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Student Advice

Remembering the most impactful leader in my life…

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Reetu Gupta, TMMBA Student

September 27th, 2009…one of last lazy Sunny Summer Sundays…

Next Friday I get to go to the Leadership Immersion. I’m really excited about that. Part of the reason is I want to see what kind of leaders have impacted my class mates. This was one exercise we are supposed to do. Talk about some one who has been most influential in our life stream so far.

I have been thinking about it for past few weeks. Finally today I sat down and wrote about the most influential person in my life – my mom. After I wrote what I’m going to share with my class, I thought of sharing that with other perspective students too on this blog. While writing about that I realized that I would have been a totally different person if my mom was not who she is. In addition, I also suddenly became aware that whatever I do is also influencing others in positive or negative way ( I hope not this way though..). Here is what I’m going to share about most influential person in my life.

Leadership Impact – how are you impacting others?

I don’t think I have come across a leader that was perfect in all aspects. Each one had his or her own strengths and weaknesses. Each leader also had his or her unique style. As a follower I’m sure I have picked up various attributes of different leaders but I would say most impact has been made by my mother.

My mom is one person I characterize as energetic, result oriented and high achiever and mainly with a high degree of perseverance. She is someone who thrived thru tough times in her life. She was always determined and struggled thru a male dominated society where women were still is a role of house maker. Having career was sort of unheard of. If any women were to do that, she had to do that in her own time after completing her other society dictated responsibilities. My mom went to high school against her parent’s wishes. She went to college without knowledge of her parents. She did her masters while she had two kids and without any help from her family. Finally she started an elementary school in 1980 which she ran for 25 years before she retired. There were over 350 kids in her elementary school. She demonstrated to me that “Where there is a will, there is a way”. This has been my mantra too. She always taught us that only person you can really rely on is you. You need to have the confidence in your abilities and once you know what you want to do, it’s only a matter of going after it.

She also always have opinions about things. She is an active volunteer in society. She was active in politics. She ran for two political campaigns at the district level. On one of her elections, I acted as her campaign manager. This was after my masters in engineering. That was one time that I worked closely with her and came to know how she connected with people on a more personal level. During this interaction, I learned the people always have a need for personal bond and if you can create that bond, as a leader you can be much more influential than otherwise.

Of course my bond with her is at a much deeper level and I don’t need any physical object to remind me of her. But to share with you all, I brought with me here this box that she got in her wedding. This is a great memory from my childhood and when I moved here 10 years ago, she gave it to me.

I just hope that I can be a role model for my daughters and some day they give a talk remembering the positive impact I made in their lives.

Enjoy the sunshine…

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Summer after TMMBA Graduation

Monday, August 24th, 2009

Tom Mackey, TMMBA Alum

Some of you current TMMBA students are probably wondering what you will do with all that free time after graduation. In my case, at least, the question is “What free time?” Heh — it is amazing how fast it gets filled in with bits of vacation, household tasks, the J.O.B. that helped fund your studies, and both new and old personal pursuits. Two weeks after graduation found us in Eastern Washington, specifically, taking a tour of the Hanford Site. They open up tour dates in April and the slots fill up in just a few hours. We have wanted to take a tour for several years, and this was our “post-grad” treat. Our roses and other landscaping had really suffered for the last 1.5 years, and this summer I have spent a lot of time getting things pruned, watered, fertilized, and watered some more. The hot spell this year made it extremely challenging to keep things alive without running up the water bill too much. It seems I’ve spent just as much time on the computer as before, only now instead of writing papers, I’ve been researching more personal interests and discussing possible business ideas with Marilyn. And finally, I’ve started back into painting the final interior pieces of our house, and I’ve already been informed that the laundry room, one of the first things I painted when we moved in, will have to be painted a different color soon! It reminds me of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco — when they finish painting it they shift back to the other end and start all over!

So what bits of knowledge from the TMMBA program have I been using lately? The things that come to mind, in no particular order are:

Macro Economics — the knowledge we got from Karma helps every day in understanding what I hear and read in the news. It’s nice to be able to explain what is really happening when we hear that the “Fed is printing money”. And did anyone see the article in the March 21-22 Wall Street Journal titled “Fed Doesn’t Need a Press to Print Its New Money”? I now keep it at work to show folks the difference between Federal Reserve notes and the overall money supply.

Wall Street Journal — I renewed my subscription on the student rate. If not offered next year, I’ll switch to electronic. I try to read it every day, but often have to skip all but the first section and then try to skim through the rest on the weekends.

