As one of the youngest among all cousins, I used to dread Holi, when I was about 6-7 years old. It was a scary day, when suddenly, everybody literally changed colors. (See the pic on right and you’ll know what I mean!) But as I grew older, I developed love for this amazing festival and eagerly waited for the day every year. In addition to playing Holi with my family, I was a regular at Holi-celebrations at my engineering college in undergrad days and later, at my workplaces: CA and Adobe.

This year, it was only the second time that I was not with my family on a Holi and the first time that I was outside India and thus, I was saddened by the idea of missing the colors. But the MBA’10s (second-years) had different plans.  They had a clear plan lined up for a special Holi-day covering the entire first half of the day.

The day started with a Cricket match at 9. Cricket and Holi! What’s the connection, you may ask? Frankly, even I can’t think of one, except perhaps that both of these bind Indians together. So, it was some MBA’10s pitched against MBA’11s, with some alumni from class of 2009 joining in and we had a wonderful game. After two gripping games lasting about three hours, we were finally ready for Holi-time. We had booked the picnic-area of our apartment for the celebration.

As soon as we reached the venue, the Holi-fever took over. With colors in the air, shouts of “Holi hai!” (“It’s Holi!!”) and people running after each other with colors in their hand, the scene wasn’t very different from what it used to be there back in India. Partners and kids (Brave ones, who, unlike me, were not scared of colors!) of some of the students too joined in action and suddenly, I wasn’t missing my family that much. Friends from China, Pakistan, Armenia, Latin America and the US too joined us and within moments, every face was smeared beyond recognition in shades of red, orange, purple, green and many more. And that’s the beauty of Holi! Once you are a part of it, the distinctions of nationality, caste and religion disappear and give way to the oneness of Holi. (Take a try at the snap on left, it will certainly take you more time than usual to correctly assign people to their nationalities!)

Once we were done with colors, it was time for yummy Indian food. And as we were gobbling it up, we had a surprise guest: Harriet, our Director of MBA program office. All international students share a special relationship with her, as she is usually the first Goizueta person that we get to meet after landing in the US and she goes an extra mile to ensure that we all get settled here comfortably. As such, it wasn’t actually surprising that some of us had sent down a special invitation to her and she did join us for lunch.  It was great to have her among us, but sadly, we had run out of colors, by then.

This was certainly not the wildest Holi that I have played. Two (Yes, two!) Holis played in the final year of engineering college win hands down on that front. But still, I’ll count this as one of the most memorable Holis ever. Enjoying a festival in a new land, with other people joining in to share your joy: this certainly is a lovely feeling. Thank to MBA’10s for a wonderful day and we promise a bigger Holi, complete with Holi-special songs, next year.

It’s a bit of a catch-22 in some ways. As March and April go by, our focus as second years has shifted a bit away from Goizueta and into the next chapter of our lives – that of newly-minted MBAs. We’re looking for jobs, housing, scheduling moves around Atlanta and around the world, several our classmates are getting married, others are looking forward to being reunited full time with their families and children and loved ones, and there are celebrations upon celebrations around graduation and all these other life events. So it is a good time to turn over leadership to the first years (and one years who are about to arrive).

On the other side of things though, these groups that we have been leading (it’s the Honor Council for me and participation with this blog among other things) have taken on special importance and significance in our lives. They have been the groups through which we have been able to affect our community and our classmates, through which we have been able to achieve goals of ours, and from which we’ve gained incredible experience leading and learning from our peers.

Other positions (at other schools and organizations) I have held in the past never made quite a point regarding transition. I think there really are two strong forces at work at the end of a term – not wanting to give up something you have nurtured for so long, and the natural tendency to be excited and focus on the next thing and consequently lose touch with the daily impact of a group and position. Goizueta is set with a history that makes transition a necessary and somewhat formalized process: Leadership March.

