The Programme
The LBS Executives MBA is specifically designed to support collaboration and foster networking amongst students. To achieve this, every stream of students is divided into distinct syndicate groups. The group is made up of a moderate number and the ideal mix of team members from various educational and professional backgrounds and mandatorily, each team must meet to discuss a case ahead of class to ensure rich participation of students. Since the group pre-class meeting will force you to connect with other group members and contribute to themes for discussion every day, hiding out is not an option.
The framework undoubtedly helped the group project known as “The Capstone Project of Corporate Financial Accounting” succeed and generate satisfying testimonies.
The group project’s originality cannot be emphasized enough. No member of the group, regardless of career, will be left behind. Surprisingly, the project has the magic to overnight transform participants from different backgrounds—such as Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, into Accountants who now fluently speak the language of business – accounting.
Now, those Medical Doctors in my group deserve to be honoured with the fellowship award of Chartered Accountants. Laugh!!!
The Project Guideline
It is expected of each syndicate group to choose three industries or sectors, and then four companies from each industry or sector. The facilitator will after thoroughly reviewing the chosen companies approves a company and a benchmark for each group to use for their in-depth analysis of the firm and subsequent make recommendations. Following approval, the team will collect the last ten years’ worth of publicly available financial statements from the assigned company and its “benchmark” to gain a general understanding of the companies, the sector, and their overall financial performances and positions.
To ensure that everyone in the group has a clear understanding of the business and a shared perspective on how the company did in the most recent financial years, the financial statement’s contents will need to be discussed.
An extensive review of the operations, performance, and position of both companies was conducted using ratios analysis, swot analysis, and other pertinent evaluation methods.
Recommendations to management with suggestions on how to boost business performance and give investors advice on the viability of investing in the company. Thereafter, a two-thousand-word piece suitable for publication will be released.
The Efforts and Lessons Learnt
Undoubtedly, the project was designed specifically to spread knowledge among participants. The faculty emphatically affirmed that the presentation of the group project will be a member of the group with no finance-related background such as a Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Engineer, or IT/Computer programmer, and the presenter’s performance will be graded as a collective score for the entire group members. This makes everyone feel pressured into becoming Accountants right away because of the overwhelming fear of not knowing who the random presenter would be. After several meetings (day and night) with a lot of commitment and dedication, we finalized our project and a medical doctor to anchor our presentation. She nailed it!…..Dr. Ejokhaye confidently delivered the presentation like a thoroughbred Accountant and everyone was wowed.
This approach is a unique way of teaching that guarantees peers will get things up quickly. Obviously, the project compelled all group members to cooperate, develop partnerships, manage their relationships, provide leadership, support, and share information.
What a tedious but rewarding exercise. CAPSTONE PROJECT I hail thee!!!
#MEMBA11
ETHICS: Kweku at UBS