Module 6 was the toughest module to date. I don't think the content was particularly difficult, but with the weather turning and 7 months of work behind us, the burnout factor was setting in. It was difficult to get motivated to do work, and some of the assignments we had seemed to be work projects for the sake of doing work. We managed to get through it, but I'm looking forward to the Christmas break and not seeing the school for a while.
The module was called Strategic Leadership and the courses were Finance Strategy, Strategic Implementation and Change, International Business, Negotiations and Conflict Management, and IT Strategy. A lot of the topics had to do with making strategic management decisions and how to get people to go along with them.
Finance Strategy
This was a fast paced course! Only five class sessions but a lot of topics to cover, Professor Wang seemed constrained by the short length of the course. He flipped through slides really quickly and there wasn't much time for questions and discussion in the class. I had to do a lot of reading form the textbook just to get a sense of what the topics were. People coming from Arts backgrounds without a strong command of math had a hard time with the course and some groups even hired tutors to get them through. The quizzes and exam were fair though, but the course was a lot of work. A lot of people were happy when it was over. The general consensus was that the course needed more classes than 5.
Strategic Implementation and Change
I wrote about this course already in an earlier post. The course ended well with a simulation about implementing change at a fictitious aerospace technology company. The simulation was-web based and you had to go through an information gathering phase, a planning phase, and an implementation. The idea was to get everyone on board for a change in the company's business strategy by a sequence of initiatives with limited time and money. The goal was to get over 60% of the company on board. My team didn't do that well, some of our decisions took too long to implement or drained our resources. It was an interesting exercise in any case.
International Business
I didn't like this course much. I thought the amount of assigned reading was unrealistic and, at this stage of the program, time management was more key than actually getting through all the topics. I basically did the minimum amount of work required for this course. It dealt with topics dealing with international business like the bombardier-embraer feud, the dubai-ports fiasco, Chiquita banana in south america, and other similar topics. If you were an news junkie like I was over the past few years, you had a good handle on what the topics were about. I had a hard time knowing what we were supposed to be learning though. The discussions and presentations were interesting, but at the end of the day, I didn't really get something out of it that tied everything together.
Negotiations and Conflict Management
This was an interesting course, albeit a short one. The textbook is a good one: Essentials of Negotiation. We had to do negotiation exercises in pairs where half the class had one side of a story, and the others had the other side. The idea was to get to a negotiated deal. I learnt a lot about myself and how I negotiate. A lot of past conversations, relationships, and interviews boiled up from my memory. I think just being aware of my tendencies in negotiations will help me in the future. We had to do team presentations about doing business and negotiations in different cultures. For our final paper, we had to take a negotiation from our past and break it down and analyze it. I did mine on my salary negotiation at my last job.
IT Strategy
This was a looooooong course. The idea was to make good business decisions in terms of using IT resources. I found the topics repetitive and I think this course was better off being 5 sessions rather than 10. We did learn a good analysis tool in breaking down a business problem and getting to the central underlying issues. We also learnt a good technique for writing memos with less than 250 words that were direct and efficient in conveying problems and recommendations.
I was glad when this module was over. I decided to pass on an information session trip to Toronto for meeting with companies and touring some facilities. I figured I needed a few days to lay low and vegetate instead of hob-nobbing and shmoozing in a suit. I know that companies aren't really looking to hire at this time of year, plus none of the companies really matched what I'm looking for. My job search will begin in earnest in January.
No comments:
Post a Comment