Ajay Salpekar

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Ross Argentina M-Trek

Any business school worth its salt has some variation of a 'get to know your classmates and travel the world before school starts' program. At Ross, we call these trips M-Treks. And I strongly urge that you go on one before you start here. MBA1s, if you're listening - I strongly urge you to lead one next year.

Three other MBA2s and I led an M-Trek to Argentina at the end of this summer, and I have to say it was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Not just because Argentina is an amazing place - but because we were in the excellent company of a dozen great MBA1s.

Here's a rather quick picture-by-picture account of our adventures. Here's one of Kate on Day 1 in the Recoletta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires - excited that we're there during the Tango festival.

Here's a picture of the entire crew at a Gaucho ranch where we went horse-riding. Of course, there was a long, sumptuous traditional meal involved. 

After a quick introduction in Buenos Aires, we headed out to Iguazu National Forest to see (and get thoroughly drenched in) the massive waterfalls. This is a picture of us, completely dry - before the boat captain started making full-speed runs at the mouths of the waterfalls. Yeah.

So as not to be considering boring or anything - we spent the next day ziplining and rapelling. You see the smiles on people's faces in this picture? Well this was after we had all made it safely down a rock face, while attached to a rope. The looks on our faces before were quite.. different.

 

Here's a shot from one of my favourite meals in Argentina - at a place called El Palenquet in Mendoza (wine country). This is Dan and Graham either pretending to have a great time - or having a really great time. Or both.

Much wine and steak were consumed on this trip. And you just know I'm putting that mildly, don't you? Here's a few of us at a medium sized winery, La Garde near Mendoza. Excellent Malbec.

Of course, we Rosser's aren't too shabby on the dance floor either. We took a group tango lesson, followed by a tango show. Here's Jonathan and Sawna totally not stepping on each other's feet.

As you can imagine, there was a lot more to the trip than a handful of pictures can convey. Not only did we have a great time getting to know a country, its culture, food and customs - but we also go to know each other. It's great to have that group of friends already set up when you start school. Because when you've been through stuff like this together - you can count on sticking together for a long time to come.

 

Consulting. Get used to it.

Those of you who’ve been consultants before should feel free to move on to the next blog, for this might bore you. For those of you who’d like to know what it’s like to transition into consulting from another function/industry, I hope this makes for useful reading.

[Disclaimer: Consulting, like so much of life, isn’t black or white. The pace and intensity of work varies across firms, across projects within firms, and across the people you work with. In short, your mileage may vary. Here’s but one impression. Mine.]

[Background: This summer I am fortunate enough to be interning out of McKinsey’s Chicago office on a very cool marketing strategy project in Retail]

The number of hours you work as a consultant definitely takes some getting used to. If I worked say, 14 hours in a day at my old job, I’d call that “crunch time.” I imagine that most consultants would just call that.. Monday. Or any other day of the week for that matter. A 70-hour workweek isn’t far from typical. Neither is 80. And neither is 65. Point is, the hours are longer than most typical corporate jobs. I am told I looked noticeably tired the first few Fridays back in the office, but within a few weeks that improved. The adjustment was mental more than anything else – it helped to be mentally prepared to power through the weekly Monday-Thursday time at the client, to keep tabs on my productivity on an almost hourly basis, and make sure I rested up on weekends. And then there’s always coffee. Lots of it.

But it isn’t just the hours – it’s also the intensity of work that takes some getting used to. In most corporate jobs, there’s a certain latitude for ‘downtime’ that we are all used to. In my experience, at a typical corporate job you could be operating at 100% efficiency for say, 80% of your day, and take it a little bit easy the rest of the day – meet up with co-workers at the water cooler, have hallway conversations about the organization, catch up on the odd personal email. And that would be fine. But I feel like at a consulting job, you’re expected to be firing at close to a 100% efficiency, close to a 100% of the time. And it makes sense – you’re typically hired by a client to do high-impact work in a relatively short time – and you cannot let downtime get in the way of that. Informal chit-chat amongst team members or with the client does happen, of course, but it’s usually at the end of meetings, or on the walk to a conference room, or while standing in line at the café – but it’s rare to find a moment in the day where you have mental downtime.

