Camp, camp, I wanna go to camp!

The first part of our move is complete and now comes a series of vacations before the big jump over the pond. Our much anticipated trip out west is finally here! We will be leaving tomorrow for our little over 2 week road trip. We will hit Yellow Stone, The Grand Tetons, North Rim of the Canyon, Zion and Arches National Park. It will be a blast and after the past few weeks of logistical and physical stress, it will be a relaxing break from it all.

Bschool Rankings

IMD does not usually turn heads, especially not in the US, unless you have been one of the people researching Bschools around the world. In Europe, I'm sure IMD is more recognized and the brand much stronger. So what do rankings say about IMD? There are several main rankings that we see in the market today:

1. BusinessWeek (Non US - 7th)
- Based largely on MBA grad and recuiter surveys
2. Forbes (Non US - 2nd)
- All about ROI, purely financial score
3. Financial Times (World - 15th)
- Survey of MBA alumni 3 years post and some business school data
4. The Economist (World - 2nd)
- 20% based on student and alumni surveys and 80% data provided by the school

Not too shabby? The ranking game gets really old as each organization ranks the MBA programs differently. What an applicant needs to do is to really understand what the main goal and purpose is when going for an MBA. Keep asking yourself Why? Why? Why? Weight your factors selfishly and you will have your own ranking of Bschools, which in the end is the MOST important!

Apartments and furnishings

The situation for next year is that furniture in the apartment is sort of "rolled over" to the next tenant for a price. However, sine the apartment was listed as furnished, this comes as a surprise. It seems that students in the past have bought things for the apartment and simply sold them to the next ones coming in. The first thing that came to my mind was what if at the end of next year, the next set of tenants don't want to buy the furniture? What do I do? Do I have to haul all of it to my new place? Yikes... it's definitely a tricky situation. In the end, I think we will bite the bullet and pay for all the furnishings hoping that someone will buy it the next year. I do not know what I might do different, knowing what I know now, but keep that in mind when you find yourself a place to stay! At least we have a place ready when we get there.

MBA journal writer - On a stick?

It IS in my stars to write for Bloomberg BusinessWeek for 2011! I am honored and excited to share my experiences at IMD. I believe the last representative for IMD on BusinessWeek was for the class of 2006, it's time to give another boost to the IMD brand. Well... I will try anyway.

So immediately after I received an email from Francesca this morning about the news, I sent a text to my wife about it. The return text was a "Sweet!" and a row of corn layed neatly next to each other. No, it's not an inside joke between us, she is spending the day at the great Minnesota State Fair and secretly giving my subconscious a craving for some beautifully roasted sweet corn. The state fair has been a tradition for many minnesotans and in my view, all about food, on a stick!

I'm going this evening and I ate a salad for lunch. Bring It On!!!

Big dog, small dog, no dog, hot dog

The meeting took about 5 min. It seems we can have as big a dog as we want! Unless of course there are complaints. Seems fair enough. Now we have 3 potential leads: a couple with a big dog, a dude with a small dog and a international visitor with no dogs. Which of these will pony up and sign the lease?

On another note, we have been finalizing our vacation trips in the next few months and that has been fun. The dates are drawing near and the anticipation is building up. In the mean time, the 2011 class has also been filling up. About 60 students (33%) in the class already and 8 months (33%) have gone by in the year... talk about swiss precision!

Next week, a trip to Nathan's hot dog in NYC? A friend of mine also mentioned a Kim Chee ladened deep fried hot dog at PDT (please don't tell) pub. I don't know about that one.

GEM #5

John Maxwell does an incredible job boiling down the "laws" of leadership, 21 to be exact. After reading this book, it definitely seems to me that only a handful of leaders in the world are practicing every law and great leaders are definitely hard to come by. A clear, succinct book with numerous examples that show you the way to being the best leader you can be.

GEM #5: The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership
SPECIAL BONUS! My top 5 quotes:
1. "Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less"
2. "Leadership is developed daily, not in a day"
3. "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"
4. "You are the message, people buy into the leader first, then the vision"
5. "A leader's lasting value is measured by succession"

Use this as a guide in all your future leadership endeavors and I know you will be successful. I'm preparing for the day that followers will look to me to steer them into the clear, are you?

Sneaking up on you

It's been a flurry of activities trying to get ready for the move, and the weeks are just flying by at this moment. There are a couple of big rocks to move before the trail gets smoother. The 2 big things are the Condo and Financing. Other little ones include insurance, visa and storage.

The trick is to keep our focus on the big rocks and still enjoy the anticipation and excitement of it all. It's never easy, but constantly stepping back and looking at the big picture always helps to bring us back to the ground. Little distractions will continue to pop up and try to steer us away from our main items! IMD activities have slowly started to gain momentum. Enthusiastic MBA candidates are planning a ski trip in January and perhaps a new year party. Pre-program courses have been suggested by IMD on Finance and Finance Accounting. I anticipate more TO-DOs will pop up shortly.

In the mean time, reading about current students continue to prepare me for the next year. The second half of the year seems to be more dynamic and less structured. No more big lectures, traveling to different countries for the International Consulting Projects, just a more flexible schedule in general. I have a feeling the second half of the year zooms by pretty fast and that is the part most students will miss.

On a different note, but related, our big dog meeting has been moved again! Alright, time to buck up and flyer the town this weekend. I have 80 flyers waiting to be posted and I know there is a potential renter out there waiting to be found.