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Asia School of Business

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Innovation

Category: Action Learning

Employers value business graduates with practical experience under their belts. According to a recent survey by the Financial Times, the most important skills recruiters look for include the ability to work in diverse teams, the ability to solve complex problems, and time management—all skills which are bolstered by working in a real-life business environment.

At Asia School of Business (ASB) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this need for practical skills forms the basis for their two-year MBA program. Intensive, real-life consulting projects—so-called Action Learning Projects—are a huge part of the MBA curriculum at ASB. Students at ASB—a school founded in partnership with MIT Sloan that aims to be on the front-line of Asia’s emerging markets—participate in five of these projects throughout their MBA, accounting for a third of their degree.

Working on one project throughout each term, students conduct two to three site visits, spending sometimes up to two weeks on site at a time. In the school’s first two years, ASB MBA students have participated in Action Learning projects in 18 different countries with 83 host companies. A total of 90% of the projects so far have taken place in Asia, with a focus on emerging markets in the ASEAN region.

Immersed in Asian Culture

For Angeline Stuma, a student from the US, Action Learning Projects offered the chance to get further immersed in a part of the world she had always loved to visit. Growing up in Kenya and India, Angeline experienced plenty of different cultures as a child, and these experiences have grown into a love for travel and exploring new places. “Choosing ASB was a no-brainer,” Angeline says.

“It aligned with what I wanted to do professionally, and I could get exposure living professionally in Southeast Asia.” Angeline started the MBA at Asia School of Business in 2016, and during the 20-month program worked with companies including Proctor & Gamble, Singha Beer, and advertising agency TBWA. In particular, Angeline credits the Singha Beer project, which took her to Vietnam and Thailand, with giving her immense exposure to the way of doing business in Asia.

“We started off in Thailand so we could understand Singha’s presence and dominance in the Thai market and we then went to Vietnam as that was the market they wanted to enter,” Angeline explains. Angeline spent a total of almost three weeks in Vietnam, conducting interviews with potential consumers in four of Vietnam’s biggest cities for Singha’s new beer brand, Leo.

“We travelled with translators to beer gardens, restaurants, bars, and clubs, to really understand where people are consuming beer and how they are consuming beer,” she explains. While the project was at times a challenge—“sometimes we would literally have to find a translator while we were travelling to the next city in a sleeper bus!” Angeline recalls—she says the project was a pivotal part of her MBA experience. “

Action Learning projects give you an appreciation of different cultures and, ultimately, humble you,” she reflects. “I definitely want to continue working in international roles that expose me to meeting different people and cultures.”

From Musician to the Malaysian Government

Malaysian student Eizaz Azhar has had a self-proclaimed “unorthodox” journey to the MBA at ASB. Eizaz got his start in the music industry, personally growing his home studio into a musical instrument wholesaler—“at one point we were one of the largest music retail stores in Malaysia!” Eizaz avows. “I’m a self-taught businessman—I see things really in dollars and cents,” Eizaz adds. “Before starting the MBA, I had to ask myself: have I learnt enough in my time doing business? Am I able to compete on a different level?”

Eizaz graduated last year, and, looking back now, Eizaz is certain that it was the Action Learning projects at Asia School of Business—especially his time working for Proctor & Gamble in Myanmar—that gave him the necessary skills to progress in the business world.

Working for P&G’s laundry detergent brand Ariel, Eizaz travelled to Myanmar to conduct market research and produce a market entry strategy for the brand. “We started on the ground, interviewing mums, housewives, or anyone that had been in contact with the brand,” Eizaz explains. Like Angeline, Eizaz had some unconventional experiences during the project.

“There was one point I had to conduct an interview with the P&G sales ladies, and I had to take a survey in the back of a moving truck on the highway!” Eizaz recalls. But it’s also these experiences that Eizaz credits with getting him his post-MBA job. “I got a call from the Malaysian government, from the director of the Ministry of Economic Affairs,” Eizaz says. “He said, ‘You’ve got experience in Myanmar, you’ve done interviews with people. Those skills are something we want.’ And that’s basically how I got the job.”

Asia-Ready MBAs

For Angeline and Eizaz, their experiences on the Action Learning projects at ASB have been crucial to giving them the skills to help them thrive in the business world of Southeast Asia. “There is no other learning experience that would give you a better network and foothold in Southeast Asia than these Action Learning projects that Asia School of Business is doing,” Eizaz states.

This article was originally published on BusinessBecause, a network helping MBA students make connections before, during and after their MBA.

As an Indian national with an engineering background, my previous work experiences did not involve dealing much with a multicultural team or with business-related challenges. Working with my diverse classmates on Action Learning projects has pushed me beyond my boundaries. My summer Action Learning Project team consisted of three engineers from the US and India, as well as a lawyer from Malaysia.