And I suppose the third major change for me was the frequency of feedback I receive. There’s a reason that companies hire consulting firms to help them out – they have tried and tested method of working through multi-dimensional problems, asking for and collecting the right kind of data, synthesizing the most relevant findings, and making practical, impactful recommendations – and all that, at a blistering pace. So naturally, as an intern, there is a lot that you’re simply not going to get right the first time. And that’s okay. So you have to adjust to the constructive feedback being delivered to you – several times a day if need be, and in great detail. It’s easy to sometimes interpret that feedback as a spotlight on your inadequacies – but it isn’t. Frequent, objective, constructive feedback is simply the best way of helping an intern ramp up quickly and deliver results in a way that the firm and the client find useful. Interpreting that feedback in the spirit intended makes the adjustment easier.

All in all, the experience has been highly educational. Do I feel like I’m adding value? Well, time will tell :)

Today was a great day.

This post's title sums it up. I'm pretty sure that all my team member's in their respective hotel rooms here at the Embassy Suites in Arkansas are thinking exactly this - "Wow, was today a great day!"

After almost two months of learning, thinking, questioning, floundering, slide making and report writing, today we presented our marketing plan to a room full of Walmart Senior Vice Presidents, Directors, marketing managers, customer insights experts and media experts. And it went well. So well, that after the presentation, the SVP for Branding, Tony Rogers told us he thought we did a fantastic job, and that we wanted to hire the whole lot of us. I think his exact words were, "Let's get you a room just down the hall so you can start today." And he wasn't the only one. Our client liaison Lisa Searing, and a number of her colleagues were pretty pleased with the "level of detail" and the "depth of understanding" we had about the subject matter, Walmart's stores in Los Angeles, and the mind of our target consumer. 

For any MAP team that's been staring down the barrel of an ambitious, unfamiliar business problem for a client who has high expectations of you for a good two months - words like that coming from your client sponsor are immensely gratifying. The feeling that we, an erstwhile bunch of 'noobs' had added value to a pretty well-run company like Walmart - is a pretty good feeling.

We followed up the presentation with a well-deserved lunch at a fine dining establishment in downtown Bentonville, accompanied by our client Lisa, and a few Ross/Michigan grads. Of course, rather than spend the rest of the afternoon celebrating, we had to go back to our hotel and work on the written report for the next few hours. But as soon as it was happy hour o' clock, we met up with Lisa for drinks and dinner. Here we are at the local Bonefish Grill with Lisa.

And as the dinner, drinks and conversation got underway, we all realized how great it felt to be part of this team. And as I put an end to this rather sappy blog entry, I know that when it came to the project, the client sponsor Lisa, and the team itself - we had really lucked out.

 

MAP. It's what's for dinner.

Over the last eight months, there have been several times I have been impressed with the professional/academic experience at Ross - whether RLI, the Leadership Crisis Challenge, or coursework. But those moments pale in comparison to the MAP experience so far. Over the next few weeks I'll break down my MAP experience into bite-sized, ready-to-eat snippets for your reading pleasure - at the end of which I fully expect you to drop whatever it is you're doing, get on a plane, and come crash my MAP team meeting. Alright, that may be going too far. But you get the point.

Of all the delicious MAP projects on offer, I picked the Walmart MAP as my first preference. Why, you ask, did I forgo MAPs in exciting locations such as Uruguya, Turkey, Rwanda, and good old Bombay to choose Bentonville, Arkansas? Because I figured it would be the best learning experience considering where I'm coming from, and where I want to go professionally. I'm a tech guy interested in developing consumer-foused (not B2B) marketing strategy experience. Our project: Develop a (hopefully) innovative, 'hyper' local marketing strategy for Walmart in the Los Angeles region. Career-switchers - is MAP starting to make sense now?

The very first week of MAP at Ross gives you a preview of the learning to come. The MAP office sets each team up with two expert faculty advisors to act as guides and examiners, a second year MBA process coach to help the team on process issues, an expert communications coach to help the team with written and oral communication, and a shared research expert to advise on marketing research. And of course, anywhere between three and five Ross classmates to share that experience with you.

And I clearly lucked out on the team. So far it's been so much fun working with them all. Here they are along with our MBA2 process coach - more diverse than a Benetton ad.

Looking forward to the next two months!

Welcome to Ross, and, "What you should do this summer. Maybe."

