Death by KISS

OK, I don't know what's wrong with my middle management team but sometimes I swear that they like to make the simplest thing 1,000 times more complicated that it needed to be...

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!

I personally think it’s a mark of poor leadership skills and lack of competency when a manager needs to “make things more complicated” before proposing a solution to solve the issues… why, oh why do you need to make things worse before solving them?

Maybe it’s a “manager complex” thingy that’s going on here… some people feel the need to paint the most hopeless picture to their bosses before they come in and save the day with a simple solution… but heck, who the hell are these people kidding?

The one who has to do all the heavy lifting is their subordinates… this kind of leadership behaviour is very corrosive in the workplace. Essentially, the manager will be wasting the subordinate’s time and productivity on a wild goose-chase…

So, let’s cut to the point and put more effort to solve a particular problem, rather than spinning it out of control!

But hey, in corporate world, everybody would like to think that they are saving the world… but none know how to keep is simple…

p/s: oh yea, first post after a long break, I rant about my work... ha ha, oh well

Stanford GSB's Webinar for ASEAN Countries

OK, first thing first - the morning after I decided to retake GMAT, I woke up with severe migraine, sore throat, blocked nose and ears... was it a sign?!!

Anyway, last night, Stanford GSB held a webinar for ASEAN countries to give a chance for the prospective MBA and Sloan programme applicants to chat with 2 of its recent graduates. So we had the pleasure to meet Tilia Wong, who was from Malaysia but is now living in the US, recent MBA 2012 and Khai something something, a recent Sloan programme graudated who is now a civil worker in Singapore.

OK, confession time - I didn't really pay attention to what Khai something-something said because he was a bit kiasu, spoke longer than necessary and mainly he was talking about Sloan programme... yea... not really interested in the Sloan programme...

But Tilia came across as a very charming lady, soft spoken but very articulated and obviously smart. I just wished that Khai would be less of a mic hogger and let her speak more... like really MORE! and Khai just had opinions about everything, even on MBA specific matters... oh well.... kiasuness...

What I like about the webinar - it was at 9 pm on a weekday, a nice change from having to wake at 2 am on a weekday to attend other top school's webinar (HBS, I'm looking at you!).

What I don't like about the webinar - Khai... like seriously, I rather Tilia be the sole speaker for the session so she could explain more about her experience as a student at GSB...

What I learnt about GSB that I couldn't get elsewhere - hmm, ah this actually came from Khai (thanks, Khai, hahaha) - he said to take advantage of the different programmes offer by the 7 other schools in Stanford and work with the young people who are doing the undergraduate there.

What thing that was quite obvious from the way both of them talk - the entrepreneurial spirit of GSB and the Silicone Valley... this seems like something unique to GSB and students should really take advantage of it.

OK, now I can't wait to attend their info session on 1st August!

GMAT Round 2

...I better start studying the IR section!

What is Your Favourite Food?

Stanford GSB wants to know what is your favourite food!

here's one of my many-many fav food:

Nasi Lemak Sambal Kerang!

As a Malaysian (I can hardly call myself a Malay since I'm part Malay, Thai & Indian...) I'm completely at a loss as to what food I will actually put in that tiny little box in Stanford GSB's application... we're such a food society, it's tough to just pick one!!

Data-Mining My Life...

In between cramming 15 slides worth of info into 3 for a presentation this Monday, I’ve started the painful process of data-mining my life, all for the hope to finding the tread that binds all of my life experience together to substantiate my obsession with HBS…

 

This reflection process is a crucial first step towards crafting my application theme. To borrow from Stanford GSB’s Dean’s Corner entry on writing effective essays:

“Essays are not a marketing exercise but an accounting exercise. This is a process in which you look inside yourself and try to express most clearly what is there. We are trying to get a good sense of your perspectives, your thoughts on management and leadership, and how the business school can help you realize your goals.”

