Work, Exams, Holiday. Not Work, Exams, Work.

My mind is still spinning from another day of writing, presenting and debating at the RSM full-time MBA.

We are in the last few days of Living Management, an intense training exercise which we carry out in small groups. Over the course of 6 days, our small group of six people, receives, analyses, solves and presents a consulting project to the management teams of companies like GE, Phillips and the Dutch utility Eneco. My group drew a project from Eneco (that’s us in the photo I have attached, standing with George Yip the Dean of RSM). Put simply, we have had to develop a new business model that will hasten their shift to a low-carbon economy. The company already has a range of renewable energy solutions, and is slowly rolling them out in pilot projects around the country. But how to upscale? How to reach the retail market where transaction costs are high and margins tight? How to compete with cheap coal and nuclear power generated and transmitted across infrastructure that is still heavily state subsidised? Sure. Should be easy, right!?
Well it hasn’t been easy, but it HAS been fun. Our presentation is all ready to go. We’ve pitched our solution in various forms to different people in the company and told that we are on the right track. So we know that at a minimum we won’t be laughed out of the room tomorrow when we present to the head of HR, the CFO and the head of the Sustainable Energy Solutions business unit.

So much for a holiday at the end of Term 2… Exams finished two weeks ago and I thought they were bad. Four exams in four days, for subjects like Finance and Operations Management. Then in the middle of exams I travelled to London for one night to interview for the finals of the MBA Student of the Year award. Two weeks later and the pace is still as hectic as ever. Next week we depart for a business scoping study in Belgium where we will be asked to research and write-up a business opportunity over the course of three days. Then we really DO get a holiday. In the ten days we have off, I will be presenting to a Rotary Club in the suburbs of The Hague and travelling to France to visit an Australian friend and his French wife.