Congratulations to all of you Round 2 admitted students! Feels great doesn't it? I remember when Kelly Kong Rogers called me to let me know and asked me whether I'd accept. I remember saying something like: "Stamp me Maize and Blue and mail me to Michigan!" I was clearly overcome at the time. I'm sure all of you said far more poised, intelligent things when you received the call.

So now that you're in, you have 3,678 things to get done before business school, right? Tell your boss (if you haven't already!), come to GBR, find housing, find roommates, figure out student visas, figure out your move, pack up your life.. the list goes on. From all the traffic on the admitted students Googlegroup, it looks like you have a lot of help with those things, so I want to use this space to talk about something else that's probably on your mind:

"So.. what can I do this summer that will get me that awesome internship next summer?"

 Fair question. You're business students. Of course you think ahead. And the typical answer to this question goes: "You should use this summer to build connections with people in the industry/company you want to work for, so you're in a good position during internship recruiting." And I think that's a fair answer.

But because your business students, and must look at the big picture (no pun intended), I'll challenge you to take that question back a step or two. You could use this summer to furiously network the living daylights out of a particular industry or firm (which implies focussing narrowly on a career path, even before you arrive at school), or you could use this summer to widen your focus, and explore.

By getting into business school (and what a fine one at that! :) ), you have effectively hit the reset button on your career, and to an extent, your life. From here, you can go anywhere - geographically, functionally, and in terms of industry. You could go from being a corporate drone to a dedicated social do-gooder; from being a non-profit career person, to a corporate manager; from being a school-teacher to being an innovation consultant, or from being an IT consultant to a social entrepreneur in North Africa.

My point is: If you are in the BEST position, right now, to pick and choose how you impact the rest of your life (and others'), shouldn't you give yourself the opportunity to really explore what's out there?

And will you have time to do this 'exploring' business when you're in business school, August onward? Well yes. But most humans tend to subscribe heavily to group-think when it comes to choosing career options. If you've taken the time to think through who you are, what makes you happy from a career standpoint, and done some preliminary exploration on your own before you get here, there's a greater chance that you'll forge your own, personal recruiting path at school - rather than joining whatever recruiting line seems most 'popular'.

So what's my top three list of things to do before you start business school?

1. Get some sleep - because you might miss it when you're in school

2. Go on an M-Trek - because it's one of the best investments you'll ever make

3. Explore what's out there career-wise, instead of locking in on a focus too early, or without introspecting

I'm a little alarmed at how preachy some of my posts sound, but I hope you see that a lot this stems from my own learning. So naturally, I'm inclined to share that learning :)

And once again, CONGRATULATIONS. You've all done so well. Welcome to Ross.

Of Winter break, recruiting and leadership challenges

Hello all. And welcome to this new year. Time flies, doesn't it?

It's been a while since my last post, and I'm afraid it might be a while before my next proper one. It's internship recruiting time here at Ross, and for the past couple of weeks (and the next couple, at least), most of us MBA1s are neck deep in interviews and prep work.

A few quick updates..
One. Had a short but good trip back to Bombay after a two year absence. Had the pleasure of chatting with some of you in person at a cafe chat. Enjoyed talking (even more than I usually do :)) about my Ross experience so far, and loved your questions. A two and a half hour session diving into my six months as Ross reiterated for me what a great time I've had here. For those of you who couldn't make it to one of the worldwide cafe chats - I hope you were able to reach an Ambassador over email or phone.

Two. I understand that some of you may not have a clear career focus when joining business school, and that part of your reason for taking up school again is to explore several opportunities. You'll hear this several times during your MBA, but since it's important, I'll say it too - the earlier you can determine your career focus (and the more wisely and maturely you make that choice) - the more effective your recruiting process will be. I cannot stress this enough. Consider this: You start school in the first week of September. You start interacting with companies in October. You apply to them in December. You interview with them in January. When you factor in academics, socializing, and sleep (not to be ignored!), that doesn't leave very much time for leisurely exploration of career options :) Don't freak out. But don't dilly dally either. Spend quality time trying to determine your career focus from day one. You'll be much happier during the recruiting process, and thereafter.

Alright. Stern, finger-wagging MBA1 hat off.

