Once a runner ...

[In keeping with the running theme about running, today's title is inspired by one of my favorite books on running - "Once a Runner".]

The highlight of the past session was the talk by the SVP and CIO of the SF Giants, Bill Schlough who's also a Wharton alum. Despite being the busiest session in the year so far, the talk was well attended and appreciated. Friday night gave a chance for classmates to mingle with the families of the rest of the class at a dinner at Thirsty Bear Restaurant. As expected, nothing can dampen the spirits (both the spiritual and bacchanalian kind) of Whartonites. Sleepless nights spent partying or working on assignments (or both) followed by full days of lectures and cases whizzed past and before one knew it, the three-day weekend was over.

This weekend was an occasion to get to know Senthil from OPIM 632 better. I haven’t heard anyone mention Silvia Plath and William Feller in the same breath – he does seem to have an interesting breath of taste in books. A quick summary of sustainability and carbon footprint considerations in the supply chain was fascinating as well – brought out several facts that I had not heard of before. The other interesting class related event of course was the MKTG 621 final – was interesting to take a closed book, no-cheat-sheet test after a long time. The class itself was one of my favorites so far in the program and it will be missed. We got exposed to marketing strategy discussions with Prof. Patti Williams through the Medicines and Aqualisa case - was interesting to learn formally what we were trying to wing our way through in SABRE so far. Many of us stayed up late on one of the nights, debating over cost of capital, corporate capital structures, asset, debt and equity betas and a whole bunch of other things as the night progressed, for the Teletech case in Finance.

This term underscored more than anything else my feeling of being a participant in a race that I probably qualified for by mistake, like the other academic sojourns of mine where I've felt equally out of place in the midst of a sea of talent. I have friends that recounted the experience of running the Western States 100 to me, and at some level the WEMBA program itself can be abstracted to that race. Only those that have the endurance and will to qualify for it would even consider applying. Once you’re in the race, your vitals are checked at every aid-station to ensure that you have what it takes to reach the next one. 

It’s been an honor so far to witness the races run by my fellow classmates, even as I huff and puff along from one aid-station to the next, willing one leg in front of the next. The effortless cadence of the elite runners to whom this is just another race to be done perfectly, the flair and gregariousness of the social runners, cheering on the slower ones and chitchatting with the aid-station staff, the methodical approach of the personal-record hunters as they watch their time and vitals at every step, the tired visages of the few having a bad day as they trudge towards their next stop, unsure whether to call it a day and race another day or not. As the year almost draws to a close, it’s been amazing to look back and see the hills and valleys we’ve conquered so far in our quest for that elusive belt buckle that the finishers get to keep.

The nostalgia stems also from hearing back from applicants who I had interacted with during the admissions process – their happiness at getting in brought back pleasant memories from last year, and my exchanges with my own mentors who helped me through the process –Miri (class 34), Ashish (class 31), Laura (class 31) and Venk (class 27). Congratulations to all the newly minted members to the WEMBA family and wish you all the very best! 

To continue with the running analogy in this context, the Anbessa song comes to mind – we’ve done our part keeping the WEMBA flag flying high in the first year, and now it’s your turn to get into your stride and power ahead of us.

Term 1-3 speed-round update from Joanne

Okay. It's been awhile, I know. Sorry for the blog-silence (and thanks to Anand for carrying the blogging torch!). We're rounding out our first year (completion of Term 3) and I'll give you the quick update from my side.

Wharton:

Term 1 I studied a lot, maybe close to 25-30 hours per week. The content was interesting, yes, but also there was a part of me that wanted to prove that I'm smart enough to be there. I guess everyone (well, me at least) thought just maybe I was the admissions mistake. I wanted to "keep up" in regards to test scores, etc. What I gave up was time with my husband and friends. I found that there is such a thing as too much studying. Still managed to squeeze in my first triathlon (yay!), which was a super fun activity to do with my husband and cousins.

Term 2 Cut back significantly on the studying, down to about 10 hours a week or so. In hindsight, this was an overcorrection from the first term. Grades went down (which is okay) but maybe flirted with disaster a bit. On the bright side I was able to spend more time with Tim (husband) and Fuzz (dog). Still managed to stay out of the lowest 10% (number of "LT"s are tracked by the school) but probably just barely. I'm sure my poor showing in statistics will come back to haunt me in electives. Alas, my mother's statistics-gift (her Masters) was not transferred to me.

