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Evening MBA program

While the winter break in business schools around the world brought about a significant dip in traffic to my blog since mid-December, for me personally it was a very productive period in my MBA blogging. I mostly kept my promise to keep up with regular updates to this site and in the process I was able to publish all of my self-reflection journal from the Conflict Management and Negotiations class; I uploaded five new business cases analyses from my past MBA classes;. So if you have been away from reading the blog (and rightfully so) for the last month or so, you will find a lot of new reading material.

Apart from blogging I had wonderful holidays season with the family and friends, and even managed to squeeze in a short Caribbean getaway with my wife. Now is time to get ready for the upcoming Spring Term at George Washington University School of Business. Not only it is my final, but also most intense term in my whole MBA journey. With that said, it is possible that I won’t be able to update this blog as regularly as I managed to do in the past month. Still I hope to stick it out and give you some updates on my MBA classes and extracurricular activities. Stay tuned.

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I have already reflected on the Ridgecrest School Dispute Negotiation Simulation in my blog earlier. There were also couple of posts on the importance of preparation for negotiation: Negotiation Preparation – Do the Numbers and  Cover Your Butt – Prepare Your BATNA. This is the last post with my thoughts on the importance of preparation for negotiation. May be I am paying so much attention to it because before I took the class on Conflict Management and Negotiations I was, like probably most people, confident that I can figure it out at the spur of the moment during the actual negotiation just based on my natural abilities. The course has taught me that there is no substitution for a thorough prep work. And the more complex is the issue at the negotiation table the more time and effort should be put before you even get to that table.

The Ridgecrest School Dispute Negotiation simulation was in a way a pinnacle of our practical exercises: involving two groups of negotiators, each with multiple participants, extremely opposite objectives for each group, some tedious budgetary calculations and re-calculations.

One of the interesting observations about this negotiation was actually from a “glitch”. In the beginning of our preparation for this negotiation our group did not know about the hard data, including the budget, as the background information for the simulation. Therefore when we had our first discussion based only on the description of our group’s objectives it was very easy for us to set our preliminary initial offer. In the essence, we were going to demand from the Board of Education the maximum and we were not going to make any substantial concessions. Of course, we expected that in the process of negotiation we might split the difference with the Board, based on what their initial requirements were.

In the absence of real data it was very easy to speculate and be tough in our expectations. However, shortly after our first discussion we learned about the data available for the case in the textbook. It was amazing for me how quickly our perspective, at least my personal, changed. In general, it is easy to speculate about abstract objectives without real constraints. But once the reality sets in, you start realizing that it is not as easy as it seemed to be.

In our case, after learning about the budgetary constraints, we took on a labor-intensive task of crafting the new budget given those constraints. We still had intention of modifying those constraints if we could, but mostly we were trying hard to reconcile the needs and wants under the existing budget framework. (By the way, the Ridgecrest School Dispute case was, just like most of other cases we worked on in the Negotiations class from Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases by Lewicki, et al – probably the best textbook on Negotiations out there.)

This reminded about the real life situations. Specifically, the elections. The candidates, especially the newcomers to the office, have high inspiration and promise the sky and the moon during the elections. Most of those promises, of course, are calculated populism in order to manipulate and win the voters – Swing Vote immediately comes to mind. But some of them might as well be the naïve perception that they can do everything and change the world once they get into the office.

But once they get the office, they learn about all very real constraints and limitations and then they find themselves re-arranging the same old budget items, instead of changing the world altogether, as they had been inspired. Lesson: it is good to have the facts at your disposal in advance, which will allow you to work with reality instead of building castles in the air.

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This week in my part-time MBA class on Conflict Management and Negotiations we had an in-class presentations for the group negotiation simulation based on Ridgecrest School Dispute case. Essentially, the case is based on the dispute between the Board of Education and the Teachers Association (the teachers union) about the ways of closing the budget shortfall in the school district, while at the same time negotiating the salary increases and other benefits for the teachers. As you can guess, this was a recipe for quite a contentious situation.

The teacher’s assistant for professor sent an email on the day of presentations that the professor was not feeling well, so he would substitute for him for that night.When I read it, it was a bit of a turn off for me because the professor in this class is really highly engaging and rather entertaining. He has made his reputation in the business school and can get away with a lot of things that younger faculty or non-tenured professors would not dare to experiment. In that regard he reminds me a bit of my professor in Entrepreneurship class. He has also been involved in many real engagements as a consultant and has been sharing very interesting and unique first-hand experiences from those engagements.

One thing I did not take into account, that the instructor’s role in this particular class of group presentations was more of a moderator, but the class itself was mostly driven by the presenting students. In fairness, the teacher’s instructor did a fair job as a moderator too.