Negotiations — I have to say that the Negotiations class was only a primer — I am getting my real education from Marilyn as we plan a purchase of an Airstream Travel Trailer in which to further explore this great country we live in. The one thing that she has made clear to me that the class did not is that as soon as you make contact with a new car or RV dealer, you have engaged in a war over the contents of your wallet. Pure and Simple, everything you say, and the way you say it, will be used against you if at all possible. Luckily we have some time before we get serious, so with one possible exception, my initial dealings have not had an impact on our wallet. In that one case, we will probably choose to exclude that dealer from our possibilities as he will probably remember a comment I made and know that we have a vulnerability in one area. More on this topic in a later post…

Leadership — Well, that’s something we can all improve upon, right?

Managerial Accounting — Has helped convince me even more that getting our home paid off is the best use of any extra cash we happen to have. Where else can you get a guaranteed 5% return on your money right now? And it sure is nice to see that “Interest Charged” amount go down with each extra payment made!

Marketing and Entrepreneurship — Every day Marilyn and I discuss possible business ideas — does it play to our strengths? How would we market the goods or service? Is it worth the time and effort required to make it work? So far, we have not come up with a winner, given our particular circumstances, but it could happen on any given commute, our normal “brainstorming” time.

Hi to TMMBA Alums. Happy Summer break to Class 9. Welcome to incoming Class 10+. Comments welcome!

-TomM

Tags: Economics, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Marketing, Post-Grad, WSJ
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Procrastination

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Teagen Densmore, TMMBA Student

Procrastination.

The sound of the word makes me cringe, it’s the monkey on my back that I don’t seem able to shake.

I’m a sufferer of procrastination…sometimes. Starting large and complicated projects/assignments/tasks with due dates attached is a personal puzzle.

Luckily, I like solving puzzles. Solving this particular puzzle is a goal I had in sight when I started the TMMBA program back in January because grad school involves lots of big projects with big, hairy due dates. Grad school also involves a lot of work. All nighters are not fun if you have to get up and go to work and school the next day…and the next day.

And to top it off, team members are counting on you.

Despite trying several different solutions to my procrastination puzzle, I have yet to hit upon one that works for me. Like any good puzzler, I’ve been learning and refining my strategy with each attempt–getting closer and closer to a solution that works.

I think my current solution (”Procrasti-Can 3.0″) might be gold, so I wanted to share it with you all.

Here, I’ll lay out what I’ve decided are the important clues that led me to this solution:

Clue 1:
No due date? No problem. I’ll happily chip away at the project in small chunks or all-nighters. On my own time, I love doing projects and I’m a very hard worker. In fact, I often have several personal projects (well, I did before grad school) going at one time. Aversion to work is not an issue (unless it’s Sunday morning, then I’m sleeping in).

Clue 2:
Big projects with due dates appear differently to me than big projects without due dates. Big projects with due dates feel like giant, inscalable walls, too big and complicated to approach in one bound. “You’ve got to be kidding me” is a phrase that comes to mind. Not exactly inspiring…not what you want to have running through your head mid-quarter when you have, like, five million big projects due.

Clue 3:
Many of you are probably thinking “Duh, just slice up the big, scary projects into smaller pieces”–the classic recipe for procrastinator success.

You are right and I’ve certainly tried it, but it still hasn’t worked for me. The mantra “I’ll just do a little bit now” was still too…ambiguous/unknown/unquantifiable, just like the giant project. It’s the only way, but my application was still off.

Solution:
So, what’s the secret ingredient that would make the classic recipe work for me? Structure.

Here’s my recipe for success:

Procrasti-Can 3.0: “15 minutes a day

This plan uses the classic “smaller pieces” solution, but also adds structure that limits the small pieces–thus preventing the pieces from morphing into big scary procrastinator nightmares.

Certainly, this is nothing new. I’m sure there is a whole shelf of books at Barnes and Noble on exactly what I’ve laid out here.

Why am I figuring this out now? Over the years, I’ve learned that many people can offer solutions to a problem, but you have to really understand the issue at hand before you can effectively choose and apply the right solution.

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Summer Funancial Aid

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Hani Rachidi, TMMBA Student

So only read this posting if you are not a trust fund baby, work for a company with full tuition reimbursement, or are so well off you should be in the Executive MBA program. This post is about why financial aid for summer tuition is so much fun.