We all know we’re going to be giving up these opportunities to serve our community so directly, but through the Leadership March process we’re also going to be handing over our accomplishments, goals, and learnings to a group of students who are just as passionate and who will benefit just as much from leading as we did. Spring semester in general tends to turn into a time of clarifying logistics, processes, and documenting the last year and our lessons so that the next round of leaders can spend time nurturing and creating rather than trying to figure out the last year and reinvent the wheel. Leading at Goizueta is an incredible experience, and because of traditions like Leadership March, we get a taste of the entire cycle of leadership from start to finish.

• More info, more posts, more gossip: Okay! We perhaps cannot promise the last bit. But with the launch of this new look, we hope to be more regular in our posts. We have a number of interesting posts lined up. If there is anything specific that you’d like to know about, let us know!
• A pictorial view into Goizueta Life:  You asked for it, we heard it! We know that the snaps displayed in the previous version of this blog were tantalizingly small and you wanted to have a clearer view of Goizueta life. The photo-gallery “Life @ GBS” will show you glimpses of Goizueta-life from a different aspect every time you navigate to a different page.
• Better Categorization:  We have cut down the number of categories to the six most prominent categories and re-categorized all the posts in a more logical manner. We hope this would help you in navigating to the topics of your choice more easily.
• Know your authors better: Now, each author has a page of his/her own that allows you to know the people behind this blog in a better manner. If you like the posts by a particular author more than others, you can choose to bookmark the author’s page to see all the posts by him/her at one place.
• Like it? Share it! Keeping in step with the social-media wave, we provide you the option of sharing content of this blog on all major networks. So no more copying-pasting links for your favorite posts to send them to your friends. If you like a post, you can share it (or digg it or tweet it or whatever!) right from the blog page.

We may have changed a lot in terms of look and features. What hasn’t changed is the mission and purpose of the blog.  The GLOBE team will continue to bring to you undiluted, authentic and unbiased insights into the life at Goizueta from the perspective of its students.

Welcome to the new Voice of GBS!  We hope you enjoy your time with us!

Goizueta Marketing Strategy Consultancy (GMSC): This is a course and a competition combined into one. Six teams of 6-7 students work on a consulting project with a company to solve a real business issue that the company is facing. Throughout the spring semester, the teams receive guidance from second-year Team Guides and leadership team, faculty members, a number of external trainers and of course, the client.  At the end of the semester, the teams present their recommendations to the client as well as to a judging panel comprising of experienced marketing and consulting professionals from Atlanta business community.  The course is intense; the total time commitment varies between 12-15 hours a week and that’s not counting the classroom time!! But the learning experience is certainly worth the time investment. Actually, GMSC deserves at least one post of its own and I promise a post on this in near future. Meanwhile, you can have a look at these.

Managerial Accounting:
Sample these comments from recent alumni:
“Managerial Accounting changed my life. Before taking the class I was a real “girlie-man.” But thanks to activity based costing, I’ve got a great new job, tons of money, women, and a new attitude.”
“Prepare to be amazed. Once you’ve experienced The Death Spiral, nothing will be the same again. I’m a changed man.”
From these comments, you can have some idea about how much students love Managerial Accounting taught by Dr. Kristy Towry. I know it’s a bit difficult to imagine the words “love” and “Accounting” in one sentence, but this is perfectly acceptable, if Dr. Towry’s name is used in the same sentence! With her witty anecdotes, distinct sense of humor and excellent style of teaching, she literally makes accounting a fun-class. (For a sample, see attached scene from one of her classes. ) No wonder, she has won a number of Teaching Excellence awards over last 6-7 years.

Analytics for e-markets: The course deals with the nuances of how Internet and e-Commerce has fundamentally changed the way business is done. As a former techie, I was naturally attracted to this class, but after going through a third of the course, I realize that these are the issues that everybody needs to address to survive in today’s business world. Like most classes at Goizueta, this class follows a balance between lectures and cases. In addition, we have experts coming from companies like Google and Yahoo to keep us updated on the latest in the industry.

