The Mother of All CP

Class Participation (or CP) is one of those things that an MBA student at the Asian Institute of Management will love or hate.

Being a business school that employs Harvard's Case Method, professors put a great weight to how the MBA students put forward their ideas and points to the class discussions and how well they articulate these points. CP grade often constitutes at least a third of a student's final grade, and sometimes it accounts for 100%! So you could imagine the pressure on the MBA student in class to deliver good CP-- his/her survival in the classroom jungle (yeah, the classes can really get "jungle-like" often times, with folks trying to get the better of everyone.)

The common notion the students subscribe to is the concept of the one great point that will stop the show, one great CP that will make the whole class bow down to the point and subject the student to momentary adulation-- "The Mother of All CP."

I myself have thought that it would take one helluva point to make it through every class. I'd spend so many minutes cooking up that thought in my head, but more often than not, that bright spark of a CP never came.

After much frustration in the past, I let go of this notion of the "Mother of All CP" and just said what was in my mind, show-stopper or not. But it was this letting go that made my MBA life easier-- The Mother of All CP was as elusive as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster, so why put so much stress on myself to find it? The funny thing is that after adopting this mantra, I felt the quality of my points got better in class discussions.

What happened to me may not apply to all, but it's one perspective worth looking at. The Mother of All CP, that heroic, hail mary, show-stopping point may come, but it may all be over when it does.

Fuller Hall

Fuller Hall
Originally uploaded by Ajа

Just a quick one:

I just wanted to share this nice photo of the stage and backdrop at Fuller Hall during the past form function & class web design conference last July 10, 2009.

This photo was taken by PWDO member Aja Lapus.

AIM Webcast of Turnover Ceremony to New President

The Asian Institute of Management has a new president and the turnover ceremony will be webcast over the AIM Ustream.tv channel.

I've embedded the live webcast and everyone can view the ceremony starting 4pm (GMT +8):

Online video chat by Ustream

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Update: the webcast has already been finished. :)

Love Stories

The Asian Institute of Management is place where a lot of good things start-- business ventures, careers, and friendships.

But as two of my former classmates have proven, AIM is also a place where love stories are written.

Pradyumna "Praddy" Krishnakumar and Divya Jagadesh have made public their engagement. The news first broken by Gaurav Sharma, another former classmate:

Well a gud news from our batch mates, two of our batchmates have decided to be soulmate for rest their life.
this news was just shared to me by Praddy that "he" and "Divya" are getting married sometime in next year. he was bit scared and shy in sharing this news to the group so he asked me to do so.
so plz join me to pass good wishes to them. I have open the case and now the forum is open for discussion and respective CP.

To be honest, I was a little surprised when I heard the news because during our MBA stint, I never got to see the both of them together that often. (The other folks perhaps). But like most love stories, this one probably bloomed and continues to bloom in their own terms. :)

So to Praddy and Divya, congratulations and all the best! :D

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Prof. Larry Tan shared in the past that 7 couples in their MBA class ended up getting married. So who knew the MBA was one place to find "The One"? :P

AIM MBA Students Featured in Balikbayan Magazine

MBA Cohort 3 Students Laurice Alaan and John Lim were recently featured in Balikbayan Magazine. The magazine is a monthly travel and lifestyle journal for balikbayans and Filipino expats from the USA and other parts of the world.

According to Laurice:

When AIM's Marketing Department approached John and me to do an interview for Balikbayan Magazine (a monthly publication under the Asian Journal), we agreed even though we were unsure of what horror stories might slip on the subject of the first year of our MBA, which was just behind us. The experience turned out to be really enjoyable--a rare and surprisingly candid opportunity for us to reflect on the crazy changes we've been through since that rainy day we arrived last August...

(Photo & comment taken from Laurice's Facebook photo album)

How Socially Responsible Should Managers Be? (Part 2)

In the last post, I talked about my observation that MBA folks are getting a lot of flak because of the apparent lack of sense of social responsibility.

