Presentation

Each of the learning partners are assigned a presentation topic at the beginning of the course. The presentation order is based the aphibatical order of our last name. Mine was scheduled on the last day of the class.

Today, my partner and I presented the topic about Cultural Gap. I am so glad to partner with someone who has strong sales background. He added lot of creative elements into the presentation including video, sounds effect and graphics. I am also impressed by his commitment and work passion.

It is a good feeling to work with quality people. : )

Type A people

When talked about executiive stress, Professor Leung told us a research result about Heart Attack. The research result found out that Type A people had higher chance of having Heart Attack.

Am I type A?
- Impatient
- Aggressive, competitive, hostile

I guess not. :-) but I better to remind my Type A friends.

Experience sharing

One of the main reason for me to pay a premium for EMBA instead of MBA is for experience sharing from other learning partners. In the first group exercise, the team worked until 2am at my club house. But, it was fun. I learned some insider news of other learning partners company, such as problems of a well known organization famous at excellence management, why the top management of a media company being replaced, ...

Organization ---> complex
human beings -----> complicated

Leadership

We talked about Executive Role and Leadership. In the class, everyone is having an executive role or being a leader in certain areas. However, not every leader have leadership.

Leadership may be trained or in-born. It is about personality or character but not a role. Leadership may have the following elements:
- Uplifting
- Visionary
- Charismatic
- Inspiration
- Intellectual stimulation
- Individualized consideration

I think I am only a good executive but not having much leadership. Although I believe leadership is more in-born than trained, I still hope to learn having more leadership elements in the class. :-)

How can we create a culture of leadership at our company? We need more people with leadership to achieve our vision.

Balanced Scorecard

Balanced scorecard is a framework to help organization alignment.

The scorecard has 4 strategic objectives
1. Financial
2. Customers
3. Internal Process
4. Learning and Growth

Each team or functional department can define their own measurement on the above 4 objectives.

This class reminded me the Appraisal System in PwC. They do have a very objective and systematic way to review staff performance and tie up the firm's objective to staff's objective.

Is it feasible for me to bring this framework to Beijing? We need a system for measurement!

Action item: Work out a plan to share with my partner this weekend :)

Reengineering: Organization Alignment

It is not easy to have a right Vision. It takes lot of effort to formulate strategies. Without the implementation ability, Vision, Mission, Strategies are only BS.

My business partners and I are working on a real case. We have just acquired a company in Beijing which consists of many top talents from renowed universities in China.

How can we share our culture and vision to them? Who can be our facilitators? If we fail to align our culture and vision, we may fail to manage them.

When my partner told me what he was doing in Beijing, I was amazed that he'd done a lot on Organization Alignment by his common sense. He is so talentive in business.

Management Theory: X vs Y

In the 3 hours lesson, Prof Leung led us run through the History of Management from ancient management, Weber's bureaucracy, management theories from Industrial revolution to modern matrix theories.

Among all the models, I like the McGregor Theory X and Theory Y the most.

Theory Y - work is natural
People care about meaning in work, quality of work life, personal growth and sense of achievement.
e.g. build dream, share vision

Theory X - humans are lazy
People are lazy and penalty, stimulus and control behavior are necessary for managment.
e.g. penalty, pressure and quatitative reward driven

McGregor explained the different management styles of my partners. Well, no wonder!

Team Work Exercise: Total Loss

In the team work exercise, each team was reuqired to perform certain tasks.

GAME RULE

Before we started the game, each team had to set a score target for their own team. Any score exceed the target would only be counted by 50% discount. If the team fail to meet the target, their score would be ZERO.

GAME OBJECTIVE

Strategy, Leadership, Team Work, Intuition / Creativity, Risk Management

GAME RESULT

Even having the highest score, we scored ZERO.
We even failed to sell the other learning partners to vote us as the best teamwork team or the most creative team.

Learning
- Risk Management - Certain risk shiuld not be taken
- Goal setting - Too Simple Dimension will lead to short sighted

Open and Close

Ida was the trainer. She was amazing with unlimited amount of energy.

Ida tried to teach us how to use our body to release stress, to review our own personality and to understand other people from their body movement.

We had done a few exercises:

Shake hand
Open and close
Create and Fill
Blind Dance

The class was fun but not very impressive. But, I was lucky to pair up with a handsome guy. So, it's not too bad!

EMBA Orientation

Learnt Myer-Briggs Type Indicator - MBTI in the class.
E (Extraversion) vs I (Intoversion)
S (Sensing) vs N (Intuition)
T (Thing) vs F (Feeling)
J (Judging) vs P (Perceiving)

Computer Test Result: ENFP
Self Interpretation: ISFP

I am not surprised to see 2 different results. In fact, it is very consistent. I don't have a very clear character or personality. The exercise recalled my training experience in Enneagram. I couldn't indentify my Type and at the end of the class, everyone told me that I should be Number 3.

Anyway, it is good to learn another system to understand people. I start to label some people around me.

Miss A: ENTP
Mr A: INTJ (wor!! no wonder!)
Miss I: ENTJ (wor!! isn't she a leader? oh ya...)
Mr D: ISTJ
Miss K: ENTP
Mr B: ESFP

That's enough!