Term 3 (mid-way through) brought more interesting professors (in a good way) and butt-loads of classes. I've ramped up the studying again somewhere between where I was Term 1 and 2. Classes, which started in Term 1 as full-term classes, are now half term (most of them) that overlap at an alarming rate. They still remain interesting and engaging (operations/supply chain optimization, marketing, finance) and I find myself furiously scribbling notes for my startup (you know, business principles I never knew I was supposed to do when starting a venture - oops, better late than never).

Because I thought I was hot-stuff, I also allowed myself to get drafted into the Global Consulting Practicum course this term (yes, all those words have been selected carefully). GCP partners a Wharton team with a team from an international business school, in our case Instituto de Empreza in Madrid, to create a US market entry strategy. I'll have to reflect/write more on it when it's done. So far, it's had it's ups and downs. Adding this to the workload has definitely taught me my limits.

Life/Career Update!

Well, thanks to everyone for listening to my rants last year about entrepreneurship and my corporate job. :) With the blog-radio silence, trust me, I saved you from months of my agonizing over whether or not to leave my job and pursue the startup full time. Ultimately, it was the wise words of our backyard landscaper that led me stop the on-the-fence BS which was causing my suffering, and just make a decision already. So I did. 

On January 6th, I said farewell to my gray cubicle and hello to full-time startup life. 

I. absolutely. love. my. career. now. (yes, all the periods are necessary)

Things I love about it: creativity, variety in work, and the feeling that I'm building something fantastic. I realize that I belong in this world and am enjoying every minute of it. 

Wharton has been a huge supporter of our startup - from the professors, to my fellow classmates, and the awesome staff. Coming from a non-business background, the benefits from learning all the business fundamentals has helped me tremendously and I'm truly grateful for all the amazing things in my life.

Discovering limits ...

A lot of data that get sent across the web gets sent using a protocol called TCP. How does one send data as efficiently as possible across a channel whose capacity one doesn't know? TCP does this by increasing the window size of data sent for every acknowledgement it receives for receipt of data. It does this until it starts to see packets lost, at which point it throttles down to the bandwidth that it just observed and tries to maintain that data rate for transmission, fluctuating around that mean value using the same mechanism.

What's the place for a networking lesson on a Wharton blog, you ask? The Wharton Executive MBA program topped rankings yet again recently. One of the reasons of this other than the usual that you hear, is how the program manages to extend your capacity for work, slowly but surely. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun while you are in the middle of it facing time crunches, but looking back at some of the busier sessions, it has been amazing to see the amount of work that got done between sessions with minimal time and additional commitments.

Which brings me to the TCP analogy. This session promises to be one where most of the class will hit our capacity ceiling. And as if they knew it, the load for the session after the one this weekend seems to be lighter too, as if to give us a breather. In the upcoming session, we have Bell's MKTG 621 final, in MKTG 622 we have a Medicines case assignment due to be submitted, SABRE decisions due, and an Aqualisa case due to be read for discussion. In OPIM 632 we have an assignment due, and three (yes you read that right) cases to be read for in class discussion. In FNCE 601 we have a Teletech case on cost of capital and hurdle rates due, and in WHCP 614 there is a lot of reading that needs to get reflected into a five-minute presentation on communicating change.

Now one thing I know for sure - this too shall pass. But during the time that it hasn't, it has been a scramble trying to identify all the different things that need to get done, and re-prioritizing them based on urgency or learning team conference call coordination. Last session itself was an exercise in juggling tasks and this one promises to do one better on that.

What else happened last session? Two of my classmates, along with two from class 35 represented Wharton at the Hult Case Challenge and just missed getting selected to the next round. We're proud of you anyway, Chris and Brian! Five of us represented Wharton at the CFA Institute Global Investment Research Challenge Western Regional Finals (that's a mouthful!) last weekend, and won. We now move on to Omaha to represent Wharton at the Americas finals. A big shout-out to Arif and Tao, the two classmates that were instrumental in making this happen!

