Gabriel’s scarcity rent - it’s management stupid!

The exam was really stressful. More than three hours writing like crazy. At the end I was rather confused, not really sure of what to expect. Fortunately, it was over.

I sat the exam at Barcelona’s British Council. I thought it would be a better experience than taking a plane and driving to Henley. It was a good idea. The place is just ten minutes from home.

On the other hand it was rather weird to be the only one taking the exam. The invigilator was there only for me. At least he was nice and had a thick book to read so he didn’t spend three hours glancing at me in suspicion. That would have been awkward.

Half full or half empty, who knows. I hope I pass. In the meantime I just need some time to relax. And that’s what I did on the weekend. The garden needed my attention so I just focused on trimming the bushes and getting tired. Oh my, my arms got so bruised!

The view from home is rather relaxing. The weather wasn’t perfect. It was the fourth rainy weekend after the most severe draught that I can recall. From scarcity to the most rainy May in 25 years. Our water reserves have tripled and reservoirs have reached 60% capacity. It looks like we’ll have enough water for the time being.

I like it when the beach is almost empty, and the showers scare the tourists. The calm seems to envelope everything, the air is fresher, the plants greener. This spring the plants are blooming like never before. Let’s forget about the price of oil, the high interest rates, the lack of liquidity and the forthcoming stagflation. It’s time to enjoy… at least for a while…

The garden this year is full of Mediterranean roses. The plants grow by the hour. A good omen? I hope so.

Yes, I admit it: I am nervous. Been there before, but I still feel the anxiety to sit an exam. Maybe I shouldn’t. I am supposed to be wiser, older (that’s for sure), more mature and self assured than before. But still I insist into getting myself into the verge of anxiousness again, clouded by emotions, cluttered by several contradicting feelings.

Because the whole spectrum of learning comes down to this, the whole personal development rhetoric melts and, what is left, is hard bone again, the same measurable and accountable bottom-line: exams.

Sadly, the whole learning experience converges and funnels to an exam. It all revolves around being tested, thoroughly or not, with a closed set of rules that deprecate initiative and enforce strict followership of rules.

After all that disquisition around soft and hard people management models, after all that rambling around the balanced scorecard, after acknowledging uncertainty and complexity, all the roads end here again, in a cold, specific and simple figure, the mark.

I wouldn’t want to practice the cynic or sceptic here. It’s simply that I am nervous. There must be a better way to assess people than the one I have experienced this year. I simply don’t feel it’s fair. A friend of mine just advised me not too read too much about the case: it could be counterproductive. Excuse me? Counterproductive trying to learn more? Since when? Yet I fear he’s right.

If I had to change one thing about the MBA it would be its assessments. I can’t agree with certain doctor at Henley that decided to judge me by her obscure set of rules instead of listening to me and being fair. But not being British has this things, and you learn to live with a cultural gap. Where would be the international experience if everything was just like at home?

Yet another day less in this countdown to Wednesday…

As the average reader of this blog knows, and wordpress knows such individuals exist to my amazement (THANK-YOU), I do several things in my job, one of them is the integration of the baggagge system in the Terminal South (or Terminal D) in Barcelona’s airport.

Well, it used to be one of them… but it has been growing and growing, absorbing my time and effort, sometimes with complex things, of course, but very often with little and silly things, sometimes simply to overcome the lack of communications between parts in a huge project, sometimes just repeating the same things again and again.

Organisations prepare themselves to manage projects. They start shyly with one and, if they are able to envisage an strategy, they include project management into their capabilities. There are models to describe how project management competencies are integrated into organisational capabilities. Different organisations are at different levels, and thus are able not only to manage projects but also to increasingly learn from them.

But, at the end of the day, panic happens. That’s when they forget everything and start to triple-check everything based on the gut feelings of people, high enough in the ladder, that don’t really know about the systems to be implemented. Trivial things get inflated and strategic things suddenly obviated.