This is one observation one of my mentors at the Asian Institute of Management helped me see.

Prof. Jun "Junbo" Borromeo has been teaching at AIM for decades now and he has seen the widening gap of leadership in the business & management world. In one of our chats, he said that it's about time AIM further leveraged on its unique position as an institute that has strong programs on management and leadership and tying it together with development & social goals.

To him, there are two perspectives that AIM has full mastery of and should try to integrate more:

• Social consciousness, which will lead the student to discern, recognize and respect his or her various stakeholders; and
• Value creation for all those stakeholders, which he or she can deliver with the right competences.

Think about it: AIM has MBA, MM (Master in Management) and MDM (Master in Development Management) programs in one roof, and the integration is still very loose.

But Junbo has a plan.

(To be continued...)

A New MBA Term Begins!

The elective terms of Cohorts 2 & 3 begins today and this is one of the rare moments that the terms of two MBA classes coincide.

This development brings the total students for this elective term to 157, which is quite high (at least in recent years). Add to that the fact that MBA students have the option to take extra electives and the Action Consultancy (AC), then that means that there will be more students per class. During our time, each class averaged around 20-25 per class. Now it's around 40 per class.

Also, this is the first elective term that the class I'm co-teaching is offered to the MBA's. Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics has 42 MBA student registrations and I'm looking forward to handling my class sessions. The faculty for the class (Prof. Ricky Lim, Jayvee Fernandez, Anton Diaz, Prof. Richard Cruz, Edwin Soriano, and I) have lots of exciting ideas and plans for the class. :)

Junbo's Law

Just a quick one: I've realized one thing from one of my mentors in AIM, Prof. Jun "Junbo" Borromeo, said in one of our classes.

He shared before that a lot of his past MBA students before shared that they appreciate his Human Behavior in Organization (HBO) class after they themselves joined an organization after graduation. Why? Because the very first issues they face is HBO-related issues. (In other words, people problems).

That's why I'm submitting the concept of Junbo's Law:

The very first problem an MBA graduate will face after joining an organization or starting a new job  is HBO-related.

Junbo's Law... it has a nice ring to it. What do you think?

MBA: Six Months After

Six months after we graduated as the very first 16-month MBA class at the Asian Institute of Management, folks who are here in Manila had a small reunion. We did have a reunion of sorts last February in our classmate Michelle's wedding, but this get together was really organized to reconnect with good friends.

Seventeen of us met up in the new Chili's restaurant in Greenbelt 5 and it was a the first time a group that big got together. For most of us, it was the first time seeing each other again since we all got our diplomas.

So how's the very first 16-month cohort so far? Most of us either have have jobs already, involved in the family business, or still in the final stages of securing a job. (At the slow rate the global economy's turning a corner, it's not surprising.) Professional stress has replaced the rigors of reading cases and battling for CP (class participation), but the friendships have not changed at all. Significant others of some of our classmates joined us for the evening.

Personally, I was glad the dinner/reunion pushed through because everyone had good stories to share and reminiscing about the student life was a breath of fresh air for most of us.

Here are some more pics of the get together taken from the cameras of Maya Perez and Karen Sumcio. (Thanks girls!)

How Socially Responsible Should Managers Be?

If you ask me, MBA's have gotten a lot of flak in the last decade because of the messy situation the business world is in. From the Enron Scandal to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, a lot of the blame is being passed on the MBA-trained financial managers that turned their backs on their ethical and social responsibilities.

This now raises a question that probably been asked countless times when the aforementioned financial and corporate scandals broke: Are MBA programs too focused on the bottom line, on the numbers, and on the final results that they have lost sight of the proverbial "Big Picture?"

While we at the Asian Institute of Management have a healthy amount of courses on ethics and social enterprises, I personally think that there could still ways to have a deeper appreciation and awareness to the manager's social responsibility.

(To be continued...)