Ah, that’s why I hate writing these essays… they remind me of my awful accounting classes I took during my final year in uni! Joking aside, I do think that in order for you to intelligently market yourself, you need to know yourself first, and the only way of effectively doing this is by accounting all significant events in your life that have had an influence on who you are today.  In other word, good book-keeping is a pre-requisite to great self-marketing!

The way I look at it, I have 3 areas (or books) that I need to fill up with relevant stories:

1.       Professional Life

2.       Personal Life

3.       Student Life

Professional Life:
I have about 5 years of work experience in 2 major firms. At the moment, I don’t have anyone reporting directly under me but I’m leading various small teams and initiatives. I’m comfortable leading as well as being a proactive team player. I’m comfortable with numbers and in my analytical ability, I live by a set of principles and never compromised on them. I’ve lived in the UK for 4 years, and I’ve worked with people from various cultural backgrounds. And as an added bonus, I speak 3 languages. So I think coming up with good examples in my professional life to highlight my leadership impacts, teamwork, motivation, ethics and diversity will not me a major hassle.

Personal Life:
Ah… the elusive life outside of work! I volunteered a lot. But mostly on work-related event – stuff like leading an event management team to organise an engagement session. Problem is, these involvements are so intertwined with my work that I find it difficult to categorically put them either under the professional or personal life banner… I’m a coach to my alma mater’s debate team, I enjoy running marathons. And I used to play a lot of MMORPG… but I bet business school doesn’t want to know about my video gaming hay-days! This is certainly an area that I really need to think hard about to get any substantial evidence of leadership, ethical values, diversity, teamwork and management experience… anyone knows of any good leadership volunteering opportunity online or around KL?

Student Life:
Ah… now is where the trouble begins…
The four years of my university life was the “lost years”. Really, I was completely burnt out by the time I made it to university. You guys know how it works in Malaysia – in order to get a scholarship to study overseas, you pretty much have to mortgage your childhood to the devil (fortunately with way better interest rate than say, Freddie Mac…) and commit yourself to various leadership and extra-curriculum activities while you were in primary and secondary school. I’m not ashamed that I did it all – I played hockey for my school, I was a nationally ranked debater and captain of my debate team since form 3. I won every single academic prize offered by my school, I was on top of every exam list, I was a prefect AND library monitor. I represented my school to almost all academic events, quizzes and completion. I served the community as a St John’s Ambulance volunteer and for a short while I was in a band… and I started doing all these when I was 10 years old! So pardon me for being lazy during the university years… all I could think of during that time period was traveling around the world, enjoying different cultures and meeting as many different people as possible.

***

5 years after graduation, I’m f**ked!

Lucky for me, I have 3 – 5 months to improve my candidacy!

Trend of Admission Essays...

I think I wanna close the night by commenting on the recent trend of admission essays by top US business schools and reflecting a bit what my gameplan is moving forward with the application season this year...

Last year when I applied to HBS, I had to wreck my brain to answer 4 questions:

• Essay 1: Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)
• Essay 2: Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)
• Essay 3: Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)
• Essay 4: Answer a question you wish we had asked. (400 words)

Essentially, HBS asked each applicant to share with them 6 short stories about themselves, through their accomplishments and setbacks, their short, mid and long term goals for pursuing an MBA degree and a really wildcard question that they hope the applicant could reveal more about their unique traits and why these traits are relevant for their business career... total word counts for the applicant to capture the admission committee's short attention span is 2000 words.

HBS 2012/13 application essays:

• Essay 1: Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)
• Essay 2: Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

This year however, HBS dramatically cut their essay requirement to TWO with total word counts of not more than 800 words! Thats a 60% reduction in word counts!!! Of course they include the post-interview memo-style reflection but given than HBS only interviews about 20% of its total applicants... not a lot of people will get the chance to have their "final say"

And as a testament to HBS' leadership in MBA branding, most other top business schools follow suit with their own changes to either their essay word count, no of essay, or the application components itself.

Stanford reduced one essay required from 4 to only 3 and reflected the change in their word counts as well.