Despite not having any experience in the banking industry, we spent the summer working with Citibank Malaysia because the bank wanted people with fresh perspectives. Our project at Citibank was focused on the digitization process of retail branches.

After three to four weeks of working together on our project, we were split up and sent to work in different departments. In the beginning, I didn’t really like working in a separate department. It took a few days of immersing myself in the environment to start enjoying it. Having been placed in the wealth management department, my work involved a lot of interaction with people. This was, of course, also due to the nature of my project.

My work was very dependent on people; I had to learn to approach them and to effectively convey and receive messages in person as well as via phone and email. I also picked up hard skills like financial modelling and market sizing, which were very different from skills needed during my previous Action Learning projects.

At the end of the three months, we presented our ideas to the Head of Consumer Banking for Asia Pacific, who really appreciated our solutions. Looking back at this experience, I feel like I have significantly improved my communications skills and am much more confident, responsive and attentive. ASB has definitely changed me for the better.

Since starting my MBA journey at Asia School of Business, I’ve had the chance to work with people from all walks of life. In fact, ASB’s diversity is inescapable and is one of the school’s defining characteristics. With a class full of students hailing from different backgrounds, every Action Learning experience is an opportunity to discover new ways of looking at and resolving real issues that affect our host companies in the ASEAN region. Having varied vantage points within the team makes for a collaborative and constructive approach to each situation, where new ideas build on previous discussion points and look at the issue from new angles.

More than once, my teammates have thought up approaches to business issues that stretched me well outside my comfort zone, forcing me look at a problem from angles that I would never have contemplated had I been working on my own. I consider these growth opportunities some of the most valuable and memorable aspects of my entire MBA experience. An example is a recent Action Learning project I worked on in Bangkok. I was on a team with students from four continents and our project was to advise a Thai-owned supermarket chain on the expansion plan of its national distribution network over the coming decade.

Over the course of a semester, we visited Thailand on three separate occasions for a combined total of four weeks. We were tasked with identifying opportunities for regional distribution centers, assessing their financial feasibility and recommending a roadmap and timeline for execution. In order to understand the full extent of the issue, we started by visiting and interviewing people at company headquarters, warehouses and stores. Hierarchy and respect are deeply embedded in the culture of this region, so our teammates from the region provided guidance on how best to navigate this environment deftly to ensure a successful outcome.

We discovered constraints on the expansion plans — such as contracts with logistics companies, loading bays that could only accommodate for certain types of delivery trucks and short delivery windows for stores in city centers, among others. Luckily, our team’s collective expertise included diverse fields such as engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, financial modelling, insurance and consulting, as well as law and sociology. We borrowed from these past experiences to come up with useful insights into ways to assess the host’s issues and deliver a project outcome that would create the most value.  Our hosts were very pleased with our recommended roadmap and timeline, which provided a 15% reduction in projected costs compared to the status quo.

Thanks to this project I have great memories of Bangkok and was able to work on my business, cultural and personal development in many ways.

With a background in the solar energy industry, Alex is passionate about sustainability and using big data, behavioral economics, and process optimization to deliver impact and efficiency. The former Marketing Director was also a Venture for America Fellow, trained in principles of entrepreneurship and holding experience working in a startup. Hailing from the United States, an MBA at ASB gave her not only a world-class education, but the chance to explore and discover a region of the world she had never visited before!

We caught up with Alex, who is from our MBA Class of 2018 recently for a quick Q&A about her experiences at ASB.

Tell us about your career background and what you were doing before ASB.

As an Environmental Science major, I was daunted and somewhat disheartened by the career search process. Everything pointed toward academia or activism, neither of which seemed to be a great fit for me. I stumbled upon Venture for America through a friend that had gone through the same dilemma and ended up living in New Orleans for three years.

My two jobs there were as an energy efficiency consultant and a marketing director at a solar firm. I use the term “consultant” loosely, because my job involved climbing on roofs and poking around mechanical rooms to see how well equipment was running, or typing in numbers from utility bills, or troubleshooting our connection to a building’s operating software. As a marketing director, my job description was more conventional, but covered everything from making brochures and infographics to tweaking ad campaigns to optimizing sales operations. I learned a ton of skills at each position, but higher-level strategy always felt elusive to me, hence enrolling at ASB.

Why choose ASB?

For me, it was a unique chance to explore a region in which I had a lot of interest but had never visited. Not only that, but it was a way to get an MIT-quality education in a unique environment with a diverse class. If I had gone to any other business school in Asia, it would have been mostly geared toward local students, and if I had gone to business school in the US, I would not have received many of the learnings and opportunities that ASB offers.

What has been the highlight of the MBA 3.0 curriculum?

