will surely follow. Considering that unemployment is likely to rise, and wages will thereafter fall (thanks to my recent macro-economic training at school), I’m thinking that I maybe better off financially locking into a job earlier rather than later. Couple that with the fact that Geeta is in the midst of a career switch (it will take a bit of time for her to bring in income), I’m thinking I ought to sacrifice and compromise a bit on my post-MBA passions. Wow…who knew it would be so hard not to sell out. Keep you posted.

About a month ago, I had an opportunity to attend the World MBA Fair in Toronto with some of my student ambassador colleagues. We were representing Ivey, and what an experience it was! The Ivey booth was by far the most popular at the fair (including many prominent U.S. schools). The sheer volume of interest in Ivey reconfirmed the power of the Ivey brand and I think we all felt proud to represent the school. There were approximately 15 of us there representing Ivey (students, admissions staff, faculty, dean), and I don’t think any of us had more then 10 minutes to rest our voices over a six hour period as there were constant line ups of prospective students looking to talk to us. Pretty awesome experience! The next one is in Toronto on Nov 8 at the Convention Centre (downtown) for those that are interested; http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/mba/contact/fairs.htm .

On a side note, Slice TV has been filming a reality show at Ivey for the last few weeks and will continue to do so for a few more weeks. Its not The Apprentice, but it’s still kind of cool being able to tell your friends that they are filming a show at your school (although despite numerous attempts I haven’t been able to get into the background while filming….;)). The annoying part is that they are using our gym and common room for six weeks during the daytime hours. It’s put a bit of a damper in my workout schedule since the showers and workout equipment aren’t available 8-5pm daily. What’s impressive is that the school has been quick to listen to the student complaints and have made amends by setting up some treadmills in an alternative room with shower facilities….definitely makes me happy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sacha

Out with September and into the Fall...

2008-10-05T16:46:00.000-07:00

It’s October, and the weather has taken a sudden turn toward winter. The mornings and evenings are cold and I’ve pulled out the old fall leather jacket to cope. It’s been a really interesting two weeks to say the least. We’ve started the GLOBE module in the Ivey MBA program. One week into this module and we’ve already overviewed macro-economics; who knew that economics would come so naturally to me? I guess having two parents with PhD’s in economics has rubbed off on me as much as I hate to admit it ;) GLOBE has been a nice break as I assumed it would be based on the word of previous outgoing students. There’s far less preparation and I feel like I’m getting more time for myself.

We had a week off in late September for recruitment activities. I spent the majority of the week in Ottawa. It was a crazy week. First off, a piece of good news; I successfully managed to throw Geeta a surprise birthday party….wow who knew that it would take so much coordination! The important part is that Geeta was surprised and we all had a great time; it was really nice catching up with friends and family. I figure it was time I surprised her with a bday party considering that she threw me a surprise birthday party three years in a row! The funny thing is that in all of those surprise bday party’s, I was in fact caught by surprise ;) As a joke, one of my best friend’s thought it would be funny to throw me a fourth surprise party in a row, and yes I was fooled again. I guess I’m just gullible.

Life at Nortel has taken a dramatic change to dark side in the last two weeks. The company is selling a major business unit and is enduring difficult times. The stock has plummeted over 50% and additional restructuring is likely pending. It’s heart-breaking for me to watch. I feel very passionate about Nortel and I want to see it succeed. I really wanted to be a part of the rebuilding process of that company post-MBA, but I'm feeling like it’s too late for this Canadian icon. Nortel gave my first job in high school, gave me a scholarship for my undergrad engineering studies, hired me back as a full-time employee after graduating, promoted me quickly, put me through their accelerated leadership program, and gave me a leave of absence for a year while I pursued my MBA. Do I feel loyal?....you bet and it hurts to watch this company falter. The full impact of the news was quite visible during my visit to Ottawa, Nortel’s R&D headquarters. I’m still on a leave of absence from Nortel while I pursue my MBA, and I spent three days out of my recruitment week catching up with colleagues, executive mentors, and my internal network. Having lunch with my former Leadership program teammates was an eye opener. We were supposed to be the cheerleaders for Nortel; the bunch that represented the new leadership and that motivated others to make Nortel a great Canadian company again. We were supposed to help make a difference. It was really hard for me to witness that even our most enthusiastic future Nortel leaders had suffered from the morale blow. Mind you, the news release is fresh in everyone’s head and I realize that with time the morale will go up but something seems different this time. Moreover, meeting with some of my executive mentors was also an eye-opener. When talking about my post-MBA plans with them, I was told off the record by multiple mentors that I should probably start considering companies beyond Nortel. That was really hard for me to hear, but I appreciated the non-bias advice. I have started looking beyond Nortel but am sticking to my guns when it comes to finding a position that aligns my strengths with my passions. I started interviewing with a few companies…keep you posted. On a side note Lauren Flaherty, CMO of Nortel, has had to cancel her visit to Ivey as a result of all that’s happening in Nortel. I’m hoping to reschedule her for a visit sometime in 2009.

The topic of friendship versus acquaintances has been a topic on my mind lately. Over the years, I’ve developed a lot of acquaintances (i.e. people that I socialize with but don’t consider close enough to open up to). Over that same time period, I would say that I’ve developed few ‘close’ friends and lost many others. I feel lucky to have married my best friend and I know that I can talk to her about anything, but I realize that it’s healthy to have and to keep good friends beyond one’s marriage. Throughout my life I’ve had many solid friends; mostly childhood friends that I continue to stay in touch with to this day. The unfortunate part is that many of my friends have become acquaintances over time and I’ve become more closed off and less trusting as a person as I’ve gotten older. Recognizing this, I’ve made a conscious effort this year to become a more open person, and I guess this blogs serves as part of that purpose. I’ve also made a conscious effort to make new friends and I feel that the MBA program has allowed me to make new ‘close’ friends. One thought that has been on my mind lately is how I’ve seemed to lose a few good friends over the years for really shitty reasons. It bothers me that I’ve let some friendships go over the years. Four years ago I stopped talking to one of my best friends after having a really dumb argument on a camping trip. Knowing that she and I are both stubborn in nature, it doesn’t surprise me that we still haven’t talked to each other four years later or that we threw away our friendship over an insignificant argument. I decided to put aside my stubbornness and finally reach out to her last week. I haven’t heard back and I guess I was a bit disappointed. It did however put things into perspective for me; it’s not worth throwing away a good friend because you’re too stubborn or because you want to prove a point. Good friends are hard to come by and I know that moving forward I’m going to make more of an effort to not let the little things get in the way.

Since the MBA program started, there have been a few people that have really influenced me both inside and outside the classroom. Without mentioning names, I though it would be neat to reflect on three of these individuals and how they’ve impacted me. I hope to follow-up with some descriptions of some others that have influenced me in a few blog entries from now down the road…here are the first three.

The first person is someone I respect and admire very much. She comes from a prominent Canadian family, but you’d never know it based on her grace, her diplomacy, and her tact. She’s modest, she’s confident, and she’s down to earth. She works hard, and puts a lot of pressure on herself to perform and seek excellence. She’s there for her classmates when they need her, and she takes on a lot of extracurricular responsibilities not because she has to but because she likes to add value. She’s nice, but gets strong when she needs to; the right mix of softness and strength. She’s serious, she’s professional, but she knows how to have fun as well. She’s a got a bright future written all over her. I find myself learning from her everyday.

The second person has taken a prominent class role; a tough job with little recognition. Few people realize the amount of work that is required for the job, yet he continues to work long hours to ensure that things run smoothly. He responds to emails late at night, with the Ivey brand on his mind at all times. He doesn’t need recognition or fame; he just wants the class to succeed and it is. His work ethic and responsiveness are contagious and I’m glad that I gave him my vote on class election day. I know that he’ll keep it up and I hope everyone recognizes his work.

The third person is an entrepreneur. She knows what she wants, and she’s driving forward with her dreams. She’s not concerned with all the others; she’s focussed on her objectives and you know she’ll get there. She’s appreciating the program and absorbing as much as she can get out of it. Her passion and energy make me that much more excited about the program. She’s an energy booster and she works long hours into the night to ensure that she’s learned what she’s needed to learn…my type of person.

Until next time.

Sacha

Rewind: Who am I?

2008-09-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be a good idea to kind of start over with an introduction of myself for all the new readers of my blog. I recently took on an initiative as a Student Ambassador for the Ivey MBA School, and was tasked with getting a blogging site up for the school. The idea behind the blogging site is to offer prospective students a view on what a day in the life of an MBA student at Ivey is like. Six curret Ivey MBA students were chosen to blog (including mysefl). Check out the site at http://iveymbastudents.blogspot.com/. As a first blog entry, I did an introduction of myself by writing about my ambitions, influences, and background. Anyhow, I figure it would be a good idea to formally use that same blog entry to introduce myself on my own personal blog for all my new readers that don’t know me. I’ll follow up with a regular blog entry soon detailing my thoughts on a heart breaking week at Nortel, a busy week off of school, and my recruitment plans etc…stay tuned.