Last year Stanford GSB asked:

• Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
• Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
• Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
• Option A: Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
• Option B: Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.
• Option C: Tell us about a time when you generated support from others for an idea or initiative.
• Option D: Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined or established.

...and the word limit was 1800 words total, 200 less than HBS'.

This year Stanford GSB asks:

• Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
• Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
• Essay 3: Answer one of the three questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
• Option A: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
• Option B: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization.
• Option C: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.

...and the maximum word counts for all of the essays combined is 1600 words. That's double HBS'! This year it looks like they combine last year's Option B and C to create Option B. Logically, if you generated support for your brilliant ideas to make a lasting impact on your organisation, of course you'd have pursued an opportunity to improve your organisation... I guess a lot of applicants in the past answer both question in ONE single essay and this could well trigger the admission to reword their Option B!

And Kellogg also completely revamped their essay for this year...

Last year, Kellog asked:

• Essay 1: Briefly assess your career progress to date. Elaborate on your future career plans and your motivation for pursuing an MBA.
• Essay 2: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences.
• Essay 3: Why would you and your peers select you for admission, and what impact would you make as a member of the Kellogg community?
• Essay 4: Complete one of the following:
• Describe a time you had to inspire a reluctant individual or group
• People may be surprised to learn that I…..
• The riskiest personal or professional decision I ever made was….

This year, Kellog asks:

• Essay 1: Discuss moments or influences in your personal life that have defined who you are today. (500 word limit)
• Essay 2: What have been your most significant leadership experiences? What challenges did you face, and what impact did you have? This is your opportunity to explain how you Think Bravely (personally and/or professionally). (500-word limit)
• Essay 3: Imagine yourself at your Kellogg graduation. What career will you be preparing to enter, and how have the MBA and Kellogg helped you get there? (Please answer in terms of your program choice: One-Year, Two-Year, MMM, JD-MBA) (500-word limit)
• Essay 4: (For MMM applicants only): How have you redefined yourself, your business environment and community through the pursuit of design and innovation? (400-word limit)

...and owh, they have this really cute tweet-like essay that you have to answer in 25 words or less:

“What one interesting or fun fact would you want your future Kellogg classmates to know about you?”

I won't be surprise if next year these schools adcom asks applicants to just tweet their "essay"...

 

My GMAT Experience

I personally felt that the most stressful part of my MBA application last year was the GMAT... only because I gave myself 1 month to familiarise with the format and study the key concepts of the test. Now, before I share my GMAT prep experience, it might be worth mentioning why I only had 1 month to prepare...

I've been looking for the right time to pursue my MBA education ever since I joined the workforce, way back in 2008 but I never really started any research on the whole admission process until about a year ago and the only admission process that I bothered to check was HBS'. Basically, I just know that I need to fill in an online application form, sit for GMAT, write essays to recap my achievements and why I want to study MBA at a particular school.

Last year, without going into too much details, was not a good year for me. I was part of a product development team (engineering team lead) who managed to deliver stretched results but was sideline during the annual appraisal cycle because my new line manager "didn't know me well enough" to vouch for my contributions to the project (he came to the project AFTER we completed and passed all of our internal review for funding). Well, things like this happen every day in the business world, but to me, it was really the kick that I needed to start considering MBA seriously.

That happened way back in October, so at the end of the month, I decided to submit my application to HBS for 2012 intake.... and yea, I know... I was way unprepared!

From my readings, applying in R3 is not advisable, and you might as well apply in R1 for the following application season. By end of October, R1 deadline had already passed, so I was hard-pressed to submit my application in R2, and the last date of GMAT offered by the only test centre in Kuala Lumpur was in the middle of December, before the Christmas holiday rush and the next available appointment was in March, after the Chinese New Year holidays (!)... hence why I only had 1 month to prepare for my GMAT!!!

Cue drama...