Firstly, you must realize that the academic calendar is like a fiscal calendar it ends with the spring quarter, roughly June. So that means you have to apply for Summer quarter onwards for the 2009-10 academic year. Okay, I realized this the first week of June, great, that means I technically have about one month to get my financial aid information completed to meet the Summer Quarter tuition deadline of Friday, July 10th. Plenty of time, oh ya summer fun and travel and financial aid no worries. I even had a month off of work and barely made the cutoff, in fact I missed it but was saved by the secret Monday, July 13th actual deadline….here’s the drama and why I termed it funancial aid.

1) I go to fafsa.gov and fill out all my information – 15mins to an hour depending on the amount of fabrication you want to submit. For me I don’t fabricate so it takes me longer to look up stuff about how much I cannot currently afford this $60K+ program

2) The UW funancial aid office receives my submitted fafsa form – felt like a week could have been less/more doesn’t matter when you call them you are on hold for at least 10 minutes every time if not 30 minutes so it feels like the experience is longer especially with the awkward moments of pause silence where you don’t know ifyou have lost cell phone coverage or somebody on the other line is playing a game on you or that you’ve listened to the background music so long that it numbs your sense of hearing so you hear nothing although there is something

3) UW informs me after I call them and proactively ask what’s up with aid that I need to prove that I’m a citizen and fill out a form and go visit the Social Security Administration – okay I like jumping hoops and wasting beautiful summer afternoons proving that I voted in the last few elections and that I am a citizen and oh wait you gave me financial aid the last two quarters, yes this is fun

4) Now after submitting the proof of citizenship I’m awarded aid another phone conversation with the UW Funancial Aid office confirms that yes I should be ready to go we are now around 1st week of July and my aid is awaiting my approval/acceptance of it

5) I accept the aid and it’s a couple of days before the cut off – so the story is over but wait i have to sign some electronic promissory note at some obscure website that is not posted in my UW funancial aid web page, so another converstaion with the UW funancial aid office i get a letter by letter read out of this 80 letter obscure website

6) I click through the website reading nothing because it takes 72 hours from the point of completing it to hit UW office of funancial aid, this takes about 20 minutes even with reading nothing and filling out a few pieces of personal info, there’s like 15 steps it feels like a weight loss program for typists my fingers were skinnier when i completed it my ring fell of my left ring finger it was weird, surreal, fun experience i felt like i became divorced from reality and married to the financial aid process in some weird literal, figurative way

7) Next I call the UW funancial aid office on deadline day July 10th, and ask did you get the money yet, this was after waiting 25 minutes on hold, the answer was no

It’s Monday, July 13th grace period day for tuition deadline, I call funancial aid UW and ask money present? the response was umm well you need to contact UW fiscal services on this issue we have seen a lot delays for aid funding not sure what’s wrong. So Fiscal Services pushes through the aid it was like sitting in some electronic funds gateway just like waiting for some manual intervention, no clue, stopped asking why is this happening to me and was just grateful at that point that I could incur tens of thousands of dollars of debt

Unfortunately this may be the story of people in debt all across our great country and why sometimes I feel like my older friends are right when they say save then spend. Then again, financial leverage, to a certain extent, is healthy just all the trouble to get there puts a bit of strain on your health.

I hope your experience is better than mine and that you are fortunate enough not to have had to read this blog, meaning don’t need financial aid.

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Time Management

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Lucas Perin, TMMBA Student

The TMMBA can be very demanding in terms of time. It’s very likely that you have a job (I think you must have one to apply, although keeping one is harder and harder these days), and hopefully, you have a life.

When I started the TMMBA, I had a wife and one son. Now I have two. Sons, I mean, I still have just one wife, although keeping one is harder and harder these days.

I should not forget: having a baby during the TMMBA is madness. Therefore, saving time is very important. Here are some tips:

- Pre-reads: yep, they’re useful. You read before the class, you’ll understand more of the class, and you’ll need less effort to catch up later. The challenge is to make time for them. I get to work early and read for about 30-45 minutes, it serves me well.
- Amazon Fresh: It will save you some time, it has good stuff, it is sort of local, but some items are a little more expensive than Safeway, especially the “fresh” ones. Safeway is good for online groceries, too. The good thing about Amazon Fresh is that you don’t need to be present to receive your groceries. You can also purchase some Amazon.com items and have them delivered with your groceries (the service is called Amazon Now).
Get out of Facebook: I like it, but it takes too much time. Some people are still going to be friends with you even if they don’t say so in Facebook.
Comcast DVR: You’ll skip the commercials. But really, if you have time to watch TV, why are you looking for time saving tips?