So who am I? I’m a 27 years old engineer born in Canada and of East Indian decent. I’ve been married for 4 years, and have an incredibly beautiful and supportive wife who’s followed me to Ivey and put her own career on hold for me for the year. I have no children of my own yet although my wife and I hope to have kids soon. I’m born and raised in Ottawa, Canada; a place that I love and I hope to live there again one day down the road. I come from a close-knit family with a strong background in academics (both parents are PhDs).

I like to describe myself as a hard worker, and a team player with a good understanding of my strengths and development areas. People often describe me as being very goal-oriented in nature. Throughout my life I’ve always had a very clear idea of what I’ve wanted to accomplish and where I’ve wanted to go, and I put a lot of pressure on myself to follow-through. Going to b-school was one of those life goals, and I’m proud that I’ve gotten myself here to Ivey after a stringent application filtration process.

I’ve had three idols throughout my life that have dramatically shaped and influenced my morals, values, and thought process: my mother, Bono (rock star/social activist), and Wayne Gretzky (hockey legend).

My mother is an incredible women; she’s an executive at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Canadian Federal Government) and somehow was able to lead a hugely successful career while raising four kids. I think of her as the super mom. She’s a selfless nurturer and giver to all, and a woman that would rather give you her five minutes of personal time than take rest. Not only did she manage to successfully raise four kids and a run a household while juggling a travel schedule that had her out of the country 50% of the time, but she somehow managed to take me to all my 6AM Saturday hockey practices while I was growing up. She has advanced in her career and is one of only a small number of visible minority women in her generation to have reached the executive ranks in the Federal Government. I’ve grown up watching her work ethic and commitment to the family, and I’d like to think that I’ve gotten that from her. I respect her, and we are alike in so many ways; that’s probably why we argue and disagree so much!

Bono, a rock star from the band U2, has also been a long-standing idol of mine. It’s not just because I’m a huge fan of the band’s music, but it’s more about what he stands for and what is possible if you put your mind to it. Bono is a part-time social activist bringing visibility to the key issues facing third world nations in Africa. He’s changing the world in some ways by spreading awareness of the AIDS, debt and the Malaria pandemics facing these countries. His strategic use of his celebrity, network, and influence allow him to execute on his mandate, and there is a lot to learn from him on these aspects. He does all of this while being a successful husband and a father, and while being one of the biggest rock stars in the world. His words are melodic, his charisma is contagious, and his passion is inspirational to me.

Wayne Gretzky is another hero of mine. He’s an example of what hard work, intelligence, and confidence can allow you to achieve. Wayne Gretzky was never the biggest, fastest, or toughest person on the ice, but he used the eyes on the back of his head to outsmart everyone else and arguably became the most successful hockey player in history (I say ‘arguably’ but I truly don’t believe there is any debate here ;). Wayne Gretzky has inspired me throughout my life to work hard, to use my intelligence, and to be confident.

I’ve spent the last five years working at Nortel, one of the world’s leading telecommunications company’s, and have loved every minute of it. My last couple of roles at Nortel heightened my interest in wanting to develop my business acumen skill set particularly in the areas of decision making, finance, and effective leadership. Furthermore, it heightened my awareness of the power of networking, and the importance of extending one’s ability to leverage and influence others. In my last role at Nortel before leaving for b-school, I was given a team leader opportunity and failed at it. This failure took a large toll on my confidence, but it turned out to be a good reality check for me; it shed some light on some of the areas that I needed to improve upon. It was at that point that I realized that an MBA would be useful to me. In addition, earlier during the year I was unsuccessful at landing a Product Manager role because the competition all had MBAs. Based on some of my discussions with Nortel leaders, mentors, and MBA grads; going to a prominent, well-recognized b-school appeared to be the best way to accomplish my professional objectives. I applied and successfully achieved admission to the Richard Ivey School of Business and have loved every minute of it. What an incredible experience it has been thus far!

Hopefully by now you’ve got an idea of who I am, what I’m about, and why I’m doing an MBA. I look forward to sharing my b-school adventures with you all in the coming months.

Until next time…

Sacha Gera

Top Ten Things I've Learned in the Ivey MBA

2008-09-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

Wow; it’s been a tough week. Lots of ups and downs but I feel like things are moving in the right direction. I’ve been looking for a boost lately…anything to lift my spirits and get me kick-started and energized again. I think I’ve got that finally; partly from my wife and partly from school. Geeta (my wife) really has a way of understanding me and I feel like she’s filled in the void that I’ve been feeling lately; she always knows what I need. I got my marks back for Module 2A today. I was quite sure that this term was not nearly as good as the last, especially in Strategy and in Accounting. To my surprise I did far better in all subjects and I’m very happy about the results. I feel more confident about my multi-tasking abilities and my ability to be productive even when faced with a shortage of time.

On a side note; Hurricane Ike blew through Texas on the weekend. I always wanted to be a meteorologist and I enjoy tracking weather and hurricanes as one of many of my weird hobbies. I feel for all the families that were affected by the storm, but I must admit that I’m always wowed by the power and strange beauty of these storms. I thought I’d enclose a radar picture of Ike slamming into the Texas coast line….I think it’s a fascinating picture; a balance of beauty and destruction.

I promised in my last entry that this one would be about the top ten things I’ve learned in the MBA thus far. I hope it’s helpful especially for all of you incoming students who have started reading my blog. Here it is.

Top Ten Things I’ve Learned ~Advice for Incoming MBAs

Sacha Gera, MBA Candidate (May, 2009)

#1: Take a chance; put yourself out there

You’ll learn more if you take chances. Put your hand up during class even when you’re unsure of how ridiculous your answer will sound; chances are that 1/3rd of the class is thinking the same thing! Don’t worry about your ego being bruised; a wrong answer is just as valuable as a right one and you’ll earn participation points for it too! In fact wrong answers often earn higher participation points then right answers. Furthermore, your colleagues and your professors will respect you for taking chances. MBAs graduates are often successful because they take chances and are not afraid to go against the grain in the board room; test drive this philosophy in the classroom!

#2: Make it collaborative, not competitive

In a class full of type A leaders, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of being competitive with one another and to lose sight of the long term picture. The power of an MBA often surfaces many years down the road when you are more likely to leverage your network. Too often, students take a short term view with the goal of out doing their colleagues for that first post-MBA job that everyone wants. Competition will always be a part of the MBA experience and you will compete for jobs, but do your best to promote a collaborative environment where helping each other is a common practice. It’s surprising how helpful my class colleagues have been, and I’m finding that the more we help each other the more that behaviour gets encouraged.

#3: It’s a marathon not a race!

The one year Ivey MBA program can get intense at times to say the least. Burning out is a constant risk that we face especially at the start of the program when we are learning the ropes with respect to how to study and manage our time, and during recruitment season. Be sure to pace yourself and to give yourself a break once in a while. Although it is tough to avoid, don’t worry so much about how many hours your colleagues are putting in; concentrate on being yourself (the same person that got you into this great school).

#4: Alumni power

You hear about the power of the Ivey alumni, but you won’t know it until you try it. As an MBA student you’ve got access to a database of 20 000+ Ivey HBA and MBA alumni, which is hugely powerful! The database allows you to search out contacts by industry, location, and company. In my experience, there appears to be a strong Ivey culture instilled in all graduates whereby Ivey alumni make great efforts to help current students and promote the Ivey brand. Reach out to the alumni and you may surprise yourself on how helpful they can be in guiding you and helping you with your job search.

#5: Staying healthy takes effort

Expect to have tough weeks with little sleep, and expect to get stressed at times. I’ve seen many of my fellow students adapt to the MBA life in both positive and negative ways. I’ve found that getting a good amount of sleep and exercising regularly are keys to staying healthy both from a mental and physical perspective. Leading a healthy lifestyle will help you keep your immune system up at those critical times. Remember that there will be times when you can’t physically do all the required work; know when to draw the line and call it quits.

#6: Remember the importance of networking and socializing

Expect to make 70 new friends instantly when you join the MBA program. Your classmates will form the basis of your professional network for years to come. Developing relationships and bonds with your classmates is important, and making the effort to attend MBA outings will help you achieve that. Don’t expect to attend all the events, and don’t feel pressure to go to them all. Pick and choose based on your schedule. If you’ve got a spouse or partner in town, be sure to bring them out and have them join the Ivey Circle (social group for spouses and partners); make them apart of the Ivey MBA experience!

#7: It’s a work hard play hard environment

Expect to work hard, but also take comfort in knowing that there is time to relax, socialize, and visit friends and family even in a one year program! I thought I was going to be pigeon-holed for the year, but surprisingly I find the time to take the stress off. Often times I find myself needing a break during the middle of an intense week, and I’ve learned to create time for myself even when it appears to be a bad idea. It’s important to work hard, but equally important to take time for yourself when you need it.

#8: The power of diversity

Coming into a classroom of accountants, engineers, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and others is stimulating to say the least. Coming into a classroom with students from all over the world is even that much more stimulating. As we discuss and debate a case in the classroom, expect to hear many different and diverse perspectives on issues. Have an open mind to what others are saying. Listen hard and you’ll find yourself learning from your peers and thinking in new and unique ways.

#9: You can lead without being the leader

We are all effective leaders; it’s why we were selected to be here in this program. We are all eager to lead in some capacity or another. Learning to lead without necessarily being the leader is a very powerful concept. Challenge yourself to figure out how you can help your peers and make a positive impact in the class. Be there for your colleagues when they need you most, and share your talents and gifts; doing so will earn you respect and increase your influence in the classroom.

