Cheers to Experiential learning

I did not have much idea about experiential learning before this class, now I hope all my MBA classes are experiential learning :). Cheers to all of us who made this class one of the best learning experience

A proposition!!!

Lets keep this blog alive....to keep in touch.. and....share our experiences....!

Great class, Superb Prof and Wonderful Classmates..!

The day Prf. Osland told us about him, I was eagerly waiting to hear Joseph Stiglitz. It was so fascinating to sit in the same hall with a noble prize winner and listening to him. He analyzed the whole economic turmoil in a very easy to understand way with lots of examples. I was so delighted when one of my questions got selected and he answered it. I asked him about the "American Dream". This is a phrase that I have heard since my childhood, though I used to live in a very different part of the world. When I came here, some how after couple of years I also was living with that dream without even knowing. The whole consumerist environment somehow shadowed my values set out by my culture, which always teaches us to save and live within our means. After listening to Stiglitz, I was so amazed that an American is saying that this is not the right way and it should be changed. Hope we can all try to fix our own little economic problems by taking baby steps and this will eventually make a difference in larger picture.

This was my first time taking an off-campus class as I am an on-campus student for the MBA program. This course was a great experience for me as I got to meet professionals from different background and work with them. The demographics was a great mix which I though was perfect for a course in Global Leadership. I have learned a lot from the Professor's lecture, the fun games and simulations and also from my classmates. Thank you Prof. Osland and my dear classmates. Hope to see you in a different course sometime.

Another End

With only two classes to go in the program it still surprises me how fast a session comes and goes. However, this time, I can honestly say I come away with practical tools that will continue to make me a more globally aware person. The course schedule, activities and speakers took a great deal of thought, planning and extra effort, and as an experienced student, I want to say I appreciate those efforts and thank you all for making this a class I will remember.

last day on tuesday the 23rd

We were all sad that the class had already ended and it seemed really short. It was such a wonderful experience and we all learned so much about ourselves and our classmates, that we wish it was a little longer. The presentations on the last day were also very interesting and fun and we got alot to learn from them. This course was truly amazing and i thoroughly enjoyed it and would love to taking another course with professors Osland's if i get a chance to. Thank you.

Thank you,

Like previous posts from my classmate, I feel like this exciting learning adventure has just started, and there still many global leadership aspects that I have yet to learn. Nevertheless, good thing has come to an end. I’m so glad that I get to be a part of this innovative learning experience. Thank you Professor Osland and everyone for your contributions. I have learned a lot from all of you over the past one month or so.

Au revoir

Why oh why must this end? I guess it's time to put it to practice...

Jane Leu

Jane Leu's talk last week put to life what a social innovator is. Her work illustrates the innovation topics we covered in class. She worked at an organization who helped immigrants find a job and was not content with where she placed them. She then thought about how to help international employees find jobs that meet their qualifications. What's amazing is that she took an everyday problem and found a solution that benefits the new immigrants, diversifies the workforce, and makes money.

One of my favorite Leu quotes was, "Social entrepreneurship is also about being obsessive, demanding, competitive, and ruthless...We are capitalists in pursuit of good!" What a win-win situation for everyone. Do good, be agressive and make money doing it! I think she should host the next Apprentice.

Great end to a great class

I'm very happy I was able to see Joseph Stiglitz speak. He's an excellent speaker with very interesting point of views on the effects of the economy over the last several years. His AIG money commentary was very interesting- I had no idea how much money the government gave them. I supported his position on the school spending and how we could have supported Africa for 25 years with all the money we wasted on the bail outs. It's frustrating to hear the truth and know we're not going to get the money back.
The class presentations were really good. I liked the preso on how to support innovation within an organization. I feel I can take those ideas back to work with me and work with managers on implementing them. Overall it was a great end to a very interesting class. The content was very valuable and the student were great to work with.

Finishing on chapter & starting another one

After attending last night speech at SJSU auditorium and then in-class presentations, felt like one more chapter of my MBA life is over and next week will bring another chapter; the last chapter. Yes, planning to finish MBA program next session.

Similar to previous posting about learning from this class, it will be one of the most referred class learning in my daily work life. This class coupled cultural aspect with organization behaviour and innovation. The three main areas of my passion hence no wonder I enjoyed it so much.

I connected with most of you via LinkedIn. So we will be in touch.

February 23, 2010

Joseph Stiglitz engaged the entire crowd with his awe-inspiring speech. He started with the battle of ideas that led to the BUBBLE. He gave an insight to the failure of the financial market and its reasons. His profound knowledge on current issues was impressive. His view about recession and how to deal with it gave me an idea of how simple changes can help us revive our economy.