/* BTW, why did I just call myself a “former” techie? Just 2-3 days ago, I successfully wrote and executed a “shell-script” on my mac to rename a specific set of images for this blog’s new design!! */

Ideation: This is a course about “Thinking”! May sound a bit unusual, but it’s no more unusual than Professor Joey Reiman: the man behind the concept. He had a great career in advertising (He even won a Golden Lion Award at Cannes Film Festival!) before he decided to start his own Ideation company: Brighthouse .  Under the Ideation course, Joey lays out a sequential series of steps for coming up with great ideas to transform an ailing organization. This is purely an experiential class: each project team is asked to select a company, and uncover its purpose and impact on society. The purpose is to excavate and develop a Master Idea that aligns the company’s ideals, values, goals and objectives and allows it to stand for more than just its product offerings. In the past, the master-ideas from the class have made it to the CXOs’ tables and some of them have been implemented successfully by companies.

As you can imagine, life is much more hectic this semester (In addition to above, we have two core courses too!), even more than it was during the dreaded Block 2 of first semester. But with the choices I made in picking the electives, I am really enjoying the experience. Stay tuned for more updates on GMSC, internship hunt and more.

While I am taking small steps toward the end of spring semester with all the classes, numerous team meetings, club responsibilities, and internship interviews in between, my train of thought goes back to block 2, arguably the most academically challenging part of doing an MBA from Goizueta. One of the things – that we (first years) got warned about most often from second years when we started school back in August’09 – was block 2 (it was block B before it was renamed as block 2). Before I start elaborating on why block 2 is what it is, let me explain, to those not familiar with block system at Goizueta, how it works. Essentially, first semester is roughly equally divided into three blocks. Few courses are just one block long, and most extend over two blocks. There are exams at the end of each block.

Block 2 starts around mid-September and continues till about end of October. The senior class (second years) had a challenging time during block 2 (hence the warning from them) a year before because of the tremendous amount of multi-tasking required to get through ‘successfully’. Success can mean different things to different people. For most, it was about finishing all the readings and assignments in time for the four core courses, all very challenging and important. For few, it was about getting highest grades. For some, it was about doing well in the three career conferences, which also happen during same time (yes, same time), so that you have your dream internship before even on campus recruiting starts (internship recruitment does start as early as September). For some, it was about building networks and being socially active. Then, there were a few for whom success was to achieve all of the above. So, the ‘coefficient of difficulty’ varied based on which category one fell into. However, although the relative perceived difficulty varied, there was no denying that it was difficult even at the bare minimum level, just because there were so many things to do.

So, that was block 2. Difficult? Perhaps. More difficult than spring semester? Depends. That reminds me that the answer of many questions in b-school is just one word: depends. But, I will save more detail about that for some other time. Before I finish, let me share another interesting fact about block 2. It was actually even more challenging a year before than it was for us. Based on the feedback that the program office received from our senior class, we got a stripped down version of block 2, with lesser number of courses, for which we thank second years (and MBA program office) whole-heartedly. And, yes, at Goizueta, feedbacks are considered seriously and are acted upon. They trigger change.

After first six months of MBA full of great learning, tremendous work, new friends, surprises, and lots of fun, I can’t wait to discover the rest of the experience of doing an MBA here at Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

What is microenterprise? Of the world’s 3 billion poor who live on less than $2.50 per day, many run their own micro-business to earn money. And the business’s prosperity becomes the family’s. This is true for women in particular; for every $1 a woman earns, she invests 90 cents in her family’s health, education, and well-being. Unfortunately, a lack of business literacy can often hold a microentrepreneur back.

Meet Maria
Maria is a microentrepreneur. She runs a small store out of her home in the highlands of Guatemala. For her, some additional help in marketing and selling her textiles could mean the difference between sending her daughter to school or not. Speak with Maria and you will hear a strong desire for the tools of business. She knows business literacy is an obstacle.

When we think of microentrepreneurs like this, something changes. We begin to view the poor not as passive charity recipients, but as consumers and producers. If we can get rid of the obstacles and constraints in their way, we can give them the opportunity to effect change in their own lives.