As an earlier post alluded to, a few of us 36ers, a couple of Harvard alums, Prof. Smetters and Dr. Harvey Rubin from the Penn School of Medicine started a nonprofit recently called Energize the Chain to eradicate vaccine preventable diseases in the developing world through an innovative use of cell phone towers for off-grid power for vaccine storage. We have submitted grant proposals to Gates Foundation as well as USAID. The reason it gets a mention on my blog today is that one of our team members, Alice,  at Harvey Mudd, got one-on-one time with Mr. Gates himself to present the idea and hear his feedback - way to go Alice! We are hoping that exciting things come out of this project and hope to launch a project in India and/or Kenya soon. Couple of our team members are in Kenya right now attending a GSMA conference to learn more.

Stay tuned for how this three-day marathon session pans out. I expect sleepless nights, caffeine-filled days and a lot of fun!

Be careful what you wish for ...

A facebook post by Michael, my classmate, inspired the title for this week's post. As the saying goes, you should be careful what you wish for, for you might get it. All of us that got into Wharton were made aware of how busy Term 3 could get, and yet it feels like we weren't prepared enough for it. As a hectic fortnight whizzed past before the previous session and we're midway through another one, it seems nostalgic to remember the time from a year ago when this was a distant possibility. Don't get me wrong. I love what I'm learning this term. Its a confluence of work, school and personal schedules that makes this term hard for me, whereas for some others its taking on GCP over and above Term 3 schedule that makes it harder.

Last session whizzed past tamely given all the excitement leading into it. Many of us were up late doing (or re-doing) the Webvan case for David Bell's class, and then doing (and re-doing) the discounted cash flows for the finance case. Sabre period 1 decisions had been submitted and we had different teams trash talking each other in good spirits.  I believe that one of the milestones that went relatively unnoticed is that the Webvan case was probably the last assignment that we get to do together as the original learning teams put together when we joined. I'm sure everyone one in my class has something to say about how awesome their team is as well as about how badly their team sucked on other attributes. I actually went back and read what I wrote in my Wharton admission essays about learning teams and what skills I bring to the table. It helps to have that thought out well and observe yourself as you interact with your learning teams and see how true your assessment of your skills were. This is a classic case of a constrained optimization problem where each team member has to optimize their time distribution over individual assignments where they are graded individually and team assignments where the team gets the same grade and everyone pitches in towards the work. People's perception of how good/bad their learning team members are, is often linked to where along this continuum those members chose their optimal distributions.

As we form newer teams to cooperate on projects like SABRE and GCP, its refreshing to work closely with other classmates and see the differences and similarities in their modes of operation. At the same time, terms like this where everyone is so busy highlights those in the class who make it worth the while to spend time at Wharton. There are several of these, but I shall just pick one to illustrate, while leaving his name out since he might prefer it that way. Not only does he take leadership in most of his learning team assignments, he always goes out of his way to help classmates with difficult concepts. His attention to detail is as good as his ability to make a jazzy presentation of the material he wishes to present. With a busy career and a busy personal life, its just incredible to see how he manages his time and manages to stay on top of so many things - definitely it has been a great learning experience for me. This post (like others by me) is influenced by what limited set of observations I get to make of my class, but I'm certain that there are several stars like this in my class, which makes school fun and inspirational.

Speaking of inspirational, as part of homework for these two weeks, we were required to record a 3 minute video as part of our Management Communication class based on the iPremier case where we needed to role play and convince the executive team at iPremier on what future course of action to take. Given that most of us did not prepare for it in time to use the recording resources back in school, it was interesting to watch the hodge-podge of video qualities, backgrounds, presentation templates and approaches from different classmates for this assignment. We were required to "create" a chart to aid us with our explanation, and this required that we invent some data and plot it the way we wanted to, to make our case. I didn't realize that inventing data to plot it in Excel to fit what I had in mind was so much harder than it sounded. Recording without an audience and pretending that there was one in front was not easy either. I've always had a hard time rehearsing for any presentations that I make, and sure enough that came back to hurt me this time as well. Its been interesting to read the materials for this class and learn formally how to be a better speaker.