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Spring Quarter 2009

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Hani Rachidi, TMMBA Student

I must start and end simply with a word from Socrates “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”

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And Life goes on…

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Reetu Gupta, TMMBA Student

We are almost at the end of 2nd quarter. I can’t believe it. Time flies no matter how busy life is.

Actually 2nd quarter wasn’t so bad. I went back to watching “Lost” live on TV. It may be because after 1st quarter, you become a more seasoned student. You learn better time management tactics. You also learn how to skim instead of reading and trying to retain everything. You learn to compromise on quality when you have four different assignments due within a week’s period. These may sound like bad things but if you are a perfectionist like me, believe me, these habits bring you closer to reality.

Anyway, one thing to remember is that you don’t get discount in life just because you are in TMMBA program. Life’s ups and downs still happen. Nothing stops in outside world even if you lock yourself in a classroom. At the very beginning of 2nd quarter, my family got hit by recession lightening. My husband’s company shut down and he lost his job. Now I had one additional assignment of helping him find a job and keeping his morale up. My 5 year old got prescribed with eye glasses and gave me first shock of parenthood. My company announced a pay cut and let few people go. In a nutshell, these were hard three months that hit me and my family close.

Interesting part was, TMMAB helped me maintain my sanity. It helped me in some very unique ways. I contacted my classmates and alumni for my husband’s job. I was glad to see that finding a job for my husband became a group project. I have never so much support from so many people. In addition, knowledge I gained in corporate finance and accounting, I immediately applied to personal finances. I was able to maintain my cash out flow with only 45% cash inflow. Using newly acquired Marco Economics skills I was able to read various indices and was able to set my expectations accordingly. “Green shoots” in economy gave us hopes and labor index monitoring told us it may be a while when labor market improves.

I think going through an MBA program during a deep economic recession made it very fruitful and interesting. It’s perfect combination of theory and its use in practice. I think it was a once in a life time opportunity for me. Not that I’m crazy about economic recessions but if I was going thru MBA in a normal timings I probably wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the gravity of management skills.

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Mother’s Day

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Lucas Perin, TMMBA Student

When you join the TMMBA, you need a constant reminder that you need to plan ahead. If you don’t, it bites you back. The current example: we have a class on Saturday where we will learn something about the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), and we have to prepare two cases for Monday. In between, there is Mother’s Day. Most people in our groups have mothers (or children), and that becomes a little problematic. To add up, we also have a final paper for Global Management due on Monday and a Macroeconomy exam due on Thursday, plus everything I’m essentially forgetting about, such as the pre-reads.

If we detected the problem a month ago, we could have try to learn the subject on our own, or maybe we could have asked for an extension. Now we are in the risk zone. Come to think about it, the class this Saturday is about risk. It all makes sense now: in the TMMBA, you have learnings that you can apply directly to your life. It just may not be in the way you expected.

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Failing to plan is planning to fail

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Lucas Perin, TMMBA Student

Given my current title of “Business Planning Manager”, you would probably think that I like to plan things. And, in the TMMBA, you need to plan. This quarter is curiously the opposite of our last quarter: we have a lot of deliverables in the beginning, followed by a long hiatus of deliverables.
Knowing that may make the difference between cruising or being very stressed.

There’s so much to learn and the subjects are so interesting that there’s the real danger of being overwhelmed. It’s like having a lot of top models fighting for your attention. Really stressful. Trust me, I know! Therefore, you need to plan and prioritize in order to get the best out of some quarters. The second quarter is one of them. Tips?

Assign a planner to your team.
Use Agilix Backpack to help you download updates from Blackboard.
Synchronize the TMMBA calendar with Outlook.

And, most importantly, keep going to the Keg after every class!

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The Keg

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Lucas Perin, TMMBA Student

My team, Espectro, has been tasked with the important responsibility of keeping the tradition of having a drink at the Keg after class. We have been going there regularly since the second week, and now we have more and more regulars joining us, especially after the accounting test.

I have to admit that I’ve learned way more at The Keg than I learned in class. This could sound like I should start reconsidering my investments, after all, The Keg offers free nachos if you go with six or more people. Maybe it is because I have been spending a lot of time there, too.

If you are negotiating the MBA schedule with your significant other(s), this is the best advice you will get: tell him/her/them that on Mondays (or Wednesdays, if that’s your section) class goes until midnight. It’s not going to be a lie.

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