Anyways, the class turned out to be hilarious, thanks to reflections of some of the groups on how their negotiations had gone. Some of the presenters were quite  expressive in describing their side of the negotiation analysis. They mentioned the high tension during their negotiations complete with yelling, name-calling, walk-outs from the negotiation table, objects throwing, “bad cop-good cop” games, and other manipulative techniques they or their counterparts used. Their description of the high explosive negotiations was so colorful that some other groups had to apologize ;-) that theirs were more matter-of-factly and routine business.

Another point of bringing up excitement in those presentations was that both groups participating in the negotiation had to present one after another, so it gave a way for many intriguing situations of “we said – they said” and comparisons of the opponents’ interpretations and views on the same situations and flex points in their negotiations.

Our group’s recollection of the negotiations dynamics, by the way, was one of those matter-of-fact. We tried to be more realistic in our approach and focus on how we would do it if it were a real situation, not just a made up classroom exercise with opportunities on show craftsmanship.

There were two lessons I took out from that night. First, the astonishingly broad range of outcomes of the negotiations, even though we were all given the same background information and confidential instructions depending on the role of the group, based on the personalities of the people involved on each side of the negotiation table. The outcomes ranged from complete breakdowns, when the teachers decided on their own or were forced by the Board to go on strike, to a broad range of settlements with various levels of negotiated benefits, where either the Board or the Association had an upper hand in grabbing a significantly bigger part of the pie.

Second lesson was triggered by the question one of my classmates asked everyone at the end  of the class. The guy, who was the oldest one in the class, even older than me ;-) , asked how many people had had mortgages and were laid off during their career. Needless to say just a few hands went up, less than five out of the class of over 50 students. It should be expected, given the fact that the majority of the class were people under thirty with up to five years of work experience.

The question was probably an expression of frustration born from the fact how easily some groups were firing droves of teachers or stiffing them out of the benefits. This question emphasized the fact that some groups chose more of a playful approach or were quite eager for replacing the objective utility implied in the case with the subjective utility of having an upper hand in the negotiation at any cost, even by destroying the very essence of the purpose of this negotiation. I don’t blame those groups, after all it was just an exercise,  but I found it really fascinating.

On the other hand, if those attitudes are not just conditioned by the limitations of the classroom exercise, but actually a reflection of the philosophy that will be extended in the real world, then it is more bothersome.

Then I remembered the national budget deficit and debt ceiling debate that took place in the Congress this past summer and realized that there are a lot of role models professing and practicing this kind of attitudes when the very crucial and real objectives are swept away and sacrificed in the interest of partisan interests and personal agendas to the detriment of the common good.

It makes me wonder how those congressman played their negotiation simulations while still in the classrooms.

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Just wanted to add another fun video to keep your interest in economics up and demonstrate that macroeconomics is not all that boring as the economists try to make it look to us – lay -men and -women.

I first saw this video about a year ago when I was taking my Financial Management class. At that time it was interesting to me, but mostly for the esthetic reasons, because it was really pretty well done. I remember the video had to do something with what professor passingly mentioned in the lecture, but it was not very much  elaborated on at that time.

However this year it makes much more sense as we just covered in class the Keynesian and (Neo)classical economic theory, aggregated demand, aggregated supply, IS-LM model, and many other equally as fascinating things. When I watched the video I remembered my professor’s in Microeconomics joke about “Economists do it with models”. The models in the video is what the economists would like it to be, but in reality, it is still more likely they will keep doing it with IS-LM models and such ;-)

And since we are on the topic of poking fun at economists, here is another joke on the subject:

TOP 10 REASONS TO STUDY ECONOMICS

1. Economists are armed and dangerous: “Watch out for our invisible hands.”
2. Economists can supply it on demand.
3. You can talk about money without every having to make any.
4. You get to say “trickle down” with a straight face.
5. Mick Jagger and Arnold Schwarzenegger both studied economics and look how they turned out.
6. When you are in the unemployment line, at least you will know why you are there.
7. If you rearrange the letters in “ECONOMICS”, you get “COMIC NOSE”.
8. Although ethics teaches that virtue is its own reward, in economics we get taught that reward is its own virtue.
9. When you get drunk, you can tell everyone that you are just researching the law of diminishing marginal utility.
10. When you call 1-900-LUV-ECON and get Kandi Keynes, you will have something to talk about.

This joke  I picked up from here. There are many more there on economists and economics. And, of course, these are my favorite jokes on MBA.

 

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Macroeconomics Fun – Notes From the Classroom

November 12, 2011

Macroeconomics is one of the core classes I am taking right now – a little bit later in my MBA studies. The first part of Economics – Microeconomics – I took in my very first module when I just started my whole part-time MBA program journey back in fall 2009. // As everything with economics, [...]