#10: Represent the Ivey brand

We all represent the Ivey brand, and we’ve all invested in it heavily. It’s important to represent the Ivey brand externally and internally at all times through the good times and the bad. Expect there to be hiccups, but they will be far outweighed by the positives of the program. Negativity is contagious but so is positivity; so make a conscious effort to be positive and to be an Ivey ambassador at all times!

September is here.

2008-09-08T20:00:00.001-07:00

In my last posting I mentioned that I would talk about my key learning’s thus far; I’ve decided to delay that blog entry for a couple of weeks. We have a week off in September for recruiting activities and I think I’ll have more time to think through what I want to say for that entry.

I’ve just started my first elective cycle here at Ivey. I am taking negotiations and competition. It’s really refreshing taking electives. I definitely needed a break from the quantitative stuff, especially after taking accounting and finance. I’m particularly enjoying negotiations. Who knew that negotiation was part art and part science? Each class involves a one on one negotiation with a colleague from the class. The idea is to try out new negotiation tactics and strategies from the night’s assigned readings + the class discussions. There always is a winner and a loser in each of these negotiation sessions. In my last session, a colleague of mine (who happens to be part of my learning team), ripped me pretty good. The funny thing is that I walked out of that negotiation thinking that I did well. I guess he got the best of me and made feel good about it too; a true negotiation master. I guess the fact that he has a background in sales and marketing doesn’t hurt either ;) As part of the course we had to write a reflection paper on that particular negotiation. You can imagine how much fun I had writing about how I got ripped off. I tend to be a competitive person in general, but I realized that I have a harder time being shrewd when I happen to be friends or like the person I’m dealing with… Kudos to my negotiating mate!

Today was a really tough day and I find myself at a low point. This program and this experience have brought many new challenges and learning’s; some as a direct result of the program, some as a result of moving to a new location, some as a result of unexpected changes on the home front, and some because I let myself wander a bit too far. Today was yet another day in my march toward getting a grip on things and I find myself continually forcing myself to make the tough decisions that are right for me professionally and personally. I guess some days are better then others and today wasn’t a good one. I’m a bit down at the moment; probably a bit tired, and feeling a bit vulnerable. I went for a long run/walk today…the perfect cure for a shitty day. I think I need a break and some time for myself; I’m looking forward to the week off in September. I plan to go home and spend some time with my wife, my family and friends, while also using the time to catch up with colleagues at Nortel. I’ve scheduled a number of meetings with former mentors, colleagues, and peers. A very prominent Nortel executive has agreed to meet with me to discuss my post-MBA plans…keep you posted.

On a side note, I recently decided to entertain the idea of interviewing for jobs outside of Nortel. I recently had an interview with a prominent company for a product management position; a dream job and one that was totally in line with my post-MBA goals. I didn’t make it through to the next round of interviews for that job and I was a bit surprised. More then anything I was disappointed and it hit me harder then I thought it would. I’m sure that’s contributing to the downer day I’m having. Never fear; tomorrow is a new day and I won’t let myself stay down very long.

The new U2 album is delayed! It was supposed to be out on Nov 18th but has been pushed to early 2009. Why am I mentioning this?....because I’m a U2 fanatic of course. These days I’ve been listening to a fair amount of U2, as well as the new Cold Play album, and Arcade Fire…it gets me through those tough and busy days!

The Clapping Class

2008-08-31T16:00:00.001-07:00

I’m 1/3 done; Holy S**T! Time is flying and within 8 short months I’ll be tagging three very expensive, but invaluable letters to my name ;) I’m feeling more confident then ever that the program is providing me with the skills and network that I need to achieve my post-MBA goals, and I’m going to ensure that I’m working my ass off to make it happen. Remember; things don’t necessarily fall in your lap during an MBA program…you’ve got to make things happen! That said I’ve definitely lost a fair amount of hair during the first bit of the program, which really sucks….guys are conscious about their receding hair lines and I’m no different. I also find myself rapidly turning grey; I seem to be getting more comments then ever on how my hair is turning grey….at first it was cool because I felt wiser and more mature but now I think I’m just starting to look older? Did I mention that I noticed a couple of greys in my beard and on my chest? Yes.. the stress and pressure of this program definitely have effects on us students…. when we first started the program there were likely only 2 or 3 regular smokers; now at break times there appears to be 10 to 15 (no I'm not one of them)! Remember to keep up the exercise during the program; I don’t think I would have gotten here thus far without staying healthy and active. I seem to get my stress relieve, second wind, and adrenalin rush from running at the end of a long day of classes…

Thought I’d share my top MBA phrases and words that I’ve picked up from the first 1/3 of the program: ‘culture’, ‘holistic’, ‘burning-platform’, ‘urgency’, ‘communities of passion’, ‘vision’, and the one I seem to be saying all the time ‘apparently’.

So how did exams go you ask? They went as well as they could under the circumstances. I’ve had a lot on my plate and a lack of time. I’m happy with my finance exam, not very happy with accounting, and luke warm about strategy.

I’ve been overwhelmed by some of the response I’ve had lately from readers of my blog. I had no idea that people were actually reading this blog and it’s nice to receive emails and questions about the program from them. Originally, this blog was meant to be an open, public diary for my former work colleagues, friends, and peers that were curious as to what a realistic MBA experience is all about from a personal, and professional perspective. I didn’t refrain from sharing personal details, despite some of them being overly-personal. I now feel a bit of restrain from being as personal as I’ve been in the past, however I also believe that I’m not being true to myself or to anyone else if I don’t show that personal perspective.

Recruiting season has set in for the iBankers and consultants of the class; you can feel the competition heating up. Our class social coordinators have done a wonderful job in ensuring that the class continues to get out socially and relieve themselves of the day to day MBA and recruitment stress. All in all I must say that I’m delightfully surprised at how well the class continues to get along despite the increasing job competition, and despite the so-called ‘honeymoon’ period being over. Some groups of people tend to click more naturally then others; in our class’ case the Ivey admissions teams definitely hit the mark with selecting a compatible and diverse bunch…we jive, we have each other’s backs, and we are united. For example, every single time one our classmate’s make an announcement or a presentation the entire class provides a standing ovation or a loud applause for that person. We love encouraging each other and driving each other with positive reinforcement. Its gotten to the point where it’s almost amusing; our class just itches to applaud for each other… hence I now refer to our class as “the clapping class.”

On a secondary note, I honestly think that they are a few people in this class that will surely emerge as superstars within 5-10 years; after a few months you get a good sense of the gifts/talents that are hidden within each student …but there are a few that standout like sore thumbs. There is some incredible talent in the class and I find myself learning from their diversity and their gifts every day. I’m excited about re-visiting this blog entry a few years down the road to see if my prediction holds true. In the mean time I’m going to let my intellectual curiosity wander some more and to be as open as possible to continue absorbing from my mates.

Recently, our class president raised a very important topic to the class; the importance of not spreading ‘negativity.’ In my experience, negativity is contagious. It’s a cancer that spreads rapidly. Our strategy professor likes to call such things ‘viral.’ I think that name is appropriate. Day in and day I’m making more of effort to become a positive person. I believe in forceful optimism. I consider myself to be an eternal optimist but I’m human and I like to b**tch about things like everyone else. When others start to complain, under the right circumstance I’ll join in. Over the last year at Nortel, a work place that has its fair share of negativity (for obvious reasons), I’ve witnessed the power of negativity and what it can do in a work place….it spreads. I’ve also witnessed that being positive can encourage others and provide them with the inspiration to want to do their best. That’s who I want to be and who I strive to be.

Geeta and I were in Ottawa twice in August for two different weddings. Weddings seem to be seasonal in the East Indian community (my background)…they all seem to be in the July/August time frame. We had four weddings to attend in August but picked two. One by best friend’s got married last weekend. It was really nice to see how happy he is, and for whatever reason it made me appreciate how lucky I’ve been to have married my best friend. These days with life being so busy and all, I seem to take things for granted. I sometimes forget how good I’ve got things. Not too long ago, I decided to make some changes by spending more time at home, and by reducing the number of MBA social outings I attend. I think these changes have been positive, but I also realize that there is no substitute for time which will always be lacking throughout this program. For those entering into a one year program with partners, remember that you’re going to have to work that much harder to keep things good on the home front; you’ve got to treat this experience as a partnership! Also remember that you’re going to go through many ups and downs, but that you’ve got to take life day by day and find common ground.

My former director (bosses boss) at Nortel accepted a job in Turkey. I can’t say that I was surprised, but it made me think about the prospects of working somewhere international. I think that getting international experience would be an incredible experience and perhaps the timing is better then ever to go for it?

So what are my top learnings from the program thus far? I think that’s the topic of my next blog…stay tuned.