That’s what has happened to me with the Terminal 5 syndrome (to know more about Heathrow’s Terminal 5 click here). It will take some time to settle. In the meantime some issues have been enshrined as the most relevant by the organisation and are draining a lot of resources. Yes, organisations are able to learn a lot about project management but, when panic starts, they sort of regress to a previous state, top level managers want to micromanage what they still don’t know anything about, and reality gets distorted to adapt to the top management expectations.

A hard critique? Fortunately the tide is just a tide and we will be able to focus the existing energies on the real issues… having top management’s attention is very helpful as long you can manage it in the right direction, and to help you instead of interfering.

When you think of building a terminal you always think of huge construction works. And yes, that’s the bulk of the budget, and sometimes the most spectacular part. But in a 80/20 rule fashion, that 20% ends up entailing 80% of the work. As I like to say, the devil is in the details.

For example, in Barcelona’s airport, we started 2006 doing something like this:

The horizontal axis is roughly equivalent to one mile. The South Terminal was beginning to take shape. It was still divided into several parts instead of being a single building. That’s the way it was decided in the tendering process: there should be a few smaller cakes instead of a big one. A dilemma between having to co-ordinate or letting more companies participate. It was decided towards the latter… no wonder co-ordinating has been one of the main issues here.

But three years later, with the building almost done, we are focusing on a lot of different and much smaller things. Things like the following:

The white structure you see is inserted to the glass block. The purpose of the structure is to hold a couple of flat screens to be able to inform the passengers for the boarding process. It is thus provided by a different company than the one that is building the green glass block, the one that is providing the energy, the one that is providing the communications (that the screen will surely need in order to work), and the one that is providing things such as the air bridge or the cooling systems.

Yes, it’s all about interference again. In this case, as we get closer to the endgame, the different paths start to converge into one set of critical paths, all interrelated with each other. There’s no more unique critical path, but every single path becomes dependent on the others’ every delay: a web of interdependencies, a critical network instead of a path. 

My impression is that this part is much trickier than the other one. Finishing something is much more difficult than just going along with it. Slack has been consumed: the endpoint is not far anymore, pressure is increasing, hysteria is hovering, and we have to go down to every detail.

And studying for the final exam doesn’t help. In fact I sometimes arrive so tired that I don’t have the will to do anything. Still I have to. I strive to find some free time whenever, sometimes eating a quick sandwich and hurrying to imitate the waiting passengers in any available coach. The only difference is that they are waiting for something, just passing the time. I, on the other hand, I’m trying to use it. My macbook comes with me wherever I go, preview -for PDFs- and powerpoint to take notes always ready.

It’s funny how the process here is the other way around. When I studied the people, processes and financial modules, it was a matter of going into detail, of submerging into a wealth of information and trying to find the details, the reflections, the hidden wisdom, sometimes simply the stories behind, the assumptions, the reasoning. In fact that was a mistake because my teachers didn’t want me to prove that in the assignments: they just wanted to test that I knew the basic models. And I paid a price for going too far.

Now I’m going back to the basics. An exam is a place where you have to prove that you understand the basic reasoning, its assumptions, and apply it to some cases. It’s something like the terminal, but backwards, from detail to widely accepted models. That’s what they expect from me, and that’s what I should be giving them… I’ll try to refrain myself from doing otherwise.

It’s been too long without blogging. Some weeks at an hectic pace. Good things, bum things and a grain of salt. In this learning journey I don’t especially like posting about me. But here I am again, the worst draught we have ever suffered in Barcelona and I am at the beach and it’s raining! A few days ago I was in rainy England reflecting, trying to finish my assignment -dismissed as too reflective by the way-. Can it be that I’ve started to believe my own lies? Do people really expect you to reflect or talking about reflection in personal development is paying lip service to a new god while still worshipping the old one? Who knows.

I don’t want to further bore you with my own ramblings. The thing is that, if you ever face finance, think about the bottom line! There’s absolutely nothing else. No corporate social responsibility, no carbon footprint, just budgets, margins and ratios. The stake-holders are simply unavoidable, and the customers necessary. And if they care about those things, we’ll have to convince them that we care too. Nothing more.