As we hit home stretch for next session, the finance midterm looms ahead. Before that, we have our SABRE Period 1 decisions due tomorrow. Teams that did well need to remember to keep their eyes on the ball, and the teams that didn't .. well, need to get their act together and reverse their fortunes. The CFA GIRC team had our report for the Western regional finals due last week and the presentation happens in a few days time, so its been crazy scheduling that in the middle of other deliverables for school. It was a great learning experience about the semiconductor industry, performing public comparable valuation, DCF analysis etc. to the extent one could given the time constraints. Another illustration of the importance of being careful in what one wishes for, and being prepared to handle the consequences of realizing that wish.

Missing the forest for the trees...

This has been the longest lag so far between a session and an update about it. And rightfully so. This is probably the busiest two weeks in the program so far, without a single exam at the end of it.

Last session was over even before it began. We had our marketing case reports due for the elBulli case. In addition to coming up with interesting business ideas for Adria to ponder over, creative classmates such as my learning team buddy and superstar Arif used Adobe After Effects to create ads for a new restaurant that Adria could start in Barcelona. The fact that the ad was excellent could be summarized by the response from one classmate who thought that we had just downloaded that ad from the elBulli website! Thanks to our classmate Leo, we had two really engaging and inspiring speakers last session, the CEO of EmberClear and a parter from KPCB. Albert, the CEO of EmberClear, was amazingly articulate about the business case behind gasification of coal as the next incremental technology innovation in energy that will drive billions of dollars of business. He recommended that all of us look at incremental changes rather than totally radical ideas such as "cleantech".

Did I mention that we also had our first final for the Term? OPIM got done with a crisp, two-hour final exam from Christian. We also had our first session of MKTG 622, which is the marketing management strategy class. Patti Williams will be spending the next few sessions with us as we rattle our SABREs and learn the material by building a company. All the Wharton MBAs are divided into several worlds of 6 companies each. Each company is a team of 5 people and sells two brands of a particular product in its own world. Given a lot of market reserarch, production planning, sales, distribution, forecasting and other data, each team has to decide what its best strategy for growth is. The game is played over 6 periods of decision making where one uses a software called SABRE to fight it out. May the best team win!

Coming back to why these two weeks are hard. We had the first set of SABRE decisions due a few days ago. There are two cases due in David Bell's marketing management class and one due in the finance class. For the communications class we are supposed to read a case and record a video presenting a defense to the media about the situation presented. We are supposed to do this as teams of two, critiquing each others work, which is due for recording this weekend as well. Oh and did I mention that those of us that are participating in the GIRC investment research challenge have our reports due this weekend? And GCP folks have their Devil's Advocate round coming up soon as well. Those of us with busy jobs or kids at home can also bid goodbye to sleep for these two weeks. Would this explain the record turnout for our weekly lunch meeting in South Bay today where 10 of us showed up to commiserate over each others' predicaments.

In the middle of all this, it is easy to get bogged down in the details of the case materials presented. Be it SABRE, or the Webvan case in marketing or the New Heritage Doll case in Finance, there is much more data that what someone could potentially use in their analysis. In fact without getting some perspective from the conjoint study data and perceptual maps in SABRE, one can get lost navigating all the other pieces of information there. As part of the Webvan case, Prof. Bell uploaded a few of his interesting research papers for reference. For the engineer in me, it was fascinating to see how Bayesian spatiotemporal models and discrete time hazard models were being used to analyze how an online retailer such as Netgrocer could have increased their customer base. Again, lots of data, lots of math, but a few key intuitions that guide the analysis.

So term 3, at its midpoint, seems to be about sifting through the muddy waters of detail to arrive at key insights. About not missing the forest for the trees. For data obsessed engineers such as myself, it seems to be about seeing data as a means to an end, not an end in itself. At a more philosophical level, it is about seeing where the trees of coursework and homework fit within the larger, more beautiful forest of life filled with the cheer of near and dear ones, Valentine's Days, chasing toddlers and smiling newborns.

The Batmobile and race cars

It took a few days after a marathon 4-day session last week to sit down and post a summary of events. So here it goes.