Until next time….which will hopefully be sooner then last time ;)

sorry for the delay in posting

2008-08-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm in the midst of stuying for Module 2A finals and I'm getting rocked from excessive fatigue ;) Yes its a work-hard play-hard atmosphere, but at the moment there's no play. I've never been in a situation where I could honestly say that I didn't have the time to prepare for an exam to the extent that I wished; I can now say that this is the case. I'm playing catch up and I find myself in uncharted territory....a perfect recipe for some additional, unrequired stress. I can't say that its all because of school. The truth is that I've had a really busy extracurricular, and personal schedule over the last month which has taken away from my studying time. I just got back to London after attending one of my best friend's wedding in Ottawa. I was one of his two bestmen and hence I felt that it was important for me to put that ahead of studying for finals this weekend....by the way the speech went well. In a previous blog entry, I mentioned that I was having writer's block with respect to writing his speech; well one day about a week ago I was able to write his speech in 15 mins!....talk about having a good writing day ;) When it rains it pours.

I've gots lots to talk about and lots to update on....I'll get to it with a blog entry this Labour Day weekend. Wish me luck!

I'm Loving It!

2008-08-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

Can you believe it: I’ve completed a quarter of an MBA degree already ;) Time is flying by, and I am truly loving the Ivey MBA experience. In all honesty I think the program has been excellent thus far and I think that most of my colleagues would agree with me. The learning materials are relevant and applicable in the real world, my peers are awesome (I feel like I’ve made 70 good friends), career management has been very helpful and is living up to their reputation, and the alumni network appears to be as strong as ever. What more could I have asked for?

I recently got back from Industry Week; a week off from class where the class was put up in the Hilton Hotel in downtown Toronto and given an opportunity to meet with industry, alumni, and recruiters. It was truly a great experience and a fantastic way to weigh one’s options with respect to potential career paths and target companies. In particular, I found it useful because I was able to eliminate a number of career paths that I had been contemplating. When I came into the MBA program, I was focussed on going back to the telecom industry in the capacity of general management, or product management. Early on in the MBA, I got caught up with the management consulting and iBanking (investment banking) crowd. It is difficult to stay focussed on your career goals when you are being wined and dined and lured in by the consulting and iBanking companies. It also doesn’t help when 60-75% of the class is talking the iBanking and consulting talk day in day out, with its promise of big money + bonuses etc. Well I’m off that diverted track and I came back from Toronto more focussed then ever. I feel that I’ve cleared mind with respect to my career path: I think I’m sticking to my initial objectives and will follow my passions in Telecom (remember Sacha that the intersection point between your passions and strengths will lead to success --> I live by this!). Of course there are a few exceptions; I am considering technology consulting as a potential post-MBA path. This type of consulting is somewhat different then management consulting and is somewhat appealing (more research required). At this point, my first preference would be to go back to Nortel if the offer and opportunity is right and fits my goals. I feel very loyal to the company, but I also realize that expanding my breadth of experience beyond Nortel is equally important at this stage of my career. At the end of the day I will need to pay the MBA bills and a good offer would likely sway me. I hope Nortel comes through for me because I want to give back and be apart of that turnaround story.

One of the interesting positive points that I’ve come to like about Ivey is how they are very quick to respond to student concerns. There are no doubts that the one year program is still in transition phase, however I would argue that most of the knots have been ironed out and any glitches in the one year program have been fairly minor thus far. About a month ago, the new acting dean came to our class and asked for the student’s feedback. All concerns were recorded and many were fixed immediately. For example, one student complained that some of the study rooms lacked a white board; within a week all study rooms that were lacking one were fitted with white boards. I guess that’s what you’d expect from a top b-school. I know I was impressed!

I recently applied and was chosen to be one of three ambassador senators for the Ivey MBA School. I’m excited about the opportunity. People who know me well know that I like to sell and promote things that I believe in. I believe in knowledge sharing and collaboration and I spread this wherever I go. I believe in Nortel and I promote the company wherever possible. I believe in Ivey, and you better bet that I’m going to do my best to do a good job as an ambassador for the program.

Speaking of Nortel, I am thrilled to announce that Lauren Flaherty (CMO of Nortel) and one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women (as per a recent award), has agreed to visit Ivey and deliver a talk on leadership and Nortel. I wanted to specially thank a particular reader of my blog who happens to work for Lauren and who endorsed my cause and invitation: Thank you! I can’t wait for Lauren to come down. I really believe that it will help change the perception of Nortel on campus and will help build the Ivey/Nortel relationship. In the mean time I’ve been in touch with the University Relations Prime at Nortel to help rejuvenate the Ivey/Nortel recruiting relationship; keep you posted on that. I believe that Ivey has some of the brightest business minds in the country, and I believe that Nortel should be taking advantage of this. I hope that Lauren’s visit and a potential rejuvenation of the Ivey/Nortel relationship will spark interest in Nortel amongst the students and vice-versa.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a “dress for success” event that was put on by the Ivey Career Management folks at a high-end clothing store here in London. I learned a few nifty fashion tips. Here are some of my takeaways (which will be handy for the upcoming recruiting season): match you belt with your shoes, one should have at least four suits (black, navy, grey, and one other colour), one should have about 15 dress shirts (really??), brown shoes go with navy and gray suits while black shoes go with a black suit, there are many different tie knots, dry cleaning reduces the life of you attire by 50%, and never button up the bottom button of your suit (leave open). I’ll leave it at that. Did I mention that the store was selling $3k boss blazers! Maybe one day ;)

I just got back from a 4 day long weekend in Ottawa where my whole family spent the weekend together. My sister and her family came up from California, while my brother and his kids came up from Texas. Of course my parents, in laws, and other brother and his family were present too (all live in O-town aka Ottawa). The 22 of us had a blast; I love family reunions! We attended a wedding of a close family friend, and partied it up for 4 straight days (mix of wedding parties, clubbing, and outdoor activities including fishing!). I arrived back to London late on Tuesday night feeling like I needed a vacation from the vacation. Well, I’m in one piece but I’m still paying the price for a crazy, fun, sleepless weekend. I’ve been exhausted all week and haven’t been participating much in class. In addition, I seem to be falling behind a bit on the accounting and finance class material. I need to catch up on some sleep this weekend…What’s new? The good news is that it seems like most of the class is in the same boat ;) I'll catch up on sleep after hitting the barking frog (night club frequented by all Ivey MBA students) tomorrow night with my mates

In my last entry, I briefly discussed how I was feeling a lot of anxiety lately and was not always thinking straight + losing concentration etc etc. Well I’ve had enough of that #!#@# and I’ve decided to get a grip on myself. I'm feeling a lot better over the last couple of weeks, and I’m getting back to normal. I’m spending more time with Geeta (my wife) which is really helping me + I’m exercising regularly + I’m learning to take life day by day + I’m doing away with things that are dragging me down + trying to keep life as simple as possible: Keep you posted on my progress.

Until next time…

Sacha

Ups and Downs

2008-07-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

Hello from Toronto! It’s the start of the Ivey industry week; a week where Ivey MBA students are exempt from school work and are brought down to Toronto to visit various corporations, network, and feel out potential post-MBA industries. I’ve come down a few days early to attend one my best friend’s stag party. What a weekend it has been. It was really refreshing to see my Ottawa friends again and have a good old fashioned boys-only party weekend.

I’m a bit tired from two days of little sleep, but I’m excited to be here for Industry week with my classmates. Hanging out with my classmates is a lot of fun and has really made the MBA experience really enjoyable thus far. On the other hand, I am without my wife this week; Geeta headed back home to Ottawa and will be picking me up when we wrap up in Toronto this week. We will be celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary (July 31st) a few days early this Saturday to accommodate my busy schooling schedule (yes those are the unfortunate sacrifices you make in this program). I feel bad that we haven’t had a lot of time together lately; it’s been tough on us and I miss our time together. A one year condensed MBA program is definitely tough on those that have partners/spouses. It takes a really supportive partner to get through the year with high spirits, and I’m really lucky to have that support. Spouses of those in the MBA program should get a pseudo-MBA degree when we graduate for putting up with our moodiness, crazy schedule, selfishness, and having to hear about our MBA stories 24/7.

Speaking of selfishness, I feel that I’ve become more selfish lately and have been testing my limits in all fashions including those with my spouse which hasn’t been easy on her. Yes; men always seem to pull that leash as far as possible before their intelligent spouses yank back at the right moment. I am no different and I was getting a bit too carried away with the partying/socializing and the whole MBA environment. I’ve made a decision that I will tone down the MBA outings and spend more quality time at home, while also trying to help out a bit more with household chores.

Geeta (my wife) recently assumed the Presidency role for the Ivey Circle (the spouses club); they’re club stands at 20 and that number is growing weekly! The club provides a social group to all the spouses here in London and elsewhere who’s partners are in the MBA program. I’m happy that she stepped up for it and I know she’ll do a great job.

Life has changed drastically for Geeta and me on a financial perspective since we’ve moved to London. For one, we’ve gone from two steady incomes to zero which has really put a lot of things into perspective for us and makes us appreciate the little things that we became so accustomed to. We both got used to living a very high standard of life over the last 4 years of marriage with a ton of travelling, and fine dining. We now look back at the good old days and are so thankful that we enjoyed life now that we are ‘poor’ students again ;)

In my last blog entry, I wrote about how I was pursuing Lauren Flaherty (CMO of Nortel) to come to Ivey to deliver a key note presentation to the MBA class and help raise the profile of the company on campus (Nortel’s reputation on campus is lacking here at Ivey in my opinion; and I want to change this). I haven’t a clue on who reads this blog but it seems like its reaching out to people and I was pleasantly surprised to here from one of Lauren’s reports (who read my blog entry) and has offered to help my cause…talk about the power of blogging!