Three. Fun stuff. The Leadership Crisis Challenge just happened on January 13th and 14th. And it was a very unique, very educational experience. Oh. And fun. A lot of fun. You'll have many demands on your time here at Ross, but I urge you to make a little room for the LCC. You and three other MBA1s are put at the helm of a company in crisis - usually of the environmental and/or public relations ilk. You're answerable to your Board members (your Professors and peers in a acutely critical mood), your customers, and even the Press (real Press people. Name tags, microphones and all!). Your task - to keep it together, and be the composed, capable face of a company besot by the worst crisis in its history. You learn from each other, from the multiple rounds of feedback (from professional communications counselors, MBA2s and professional journalists), and from the challenge of the crisis itself. Not to be missed. Don't leave Ross without it :)

Finally, good luck to those interviewing in the next few weeks. And CONGRATULATIONS to our Round 1 admits. You're in for a great time.

Community Consulting at Ross. Just Do It.

There are probably 3,761 things you'd like to do during your MBA at Ross. You have time enough for perhaps 300 - and that's assuming you don't sleep very much. So I thought I'd share something that makes definitely makes the cut for me - the Community Consulting Club.

[Disclaimer: The CCC Board is in no way putting me up to plugging this. In fact, by attempting to inspire even more MBA1s to jam up their application process next year, I'm just creating more work for the poor souls :)]

So why is the CCC worth writing about? Because it gave me perhaps the most professionally satisfying day of my MBA so far.

Here's how the CCC works. The Board picks 20 or so consulting projects with local non-profits, ranging from marketing strategy overhaul to business planning. Community Consulting wannabes (i.e., you) submit your application and preferences for projects. If it's clear that you care about gaining consulting experience and contributing positively to the community, and you have a little luck, you get to work on one of those projects along with a team of peers.

My project: Helping a University of Michigan Health Services seniors' program overhaul their branding and marketing communications strategy so they can more effectively reach out to seniors within the community.

My team: These lovely people - Pia (MBA), Quang (Erber + MBA), Ryan (MBA) and Alex (BBA)

Things in our favour: GREAT team chemistry from the get go, very supportive Executive Director and non-profit Staff

Challenges: (i) Time. Coordinating our five schedules to extricate time from the barrage of recruiting events, case competitions, classes and assignments was difficult, to say the least.

(ii) Making sense of it all. Our client non-profit helps seniors find and maintain suitable housing within the community for no charge, and does so on a shoe string budget. In addition, their target audience isn't homogenous - they must effectively communicate their value to not only seniors, but also adult children of seniors, landlords, community housing managers, health care practioners and others. Creating a representative organizational image and message that would be relevant to all these audiences, and that would also make sense from a fundraising perspective, made this a challenging branding problem.

D-day - Presenting to the client: I will say that on the day of the presentation, I was a bit concerned. We were going to go in there and explain to the client why we thought they should change their name, and throw out all their old marketing materials and re-design everything from scratch. Our recommendations were controversial, but we believed in them. As the meeting got underway, it was easy to sense the staff's reservations. The organization had held on to its original name for almost 30 years, so that was understandable. But we encouraged them to question our assumptions, and made sure they understood the rationale behind each recommendation before we moved on to the next one. Gradually, skepticism gave way to "aha" moments as the staff and the Board began to see things in an objective light. It became clear to them that we had given their problem a great deal of thought, and that our recommendations had their interests and those of their clients (seniors) at heart. At the end of the presentation, the staff and Board had a clear idea about what changes to make to their naming, brand identify, marketing materials and website - and they were able to benefit from our objective assessment of their organization's needs.

As the presentation wrapped up, we had staff and Board members coming up to us to thank us for our work. "Do you get a grade for doing this project?" asked one of the senior program coordinators, someone who had been with the organization and the Health System much of her life. "No, we don't, this is extracurricular," we replied. She went on "Well if I were giving you a grade, I'd give you all an A+"

And it was feedback like that, that proved to me we had helped our client in a tangible way. And at the end of the day, as "future business leaders" and "budding consultants" - isn't that what we wanted to hear? Pretty much.

Contact an Ambassador lately?

It's the time of year when thousands of you will spend hundreds of hours wringing your very souls into a body of essays for Soojin's fine Admissions team to pore over. Rewinding myself back one year, I know exactly what that's like. I know it's a demanding process. But I can tell you that it is well worth it.