We had a full-day corporate valuation training on Wednesday attended by a good number of class 36 and a few class 35 folks. Classmates who are looking at investment banking internships were quite happy with the session that would help them with their interviews. Continuing with the Impact Investing speaker series, we had a speaker over lunch to talk to us about different ways of looking at metrics for analyzing social impact from a market perspective. The Brazil committee met to discuss more about how to plan the visit, and solicit wider participation. The Wharton Business Plan Competition Phase II deadline was yesterday, so teams that wanted to meet face-to-face and discuss their submissions met and spoke about it. Folks neck-deep in their GCP work had separate meetings with their teams, chipping away at their tasks, one hour at a time. Few of us that are participating in the Global Investment Research Challenge had a quick pow-wow with our mentor Prof. Percival to get his advice on how we should proceed. We had two speakers come and talk to us about networking and how to go about doing it successfully. We had another speaker talk to us about charisma and how to make a good first impression.

Then of course there were the lectures - the reason why we were there in the first place. Percival gave us an extended session on discounted cash flows, with enough theater and script mixed in so we will remember what we were taught through all the drama. We had a couple of really interesting marketing classes where Bell and our TA Eric discussed Unilever's entry into the north-eastern Brazil market with a new low-cost detergent. Christian spoke to us about call arrival process modeling and how to estimate wait times and service times in a multi-server Poisson arrival model. We also started discussions on the Toyota Production System with a really cool French video about Citroen and their adoption of TPS.

We also had a flurry of applicants show up and attend sessions. This is the final stretch now, so I hope everyone has submitted their applications, or are close to doing so. It has been a busy month for me as well on this front. I have interacted with about 11 applicants so far, reviewing essays where asked to, responding to questions and in general providing them the same level of approachability and guidance that class 34 gave me when I visited Wharton last year and asked for help. So many of them are strong applicants and I hope they all make it in - class 37 promises to be one amazing class already!

Last weekend was also the deadline for my classmates to send in their applications for the Wharton Non-Profit Board Leadership Program. We had several classmates submit their applications already and are in the process of reviewing them. It was amazing to read about a completely different part of their lives that we seldom get to see in school and see how that motivated them to volunteer their time to help others. We hope to find the right set of nonprofits to match them with that can utilize their skills and interests the most, and from whom they can learn and benefit the most as well. We have a one day training program for all applicants planned for mid-Feb. Stay tuned for updates in the coming weeks!

As I read these essays from classmates, the essays of the new applicants to WEMBA and interact with my classmates looking into internships and career transitions, I cannot but help think about the Batmobile and race cars. Race cars are built to win - on race tracks. Every piece of their being is fine-tuned for that one act, to extract the last ounce of performance from them under challenging circumstances. The Batmobile on the other hand - a pure work of genius. Driving fast is only one of the things it can do. If you saw it parked outside your local supermarket while someone did grocery shopping, you might notice it because it looks different. But if it didn't, one would never know the things it was capable of.

Corporate life, to a great extent, seems to be similar. Through our undergraduate and graduate years, we are trained to excel at one specialized area. We get into jobs in that area of specialization, and before we know it, we're being fine tuned to excel at that one thing inside the corporation. Within a few years, we are all race cars ready to win races for our companies in that one area of specialization. But what if there were a few Batmobiles in there, that appear the same as race cars, but in terms of potential were vastly different? Where in the corporate world are there Batmobile detectors that beep when those exceptional employees walk past them and indicate to the management - behold! This is someone that you need to cherish and whose work scope needs to be expanded wider. In other words, how does a Batmobile - so used to its daily routine of winning races that it finds it as interesting as grocery shopping - signal to the outside world that it has potential that they cannot see? What in our corporate HR structure is made to detect these signals? One can learn about Hackman and skill variety and job design, but how does this get integrated into corporate business unit structures and career growth paths? How does one taken a specialist out of their "competency trap" and redeploy them into something else where they are untested but claim potential, or interest, or both?

All interesting questions ... and as many of us navigate the paths of career transitions, something to ponder about as we think about starting our own enterprises. Where would a Batmobile fit within your organization were you to build one?