My macbook just took this picture of me. I know I should have moved to avoid the direct light from behind, but I thought I could put something natural and improvised here. And that’s what I did. It’s raining outside. The fireplace is the only heat around, and the air is a bit smoky. Huge waves from the storm are splashing on the beach a few metres from here. Some dogs are howling while mine lay wet on the floor next to me. The recently established neighbouring bees are completely quiet inside their hive: they do not dare to go out. Next picture I’ll try to show you more of this. But not today.

The blog has just surpassed its 30.000 visits. Not bad, huh? Fairly surprising in fact. I’m still amazed that people find these pages floating in this coarse soup that the internet is. Maybe that’s why I decided to show my face and my nonsense, all at once.

What else happened these days? Another workshop, and, seeing the big picture, I’m straightly headed for the final exam. The first year will soon be gone. But first I need to study, I need to pass the exam.  And another year will be gone, one year and a half of blogging, and I will still be here.

Sorry for the babbling. That’s what I felt like doing today. That’s what my 3.5G modem is for. And thanks for reading.

I was interviewed for the Independent by Andy Sharman and he wrote this interesting article, here you have an excerpt

Facebook or LinkedIn?

Most business schools have their own network, in the form of a virtual learning environment. These have “blackboard” functions, which allow course materials to be posted online. But Facebook and MBAs should be a match made in heaven. One of the main reasons MBA students do MBAs is to network, and what could be easier than collecting your contacts on a site such as Facebook and LinkedIn? Still, staff seem divided as to whether Facebook – a site developed for college friends to keep in touch, and post party pictures – has any real relevance in business. Most educators agree that, though LinkedIn is a relatively safe forum, the Facebook phenomenon throws up as many obstacles as it does opportunities.

“This is a big challenge for universities and business schools in general,” says Dr Gareth Griffiths, MBA Director at Aston Business School. “We’re all looking to exploit it to the best of our advantages.” One of theways in which social networking sites can be used by business schools is to keep track of alumni. Aston has an alumni network on LinkedIn – “just because LinkedIn seems to offer more of a professional forum,” says Griffiths. This enables former MBA students to keep in touch, discuss work matters and maintain the base of contacts they built up whilst studying. Griffiths says the network can also be useful for current, and even prospective, MBAs. Former students can be called upon for assistance on student projects, case studies and future employment opportunities. They can even assist with recruitment. “If we have a prospective student in, say, Saudi Arabia, and we know an alumnus is in Saudi, we would put them together on LinkedIn,” he says. The prospective student can then ask about the alum’s experiences at Aston: “questions they perhaps wouldn’t ask us,” adds Griffiths. Social networking sites can be particularly useful for distance learners, who have previously struggled to recreate the networking possibilities on campus.

“You really need these tools for a distance learning MBA to work effectively,” says Gabriel Mesquida, 35, from Barcelona, who is studying for an MBA by distance learning at Henley Management College. Some tutors, like Dr Caroline Wiertz at Cass Business School use Facebook as an easy way of getting in touch with students. She uses the site to give instant feedback to dissertation with students, and also uses Skype for video-conferencing with MBAs. She says she has experimented with the Courses on Facebook application that allows the tutor and students to set up private study groups, upload and share files and create class discussions. But she is not convinced that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. “The question is really, where do you draw the line between privacy and your social life and our school?” she says.

“Do students want their teachers to be on Facebook or do they want it to be their own personal space. It’s a very difficult trade off to make.” LinkedIn seems to be the option that most tutors prefer. “You almost can’t afford not to be on LinkedIn,” says Wiertz. Chris Dalton, director of studies for the distance learning MBA at Henley, praises LinkedIn for the fact that it’s retained its insularity. “It remains dedicated to one thing,” he says, “an opt-in, career-building network service.” He says that LinkedIn is particularly good because you’re entering professional data about yourself, rather than personal data.