Module 1 marks came back and I’m very pleased with my performance and transition back into the academic setting. I worked hard in the first term and it paid off. I must admit that my primary purpose here in the MBA program is not to score the highest marks possible, but to learn the most I can and network and socialize with my peers the most I can; if the marks come then it’s a bonus. For those coming into the program I thought it would be interesting to share that the Ivey marking scheme is bell-curved. Essentially the highest overall module mark you can get is in the 83-84% range and the lowest being in the lower 70’s%; this is a bit disappointing for those that work really hard since the payback in comparison to those that don’t work as hard is not very substantial. My advice to anyone coming in would be to get the best of all worlds; don’t kill yourself for marks, remember to socialize/network and most importantly remember to understand and learn (this will pay off far more in the long term when you draw on your MBA knowledge as an executive).

One of my key learning objectives this year is to learn to lead effectively without necessarily being the leader (i.e. having the leader title). One of the most difficult things for type A’s is to be able to sit back and strategically lead without getting the public recognition that they crave. I’ve learned through my years at Nortel that it’s the subtle leaders within high performance teams that make a world of difference. We recently had our class elections, and as much I really wanted to run for a VP position I decided not to in order to keep in line with this objective.

Speaking of the class elections….there were some stellar candidates running. What surprised me the most was that every single person who ran blew the class away with some incredible speeches, and campaigns. You don’t always get to see everyone’s individual presentation skills when they are presenting with their teams during day to day class life. Seeing the candidates individually present on a topic that they felt passionate about confirmed to me that every person in this class is gifted in some way or another when it comes to presenting.

I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety lately over the last few weeks both personally and professionally which is making it really difficult to concentrate. I’m having feelings that I generally don’t typically experience very often and it’s taking me through a lot of ups and downs (sometimes on a daily basis). Generally, I always feel very self-confident, very in-control, and very focussed. Lately, I feel like I’m a bit of a mess and I’m a bit worried that I’m losing my ‘mojo’ with some of my key strengths and familiar personality traits. In some of my previous blog entries I discussed how this program was rapidly changing my personality. Who knew that a MBA schooling program could put you face to face with your insecurities, could test your boundaries, and could make you think in ways that once made you uncomfortable? Well I really believe that the program is doing this and I’m optimistic that it will be for the good in the end. I feel like I’m an onion being stripped layer by layer and then being slowly put back together; being taught to act and think differently. I just hope that I’m able to keep enough of my traditional traits so that my friends, family, and spouse still recognize me when I’m done ;) On a brighter note, my rental property officially closed a couple of weeks back, which takes off a bunch of stress and provides some much needed resources for this very expensive year!

My brother, sister-in-law, three kids, and mother-in-law came up to visit us here in London last weekend. My sister-in-law and 40 day old niece, Sanya, stayed the whole week. It’s amazing how a little baby can just light your day up. Seeing/holding her throughout the week was the highlight of my days and seemed to lift my spirits up.

Until next time….

Sacha

Module 2 In Like a Lion

2008-07-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

It’s been a few weeks since my last entry and I feel like I have a lot to say; I’ll save some of my talk for my next entry. It’s pretty late now and I’m tired so excuse my typos and grammatical errors. My brother and his family are coming up tonight from Ottawa. I’m looking forward to their visit. My newborn baby niece Sanya is coming and I look forward to seeing her and holding her (I haven’t seen her since the day she was born). When I left Ottawa, I realized that having a bit of distance between the family and myself was somewhat of a relief. Don’t get me wrong; I love my family and am very family-oriented but I just needed some space. I’m now getting to the point where I miss them and look forward to seeing them.

On Canada Day long weekend, Geeta and I got a bit more of a chance to spend time together. We went for a 5km run in the pouring rain. What an experience! If you’ve never run in the rain before, it’s definitely an experience I recommend; how exhilarating, liberating, and refreshening! Mind you, I almost got hit by a car but it was still fun….yes a car skidded toward me on the slick roads while we were crossing. I narrowly missed having two broken legs by jumping out of the way in the last second.

Module 2 of school came in with a bang. We just finished module 2 midterms, which is weird because it feels like I just finished Module 1 finals yesterday. I think the exams went well and I’m feeling good about them. My new philosophy is all about KISS; ” keep it simple stupid.” I tend to over-complicate things (based on my engineering background), and this philosophy seems to be better-suited in the business management world. So far so good with module 2’s accounting, finance, and strategy course load. I’m enjoying the courses and the content. I find accounting and finance have a fair amount of overlap especially in the areas of Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Cash Flow Statement analysis; definitely aspects you need to understand in any leadership/management position. I had a good chat with my eldest brother about these courses and he gave me some good advice; “you’re not going to be an accountant or a financial controller; just learn the basics and don’t worry about the details.” I couldn’t agree more and I’m doing my best to stay at a higher level of learning. Strategy seems to be somewhat like the Leading People and Organization course from module 1; more on the soft-skill side. I tend to enjoy debates and high level, non-quantitative discussions, so I think I’ll like this class quite a bit. The professors all seem very interesting; Professor Hatch (teacher for Finance) served on the board of directors for Royal Bank, which I think is quite neat and prestigious.

With 2.5 months passed in the program, I’m starting to get a good feel about the advantages and disadvantages of a 1 year full-time MBA program. First the advantages: 1. You are out of the workforce for ½ the time of a regular 2 year program which is definitely cheaper from a opportunity cost, salary, and living cost perspective, 2. There isn’t any concrete evidence in my opinion that a 1 year program from a reputable school jeopardizes your employment opportunities, 3. The increased intensity of a condensed program takes your work ethic and endurance up a notch which puts those interested in iBanking and Management Consulting in the right mode of operation. In terms of disadvantages: 1. Sometime I wish I could slow down and take more time with some of the cases and learn them in more depth, but time doesn’t always permit this, 2. For those unsure about their post-MBA path, one has to quickly come to a decision on where they are going to get the most out of the industry specific recruiting cycles which doesn't come quickly for everyone, 3. The pressure and intensity of the program is stressful and one has to become that much more careful to ensure that they stay healthy.

I finally heard back from Mike Zafirovski’s office (CEO of Nortel) on my attempt to get him to speak at Ivey. Unfortunately, he won’t be making it. I’m a bit disappointed but have decided to focus my efforts on getting one of his cabinet members to come in. I was thinking of asking Lauren Flaherty, Chief Marketing Officer, and one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women (Business Week survey). Update to follow.

After 9 long weeks, my bronchitis is almost beat. I decided to force myself to get more sleep over the last few weeks and its working. I’m keeping up with the exercise and I’m a full 10 pounds lighter then when I started the program. I feel good, and my appetite is starting to pick up again. Of course it helps when you’ve got a supportive wife that cooks so well ;)

I started writing a speech for one of my best friend’s upcoming wedding. I’ve known this person since Grade 4, and am honoured to be one of his two best men. Writing a speech for someone you’ve known so long is often tougher then one would think. I’ve been having a tough time thinking of humorous stories; although I know we have so many. Hopefully it will come to me soon.

On a final note, my eleven year old niece in Dallas got her first email address and I was pleasantly surprised to get an email from her. I can’t believe how quickly she is growing up. I still remember holding her as a new born, and now emailing! How cool is that.

Until next time…

Sacha

Module 1 is Toast!

2008-06-24T06:51:00.001-07:00

It’s been a hectic two weeks to say the least. Module 1 of the term is pretty much toast now and Module 2A with its accounting, finance, and strategy are about to begin. I’m burnt out to say the least, but I feel that I had a fairly successful first term. The last two weeks have involved 15-17 hours of work per day non- stop, and the lack of sleep is taking a real toll on my immune system. I’m still fighting bronchitis and the steroid pump that I was prescribed seems to be useless when I don’t get my sleep. I’ve cut back on the Halls; I seriously believe that I was becoming addicted to them ;)

The busy two weeks has really allowed me to make some real observations about how stress changes one’s personality. We recently conducted a self-assessment test in our “Manage Your Career” class called “Leadership Wheel.” In essence it tells you about what kind of a leader you are under normal situations and under extreme situations. I’m fairly well-versed in normal situations, but become polar North under stress meaning that I become very aggressive as a leader, with one and only one mission in mind; to get the job done no matter whose feet I step on. This was not a surprise to me and I know that both delegation and trusting my peers are key skills that I ought to work on especially when under the gun (also reflected in my 360 feedback). Anyhow, I found that many of my classmates have been acting a bit differently in the last couple of weeks likely because of the stress. I think a key takeaway here is that it’s always important to put yourself in the shoes of others when you find that they are acting differently; give them the benefit of the doubt and it’s likely that they’ll be their old self once the tough times subside.