After the speech delight, I got ready to give our presentation. We had fun presenting the article in the form of a role play. The three other teams who presented with us were innovative in their own ways. Professor wrapped up the session by saying how "Transformation" acts as the center piece to get to the leader level.

Although this class was for just one month, I have learned a lot about myself and what areas I should work on to become a better person and a global leader in the future. Thanks Professor Joyce Osland and all my classmates for having made the class so delightful.

February 16,2010

The Innovation Projects presented by all the teams were so creatively done and engaging. I liked the site idea in Public Education Budget cut presentation. The Right Brain for innovation team had high energy to emphasize on the thought that creative mind is important for innovation. I totally agree to that. The Plastic bio degradation presentation  was very informative too. We too enjoyed presenting our views on health issues in US and Corporate Wellness programs. Professor's individual feedback on presentation skills helped me focus on improving my presentation skills.

Not to forget the astounding speech by Jane. The speech gave more insight on the prevalent gaps in labor market. It helped me understand the difference between social entrepreneurship and charity. It also provided knowledge on what social entrepreneurs do, answering specifically the question on why there are not many social entrepreneurs and the solutions to it.

The end of one cycle and begining of another

Today was the last day of the class, but before the class we had a great opportunity to hear The n prize winner Joseph Stiglitz. I was excited because it was the first time I was ever listening to any nobel prize winner plus he was an economist a subject of my interest. He spoke for over an hour and there was not one moment where I lost interest.He spoke about the the current economic crisis which is a hot topic of discussion these days. He very briefly covered the causes/reasons for this recession and gave us some solutions that can be implemented and how current efforts can be made more effective. The one thing that stuck in my mind was the concept of savings and lack of savings in t's world. Being from India, savings was a big part of my life...we are taught to save right from a very young age. But I noticed the difference when I moved to USA and I must say the environment here is too tempting to save money. This culture of spending more than your means has caught up in developing countries like India as well. Call it western influence or just a phenomenon of a growing economy. But listening to Joseph Stiglitz in a way reminded me of my asking me to always try d save some money and not live beyond my means:) I think he stated the facts (though they were a bit depressing) and I guess the first step to improve the situation is to accept that their is a problem.

Today's class was a short and we had 4 very innovative class presentation. This has been a great class. Of all the MBA classes I have attended so far, I have had the most fun in this class!!! like many of my class mates, I am going to miss attending this class :(

I hope to implement my learnings from this class in every aspect of my life; in the way I behave, the way I see things and my approach towards problems. I hope to continue this learning process even after this class.

Thank you Prof Joyce and thank you all for making this a wonderful experience ..It was a great pelasure working with you and hopefully we will all stay in touch :)

Anticipation and ...!

Today is our last session....sigh:( The extra bonus is the Stiglitz Speech. But somehow I was feeling a little down when the thought came that now is the time we will be judged and will be graded. This class has been an wonderful experience where everybody interacted with everybody, worked hard to excel and be creative in every aspect. We all worked out of our passion to do something meaningful and innovative. And the whole class was so supportive of each other, giving constructive feedback and wishing the whole class to succeed. The whole purpose was experiential learning, which I think we successfully achieved. But now, when thinking about the Grades, it is dampening my spirit. I wish there was no grading or everybody got the same!

CPQ and GCI - What do they tell us

The global competency index was not really surprising to me. I scored well on relationship management and self management while was mediocre in perception management. This is mainly because I do not ask too many questions and often go along with the status quo. I also realize that this is typically the case when I am unsure or not confidant about something. If it is something I am really passionate about, then I am way too curious :). I guess I need to balance the two.

The CPQ test had me wondering about the validity of the test. As someone mentioned, sometimes we might answer how we want to be and not how we are really. So will that make the test valid? I am not sure. From the results, I summarized that I am in between cultures. While my score matches considerably with my country's result, I also see that sometimes I vary be a large degree. Still these tests are fun to take and gives us an idea how we might be perceived by others.

Social Innovation at its best

The final project presentations were eye openers. Each of us brought our ideas into creating amazing projects. I feel now that the professor could have split us into more groups just to see what other innovating ideas might have come from that. Another thing that I love about this class and one which I hope I have in other classes is the constructive feedback - There were no judgments in the feedback, just the wish to see that everyone benefits from it.

Jane was another revelation. The way she has built a business model from scratch just with passion as the root is a lesson to all those passionate entrepreneurs out there. Her enthusiasm is very contagious and left me with the desire to do something meaningful out of my life.

We can be creative

I really loved our Saturday class. I never considered myself a creative person, but even I could come up with creative ideas during our chapter presentation. The thing I loved most was no 2 presentations were the same, and we all had just 10 minutes to come up with something. Just imagine what we can do when we have much more time in our hands.

