8 - 2019 - Asia School of Business

As I sat in class, looking at several different faces from different countries, terrifying thoughts ran through my head. Have I made the right choice? Do I really fit in? Am I really sure that this is what I want to do? Then she walked in, aiming a beautiful smile at every one of the 36 students from 16 countries sitting in the class. She stood in front of the class, looking at us for a while, then greeted us.

“Good morning, class, my name is professor Loredana Padurean, Faculty Director of Action Learning.” Those words came to my ears with a sense of assurance, and at that point I knew why I was here and why this was the right place for me. That was my first day in class as an MBA student at the Asia School of Business (ASB) in Malaysia.

By the end of class that day, I walked out with an absolute conviction that I had made the right choice and that I was in the right place specifically designed for me. My colleagues on whose faces I had read uncertainty, doubt and unanswered questions were equally excited, walking with so much confidence radiating from their faces. Yes, there is a place for everyone and there is a place for unconventional people, I told myself.

Sometimes in life, we struggle so much to change ourselves just to fit into others’ definitions of what an ideal person is. The results are always devastation, dissatisfaction and self-hatred. We hate ourselves because of someone’s perception about us. We live a fake life just trying to please the people around us or trying to meet the standards set for us by society. How perfect are those who define these standards?

How good are those who tell us how to live our lives? How fair is it for our society to determine for us how we should live our lives? Looking back at the journey of my life so far, I found that I have struggled to maintain my identity. By establishing who I am and what I stand for, I lost a lot of friends and parted ways with loved ones and business partners. However, I am glad I held on to my values.

I am happy I lost those friends, loved ones and business partners, because it gave me the opportunity to further discover and embrace myself. Nothing is worse than losing yourself and changing yourself in order to fit someone’s definition of anything. To anyone out there who is still struggling to figure out their true identity and still living by the standards set for them by others: know that you are you.

You are not like anybody and nobody is like you. You are unique. You are special. Your life is more important than what others think about you. Don’t worry, it’s okay to be stupid, confused, or arrogant. It’s okay to not be beautiful or loving. You know why? Because nothing has meaning apart from the meaning you give to it. Define your own standards. Assign your own meaning to each action and stand by it. Very soon, you will know that there is a right place waiting for you.

I have found that there is a place for extraordinary and unconventional people. I found the right place for me and that is ASB. Thank you ASB for showing me that there are others like me and there is a place in Malaysia for us. Thank you Sean Ferguson for finding me. Thank you Loredana Padurean for inspiring us and giving us the tools to uncover ourselves. Thank you ASB for welcoming us.

Retraining and switching careers, once seen as impractical or even unthinkable, has become common practice for millennials. A study by LinkedIn showed that those who graduated between 2006 and 2010 had, on average, 2.85 jobs in the five years after college. For many applicants, an MBA is an opportunity to discover a new path on their professional journey.

There’s a name for these candidates—career revitalizers. For Sherilyn Ooi, an MBA was her ticket to career revitalization, helping her navigate the switch between law and business while gaining the practical experience and network to transition from one profession to the other.

An opportunity to switch

Sherilyn was always drawn toward business. Working on mergers and acquisitions with international organizations, government agencies, and large multinationals, she saw the global scale of business, as well as the many facets of the transactions they facilitated. The problem was, as a corporate lawyer, her opportunities to delve into business were limited.

“I never saw the end-to-end process, or what drove the process and the transaction,” Sherilyn remembers. She knew she wanted a change and a chance to experience new industries. Staying in the legal profession wasn’t going to offer this. So just three years after graduating, she snapped up the opportunity to study at Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur.

Grasping the fundamentals

Through her MBA, Sherilyn learned to change her way of thinking about problems from a legal context into a business context, and, more importantly, to fill the gaps in her knowledge. “When you work in a technical field like law, it’s easy to think that’s the most important part of a business transaction,” Sherilyn notes.

The core curriculum at ASB took Sherilyn through the fundamentals of business, demonstrating the varying considerations at every level, and ultimately how to balance multiple priorities as an operations manager. “I gained technical knowledge about how to understand a business and how to analyze information in terms of the decision I am making,” Sherilyn stresses.

While all aspects of business appealed to her, it was only after a core module on the MBA in operations management that her interest was piqued by operations and supply chains. As the hub of many Southeast Asian operations facilities, Malaysia turned out to be the perfect location for her to expand her experience and network.

Understanding nuances through experience

Fundamentally, her ability to switch careers was boosted by the opportunity to get hands-on industry experience. ASB’s Action Learning program requires students to complete five consulting projects over the course of their 20-month MBA, working in teams with companies to address real-world problems. This allowed Sherilyn to expand her interest in operations and see how theory can be practically applied by large corporations.