It's also that time of year when hundreds of you will reach out to us MBA1s with your questions, emails, personal visits, and the occasional offering of high-quality, dark chocolate (hint, hint). And we're happy to help. That is why we signed up.

[Little known fact about Ambassadors - there's quite a thoughtful selection and training process we have to get through to be Ambassadors. So those of us who do get to be Ambassadors are genuinely excited to interact with you prospective students]

That said, MBA1s are busy this time of year, what with internship recruiting, classes and side projects all vying for our attention. And we want to help you in the most effective way we can, given the limited (read: non-existent) free time we have. So here's a few quick pointers on how you can effectively use our time (and yours).

1. Specific questions > General questions (especially over email).

"Tell me about life at Ross" or "I would like to hear about your experience so far" may be too general a question for us to answer effectively in an email. I find that specific questions such as "What do you like/dislike most about your Ross experience?" or "Have you used the ZLI resources, and if so, how?" are more apt for email. Conversational questions are best addressed with phone calls or personal visits. 

2. It is okay to ask two or three relevant questions within a single email, rather than go back and forth over email, asking a single question at a time.

3. Prioritize your questions. I imagine the most important questions to ask would be the ones the answers to which will tangibly help you get to know Ross better, and help with your decision or essays or interviews. "Do you get ask questions in class?" probably shouldn't cut it, but "Give me an example of something you learnt from class participation, and does that happen often?" may be a great question.

4. If it's a question you can easily find the answer to on the Ross website, you're better off asking one of your other burning questions.

5. I know it makes sense to contact Ambassadors who have similar backgrounds/interests as you, but don't be afraid to reach out to Ambassadors with vastly different backgrounds - they can provide a completely different perspective that could be very helpful to your understanding of Ross.

6. Keep 'em coming :)

RLI Transition Week: Zubin Mehta I am clearly not.

Today, I conducted a professional symphony before a packed auditorium. If you find that surprising, you may be shocked to learn that this was greeted with applause from the audience!

[People told me business school would be a transformative experience. They were clearly not kidding.]

This was the second day of the week long Ross Leadership Initiative experience that kicked off our first year at Ross. The venue: the gorgeous new Blau Auditorium at Ross. The audience: 300 of my fabulous classmates. The guinea pigs: a dozen talented, professional symphony musicians who agreed to be led by amateurs like me.

How does conducting a symphony teach you about leadership, you may ask? In a very unique, powerful way. Picture this – the symphony is seated backs to the audience, so that you, the audience are part of the symphony. This lets you pay close attention to your leader – the conductor – and understand at a very elemental level how people take leadership cues from someone. Today, we were in the very capable hands of Laura Jackson (www.laurajackson.net), Director of the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. “It takes only about a minute and a half for the orchestra to size up the conductor, and decide whether to accept him or her as their leader,” Laura said to us. “Leadership in this setting is about confidence, presence, and the ability of the leader to engage every member of the team he or she leads”. From the moment Laura entered the auditorium we could see the musicians sizing her up. But from the moment she picked up the baton, to the moment she closed the classical piece they played, you could see was in complete control of her team.

Of course, at Ross, mere demonstration is not enough. Action based learning, remember? The purpose of this two hour session was to put us students up on the podium so we could experience the leader-team dynamic for ourselves. Before I knew it, I had volunteered myself to lead the symphony. After a two minute conducting lesson from Laura, there I was, baton in hand, about to conduct a classical piece I didn’t know the first thing about, with professional musicians who I probably couldn’t control, in front of an audience that did not know what to expect. The first try was, let’s just say, highly educational. I was too intense – the musicians picked that up, and felt constrained by the “micro-managing” way I conducted them. We didn’t sound very good. With some feedback from Laura, I eased up on the second try, and let the musicians have their “space”. I didn’t so much lead as 'guide' the musicians. My motions set the pace, but did not dictate how they should play. The result sounded much, much better. The musicians knew it, and the audience knew it.

So what did I learn at Ross today? Very simply: when you have a team of great performers, don’t hold the reigns too tight. Let them play. And that applies to work, play, and everything in between.

What made this experience even more amazing was watching a dozen other classmates try their hand at it, and observe how leadership styles varied across the class. I was impressed by the quality of this educational (and fun!) experience, and was grateful for the opportunity to conduct a real symphony. All in day’s learning here at Ross!