But if it wasn't for the extremely strecthed and ambitious timing that I set for myself, I don't think I'd have the discipline to actually study GMAT in a structured way. From the moment I booked my session, I diligently spent 3-4 hours after offfice hours to revise for GMAT. In a month, I clocked a total of 130 hours of revision time, so that averaged at 4 hour 20 mins -ish a day (I read somewhere that said the top scorers put at least 100 hours into revision).

OK, here's the obligatory disclaimer - putting more than 100 hours into your GMAT study doesn't automatically guarantee great score (and on that subject, what is a great score?). I think, I was being extremely paranoid about my own Quant performance that I spent more hours than necessary into revising the Quant portion of the test, whereas I only spent half a day going through sample AWA anwers and I scored 6.0...

The point I'm trying to make is, before you start any study plan, know your weaknesses... I was a trained engineer and my ego let me think that I don't really need high Verbal score and low Quant score on the other hand would really hurt my reputation... clearly I was misinformed...

If you're aiming for a high overall score, pay more attention to your Verbal skills. Apparently, people who scored 99% in Verbal and only in the low 70ish% in Quant have overall score of 730++... whereas those who scored close to 90% in Quant and 80ish% in Verbal can hardly break 700...

OK so back to my experience, I went to the test centre on the fated day, feeling completely horrified after doing a last online test and received a 640 score from the official GMAC tool... to make matter worse, I had to guess last 3 questions in the Quant section and my paranoia-o-meter just shot up the sky... I was completely sure that I just messed up my 1st attempt at GMAT...

So during the break, I had to recollect my thoughts and had to pull every shred of motivation that I could muster to focus on the Verbal section. Ironically, I became calmer and managed to finish the Verbal section well on time. Now come the dreaded decision time - should I cancel my report or press the submit button?

I thought to myself - what the heck?!! I spent countless hours worrying about this and I was not about to chicken out at the last minute, so I chose to submit my result... and....

Imagine my relief when I broke the 700 barrier!

I think my GMAT test day was one of the most intense days of my last 3 years... it almost gave me a heart-attack!

In the next post, I'll share my revision plan and the resources that I used to help me break into the 700 club... I seriously need to give a lot of people credit for my GMAT accomplishment!

Code of Collaboration

I thought I'd follow up my earlier post today with a real case example of what I meant...

Earlier this week, a manager from our corporate unit came to talk to my boss about getting our help in providing her some inputs on our past collaboration with this one multinational company. Without going into much details, my company happened to award contracts to international companies and as the unit responsible for strategy formulation of our domestic operations, we have done a few "partnership" studies to assess the level of collaboration between us and our international partners.

So this manager from our corporate unit called us for a discussion where she shared with us the draft of her study, which left me completely floored... not because I was impressed, but because I was immediately "turned-off" by her cluttered slides.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to work with one of the most strategically minded bosses in my company and I still remember his simple philosophy when it comes to pitching ideas - he only has 2 rules.

Rule No. 1 - The flow of your presentation reflects your thought process
Rule No. 2 - The quality of your slides reflects the clarity of your thinking

Needless to say, this manager has neither clear thought process nor any clue how to approach her problem...

Nevertheless, my boss let her take us through her analysis and she tried to argue that we had given so many contracts for local project to this particular company and yet internationally they have not really brought us into any long lasting and meaningful partnership. And then she went on to compare the multinational companies collaboration with a Chinese companies where they have forged a mutually benefitial relationship. So, according to her, it was her tasks to unlock the right "code" for us to replication from this multinational-chinese company relationship and emulate it to unlock our international growth...
By the end of her cluttered, busy and dizzying presentation, I was completedly checked-out...

Often times I observed middle management squabble over misinterpreted direction. I personally believe that the corporate manager (bless her ignorance) was trying to gether input to help her analysis but when she pitched her study in a messy presentation, with half-cooked ideas, she sent the wrong message - her presentation was more about how we had given too many contracts domestically and failed to cultivate valueable partnership internationally. I appreciate that she tried to coin the term "code of collaboration" but it essentially is just a way to collaborate... why corporate people like to coin terms that's so complicated is beyond my understanding...