The universality of business and entrepreneurship
What are some of these obstacles? Let’s talk about entrepreneurship itself. Entrepreneurs need two things: money and know-how. For microentrepreneurs, the money piece is called microfinance, and it’s a proven, scalable model that has spread around the world. Microfinance is still at around 10-20% of its full potential, but the model is there.

But business literacy has been a tougher nut to crack. No surprise there: money is a lot easier to spread around than knowledge. There are lots of smart people working on this issue – USAID spends $250 million a year on microenterprise development – but a microfinance-style scalable model has been elusive.

(Of course, microenterprise development comprises many more interventions than just microfinance and business literacy. Other elements include improving access to new markets, disseminating technology, and simplifying both business formation and bankruptcy. But for my money, business literacy is the most interesting.)

My experience is in business consulting. The central thesis of strategy consulting is that, at their core, all business problems have some pretty common causes. Poor understanding of one’s customers. Unnecessary costs. Lack of a clear, differentiated strategy. It’s a stem-cell theory of business – no matter what industry you’re looking at, the business challenges can be grouped into some common categories. These commonalities make a generalist MBA education not only possible, but incredibly valuable. Which is what makes business literacy such a compelling issue for MBAs like myself. We know that business is actually pretty straightforward. So how can we spread business literacy?

EXCO104: Microenterprise Development Lab
To share what I’ve learned, I have turned my business literacy questions into a class. As part of Emory’s Experimental College, I am teaching “Microenterprise Development Lab” each Thursday evening at Goizueta. If you’re in Atlanta, you’re welcome to attend.

We’ve had two classes so far. This past Thursday, each student role-played one of nine organizations – such as Aflatoun, Samasource, and Agora Partnerships – pitching USAID for funding. (Aflatoun won.) During the rest of the semester, we’ll talk about the broad challenges of micro-businesses, what microenterprise curricula look like, and how a bunch of university students might make a difference. More info is at andrewkstein.com/microenterprise.

So far, it’s a lot of fun. I came into Goizueta thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were an elective about microenterprise development?” Now there is. My hope is that, one day, a microenterprise class will be as standard at business schools as beer-powered networking.

–
Andrew K. Stein
Goizueta Business School
MBA Class of 2011

***

So where did Goizueta Business School’s 7 Core Values come from?

The students.

In 2002, full-time Goizueta MBA students brainstormed a list of values to show what we stand for with the support of their program office.  Post-its covered the walls of Emory’s Cox Hall ballroom, but what they boiled down to were 7 Core Values – Courage, Integrity, Accountability, Rigor, Diversity, Team, and Community.

The last three values form the foundation of our beliefs and Rigor connects us to the ever-inspiring values of Courage, Integrity, and Accountability.  The Goizueta Business School truly embodies these values throughout the MBA experience.  It begins with recruitment and admissions, and then welcomes you in the entrance way of the MBA building.  You see these values in current students at orientation, the development of student teams, and even through recognition at graduation.  Goizueta defines itself by these values and demonstrates it each day.

Getting involved in leadership roles is expected at a school with the agenda to “build Principled Leaders for Global Enterprise”.  We have leadership courses and we read cases, but this year I have learned leadership in practice.  Remember GMSC, that course I wrote about last year? Well this year I am the Managing Director of the course, and basically make sure things work out and we that we maintain the course.  I lead a team of 6 directors and have a faculty adviser to help guide us through the process.  This role has really challenged me in interesting ways, while also allowing me to practice some of the leadership methodology I have learned.  I have been able to develop best practices, which I really think I can use in real life.

What’s more, having to prioritize between leadership roles, similar to other endeavors in life, has been particularly interesting.  I have been in leadership roles before, and I have had to juggle responsibilities, but leading and managing alpha – male and female, super smart, assertive MBAs has been one of the best learning experiences of my life thus far.  So the point of this message, that piling roles on to our plates may seem scary, but there are only 2 years in B-school….some may choose to load up on classes and others may choose extracurricular – either way, there is some good, and real leadership to be learned for us all.