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Consulting Club Networking Social at GWU

November 6, 2011

Just a couple days ago I was complaining about the lack of time and opportunities for part-time MBA students to network within the context of the business school. Apparently, having pumped myself up with discontent about this situation, I subconsciously was looking for opportunities to do something about it . // Over a week ago [...]

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Social Networking for Part-time MBA Students

November 3, 2011

This past weekend I had a negotiation simulation with my classmate in Conflict Management and Negotiations class. As I mentioned in the past, this class requires some of the negotiations to be held out of the class, so we had a scheduled appointment on campus on Sunday. We had allocated an hour for the whole [...]

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Fall Mid-Term Breather at GWSB

October 21, 2011

On Wednesday I got done with the first module of the Fall term at GWSB part-time MBA program . In the last week I was scraping up to finalize two group project papers, two final in-class group presentations and a final exam  administered online. It was very taxing period, to say the least. I spent [...]

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Part-time MBA Blog – Two Year Anniversary

October 15, 2011

Another milestone in my blogging experience. Don’t have too much time to reflect on this now, but if you are interested in some background information on how this blog came to be, you can read the post I had a year ago on One Year Anniversary of this blog. // I would still like to [...]

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Risk Is Not a Dirty Word in Project Management

October 6, 2011

This first module of the Fall term at GWU School of business I am taking class on Risk Management for Projects. I am taking this class as a follow up to the one I took last Spring term – Introduction to Project Management. // One thing I was surprised to learn in the Risk Management [...]

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Competing on Analytics vs Intuitive Courage

September 29, 2011

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am taking a “Database and Web Analytics” elective class this first module of the fall term at GWSB MBA program. The required reading for this class is Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning – not exactly a textbook, but rather – a high view of [...]

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Why George Washington University School of Business?

September 27, 2011

The Businessweek online has recently placed a video interview with the dean of the George Washington University School of Business – Doug Guthrie,  who answers this question. The highlights of the GWU Business School approach to business education, as per dean’s interview, are the corporate social responsibility, sustainability, ethics and global perspective. These core elements [...]

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Happy New MBA Year!

August 29, 2011

Today is the first day of my last year of part-time MBA program at GW School of Business (GWSB). Summer break, vacation are all history, and I did not even manage to put a short report on my Cancun vacation ;-( . Now it’s not likely I will have time for that. But before I [...]

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Debt Ceiling Deal – MBAs Affected

August 2, 2011

Just read in the news that as a part of the debt ceiling deal the Congress is getting away with the subsidized portion of Stafford loans for graduate students, which of course includes all MBAs. It means that the interest will be accruing on the total amount of the student loan while you are still [...]

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Soda Tax and Public Policy – MBA Perspective

July 31, 2011

A year ago in summer term 2010 at George Washington University School of Business I took a class on Business and Public Policy. It was an interesting exercise and I learned a lot about the tensions between the public interests and private corporate agendas, lobbying, and public relations. I have published earlier two of the individual cases I [...]

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Pre-MBA Reading List for Poets

July 27, 2011

// Back in May I promised to have a post on summer reading list for pre-MBA admitted applicants. There are a number of lists in print and especially on the internet for pre-MBA or mid-school summer reading. I have perused some of them and found them quite helpful. I often ask people to recommend books [...]

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Hooray MBA – Summer Break!

June 26, 2011

It has been a long time since my last post, but it could have been expected that I would hardly have much time to attend to the blog. Two classes, six weeks, group cases and projects = no slack time. But it is all over now. I have been officially on a summer break from [...]

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Drop Class or Drop Dead at GWU Part-time MBA

June 5, 2011

On May 16 I started my classes in Summer Term at GW School of Business. There was some hiccup at the beginning though. I originally signed up for three classes: two from the core MBA curriculum, 1.5 credits each; and one elective from the Department of Information Systems Technology Management- three credits. I was trying to [...]

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Project Management – Sharks Against the Naive

May 14, 2011

Introduction to Project Management was a full-term 3-credit class, therefore we combed through a lot of material and got exposed to a lot of concepts. So I would probably be returning to this course quite a bit to share little reflections on the subject here and there. // There were quite a few observations about Project [...]

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Ellen Moore in Korea – Business Case Analysis of Cultural Differences

May 9, 2011

In my Consultative Processes class that I took in Fall Term of my second year part-time MBA at GWU we had a case of Ellen Moore(A): Living and Working in Korea. I learned a few interesting things about the country’s culture - something that I wouldn’t ever guessed on my own. I have quite a few acquaintances [...]