I had a really rough couple of days early last week. Geeta was trapped in Ottawa awaiting our car to be fixed. Two transmissions later, and 10 days of mechanical work finally yielded a working car that seems smoother then ever ;) Unfortunately, under the spell of stress, the two of us ended up in a pretty bad argument early last week that just seemed to come at the wrong time. I was preparing for my final presentation and a final course exam, and didn’t appreciate the timing; not to mention that it hit me at a low point when I was tired and frustrated. I said a few nasty things (need to practice those crucial conversations) and Geeta wasn’t too impressed, and rightfully so! I was so upset that I embarrassingly walked off on a couple of really good friends after they tried to reach out to me the next day. I have a hard time reaching out to people, however I feel blessed to have met some really good new friends that care. Both of these people reached out to me in their own ways which was really touching. I felt really embarrassed about the whole thing, yet both of these friends made me feel comfortable. One person in particular went out of her way to put a smile back on my face (which couldn’t have come at a better time), and I feel really lucky to have her as a friend.

Coming from Nortel, one of my strongest beliefs lies in the power and emphasis of team work. Nortel has a highly team-oriented work environment and I’ve tried to carry some of those qualities into my own MBA team. One of those beliefs lies in the power to collaborate amongst team members and share information. My most favourite former boss always encouraged knowledge sharing and stressed its importance; I feel that this mentality is permanently engrained in my leadership style. As a result, I’ve tried to make a point of sharing some of my efforts with the team. Furthermore, our team has had open discussions on this and all agree about the importance of knowledge-sharing. We’ve made it a point as a team to spread this collaborative culture across the entire class and to other teams, and we are proud that it’s having a very positive effect. There are increasing signs that others are seeing the power of knowledge sharing; in fact in some capacity it seems to be unifying other teams and encouraging others to do the same. I believe that one’s success in not measured on an individual basis but rather on a team basis. I would like to see this class emerge as a unified team that will support each other and encourage each other’s success throughout our careers. This would be far more useful and powerful to all of in the long terms as opposed to competing for short term high $$ jobs, acting individually, and withholding knowledge that could be useful to others.

We’ve had some very interesting guest speakers over the last couple of weeks; the former Chief Medical Officer (who dealt with the SARS crisis); CEO of ING Direct Arkadi Kuhlmans, and Chief Editor of the Hamilton Spectator (newspaper). Listening to the former Chief Medical Officer made me realize how difficult a job it is to meet the demands of politicians and the media while upholding what’s right for the situation at hand. The CEO of ING Direct told a very compelling story of how his company is revolutionizing the banking industry. Who knew that ING Direct is now the #16 bank in the U.S? Wow! I felt that his presentation was somewhat of a recruiting mission; to stir up interest in working for his new-era corporation but I appreciated it all the same. Finally, the chief editor of the Hamilton Spectator provided a very interesting perspective on how to deal with media; a task that some of us maybe privileged to endure in the future. There seems to be a whole art associated to handling the media, and one has to be very careful not to piss them off; remember bad news stories sell….always be careful on what you say! Sticking to the facts is always a safe bet; talking to assumptions can land you in a pile of trouble.

There’s one professor here at school that has really struck a cord with me. He teaches our “Leading People and Organizations” course …..I describe him as a high energy, wake you up, inspire me to excel type of a professor. I like high energy, especially in the morning when I’m half a sleep. This professor inspires me to push the limits, to find the adrenalin within, and to make an impact. He cares about students and works long hours; a true passion for education and I respect him. No wonder he was voted the professor of the year last year. I know some students tend to dislike his cold-calling during class but in my opinion if you’ve got a professor that cares that much and is that passionate about seeing you succeed, you owe him the respect to prepare for his class.

Until next time,

Sacha

Lose some...win some

2008-06-09T04:52:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this entry while onboard a Via train heading back to London. Geeta and I took a last minute trip to Ottawa this weekend to welcome our new niece into the world. We left late Friday (around 7:30PM) and hit Ottawa by 12:30AM on Saturday. My niece (who still remains nameless) is so cute. Mom and baby are doing great, and my brother is as happy as can be. I’m an uncle for the 7th time over and yes I’m the only one in my family (2 brothers and a sister) who doesn’t have kids yet ;)…hopefully soon! I think the coolest part of the whole experience was seeing the reaction of my nephew (Rohan; aged 6), and niece (Rhea; aged 5) when they saw their baby sister for first time. They were so happy and gentle with her…truly a Kodak moment….a great day for the Gera family.

This weekend started off horribly. Everything that could go wrong was. Geeta and I left to Ottawa under the assumption that my sister-in-law was in labour and that she would deliver 100% this weekend. Failure to do so would mean another trip to Ottawa next weekend, which is hugely unproductive for me from a schooling perspective. By Saturday night it seemed like we were out of luck; my sister-in-law showed no signs of going into real labour….I got pretty much nothing done in terms of homework and I was getting a bit stressed. In addition to this, our car (2003 Acura RSX) dropped dead on Saturday while Geeta was at Wal-Mart in Orleans (Eastern suburb in Ottawa). While Geeta was backing out of a parking spot, a ton of transmission fluid leaked out onto the asphalt below and the car abruptly jerked and shut off. A couple of mechanics at Wal-Mart told us that it was likely that our transmission was shot! How could this be? The car is less then 5 years old and has 101 000 km on it. It’s still practically new! We had to tow the car to our mechanic’s which was a pain in the ass. What’s worse is that our warranty on the car’s transmission is for 5 years/100 000km (whichever comes first). The car is less then 5 years old, but is over the mileage criteria. I think it’s going to be a fight with Acura Canada over whether they’ll honour the warranty despite us being 1000 km over. As a result of this car mess, Geeta is unexpectedly staying in Ottawa this week to get it fixed (hence I’m on a train heading home to London solo). I’m a bit stressed about the warranty not coming through. A new transmission on our cute sports car could run us $6k by some accounts…ouch! Not what we need right now. Perhaps we lost a car this weekend, and perhaps I’m coming home without my wife, but I am delighted and incredibly lucky to be an uncle to a beautiful girl…I guess not everything went wrong this weekend!

A couple of knick-knacks regarding school. You know what’s awesome about the people in this program?... They are so friendly and inviting. My sister-in-law was down this week visiting, and we took her over to a classmate’s house (there were a few others there). Immediately, people were asking my sister-in-law to stay until Friday so that she could meet everyone and have some fun with the class. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay…but it speaks volumes to the type of people in this program…very warm and inviting indeed. Another interesting knick-knack from school; I’ve noticed that a few people in the class keep their hand up even after they’ve been selected to answer the question. It’s like they forget to put their hand down….very humorous to me. By my count, I think there are about 3 people doing this. It makes me laugh every time. What’s interesting is that all three are from the same cultural background (which is the same as mine)… makes me wonder if it’s a cultural thing or not. Anyhow..I can always use a good smile to start off my day in class ;)

In my last entry, I forgot to write about Outward Bound day. Outward Bound day was a team building exercise that pushed each one of us in the class to our limits both mentally and physically. It involved outdoor rope climbing activities, tight rope walking, and team competitions etc. At the risk of being overly-descriptive I’ll keep the details to a minimum….let’s just say that it involved 70 odd Type A leader personalities being forced to trust each other and depend on one another for safety and goal- achievement purposes. Ever heard of the phrase, “ A lion won’t believe in anyone else”? If you’re a U2 fan you’ll know that line from the 1991 song, “The Fly.” In essence it refers to the fact that leaders (i.e. ‘lions’) have a hard time believing in others….i.e. they only trust themselves to get the job done. Well…in Outward Bound day, this wasn’t a possibility….You had to trust your mate or you could get hurt, or fail to accomplish the task at hand. There’s one activity that really pushed me to my limits, and unbelievably it wasn’t the rope climbing activity where we had to climb up a pole with 2 other team mates roughly 30 feet high and use each other’s weigh to counter-balance while perched on top of a 2x2 pedestal. The activity that pushed me to my limits was in fact a much simpler activity: essentially you had to fall back onto your partner without allowing your arms to break your fall (i.e. kind of like tipping a domino over). If your partner failed to catch you, it would certainly mean injury…likely a head injury. Ok I might be exaggerating a bit…but really it was scary! I must admit that I wasn’t trusting of my partner, who happened to be a petit female and likely weighs 40% less then I do. Logically, the physics of the activity surely couldn’t allow her to break my fall without one of us getting hurt. Learning to let go and just go with the flow is hard to do…but I did it (i.e. let myself fall back in free fall) and unbelievably my partner caught me safely. Its weird how a simple activity like that can teach you a lot about yourself, and how trust is a tough issue for leaders. I think I really need to start trusting people more easily!

This week, I started the process of engaging Mike Zafirovski, CEO of Nortel, to visit Ivey and bring some visibility to the company on campus. It’s greatly disturbing to me on how little of a presence Nortel has on campus. As Canada’s top R&D spender, and as one of Canada’s largest companies, one would surely expect them to be recruiting this top talent, but there not there. I am going to do my part to change this. I did send the CEO and his EA (Exec. Assistant) a letter expressing my invitation proposal, and I did get a read receipt from both him and his EA but I have yet to hear back. I had the opportunity to dine with Mr. Zafirovski last March at the Nortel Leadership conference in Ottawa. I had the opportunity to host that conference last year and introduce him, and I hope he’ll remember me from our brief encounter.

