Mr. Patrick Akinwuntan holds you spell bound in his Corporate Financial Accounting classes, an MBA course thought in the first year at Lagos Business School, not by how he defines the accounting formulas or principles. No. On the contrary, he seems to have a thing against definitions in his classes. He facilitates his classes with copious anecdotes of real-life application of those principles, instead. The words “decision” and “time” have more mentions than any other words I can think of in his classes. He misses no opportunity to emphasise the importance of time for a business executive and doing the right thing at the right time.
Since starting the MBA at Lagos Business School in July of this year, I have realised that the MBA is designed to provide the students with tools necessary to make decisions, whether in a simple well-defined process or when faced with complex to chaotic situations. But most decisions are time sensitive, for in a competitive world and tough economic environment like ours, the ability of the executive to manage his time can be the difference between him and his competition.
The popular story of a telecom firm which was shortlisted in the first batch of the telecom bid in Nigeria in 2001 but had to delay their launch for another two years because some exec in Germany mixed up the Nigerian Time is a story that summarizes the role of time in business success. That singular slip continues to define the position of this company as a player in the telecoms in Nigeria. So, I came away thinking that in everything I do time should take a centre piece in the way I run my business going forward.
Mr. Akinwuntan told a story of how he missed a dinner he organised because he came late. He had invited his colleagues to a dinner to show appreciation at the end of a tedious long business meeting. He walked into the restaurant only about five minutes late where the rest were seated and having drinks. Because of just five minutes his colleagues cancelled the dinner. I thought: this audience could have been a group of investors, a prospective client or even a contract signing event. As he told his story, I thought how difficult this simple looking principle could be. I have lots of stories to tell of appointments or meetings where I had to wait for hours as if the guest is determined to test your endurance. The higher the profile of the guest the more likely he will waste your time. It seems Mr. Akinwuntan comes from a different breed. But that is why he is teaching MBA at LBS for he comes with an intimidating profile with decades of experience at executive level.
My takeaway in terms of time management is slightly different from being able to keep to appointment or deliver on deadlines. This MBA is giving me the instrument to be able to create time whenever it is necessary.
During the last intensive week, the workload doubled, and the timelines shortened tremendously. We were expected to provide outcomes to problems we didn’t know existed when we went to bed, the following morning. At first there were disillusionment amount the students, and protests filled the entire space. As we complained the workload increased and the timelines shortened even more, leaving us no more space to complain. At the end, we did the work, we met the deadlines, we researched and presented within the time allowed. We created time where we thought it was impossible.
LBS is teaching us that though we are busy executives at different levels and places in our businesses, we are far from achieving our full potentials and this is what this MBA program is set to do in our businesses. I don’t know the last time I looked forward to a Monday, for I am eager to put LBS MBA time management to test.
