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Learn what truly sets the UC Riverside MBA apart and how it helps in your professional growth
21 May 2016, 20:00
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| FROM The Nanyang MBA Blog: 10 Ways to Network Better |
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It’s now more obvious than ever that you can’t get anywhere without networking. And it isn’t just about networking when you need a job or new business, but more about making networking a daily activity. Be it online or one-to-one, you need to be prepared. https://www.nbs.ntu.edu.sg/News_Events/Events/Pages/Events.aspx 6. Adopt a New Mindset Don’t start all conversations thinking about what you can get. You need to think about giving as well. Relationships should be mutually beneficial. Plus, giving will get you good karma in the form of referrals. Be confident, helpful and open with your peers, colleagues and even people you’ve just met. 7. Communicate Well You are not a salesman. Of course you’re selling your skills and educational background when you network, but you need to learn how to hold a conversation that has a light, informal tone. The key is to let the other person know that you are willing to give the time to get to know them before talking about what exactly you want. That doesn’t mean that you should skip your pitch; just warm up first. 8. Listen More Give the other person a chance to talk. Don’t keep on talking without waiting for answers. Ask questions as well. In fact, have a mental list of questions ready for all times and all kinds of people but don’t jump at them. Demonstrate interest with your facial and body language. 9. Always Follow Up The first face-to-face meeting isn’t the end of networking. Keep their cards in a special place. Add them to your LinkedIn contacts and other social media lists. Call or send an email a week later, after you figure out what you can connect about. Staying in touch on a regular basis is important, so don’t let it seem like you only make the effort to communicate when you really need something. 10. Don’t Neglect Your Current Network Never take anybody for granted. That applies to your career path just as much as to your personal life. Keep in touch with the people who’ve brought you closer to your goals already like high school teachers, college professors, internship supervisors and so on. Let them know that you appreciate what they’ve done for you. You could meet them once in a while and keep them updated on your progress. Introduce them to each other or to others they could form working relationships with. Who knows? Maybe one of these older acquaintances could connect you to somebody helpful in the future. It isn’t difficult to master the art of networking if you keep these tips in mind. You’ll have to network effectively as you continue your career path, so why not start now? |
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09 Jun 2016, 06:00
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| FROM The Nanyang MBA Blog: Meditate to be better than a goldfish |
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originally published on Financial Times MBA Blog on June 6, 2016 by: Laura Melina Loeven, MBA 2015-16 As part of my MBA degree at Nanyang Business School, I sought relief from my stressful student life by joining a meditation and leadership workshop with Laurence Freeman.  Father Freeman is a Benedictine monk who became famous for practising meditation with Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister of Singapore between 1959 and 1990. Meditation describes themental discipline that helps individuals to discover their inner consciousness and to develop spiritual energy. It can also promote relaxation and calm a distracted mind. I was there because I wanted to deal with issues caused by my frenzied lifestyle: insomnia, coffee addiction, hair loss, you name it. In the first lesson I discovered the average person’s attention span is incredibly short. Since the digital revolution, most people can only focus for just eight seconds. This is even less than a goldfish, which has an attention span of nine seconds. It seems the human race needs to relearn attentiveness and break some of its unhealthy habits. Dividing our precious attention between the virtual and real world, television ads, phones and all other distractions of daily life, we have lost the ability to just sit and be in the moment. At the time of the workshop, I was an MBA student close to graduation, I confess that I felt unable to just “be” in the present, but rather contemplate the next move. Simply being, not doing anything, poses a seemingly insurmountable challenge to the self-titled workaholics. The downsides of multitasking are obvious — we pick up only 20 to 30 per cent of the information available. We can waste valuable time and resources by overthinking merely for the sake of thinking about something — a mental activity which serves no purpose. In his soothing voice, Fr Freeman outlined his strategy for dealing with stress: meditation which provides a moment of silence in a noisy world. This has the power to reduce anxiety, increase productivity and improve human relationships, Fr Freeman explained. But where do I find the time to meditate in my jam-packed schedule? Fr Freeman’s response was simple: you never have time, you make time. Stress is a choice, and most of us choose to be stressed, because this simply is