simpsons quote of the day

Lisa:  Dad we gotta do something.
Homer:  What can I do?  I'm only one man.
Lisa:  Lincoln was only one man.
Homer:  Are you sure there wasn't a midget in his hat?  There was an email that said there was.

on the title

The title of this blog is from a Simpsons episode (of course).

"Tied to a Bear" is the name of fictional reality TV show as depicted in a sign panned over in season 14 episode 5 (DABF21) Helter Shelter. It's when the Simpsons are at a tv studio auditioning to appear on "the 1895 House" another fictional reality show (based on the actual UK series The 1900 House). Other fictional reality shows depicted in passing signs are "Mystery Injection" and "Sucker Punch". "Tied to a Bear" won out over my other possible Simpsons based title also from season 14:

on aig

You can count on Krugman for a pithy one-liner on the AIG bailout...

on expectations

So far, school has been very organised, and very professional in presenting itself to us, the students. The slick presentations, videos and catering at orientation, the quality of the staff in the program office and the faculty, the meticulous thought and effort put into organising our study groups, timetables and seating arrangements. It's a big name school and we have come to expect professional service and management. So when something slips up, it jars, dents our confidence and can take us a while to forgive. I think about this now because for our first month of short introductory courses we were all given timetables and whole of stream events were loaded onto our personal calenders so we can follow the flurry of lectures, workshops, briefings and so forth.

A couple of weeks ago, however, a small slip up meant that we were not notified of a compulsory workshop until a few hours before it was due to start. Not surprisingly, we as a group were pretty unimpressed and a number of people missed the email and didn't make it. The workshop was advertised to us in some other package we were given during orientation - but we were given such a pile of material during orientation, no one had been able to get to this particular bit of information. We had been relying instead on the timetable and our calendars to give us the important things. Although school acted quickly to organise a repeat session and apologise for the confusion, some grumbling persisted.

This got me thinking about the expectations the school generated for us, and how a relatively small deviation from the standards we had been led to expect caused a disproportionate amount of dissatisfaction. With our expectations so high, a tiny event tarnished the school's brand in our eyes.

It got me thinking about how fragile reptuations can be, and how much they are worth. Like how a relativly small safety incident can cause so much damage the reputation of an airline which has built a massive brand on its reputation for safe flying. The lesson is: lower your customer's expectations.

on mba

on consulting

on business school interviews

Having just completed the first proper week of classes I just wanted to write a quick note on the interviews which I went through for different schools.

Firstly for the school which I ended up at, the interview process was very rigorous. Only one interview, but very through, many thoughtful questions, a presentation and an extended discussion about the school, the city and the experience.

After a poor start (I arrived late and flustered) the interview went well, and the interviewer - an alumni from the early nineties - was clearly interested in me, had read my application closely and was keen to know how both how much thought I had put into why I was doing an MBA and how broadly I thought about the world.

Anyway, it was a very detailed, well crafted and well conducted interview which lasted almost three hours.

The other major school I was interviewed for had two interviews. They had much less structure and the interviewers only had my CV as opposed to having my entire application. The focus was on why I wanted to do an MBA and why I wanted to go to this school in particular.

The first interviewer was a very high level person, head of his organization but quite humble and friendly. The interview was good, careful and thoughtful. He was interested in me and quite happy to tell me more about his MBA experience and post MBA career.

The interview went for around an hour and the experience was very positive. It ended with him saying that he would recommend me, even though he wasn’t meant to tell me his decision.

The second interview was another matter. I had to fly to another city for it as there was not enough alumni in my home city. I took a day off work, flew in and took a train to the inner city industrial estate where my interviewer’s office was. The interview itself was pretty poor. The interviewer spent his time looking at my CV - clearly he had not looked at it before. He thought I had flown in from the wrong city, and didn’t seem terribly interested in anything I said. He asked the standard "Why MBA, Why this school?"questions in a totally cursory way, without really listening to my answers. Other questions he asked were pretty irrelevant and unstructured, and were very much backdoor ways for him to tell me how great he was and how little he needed the MBA to further his career. I learnt more about him than he learnt about me.

The whole debacle lasted about half an hour, at the end of which he tore my CV into two in front of me and asked me to show myself out.

I thought I had performed very well, maintaining my politeness, being articulate and engaged in the face of his general arrogance and rudeness, but my overall feeling was that I had wasted my time and money. Moreover, if he was representative of the type of people at the school I wanted no part of it, notwithstanding the more positive experience of the first interview.

on weather

This truly is a big city. An open and thriving multicultural melting pot. But despite the famous reserve of its inhabitants, it also has a disturbing sense that it could lurch at any moment into complete social disorder. But of course it doesn't, it's difficult to be enthusiastic about social disorder when it's always bloody raining.

The desire for anarchy and violence quickly dissipates when your umbrella has soaked through and is dripping down the back of your neck, but that doesn't matter because your socks have been drenched through for the last half hour and it still wont stop raining...