Through a project at Esquel Group, based in Penang, she discovered how one of the world’s largest clothing manufacturers runs its operations across the world. Here, she worked to improve operational efficiency, as well as develop leadership skills. Another project, this time in strategy, took her to one of Thailand’s biggest hypermarkets, helping them develop their e-commerce platform to take on global competitors like Amazon.

Having experienced operations across Southeast Asia’s major economies, Sherilyn learned the way business varies from country to country and region to region. “It made me understand the nuances of cultural context and background,” she underlines. “We forget how much variety there is in how you collect information and how you communicate, and that’s as crucial as objective data.”

“Come with an open mind”

Having completed her MBA, Sherilyn’s career revitalization is successfully on track. She is now contracting with Google Malaysia as a key account specialist, managing clients in the FMCG industry. For those looking to make the same successful switch as her, she emphasizes the importance of exposing yourself to every kind of expertise and discipline to get a aerial view of business. And most importantly, she says, “Come with an open mind.”

“I got my first job during a short plane ride from Zimbabwe to South Africa,” Tawanda Mutsopotsi, a recent Class of 2019 graduate, says. “I sat next to this guy and we started talking about the economy, sports, and politics. He asked me what I wanted to do and I said ‘banking,’ and he asked, ‘Have you considered working in this country?’” For most people, this kind of conversation is a rare stroke of good luck.

But for Tawanda, whose classmates gave him the superlative “world’s best networker,” opportunities seem to arise with every new connection that he makes. For example, during his off-hours on an Action Learning project in Indonesia, Tawanda was approached by a stranger on the golf course who asked to play with him. After conversing for eleven holes, Tawanda was surprised to find a convoy of SUVs approaching them.

He eventually found out that the stranger was a popular presidential candidate in the country, who continues to keep in touch. He also spotted a popular South African politician at his hotel on a trip to Abu Dhabi to watch a Formula 1 race. Though his friends advised him to “not embarrass himself,” he walked up to the politician’s entourage and made small talk.

He was not only invited to watch the race from the VVIP area, but got the politician’s direct phone number in case he later needed a job. In fact, his first post-MBA job offer came through this chance meeting. Some people seem to be born with a natural talent for networking, while others struggle to make connections that last. But despite appearing to be a “natural,” Tawanda believes networking is a skill that can be learned, and that ASB helped him take his networking game to the next level.

He notes that, during Board of Governor’s meetings or similar events, most MBA students wait with business cards in-hand for their turn at a thirty-second career pitch. By his second semester, he had abandoned this as a networking strategy. Instead, he comes to events without an agenda, later finding the people he’s met on LinkedIn and sending a personalized connection request.

“You start meeting them for drinks or coffee, or a game of golf. You shouldn’t tell them right away that you’re looking for a job. Just by being with them, they get to know your likes, dislikes and aspirations, and they can propose opportunities for you,” Tawanda says. With this advice, he touches on a common theme taught at ASB: the importance of soft skills (we call them “smart” skills). He notes that even those networkers with a great deal of natural ability should continue to actively develop these skills.

Why he’s a natural networker

Tawanda’s practice began early. He grew up in Zimbabwe with six siblings and has always been surrounded by family. Early on, he learned how important it was to have a support system, and seeks out environments that put him in the middle of the action. Because his house was close to Zimbabwe’s main airport, Tawanda first wanted to become a pilot. As he saw flights take off and land each day, he fantasized about being on one of them and traveling to exotic destinations.

Then, in high school, his career goals changed. He grew to admire bankers, if only because he would be able to wear a suit every day. Having landed his first job in the banking sector, he appreciates the knowledge that he’s gained about financial markets, as well as the personal growth he’s experienced. Most of all, he’s appreciated how it has helped him develop his networking skills.

At the bank, half of his job was client-facing, which meant he was meeting or entertaining clients every day. That was when he began networking on a different level. “When you’re growing up, it’s just about making friends and you don’t expect anything to come of it. Now, it’s all about maintaining relationships or gaining new clients on behalf of the bank, but you also gain personal relationships,” he says.

How ASB helped kickstart his career

While he didn’t want to move away from the banking sector completely, he joined ASB’s MBA program to leverage his current financial knowledge and take his career, as well as his professional relationships, to the next level. What first struck him about the program was how diverse the MBA class was. With the Classes of 2019 and 2020 hailing from 29 different countries, he gained a truly global network of friends and colleagues.

His class included people from Brazil to Turkmenistan that he wouldn’t have otherwise met, all with varied expertise that helped him learn unfamiliar subjects more quickly. He was also impressed by ASB’s intensive Action Learning curriculum, which he calls “the heartbeat of the school.” The projects helped fulfill his childhood dream of traveling to places such as Vietnam and Indonesia, all while working on impactful business challenges with companies such as Unilever.

