My First week at LBS

I toyed with the thought of doing a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) program with LBS roughly over a year ago. I had a lot of discouraging reasons that made me stall. Top of the list was that, it was not a good time. I have a pressured job and will need attend to family matters as well as other religious and social commitments.

In July this year, I got a reminder to complete my application, I scanned through the email and was just about to close the email when the big question popped into my head. “When will it be a good time?” In that moment, I paused the task at hand and went ahead to complete the registration. Then another round of procrastination started with respect to scheduling a date for the test. I eventually scheduled a test date on the final day because once again, I realized there will never be a good time. I must continue strive for more knowledge and development. I am here to post my reflections on learnings from the MBA course, so you can tell how the test and interviews went.

My first week at LBS was an eye-opener to many things I never thought of; some things I do unconsciously and areas I will need to improve. I will test just a few of the many new things I learnt this period.

One of the key learnings relates to the Analysis of Business Problem. The realization that one must learn to think actively was a key takeaway for me. I got to know a structured way of analysing problems to arrive at a logical decision. I found out that I can apply these models to everyday life and reduce the number of decisions I take based on gutfeel. The frequent case studies seemed quite tedious initially, but I realized that it also gave a great opportunity for us to learn from everyone’s experiences and constant practice.

I noted that it is always good to set out the objectives at the beginning of each business problem analysis. This serves as a guide in determining the available options. It is also important to set clear criteria and apply the criteria in evaluating the impact of the options. These criteria could be qualitative or quantitative; it is necessary to attach weight to each criterion when carrying out the evaluation. I am now able to apply these principles to my day-to-day activities and I am very excited about that.

I was able to get more insights into use of Microsoft excel and data analysis. Microsoft excel is one of the tools we use at my workplace. I learnt how to use it on the job; it was interesting getting to see a wider range of things one can do with excel. I also found out there were specific qualities a data set should have, for it to be good for data analysis. I was able to put this into practice in my personal space and it made the work faster. I was required to prepare a financial report for a religious society, and this would typically take about half a day. By the time I applied the learnings from the Data analytics class, I was able to conclude the report in about an hour.

It was a stretching first week at LBS; well deserving of the name “Intensive”. I felt a great deal of joy at the growth and progress I made within that one week and I looked forward to the next intensive week.  I will be back to tell you more about the next intensive week in a subsequent post. For today, I will leave you with an advice “Go and start that activity you have been keeping till later. Take a step today”.

#MEMBA12