Inspiration from Passion

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 .