“Every single project teaches you a lot about business culture in Asia,” he says of the Action Learning curriculum. “As a non-Asian, it was a learning experience every day.” Most importantly, through his Action Learning projects, Tawanda learned how to be part of a team. He notes that, though most people label themselves “team players” in cover letters and job interviews, few have experienced what it is like to be part of a highly diverse Action Learning team working in a foreign country. And from a networking perspective, he claims, “ASB was the best decision I ever made.”

Tawanda’s networking advice for MBAs

For incoming students looking to enhance their networking skills, his advice is to not overthink the strategy. While some students are afraid to sacrifice precious networking time to make small talk rather than pursuing their goals, the latter could be more counterproductive in the long run. Instead, he recommends being authentic and approachable.

He believes first impressions are often made based on subconscious “cues” or “vibes,” and that as a result, people who approach relationships with a transactional mindset fall far behind those who are genuine. When Tawanda met his first employer on that long-ago flight to South Africa, he never could have known where he would end up years later. But on the flight, he learned a lesson that he would take with him through his journey at ASB and beyond.

For when he expressed his doubts about getting a visa in the country, the banker laughed and said, “Sometimes you just need to know the right people.”
Tawanda now echoes that advice for those who are just starting their MBA journey at ASB. “Build a bridge all over the world,” he says, “because you can never know when you’ll have to cross it.”

Between juggling back-to-back classes, participating in extracurricular activities and navigating professional pursuits, it is unsurprising that MBA students sometimes feel overwhelmed by their ever-expanding to-do list. How should MBA students think about maximizing their experience within and beyond the classroom?

“No matter what your career aspirations are, you should begin by thinking carefully about why you are engaging in any activity and what you can expect to get out of it,” writes Robert Pozen in his book Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours. Pozen is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, former president of Fidelity Investments and executive chairman of MFS Investment Management.

Given Pozen’s extensive experience juggling multiple hats across academia, finance, government, law, and journalism (just to name a few), I sat down with the productivity guru to draw insights on how students can boost their productivity to make the most of their time in business school.

Work smarter by identifying your priorities

The key to learning is becoming conscious about what you want to get out of the experience. Given an MBA’s regimented academic schedule, it is important to ask yourself these questions:

- What are your priorities?
- Which classes are the most important to you?
- What do you hope to get out of these classes?

With finite time and competing priorities, it is crucial to be intentional about how you are spending your time and to devise a strategy to optimize your productivity. Pozen recommends the following: The night before class, review your schedule with your top priorities in mind. These priorities are the yearly goals that are operationalized through weekly goals.

Think about what you wish to focus on and how you will allocate time to prepare for your classes. He also suggests jotting down your objectives next to each event in your schedule. This will help align your daily activities to the yearly goals that you have identified.

Rethink how you read and write

According to Pozen, one of the things that characterizes productive people is that they always think before they act. How can students incorporate productivity principles into the act of reading and writing? “There are some materials that you read for background information and others that you read for a close textual analysis. To ensure that you are able to efficiently retain the information that you have read, you have to be clear about your purpose for reading before you read anything,” Pozen says.

With writing, the key is to first understand the logical order of your argument. Next, write an outline before you write anything substantive. An outline will keep you on track by putting the logical order of your arguments on paper. If you don’t do that, you will have a hard time figuring out what you are trying to communicate. Pozen also encourages students to start thinking about the exam or final paper midway through the semester instead of at the end of the semester. Students need to ask themselves the following:

- Can I go through this course in a way that will prepare me for the exam?
- What sort of questions are on the exam?
- What areas do I need to cover?

For research papers, Pozen warns against waiting until the end to synthesize the data, suggesting instead that students should start writing a tentative conclusion after carrying out 2 days of research. “If you wait until the end, you may end up with unimportant information or risk losing out on critical information,” he notes.

Every research paper has analytical issues, which you should try to identify as early as possible. Start with a draft, which you can change every week as you obtain more information. If you keep working on it, you will be gathering the right data in a focused manner.

Map out your career goals

Beyond the classroom, a substantial part of an MBA program is networking. Pozen advocates for students to not only form close bonds with their classmates, but to expand their network by getting to know businesspeople in their communities.

At the outset, map out your career goals (the industry/area you wish to pursue), then think about the companies and people who would have the connections that you desire. “Unless you start off by being clear about the industry you wish to pursue, how would you know who to network with? The more focused you are, the more likely you are to succeed,” he says.

Maximize your options

When it comes to career planning, Pozen believes that students should remain agile as the world is changing at a rapid pace. His theory of how to build a career is to increase your options. “Let’s say you have been a trader on a trading desk and you have two options: more money to move to a different trading desk or an opportunity to be a manager.

You are better off taking the job as a manager, because in five years, you would have managerial experience as well as trading experience. This transferable knowledge will increase your probability of success in the future.” You don’t know what the world will look like in five years or how you will feel about your career at that point in time. As you consider your next career move, make choices that will maximize your options and alternatives.

Month: August 2019