OK, so what did I do?

The main issue was not about the deals that we had made or failed to make. The main point of the study was to understand what is the best way for us to collaborate with this multinational company. If this company can successfully forged a symbiotic partnership with a Chinese company, what's stopping us? So with this new focus, I redrafted the strategy paper.

First, I proposed we look at how the international company started in Malaysia, then we assess their areas of operations, their collaboration with my company, their market share and the trend of their investment. It's important to see past trend in these key indicators before you can chart how to effectively collaborate in the future.

Another thing, it is also worth to go back in time and study the strategies and reasons that we awarded a lot of contracts to this company. Comparing number of contracts awarded to them against successful international ventures that they had brought us in is grossly inappropriate. Business is not driven by number of contracts but rather value of these contracts. Say we had awarded 10 contracts to them and in return we managed to grow our revenue 10x whilst they only took us in 1 international deal, it doesn't automatically mean that we got the short end of the stick! That's why I think in analysing the impact of collaboration and partnership, it is important to take into consideration not only the direct value of the contract but also the spin-off values created from such collaboration. Values derived from capability development, technology deployment for example.

Then we should study their strategic blueprint in Malaysia and assess it against our company strategies. Are there overlapped areas of focus that we can enter together as partners? Are we competing to win the same market? Do we have capabilities that can compliment each other's strategies? How about our proprietary technology?

Next step is to know what focus areas in the international market that we want to strategically grow and do we need this company to grow into this area? Are we entering into a new region/country and are they present in that region/country? Only by knowing what we want to pursue internationally and how we plan to grow in these areas can we identify areas of collaboration.

After that then we can study their behaviour in collaborating with their international partners. What kind of value propositions do they look for in their partners? Can we offer superior values? Identifying these strategic enablers are critical to ensure that we have the leverage for negotiation. Now, go back to their operation in Malaysia; understanding their growth areas can give you leverage to structure any effective asset swap - one way to successfully collaborate with them. After all, a successful collaboration entails a mutually benefitial cooperation!

Voila - that's your "code" for effective collaboration!

Sometimes, I think this thing is a matter of logic and common sense but a few months in a unit that's a bit closer to corporate taught me that not everybody shares the same logical sense with you...

So tomorrow she asked me to join her discussion with her boss... that should be interesting!

View from the middle

As I was finishing off a concept paper for my company's participation in one of a leading international conferences in our industry, I started to ponder that intricacy of power and political play in my own division/company. And I thought that, without divulging too many details, some of the challenges that I faced in my day-to-day job would make an excellent case study for those who were thinking of business education.

Taking a leaf of HBS' book, I think I'll also use this space to create my own case study - highlighting the many fitfalls that the middle management in my company made in interpreting the directions from the top management...

OK, so here's the obligatory disclaimer: I am no expert in business and it is not the intend of this blog to shame and blame anyone. But this will be a collection of thoughts of how I'd approach the many problems that are faced by middle management of my company.

I won't have all the answers to my company's problems but I sure intend to learn as much as possible from them!

Let's see where this will bring us!

OK, so I've decided to blog about my experience in applying to top US Business Schools, mainly as a mechanism to cope with the intense pressure and expectation, on top of my gruelling work schedule and almost non-existance personal life, outside of work that is.

I won't be detailing my short-term and long-terms goals here, or at least not in this post... but I intend to discuss my career projection and my aspiration in the coming posts.

I'll also use this space to blog about my experience with GMAT - perhaps the most time consuming preparation for business school application. I'll recap my experience last year applying to HBS just for nostalgia sake! And of course I'll be updating on my progress for 2012/13 application rounds...

I hope this blog can help those who are seriously thinking about pursuing their MBA, especially Malaysian whom I'll be more than happy to meet up and bore you guys about my mba journey, ha ha ha...

untill next time!