what everybody else does. Throughout the day, we volunteer immediate attention to every small agitation in our environment, and hence become creators of our own misery. ‘The downsides of multitasking are obvious — we pick up only 20 to 30 per cent of the information available’ However, meditation corrects this tendency towards distraction, and resets our busy minds. It is certainly no coincidence that meditation and medication start with the same prefix “med-”, Greek for care and attention. Under instruction, I sat with my eyes closed, back straight, hands folded on my lap, and soundlessly recited a mantra. Pretty soon I discovered just how difficult it is to focus for 10 minutes. My first steps into the world of meditation became an incredible journey of discovery and self-reflection. Taking baby steps on the long walk to peace, kindness, joy, patience, self control and many more big words, I discovered how difficult it is to just focus for 10 minutes straight. My mind wandered again and again, and seemed to resist stubbornly any effort to empty my brain’s Ram. After two days of practising meditation, I left the workshop feeling deeply impressed with the world of imagination and inner peace that opens up to those who regularly meditate, but at the same time I am utterly ashamed of my inability to shut down. However, I also felt much calmer. Yet, drawn in by the science of meditation and its positive impact on the mind and the work of successful leaders, I vowed to practise regularly — and made a promise to beat the goldfish in the discipline of attention. Today, I still get distracted during meditation, but I appreciate that taking this regular time out allows me to relax and withstand stressful situations. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. All rights reserved. |
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17 Jun 2016, 05:00
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| FROM The Nanyang MBA Blog: How do you get interested in business operations? Play a game… |
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originally published on Financial Times MBA Blog on June 13, 2016 by: Laura Melina Loeven, MBA 2015-16 The last course I have to pass before graduating from Nanyang Business School is a 12-week operations class. As more consumers around the globe demand good quality products at a low-cost, establishing cost-efficient and reliable operations is a fixed part of every corporate agenda to gain an edge over the competition. Thus, aspiring executives must not only be good strategists, but also need to be prepared for managing the day-to-day operations. Yet many multinational corporations are criticised for their negligence in operations management, and we read more and more about the difficulties balancing cost and quality. Climate change, depleting natural resources and labour strikes are just some of the challenges faced. But how can you prepare MBA students for a multitude of operational issues in just 12 weeks? How do you engage a bunch of young professionals in a subject that does not sound nearly as sexy as any of the popular strategy design courses, but has an even higher impact on corporate success? The answer is simple: you play a game. What I saw were just three machines, an order book and a reporting tool that displays real-time analysis of my team’s performance. It all seemed so simple. Tapping into the competitive spirit of MBA students always works, and soon after firing the starting gun of the Littlefield simulation game, enthusiasm for operations issues increased notably. The class is split into groups and the game is played over the course of one week. The goal of each group is to maximise revenues from customer orders while maintaining optimal machine capacity utilisation. Yet, the only decisions a team can make is to buy or sell machines. The catch? One hour in the Littlefield world represents a full day in real life, so inevitably you end up monitoring the game before breakfast, skip lunch to check the capacity utilisation figures, and wake up at night to make sure operations are still running smoothly. When typing the key word Littlefield into Google search, I stumbled across a scary YouTube video of a particularly committed student who fully dedicates himself to the game, monitoring the virtual factory floor 24/7. But he drops all other responsibilities, neglects his girlfriend and eventually loses his mind. With this off-putting story in mind, I am hesitant to engage in this exercise and approached the game with scepticism. However, what I saw were just three machines, an order book and a reporting tool that displays real-time analysis of my team’s performance. It all seemed so simple. Littlefield For seven days, I logged into the Littlefield game and saw the reporting graphs climbing up and down, and found my team’s ranking moving in sync. Staring at the chart that reflects the capacity utilisation of my factory left me in awe, and even after 10 months of business school I feel helpless. Puzzled by the uncertainties of Littlefield, my team decided to follow the most complacent of all strategies: do nothing. While ignoring our managerial responsibilities seemed to work well for us for a while, we eventually dropped to the bottom of the field and finished the game as the second last team. Still, Littlefield taught me crucial lessons on operations management, and life itself:
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