Blogging

But for others, like Professor Peter Kawalek of Manchester Business School, Facebook has the advantage of personality. “As human beings, we want to know who we’re talking to,” says Kawalek. “The way Facebook is structured is more akin to a watercooler culture at work. It’s more than just a formal presentation of a CV.” Kawalek’s students on the Executive MBA in management information systems put together multimedia reports, increasingly using photos and video. These kinds of resources can be easily shared on Facebook, and Kawalek encourages students to contribute also to the course group blog. And it seems that it is blogging which represents the best Web 2.0 forum for business schools. Mesquida blogs feverishly, which has led many others on the course to contact him, whilst encouraging him to consolidate his learning. “When you’re quite busy you tend to focus a lot on information and data and you don’t have time to reflect,” he says. “With the blog, the idea is to take some perspective of what has happened to you in the day and apply something you have read and make some new ideas and conclusions. That’s an integral part of learning.”

One of the best sensations of studying at Henley are the procrastinating moments at the Greenlands. You only have to find some stairs to sit on, and then just look around and stare at the Thames.

If you are lucky you’ll see rowers practising for the Henley Regatta, due in June. But they are just a few spots on a landslide made up of greens and blues coming in all tones.

Being a Spanish born in Catalonia, I can’t help losing myself into the amazing greens that England has to offer. Yes, I’ve seen so many blues in my life, as well as reds and yellows, and some greens too… but not this variety, from light to dark, a chromatic variety that depends on the time of the day, the temperature, humidity… If it is dark and foggy, as it has been these mornings, they even turn into greenish greys.

I know that my mobile phone is not the best camera to capture them, and then the computer screen doesn’t help either. In fact the colours look slightly different in each of my two screens. And although I’ve tried to correct that with my Mac OS, I’ve never experimented success yet. It’s so difficult to get something as incorporeal as a colour right.

One might wonder how this piece of landscape in a highly priced zone may have survived. It wouldn’t if it had been only subject to the forces of the market, but this part of land facing the Thames is thoroughly protected. Construction has been restricted, old buildings must be respected. Time has ceased to pass here.

I like this feeling of isolation, of being apart of the world. It’s like a retreat, an emotional escape.

Yesterday morning I couldn’t help staring with awe both the cow and the bull that enjoyed licking the entrance barrier and didn’t let me make it on time for class. I could have complained or horn them… but that would have been pointless. They were so happy that the barrier was so tasty. And I was so happy to see them that close… and to share their mouth-watering feeling.

But this kind of feelings are increasingly scarce in a mass-marketed world. And small schools will become bigger with time, to survive the ruthless competition. That includes Henley: it must grow to keep up with a fiercer competition.

Henley Management College won’t be able to grow much more here, though. Future Henley MBAs will probably be studying in other modern and expensive buildings, away from here (who knows, maybe in Reading). It’s a sign of the times.

In the meanwhile I just try to savour the moment. Moments by themselves are just an unintended consequence of the flow of time, of the increase of entropy in the universe. But we can make them special… as this one.

These days we’ve been having a collective reflection with Stephen, Andrew, Kimball and Christian. They were thinking about their reasons to be in the Henley MBA program. I realised we had a nice thread going here, so I couldn’t help adding my own.

I’ve thought of why an MBA several times, but the first one I have recorded is the one that I wrote when I was filling in the application on the 23rd of April last year. I had everything: referee’s letters, an updated resume, my academic qualifications translated… but I still needed the why. And before writing it into the application I wrote it to myself.

Reading it now gives me a funny feeling. It hasn’t been a full year but it sounds like if it was from another person. I was really trying to convince myself that I wasn’t doing it for the sake of having the three must-have magical letters. In my writings I read somebody far more worried for the future than I am now, somebody awaiting the unexpected and at the same time trying to give a false sense of security.

But now I feel the past months have changed me. They made me think, reflect and grow. I have created an additional place for Henley in my life (and Henley means its people) and I’m quite fond of it. I feel an emotional attachment that makes me think that, after those sensible but cold words I wrote about change, focus, roles, support, perspectives, aptitudes and abilities there were far more psychological needs.