And it’s not all intense, having to choose which wines to serve at a wine dinner, and which days of the semester to visit the High Museum of Art are also some of the demands of these roles.  Not at all bad skills to capitalize on for the future!

That was the topic of a Professor Tom Smith talk this past Monday at Goizueta.  From unemployment figures to pumpkin harvests, Professor Smith covered the spectrum of indicators that tell the stories you’re familiar with, such as “GDP is ticking up; good times are here again!” and “Oh my God, unemployment is 10%.  I should really put off buying that 3rd iPhone.”

Professor Smith began by citing pumpkins.  Turns out that canned pumpkin has been a bit hard-to-find on store shelves this season.  All I know is that my girlfriend loves to bake with pumpkin, so we never have less than a few cans on hand.  If you couldn’t find canned pumpkin in your local Publix this week, she’s to blame.  And honey, if you’re reading this, the pumpkin bread pudding was delicious and everyone loved it.

Apparently people like to point to pumpkin shortages as a sign of the economy.  Kind of like seeing the Virgin Mary in a potato chip, only with pumpkins and GDP growth.   As Professor Smith pointed out, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense – the scarcity is just a result of the Illinois pumpkin crop getting wiped out by heavy rains – but you’re still welcome  to begin your WSJ editorials with, “As we see with the pumpkin shortages….”

Tom: 1; Pumpkins: 0.

Next we get to unemployment.  Tom Smith LOVES unemployment.  As an indicator.  (I’m sure he’s a very nice guy who doesn’t want to see other nice people lose their job.)  And since the unemployment rate has more than doubled in the past two years – levels we haven’t seen since 1983 – Professor Smith gave us his capital-T Theory.

The thing you have to know about b-school professors is that they all have big capital-T Theories that haven’t been published in more than their textbook yet, but perhaps one day.  Tom Smith’s Theory is that the time it takes to get back to pre-recession unemployment rates is the single greatest indicator of how bad a recession is.  Whether it’s true, it’s a Theory that *should* be true.  Would you rather see the S&P regain 35% of its lowest value or see the peak unemployment rate decline 35%?  I’m with the latter, and unless you’re an investment banker with no heart for the human toll taken by the worst recession this country has seen in 70 years, I bet you are too.

Tom: 2; Mean Investment Bankers: 0.

Tom Smith also has what he calls his rules of ten.  10% unemployment? Bad.  Ten states with unemployment way above the national norm?  Bad.  Not quite a capital-T Theory – not “publishable results,” as they say – but still a handy heuristic to pull out at the next kegger.

Tom: 12; Kegs: 12.

The other high point of the Tom Smith Experience was learning how Alan Greenspan likes to use men’s underwear.  As an indicator of growth.  The idea is that since men only buy underwear when they have to, it’s the ultimate non-luxury good that isn’t an essential like food.  Good news, then, that Hanes and Under Armor are both forecasting higher sales in 2010. But the effect of such underwear discussion is little more than a series of awful double entendres around words like performance, growth, and whether spending has “loosened up.”

Tom Smith: 13; Tom Jones: [censored].

Tom finished strong (sorry), (1) arguing against the likelihood of a quick return to 2006 unemployment levels (partly because the rate of mass layoffs is extremely high), (2) commenting that inflation is low and no one can decide where it’ll go next, and (3) lamenting the weak dollar, which is great if you’re a French Exchange Student at Goizueta (“Hi, Thibault!”) but stinks if you like buying cheap toys made in Korea for your nephews.  (“Sorry, Theo. Uncle Andrew is a business student and isn’t making any money right now.  Here, have this pointy stick.”)

Tom: 14; Theo: Sad.

So have we turned the corner?  Not really.  Stay tuned next time for more rhetorical questions, capital-T Theories, and double entendres about men’s underwear.  Stay classy, Internet.

–
Andrew K. Stein
Goizueta Business School
MBA Class of 2011