It has been exactly 2 weeks since I landed in Shanghai and here I am, sitting in the front of the laptop finally with some free time to catch up with the world. I still can’t believe that it is all over. Yes, it is over but what did just happen…

Just few hours back, I was scrambling for accounting papers lying all over the hotel room, trying to make it to Prof. Katherine Schipper‘s midterm exam. And leading to that was 14 days of non-stop data deluge with class lectures, case studies, loads of reading materials that no sane person can read in the stipulated time — A controlled chaos.

Contemplating on the whole residency experience, I feel that it has been quite a journey. Coming in with little fear and little excitement, I would leave China with complete confidence in the program. Immersive environment with army like schedule got us working like droids by the end of the first week. If I were to point out a few things that I really learned besides the coursework, it would be Time management and Prioritization.

Without proper time management and prioritization, there is no way anybody can handle the content and the pressure. We constantly juggled between what readings to pick up, when to setup team meetings and when to eat in order to optimize the highly limited 24 hours. 6 hour sleep was a blessing and I have heard others going on for couple hours sleep consecutive days. May be I am still in the zone that I don’t feel like sleeping 2 am in the morning.

In the process, I have met some great people from around the world. As we spread back to our home towns, it would be interesting to see how strong of cohesive bonds we can form over the rest of the program.

There are no words in the dictionary that can describe the energy and excitement in the air. We are in the middle of the first residency for the Cross-Continent MBA program in Shanghai and it just feels great to be amongst one of the most diverse groups of brilliant minds from around the globe.

The incoming batch represents 125 countries and that’s just unbelievable. Furthermore, four out of five students I have met have lived in multiple continents and some of them even in more than two. First two days have been relatively easy going (I hear that our previous batch had lot to do in convincing the management to ease up load during the first few days of residency). However, we have been rest assured from time to time in past 2 days that very soon, there would be payback time. In particular, there are lot of scary stories floating around about the Accounting Professor– Miss Katherine Schipper, who is known to be the most grueling of all. We dig into the rigorous class schedule from Day 3 and the residency would end with few midterms and team submissions by end of next week.

The first day was orientation with general overview of what’s to come in next 16 months. Bill Boulding, the deputy dean of Fuqua and our instructor for CCL class, gave an excellent background of how the world has changed in past 100 years, transitioning from the conflict driven world war era of early 20th century to the cold war and now the capitalist political regimes leading the heard into 21st century. And finally, how the collapse of financial markets in US had serious repercussions around the globe. With the new technology and trade, the interdependency between the regions and continents would only increase in complexity in the years to come.

Later in the day, Mr. Blair Sheppard–Dean of Fuqua, talked about the Strategy of Fuqua school of Business and where it stands amongst its peers of top business schools. Fuqua’s strategy is very clear. In todays state of global economy, where each continent, each region and each nation plays a very critical role in global health, Duke University wants to be one stop global school that can provide global leaders of consequence. Today, no other business school provides such a diverse experience as the Cross-Continent program does.

I am glad to be part of such a phenomenal program. Looking forward to 16 exciting months.

Is it just me or the amount of China specific news have increased in past past few days, or may be because of the CCL coursework, my senses are over re-active to any article/news with the word China in it. In order to take advantage of the hyper-chino-sensitivity, I will use this post to aggregate everything I find relevant to China.

Disclaimer: All material here is supplemental to the class reading.

Wikipedia : The source of everything China

China demography. Source - Economist

Labor environment
Recently, we have seen big events that have brought the Labor practices of China in the mainstream media. The most prominent amongst them was increased suicide rates at the Apple subcontractor, Foxconn. The working conditions have aggravated worker protests in the region triggering instability fears and future investment concerns.

Economy
Would increase in worker wages balance the economy, which currently is heavily dependent on foreign exports? The argument for such behavior from Chinese governments is too fold. Firstly, by increasing the wages there would be more local consumption, and thus decrease the dependency on external elements (exports and foreign direct investments–FDI). Also it is seen that the chinese government is much more favorable to the indigenous companies as opposed to multi-nationals who have their homebase elsewhere, trying to cultivate entrepreneurship and self-reliance. The Economist article explores the possibilities of this change in the global economy.

As Wall street journal reports :

“Japan was the powerhouse driving the rest of Asia,” said Rob Subbaraman, chief Asia economist for Nomura Securities. “Now the tide is turning and China is becoming a powerful influence on the rest of Asia, including Japan.”

One cannot talk about world economy without evaluating the relationship between Dollar and Yuan. This link is very important aspect as it underlines the importance of external factors in the very success/failure of the nation.

Mckinsey & Company released a report last year predicting the growth in coming years. They surely know how to print a rosy picture.

Blogs

• All Roads lead to China
• China Law blog
• China Hush

After getting into the Fuqua school of Business one of the tasks I have assigned myself is to go through the Distinguished Lecture series. Finally tonight I got a chance to allocate one hour to hear a pre-recorded talk by Mr. Bob McDonald aka Robert A. McDonald, who back in 2008 was COO of P&G and now happens to be CEO of the company. He talks about Leadership qualities and how to make a difference. Before I give out the main points of his talk, let me give you a brief background of Bob. Bob did his primary education along with his MBA while in the military. After Military, he joined P&G in 1980 and has been with the company since then. Out of his 30 years tenure at P&G, he spent 14 years outside United States in various leadership roles.

If you think you have 1 hour to spare, you can catch the lecture on itunes here.

Let’s get to the key points he highlighted in the talk.

• Have beliefs/values and have a story to tell for each value.
• Take responsibility.
• Have character. Live on principles and be predictable.
• Before blaming others, evaluate what did they have in order to succeed. Were they given all the resources required to be successful?
• Leaders are the ones who lead the change and can lead the change.
• Never use authority to lead. If you get into a situation where you need to use the authority, you have failed.
• As a leader, select the right team and have right people in the right positions.
• Do not disparage your predecessors.
• There is no such thing as a bad culture. All cultures are unique and the way they are is because of some reason. Try to find that reason.

Answering to one of the questions, he also listed out the 5Es that P&G tries to cultivate in its leaders.

1. Envision
2. Engage
3. Energize
4. Enable
5. Execute