Don’t ask me to detail them, not yet. I still can’t. I know it’s something about experimenting, feeling and growing.

I studied engineering and economy before, but they always looked outwards, not inwards. I shaped external objects or analysed external realities. It was me getting closer to some facts and data, understanding and applying, but there were no reflections in me. Now I’m not worried about developing analytical abilities any more. Now I am part of what I learn. Somehow, I experiment and shape myself, the subject and the object collide and fuse. Even now, writing these words.

I don’t want to bore you with my mental ramblings. It’s only that the whys and wherefores have melded and the goals are no longer that important. The way is rewarding enough. Let’s go on…

It is not hard to accept that higher education is correlated to higher wages. Many studies have analysed this relationship. That means that if you pursue higher education you are going to have your returns.

Just try to evaluate them: take into account what you’re spending today in your studies, take into account opportunity costs (what you could be earning of you diverted all the energies and time you’re spending into earning money), think of the possible future income surpluses that you can achieve, and actualise the inflow with reasonable rates. (higher than your mortgage, try to be realistic!)

Even if that leads to a positive figure, the causality question remains. Are you going to have that extra value because of what you’re learning, or is the value actually inside you and you are only making it visible?

Let’s ask it in another way: is a MBA (a PhD, second career, a personal blog, whatever means of learning) a cause to be more productive or simply a mark that can only be achieved by the most productive people? That’s not so simple to answer.

If it was a mark, then certain ways to achieving an MBA would signal the most productive people: for example those that go for an executive MBA thus assuming a considerable extra effort in their lives and thus minimising the opportunity cost of studying.

Is it true that higher productive individuals choose higher education to identify themselves from the rest? Maybe it’s not only that they choose it, but that being them more productive, then the whole cost of studying would be lower for them, enabling them to obtain results easier. The higher the individual productivity, the lower the marginal cost of every meme (as a whole item of additional information) is.

The opposite of signalling is enhancing. Maybe the differences were not preordained but they were simply created by the learning processes.

There’s controversy between both approaches. Some studies point to the first cause, others disagree. Whatever your view there’s (rather ambiguous) data to support it.

If I had to choose I’d go for the hybrid approach. From a pragmatic point of view the hybrid approaches always work better when the demonstrations of the pros and the cons are simply too feeble, especially in a world that’s no longer black and white. But that’s not my reason to choose this approach.

I believe in the difference between having potential and realising that potential. For example I believe that, as a race, the humans have a huge potential that we’ve just only begun to grasp. There’s more to humans than what we see today. But one of our assets is learning: that marks us as privileged individuals between all species. But having the potential to learn is not enough if we don’t make the effort.

So, if you have actually decided to embark in your personal learning project (whatever that is) it means that you have already been marked as a higher productivity individual. But now you must tackle the challenge of realising your potential. Making it a reality is what makes the difference.

Fortunately I’m not talking about mine (or at least that’s what I hope)

I recently had the chance to attend a speech from a MBA (earned in a top-tier school, if you want to know) and I reassured my assumption that those three letters in your curricula don’t guarantee anything. As Mintzberg said, there’s much more to managing than getting analytical abilities, and, as somebody also said, a butcher will always be a butcher, even if you give him a scalpel.

There’s another idea that I like a lot: the “kiss up and kick down”concept. Of course I’m not recommending its practice but just pointing a finger to a way of behaviour that many people knowingly exercise.

Why is it so difficult to appreciate principles? Isn’t it strange that so many people just don’t care about anything but their goals even putting them in front of family, friendships, humanity or whatever comes into play? I couldn’t live that way.

Even when times are harsh, when you have to make difficult choices, you can’t let go off your principles. What’s right or wrong will still be right or wrong. Brilliant people can become bloody sharks if they don’t learn to tame themselves. If you fall for the hunting game you’ll end up seeing others as prey, worthless prey.

a monkey after all

This week I was thinking and reflecting about personal development… why is that I end up seeing so many people, bright people, that I don’t want to be like?