The outdoor exercise was interesting too. The first thing that came into my mind when I heard the instructions for the exercise was surprisingly not "this is impossible", instead I (and everyone else) started putting down ideas on how to accomplish the goal. I think this is the primary goal of this subject. Not grades, but how to change our thought process and soar heights in the business world. I am so happy that my classmates and the professor have made this a truly remarkable experience.

My CPQ and GCI scores

GCI:

I found my scores valid to a great extent in regard to relationship management and self management. I scored high in both of them. As I mentioned earlier, I have been living in the international house of SJSU for two years now and that enabled me to meet students from different countries of the world. It has always been easy for me to develop and maintain relationships with them. I was aware of the fact that they are different from my culture and I was able to successfully cope with that while at the same time maintaining my own values and beliefs.

I was so surprised with my score in perception management though. I scored really low on that even though I used to think that I am fairly flexible when confronted with cultural differences. I never thought about the possibility of drawing boundaries when it comes to cultural differences. So, I am really glad I took that test because it made me realize that what I think might not always be correct and maybe I need to stop and deeply think about how I react when confronted with different cultures. After taking this assessment I started to be more cautious and started observing how I react with my colleagues or classmates who are from a culture different than mine. I want to find the reason why I scored low cause I love dealing with people from different cultures and I am really interested to learn more about different countries as my dream is to travel around the world, of course when I get my degree, get a job and be rich ;)

CPQ

My scores seemed valid, most of them were close to the average for my country of birth. However, I was surprised to score very low on the nature of humans. This means that I perceive people as naturally bad. I don't think that this is true, I always treat people as if they are naturally good unless there is a specific situation that reveals the bad side of somebody who I have been dealing with.

Thoughts of an Indigenous...

In the Aracruz simulation, I was among the Indigenous people and at the beginning when I read the case, I was convinced to a great extent that Indigenous people have the right to the land and felt bad for them. However, when I met with my group that consists of the different stakeholders, my thoughts started to change gradually and I started to look at the problem from their different points of view. That was really a great and useful experience because I believe that we face the same situation almost everyday in our lives. And by the same situation I mean that we tend to judge situations from our point of view regardless what the situation is, the consequence is the same because we keep believing our own opinions and hardly think about what others think. So being put in the Aracruz situation I learned that when I give myself a chance to listen to others and understand their point of view, that makes the problem way easier to solve and the solution comes smoothly without a need to fight or get into intense arguments.

I believe that the main reason why my group was effective was because we all knew beforehand that we have to listen to each other and try to understand our different needs and reach a solution that satisfies the different parties. The conversation was smooth and we were able to reach some agreements that we thought were fair to everyone. I think it was an effective group, however sometimes we were kind of confused about what different groups do exactly, maybe we should have explained a little bit before we started what each group is about so we all have a better vision of each group.

I think that the simulation went really well and there is nothing that I would have done differently, we had enough time for discussion and I felt that the agreements we reached was satisfying the different stakeholders.

That simulation would definitely help me in my future career as a marketer especially when dealing with vendors for purchasing different promotional materials. I used to push them so many times to deliver what I want with the cost and deadline that I want. I didn't give much thought about what they think is affordable or reasonable to them, but now I would be more understanding and consider their point of view.

Aracruz Cellulose Simulaton

My heterogeneous group actually worked together quite respectfully. It was interesting to learn from the questions that we asked each other that no one had a complete picture of what was going on. The company representative was just trying to get to a solution that wouldn't change again. The NGO was truly interested in working with everyone to get to a solution that would allow everyone to move forward. The indigenous people present couldn't actually speak for all indigenous people. This was a problem where it was impossible to know who all the participants were, or get them all at the table, because not everyone who was causing a problem was necessarily a stakeholder.

The fact that everyone was respectful of the other team members, everyone listened, asked clarifying questions, and for the most part, didn't interrupt meant that we had a very productive conversation. We stayed on track and did a good job of documenting our consensus.

I don't think there were really any areas where we were ineffective. We came up with a plan that we thought might be effective, including a communication plan to try to address the issue of non-stakeholder disruptions.

I had trouble believing in the cause of the indigenous people I was representing. Based on the evaluation scores I received, I was able to communicate their values and goals effectively, but maybe if I had spent more time researching their plight than I did, I might have brought more empathy to their issues.

The stakeholder dialog process can be applied to almost any issue that involves multiple participants with differing views and needs. It gets applied at the kitchen table with my husband and our kids while discussing how to run our household. In the case of certain chores, the people who do them have determined who will do them, when they switch off, who is responsible for tracking the schedule and how they cover absences. The parents were only responsible for establishing what needed to be done and the quality expected.

This process is also applied in work teams and projects when we figure out who needs to be involved, who has a stake in the process and will be affected and needs to be included. The best way to make good decisions that people will feel they are part of and help you carry out is to use this stakeholder process.