Lastly, I thought I’d mention that I’ve been sick for over 5 weeks now. It’s getting really annoying. It started off with bronchitis and a round of antibiotics that failed to clear my lungs. My recent exercise obsession and life-long love of dairy products (i.e. cereal) haven’t been helping. They’ve been aggravating my cough and lung congestion and I’m not getting better. I’ve cut out the dairy and the exercise temporarily in an effort to recuperate. I’ve also been drinking ginger tea, which seems to be working. Did I mention that I’ve been chewing my way through a pack of halls every day since I’ve been sick? My next door neighbour in class (who happens to be part of my MBA learning team) says I’m addicted to them. At first I laughed at the comment, but now I’m wondering if there is any truth to it? Can you get addicted to Halls and the medicine that in it? I do find myself with a craving for Halls on an hourly basis ;) Maybe it’s time to put them away.

Until next time…

Sacha

One Month Down, 11 To Go

2008-06-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

One month of Ivey is completed. Wow time is flying by! The experience thus far has been exceptional for me. I’m learning a lot about myself, and living away from home is helping me develop in ways I could never foresee. The interesting part is that most of my learning in the first month has been mostly from a personal perspective and not so much from an academic perspective. I didn’t see that coming. In my last blog entry, I talked about how I felt that I was changing as a person in a very rapid fashion. That change continues to accelerate. I feel like my personality is moulding on a daily basis. I want to be more social, more open-minded, and more comfortable with myself.

Geeta came back to London this week. I’m glad she’s back and I didn’t realize how glad I was until she came through the door. The truth is that my time alone was really good for me in a number of ways, and confusing in others (i.e. dealing with all the change). Within an hour of her being back, we engaged in a very deep conversation on everything I felt like I was going through. You know what’s amazing about the whole thing; our talk was a frank reminder on why we are good together and how good we are with being open about things. She totally gets me and encourages me to keep exploring the path I’m on, and the areas that perhaps I missed out on when I was younger. I respect that she is so supportive and I hope I can do the same for her. I’m glad she’s back because we don’t do as well when we’re apart for long periods of time. We also had to make some personal decisions this week and it was definitely much easier doing that in person then over the phone where our discussions often end up stressing the other out.

I just completed a case reading on GE and Jack Welch, and was blown away by it. As many Nortel employees know, Nortel is under a business transformation process that is bringing many of GE’s Six Sigma and operation strategies into the corporation. I never realized that the changes occurring in Nortel were essentially a carbon copy of those that took place in GE. Reading this case was like getting a copy of the playbook or the master blueprint for the company and where we’re going, what the culture will be like, and how decisions will be made….unbelievable. I think I understand the 10 000 foot view of Nortel’s strategy now; how we are traversing from a hardware company to a service-oriented company to get those higher margins and move a way from a commodity market, how we are aiming to be #1/#2 in a market segment or fix, sell, or close it, how we are weeding out those that don’t deliver and share the same values, how we are de-layering the company and making the environment boundary less, how leadership development is being promoted from within, how we are globalizing….all very interesting to read and relate to.

Exercise has become an incredibly lifting part of my days! I’m trying to do something active at least 4 to 5 days a week. These days I’ve picked up the habit of running outside after class or taking a swim in the evening hours when I get home. Not only has it been fantastic stress relief, but it’s energizing me after those long days in class. I put together a new mix of MP3s that seem to pump me up and get me going. I’ve got a new song stuck in my head this last week; “Viva la Vida” by Coldplay. Great intro and a great hook to that tune: Very ‘U2’; hence the reason I probably like Coldplay.

I’m in the midst of doing a number of self-assessments as per a course requirement. I think that often times when we are buried in our day jobs, we don’t put enough emphasis on doing these assessments. They are imperative to identifying changing interests, strengths, and weaknesses and offer an interesting perspective on how to keep yourself relevant, challenged, and happy. Although many of those surveys are painful, they are worth it in the end. Thanks to all that completed my 360 feedback!

That’s enough for this week. Wish me luck on my first mid-term exam this Thursday…..Did I
mention that I’m in the preliminary process of engaging Mike Zafirovski, CEO of Nortel to visit Ivey and deliver a key note presentation? More on that next time.

Rapid Changes

2008-05-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

It’s getting late, but I can’t seem to sleep. I’ve become a party animal lately and my coffee, tea, and alcohol consumption is up….Very “un-Sacha-like.” I’m getting used to 5 or 6 hours of sleep per night now and my body still seems to function fine. It’s still not quite as bad as it was during my Engineering undergrad when I probably averaged 4 hours of sleep per night for 4 years. I guess the difference this time around is the fact that 40% of this program and the after-hour events are about networking, socializing, and team work. I realize more then ever the power of networking, and how it contributes to your ability to leverage and influence others. What’s best about it that I’m making lots of really great friends along the way; everyday is so much fun.

Geeta (my wife) has been in Ottawa for over a week now. She lost her job this week as a result of company restructuring. It has caused a significant amount of stress on the both of us considering that I’m on unpaid leave for a year and I’ve got a $70k tuition bill to pay. Add in some personal obstacles we’re dealing with at the moment, and you’ve got a pretty difficult situation. Although I’m stressed, I must say that I’m quite impressed with how we’re handling it. A year ago I especially would be panicking. Now, I’m just taking it day by day. I guess we’ve done ok from a contingency planning perspective and I’m not too stressed financially. On a bright note, I truly believe that this could be a blessing in disguise for Geeta. She’s been wanting out of tech for a long time and was wanting to career switch after I was done with my MBA. I think this is a perfect opportunity for her to take some time off, reflect on her interests, passions, and figure out where she’s heading. I want her to find something that she is passionate about even if it means less $$ and a bit of sacrificing on our quality of life. The truth is that she hasn’t been enjoying her career for quite some time. I hope she’ll make the best of this time and find her calling. I can’t help but recall Michael Clemmen’s recent keynote talk and how he mentioned that “genius comes from adversity.” I know that Geeta has hit a low point but I believe that her genius will come out in due time, and I will be there to support her as she has been there for me.

I feel like I’m going through so much change right now. It’s weird. My brother keeps making fun of me around how I am doing things backwards in life. Although I deny it, upon additional thought I think he’s right. Let me explain: I never partied during my undergrad studies. I was a serious student striving toward my career and personal goals. I didn’t adapt to change well and stayed within my comfort zone. As an example, I never bothered to try to make many new friends (besides the ones I carried from childhood), and I never let myself relax and let loose. Furthermore, I never lived outside of Ottawa. I stayed in Ottawa to attend Carleton University during my Engineering days. It now seems that it’s all coming undone. I feel younger, looser, and I’m even enjoying the club scene for the first time in my life. I feel more confident reaching out to others and making new friends. I’m having so much fun and its all happening very fast. I really wonder if I missed out on a part of my life when I was growing up? I think I was too mature for my age during my late teen years and early twenties, and perhaps I’m making up for a bit of it now? I guess this is stuff that people do when they go to college and university for the first time around. I seem to be doing it during Master’s program…hence my brother says I’m doing it backwards ;) Not sure if this will last for me, but I’m having fun and enjoying the experience. Did I mention that I’m exercising more frequently then I have in the last 3 years? Yes, I’ve finally got a good balance in my life and I hope it lasts!

Ok…time to prep for tomorrow’s day and get some zzzzzzzz’s.

School is in full swing....

2008-05-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

School is in full swing and I love it. I knew that going back to school this time around would be fun, but I never imagined that I’d become so comfortable with it so soon. I guess the difference this time around is that I actually want to learn, in comparison to my undergrad studies when I had no choice but to be there.

What do I love about this program: 1.The people are really awesome and easy to bond with; we learn so much from each other’s experiences, 2. The Professors are as passionate and energetic as they come, and 3. The keynote speakers offer an incredibly diverse set of experiences and pieces of advice. Did I mention that the city is starting to feel like home? I never thought that I would adapt to another city so quickly, but I am. I’m really starting to feel the itch to go international when I’m done with my studies here in London.

Last week, we were really lucky to have a caste of incredible key note speakers. We had Don Mcdougal, former President of Labatt Breweries, and one of the members that brought the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team to Toronto in the 70’s. Did I mention that he also helped start Brian Mulroney’s (Former Canadian PM) career! One thing that he mentioned that really stuck with me was the fact that good leaders often have a knack of being able to “skilfully manipulate the emotions of others to achieve objectives.” Very true in my opinion!
We also had the pleasure of hosting Bell Mobility President, Wade Oosterman, and Ron Wolf, CEO of ICORR Properties. The two of them delivered a very interesting debate on why corporations shouldn’t be responsible for donating to charities, and how that the onus should be on the shareholder instead. To make a long story short; the idea is that a corporation should focus on delivering increased cash flows and bottom line (i.e. profitability), and hence contribute to a higher stock price which in turn allows the stock holder to decide on how they spend their return on investment. This would be in opposition to the company spending $$ from their bottom line and taking away a portion of these profits from shareholder returns as a result of that money being donated. I’m not sure that I agree with the philosophy, but it was a very interesting class debate that got very emotional for some. One student, who felt very passionately about giving to African Aid organizations, told the Bell Mobility CEO that he should perhaps get rid of the “beaver” commercials and all the money they spend on those advertisements and give it charity. The CEO actually received that well and then took a poll to see how many in the class liked the “beaver” character on the t.v. commercials. Other takeaways: “don’t’ kid yourself, company’s are all about making profit. When they do good things, its likely because they have self-interest from a $$ perspective.” The two speakers also spent a significant amount of time on the importance of integrity and ethics.