Timing

After three weeks of rest and recovery, Term 3 started for me this weekend. Many of my classmates took the Global Modular Courses offered locally as well as overseas in India and other countries. I heard from a few of them that the marketing class in India, as well as the product development class out here in San Francisco were quite interesting. Some of us had other commitments during the break and hence could not sign up for these – there is always next December to catch up.

Friday started early for some of us that are participating in the Global Investment Research Challenge – we met on campus early before classes to strategize and divide up work for the fun ride ahead dissecting a firm’s financials. After two terms, the starting of a term feels like meeting long-lost friends after a while – was awesome to meet everyone again and get back into the cauldron that is the WEMBA program. This session we started with Terwiesch for OPIM, Percival for Corp. Finance, and several instructors led by Carl Maugeri on Management Communication. In two OPIM sessions we play-worked on two production lines – first a small assignment approving/rejecting mortgage applications as a line of 5 people, and then as a longer assignment bidding for contracts to build a circuit board that beeps and blinks based on how quickly a line of 5 employees can churn these out. Competitive juices were out in full flow as teams practiced how quickly they could insert the different components and move the product down the line to reach the tester at the end and be validated to be defect-free. Based on activity times we had to make bids on how low our selling price could be. The winning team in my section made 31 of these in 10 minutes with zero defects – hello, China, here they come!

The revelation to me for this term so far has been Prof. Percival. Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined that analyzing and contrasting the financials of FedEx and UPS over the past two decades would be presented as interestingly as a suspense thriller. The man should definitely go into theater. It was just fabulous sitting back and soaking it in – seeing how the numbers were just one piece in a larger context in which they were set. The focus of the course is value creation – and from the session we had, it looks like it is not just about the value creation happening in firms, but also within our minds about rethinking the rights and wrongs of earnings management and other shady but legal accounting practices. I’m sure I will spend more space on this course in the coming weeks, so will postpone further analysis. The Management Communication class promises to be engaging as well. It was great fun to be broken up into teams of seven and have an opportunity to address the team on a topic provided to us and speak for 3 minutes about it. We were videotaped and are to get a detailed analysis of how we did and recommendations for improvement during a 30-minute one-on-one meeting next session.

As if all this action wasn’t sufficient, we had two lunchtime speakers come talk to us about their work – one on impact investing and the other on issues that companies face as they go global. This was also the first session in the MBA program so far that one of the sections had a class as late as 7.15-9.15 pm.

Some classmates came with their significant others, some with their kids. It was great to see everyone relaxed after a good break and after having spent time with their families. It is difficult to get enough time during the term to do justice to all the relationships in our lives. It reminds me of stuff learnt during undergrad actually, if you will humor me – the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. It states that if you sample a process often enough, you will be able to reconstruct it fully without any loss of quality even though you did not get to witness the entire process. Life during the MBA program seems like an experiment at disproving this. In the recent past theories, like compressive sampling have actually extended this further to say that for sparse signals (that have very little information in them over long durations) one can actually time the sampling at appropriate times, less frequently than the Nyquist rate, and still reconstruct with full fidelity. But unfortunately, not everything in life is a sparse signal. Catching up with friends during breaks might suffice based on how well one knows them, but time not spent with kids is memories that cannot be reconstructed with any other samples from life. One can only try to sample more frequently during breaks and see if one gets back any signal from times that one did not witness.

Timing seems to be a culprit in corporate behavior as well. As we are learning in the finance class, the artificial segmenting caused in a company’s life through splitting earnings reports into quarters causes the firms to move numbers across the divide to achieve their earnings estimates and manipulate public perception of performance. Clearly a 3-month sampling period seems to be insufficient to gauge how well a firm is doing. It will be interesting to see if the FASB comes up with stricter regulations around these earnings management tricks. OPIM opened our eyes to a different sort of timing – within production lines. For maximal performance of a team, the members need to work in lock-step, or achieve “line balance” as we were told. The takt time needs to be regular. It was also interesting to hear a professor use variance in VO2Max between students as an example for variance between people, just like variance in productivity. Terwiesch's got to be a long-distance runner.

In life, timing is everything. For those of you that are applying to the program, this is something to keep in mind. As you work on your essays and schedule your interviews, think about why you are doing an MBA, as well as why you are doing it now.