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2-nd Year MBA Spring Term is Over

May 5, 2011

On Monday I had my final exam in Business Law and Communications.  My final presentation in Introduction to Project Management class took place two weeks ago. With that I am done with my classes in GW part-time MBA Spring Term. I feel free and relieved … for the next two weeks. Then my two classes for Summer [...]

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Facebook Face Off at Job Interview

May 2, 2011

This Spring term I had another core class in my part-time MBA program – Organizations and Leadership. This course is also commonly known in other MBA programs as Organizational Behavior. The course was rather interesting, and I will hopefully write more about it at a later time. On a side note about the topic of [...]

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Introduction to Project Management – MBA elective

April 26, 2011

My posts for the nearest future will be recollections from the end of the Fall term and the Spring term in somewhat random order, as I will try to fill some of the gaps since the end of my regular blogging at the end of last year. I will try to reflect on some more interesting highlights [...]

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Part-time MBA on a Full-time Leave of Absence

April 12, 2011

Leave of absence from the blog, that is. It has been over four months now since my last update on the blog . Even my summer break last year did not take me away from posting on my site for that long. // There has been a lot going on, so I kind of slipped back [...]

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Part-time MBA – Turbocharged!

December 3, 2010

This week I ran into one of my classmates in the study area before the class. I have not seen her around since the summer term, so we chatted a bit to catch up on what’s going on in our MBA studies. I remembered that we started the program at GW at the same time [...]

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Beat the GMAT Practice Questions Premium Access Winners

November 29, 2010

Four weeks ago I published a post about my Deja Vu experience with GMAT. There I wrote a short review of the new GMAT practice questions from Beat the GMAT (BTG). I am not going to re-count my experience with those questions again here. If interested you can read the complete review here. // In that post I announced [...]

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Spring Term Classes – Online Onslaught at GW MBA

November 20, 2010

Just about two weeks ago I was writing about the survey conducted by the MBA administration at GWU about offering of the online classes. At that time I thought that this was just testing the waters with the students and actual introduction of the online classes was a long way from being implemented. Boy, was [...]

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Online Electives in Part-time MBA at GWU

November 4, 2010

Update on introduction of online classes for Spring 2011 term at GWU part-time MBA. A couple weeks ago I received invitation from part-time MBA office at GW University to fill out a short survey. The questions were around the topic of offering some electives online. Basically, they were trying to gauge what portion of the electives the students would be willing [...]

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Blink, the Power of Priming and Financial Markets Final Grade

October 31, 2010

As the second module started this week, I had my class in Financial Management, which is the continuation of the Financial Markets class I had in the first fall Module at GW MBA. The same professor is teaching this class as the previous one, so we were given our final exam papers back to review. [...]

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Nordstrom: Dissension in the Ranks – Business Cases Analysis Update

October 28, 2010

As I was planning, I keep uploading write-ups of business cases analysis for the MBA coursework I have completed in my part-time MBA program at GW. This Nordstrom case is actually quite popular in the MBA programs. Not only this blog has been getting quite a bit of traffic from the search queries related to [...]

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Case Study of SG Cowen: New Recruits – Business Case Studies Update

October 12, 2010

// Just a short note on the update I made to Business School Cases section of my blog. It seems with the school year moving forward at full speed my blog has been getting more visits from inquiries related to business case studies. Judging by the number of hits from those inquiries I gather that [...]

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Consultative Processes – Group Project Progress

October 3, 2010

Updated September 24, 2011. I placed an introduction and background & understanding sections of the Consulting Proposal Letter to Kacey Fine Furniture in the Business School Cases of this blog. In my Consultative Processes class at GW part-time MBA program we are going to complete two group projects: Writing and Presenting Proposal and Writing and [...]

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Consultative Processes – Intro to Consulting Business

September 1, 2010

Today I had the first class in my elective course – Consultative Processes. From the syllabus and the first class it became obvious that the class is going to be very writing-intensive and group work oriented. We will have to submit three individually prepared cases from Harvard Business Publications. And there will be two group [...]

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Financial Markets – First Class of the Fall Term

August 31, 2010

Today I had my first class in the Fall term – Financial Markets. It was rather interesting and at times even entertaining. Professor had eventually placed syllabus with required textbook earlier today and I was able to order it from Amazon. The book we are using in class is Financial Management: Theory & Practice 13 [...]

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Second Year Part-time MBA Begins

August 30, 2010

Today is the first day of classes at the University and official start of my second year of studies in GWU part-time MBA program. My classes however haven’t started yet. I have my first class on Tuesday. For the first module of the Fall term I have signed up for two classes: Financial Markets and [...]

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