Later in the week we heard from Paul Atkinson of Casero. I don’t remember too much from his talk except for one quote: “Don’t be a PITA; pain in the ass.” We had Nadir Mohammad, COO of Rogers Wireless. He talked to us about the successes and growth at Rogers, where the company is going, and how it’s like to work for Ted Rogers (one of Canada’s richest). He told some great stories on how Ted Rogers hired him and had him over to his house to pressure him into signing the contract to join Rogers.

That brings me to the final two speakers. I saved the best for last. We had the head of one of NASA’s prominent divisions (can’t remember his name), and Mike “Pinball” Clemens (former Canadian Football League legend and current CEO of the Toronto Argonauts sports franchise). Both were incredible speakers that have so much passion for what they do. I realize how important it is to be passionate about what you do; money isn’t everything. Where your passions and strengths intersect is where you hit the “sweet spot” and get your career best, as Mike Clemens mentioned. “Genius comes from adversity,” another great quote from the CFL legend. He was probably amongst the top three speakers I’ve ever seen….unbelievable energy that he seems to turn on at the flick of a switch. What I found very interesting about Clemnens was the fact that he was psyching himself out before his talk and during his introduction to get himself going. It was almost like he was preparing for game day. The head of NASA took us through the Columbia shuttle disaster and walked us through the roles, responsibilities, and functionality of a shuttle launch….really awesome stuff for the techno geeks in the class including myself!

Did I mention that I had a career meltdown early last week? Yup…I temporarily lost sight of my goals and why I came to business school (i.e. to be a Product Manager in a Telecom company). Thank god I have an amazing wife that keeps me grounded. She got me focussed again after a 2 hour walk. I found myself jumping on the management consulting, and Investment banking bandwagon like 90% of the students….all I could see was $$ as I talk to all the other students about these typical post-MBA career paths. There seems to be this perception in business schools that the students that fail to land a prominent iBanking (investment banking) or management consulting job are failures….i.e. weren’t good enough to get in. I’m pretty sure I’m not interested in either career paths…I love telecom too much. I’ll guarantee you that I won’t be a failure though. …remember Sacha…where your passions and strengths intersect you will achieve your career best and $$ will follow! I had to put that down in writing for me to look at time to time.

Geeta (my wife) is back in Ottawa this week. We drove up last Friday for the long weekend. She’s been teleworking (working from home here in London) and has been quite lonely with the lack of interaction (i.e. people deprived). I think Ottawa will be a refreshing change for her since she’ll be going into work….. although there seems to be another round of layoffs happening in IT at Nortel this week….not sure if she’ll make it through this time and I’m a bit stressed about our financials. I do know that it if the worst does happen….I really want her to find a job or career that she is passionate about….so important!

Until next time…

First Impressions....

2008-05-04T12:00:00.000-07:00

The first week of school is completed….I think I’m finally starting to breathe again! I’m writing from my apartment’s terrace perched 19 floors above London’s central business district. I have no immediate homework due so I am as relaxed as can be. The weather has really taken a turn for the better. We had four straight days of rain and I think it was making me depressed throughout the week. I couldn’t help thinking of how much I loved living in Ottawa. On a side note, did you know that Ottawa-Gatineau was rated the best place in Canada to live by Money Sense magazine this week? Check it out: http://list.canadianbusiness.com/rankings/bestplacestolive/2008/prosperity/Default.aspx?sp2=1&d1=a&sc1=6&sub=n1&df=bestcities .

Days 1 through 3 (i.e. Monday-Wednesday) of class were simply overwhelming; after a few days of brutal statistics, regression analysis, and MS Excel training I was consistently questioning myself why I decided to do this, and why I was subjecting myself to school pressures from hell. Picking up the books after 8 hours of intense class was really difficult. I felt sick to my stomach on Monday and Tuesday evening. I felt like curling up in a ball and admitting defeat. I guess the fact that I was really sick all week didn’t help. I picked up a nasty case of Bronchitis that really made me feel like shit (by the way I’m on antibiotics now and they are working…thank the lord ;)).

Anyhow, I had a really hard time sacrificing my personal time to study this week, but there was no choice…3 assignments and two tests in the first four days…ouch! I know the professors were setting an example and toying with us to get us back into study mode…well it worked. Interestingly enough, the light bulb (i.e. my brain) went on somewhere on day 4 (Thursday), and I finally understood the big picture on what we had set out to learn this week. What’s scary about the whole thing was the fact that everything I learned this week was immensely applicable to my job at Nortel. What a weird and unexpected surprise; actually learning something useful and applicable in school…I think I’m going to like this program.
Another big surprise this week was how quickly the class has bonded. I already know that I’ve made life-long friends. It feels kind of weird. I’m not sure if every class feels that way every year, but this class has got chemistry and everyone is just so diverse and friendly. I guess we all have a few things in common: 1. We’re all new to the town, and are going through the same hardships, and 2. We are all executive wannabe’s with stratospheric aspirations. I must admit that being in a class room of 70 Type A personalities is a bit intimidating and competitive; imagine being in a room where everyone is an eager-beaver trying to make the first impression. I caught myself sitting back on the first two days, overwhelmed by how smart everyone was, and being extraordinarily silent….on day 3 through 5 I tried to make more of impression and I think I’m starting to find my place. What is neat about the class is that it’s so diverse; the power of diversity is really starting to become apparent. I like being surrounded by people who have different backgrounds (i.e. not all engineers or high tech folks). There are lawyers, doctors, engineers, bankers, energy folks, non-profit social workers, and entrepreneurs all under one roof…pretty amazing experience.

The first thing people generally ask you when you meet them here is 1. Where are you from?, and 2. Where do you work? When I respond that I work at Nortel, it’s amazing to see how negative peoples’ reactions are….” that company is still around?”, “that damn share price…when is going up?” It’s really starting to become annoying….especially because I still believe in the company so much. I guess I was a bit surprised at how emotional people get towards Nortel. I never realized how many people were invested in it during the boom and the bust. I guess I sympathize with them, but I like to look toward the future and not the past.

I guess I’ve written a bit much for this entry…. Did I mention London is really starting to grow on me? More on that next time.

Last Day in Ottawa

2008-04-22T19:48:00.001-07:00

Today is my last day in Ottawa. Geeta and I will be officially packing up the cars tomorrow morning and moving to London, Ontario. It will be our first time living in another city! We are both really excited and at the same time we are a bit sad. Its tough leaving family and friends but at the same time we both know that it will do us some good to live out of our comfort zones and in a different local for some time. I keep getting the question on whether we’ll be back in Ottawa after my schooling is done; I know that in the long-term we both really want to be back in Ottawa but in the short-term I have a feeling that it will be a few years. I have an itch to live in anther country and to gain some international experience. ….I guess we’ll play it by year.

This month has been one of the most stressful of my life. In March I had about 8 days off from work, and have been off from work on a leave of absence ever since April 1st. The funny thing is that up until yesterday, I hadn’t felt that I’d had one single day of vacation. Besides moving to a city 6.5 hrs away, Geeta and I have had tons to of loose ends to tie including renting/fixing our own house, taking our crappy tenants to court to get them evicted, fixing and the selling our rental property, and getting Geeta’s approval to telework for a year from London. Luckily it appears that most of those knots have come undone and we are ready to move on with life.

Geeta and I spent the last couple of days being tourists in our own home town. We recently toured Parliament Hill and the Byward Market and tried our best to soak in as much of Ottawa as possible. I realize now more then ever how much we love living in this city. I can’t wait to be back one day, but until then….we’ll call London, Ontario home for now. Next Update: “First Taste of School and London.”

See you in a year...

2008-03-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

All,

Today is my last day before I begin a one year leave of absence to pursue a full-time MBA in London, Ontario. I hope to be back at Nortel in one year's time. I'm going to miss not being here.

It's been a pleasure working with you all throughout the last four years here in GPS. Friends always asked me why I loved working the GPS job so much with it's lousy hours, pager calls, process-intensity, and interrupt-driven environment. My first response is that it’s a combination of a number of factors: the addictive fear of an E1 call, the adrenalin of working a Business Critical case, and the constant uncertainty of what's coming next. On second thought I realize that it's the people that make up this organization that make me look forward to coming into work every morning.

On a side note, I never realized until this year how special the GPS job is and how many folks throughout Nortel are envious of the jobs we do. Its one of a very select set of roles that allow you to be as technical as you want, but also allows you to be engaged on the business and problem management side of things as well. How many jobs allow you to deal with customers, account teams, PLMs, design, verification, and network engineering while also allowing you to play with multi-million dollar equipment, to dive into code, and to travel?...Not very many. Furthermore, the communication, multi-tasking, and technical skill sets you develop in this role are a rare commodity that will last you a career. I'm not trying to be a salesman here, but I truly appreciate the advantages of the GPS job and what it’s done for my career, and I realize it now more then ever.

If you'd like to stay in touch throughout the year, you can contact me at SGera.MBA2009@ivey.ca or you can find me on Facebook. If you're interested in following along my MBA adventures, I've set up a blog that I'll be updating throughout the year: http://sachagera.blogspot.com/ .

All the best,

Sacha Gera