The ability to travel. Period. A person’s environment does a lot to shape their behavior, so it’s been interesting to learn from both the businesspeople and the business environment in a variety of cities, countries, and organizations. Even beyond business applications, travel has made me broaden my perspective and become more open-minded. I’m able to quickly adapt to new environments, whether it’s in the context of working out travel logistics or developing respect for different cultures. It’s one of those skills you don’t even realize you have until after you’ve developed it.

What has been the highlight of Action Learning?

Working in groups, but not because it’s fun. It’s more difficult than you would imagine working in a group of diverse nationalities, work experience, work styles, and opinions. Nearly every group experiences conflict at some point throughout their project, and that’s okay. We’ve all learned a lot over the past year about how to identify personality and work style differences and accommodate for them. At the same time, there is a lot to learn from each group member’s unique experiences, and when we do the right amount of listening and collaboration, we can greatly increase our learning beyond what we would have been able to do on our own.

What has living in Malaysia/Asia been like for you?

Living in Asia has been interesting in ways that I could not have anticipated. I’ve gotten my first real taste of being a minority and not being able to blend into the crowd. I’ve also become a lot more curious about what most people feel are everyday behaviors, and have been trying to uncover the nuances of each country’s culture. That said, it’s also been striking to see how different each country within Southeast Asia is, given that they’re all relatively close geographically. Overall, the program has made me realize what aspects of cultures and societies I value most, and will hopefully guide where I’m going to live next.

How have you balanced personal projects / social or family life and a hectic full-time program?

With great difficulty. I’m someone who likes structure and organization, so the best way to enforce my priorities is to adapt my schedule to them. For example, I make sure to exercise and make myself dinner when I get home before working on schoolwork, because I know that otherwise the latter will take up my time. I call my parents and my boyfriend at the same time every week or every day. I make sure to have at least one event to look forward to each weekend day. It’s not a perfect system, but I think I’ve come a long way toward being a more balanced person.

Who should apply to ASB in future rounds of applications?

Flexibility and open-mindedness are two qualities that come to mind. As a student, you will constantly be exposed to new people, concepts, and cultures, and it will all come at you at the speed of light, so you need to be prepared for, or even excited about, this type of environment. “Unconventional” sums it up, because if you are interested in a conventional career on Wall Street or in a large company, you will have an easier time of it elsewhere. If you want an adventure, maybe ASB is for you.

An engineer by training and a successful former manager in the aerospace and aviation defense industry, Jatin Sehgal has worked with industry giants including Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd. Recently, as part of his recent Action Learning trek, he fulfilled a dream to work with a company he has always admired: Boeing. Jatin is a hard-working and good-natured New Delhi native whose plans after his MBA are to further his newfound passions in corporate finance and investment banking.

We caught up with Jatin from MBA Class of 2018 recently for a quick Q&A about his experiences at ASB.

Tell us about your career background and what you were doing before ASB.

I was an engineer by training. After graduating, I chose to pursue a career in Business Development in the Defense Aerospace Infrastructure Development industry. I have worked across the private sector on Joint Venture (JV) projects as well as with government departments to sign Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs).

Why choose ASB?

ASB provides you a platform that blends the west’s education with east’s application. This is a must-have for today’s globalized corporate world. To complement the blend of east and west, ASB also blends rigorous classroom theory with practical onsite action learning projects where we apply what we learn. In short, it prepares battle-ready soldiers for the corporate world.

What has been the highlight of the MBA 3.0 curriculum?

Every day has been challenging, every class has been interesting, and every professor has taught me new concepts. It’s difficult to pick a single highlight – but it’s the full package combined that makes this experience so worthwhile!

What has been the highlight of Action Learning?

Going through more half of the project and then realizing that the initial project scope was incorrect, modifying it and completing the project well in time with client’s complete satisfaction. In short: fail, forward, excel!

How have you changed as a person since joining the course?

On a personal level I have become more independent, more curious, more open, and more of a risk taker than I was before.

How have you balanced your personal life and a hectic full-time program?

I have a saying when it comes to ASB: “At ASB you can have only two out of three: studies, friends or sleep.” Well, I love my friends and hate to compromise on my academics. Not to worry, though; one gets enough long weekends in Malaysia to catch up on sleep and ensure one’s well-being.

Who should apply to ASB in future rounds of applications?

If you have passion to be a leader in the Asian ecosystem, the drive to lead, take calculated risks and make an impact, then you are the perfect fit for ASB.

A year ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life: to embark on an MBA journey with the Asia School of Business established in collaboration with MIT Sloan. Having always been fascinated by the different cultures and diversity across South East Asia, I was very excited to work with Procter & Gamble in Myanmar for my first regional Action Learning project and with Axiata, a regional telecommunications conglomerate, in Cambodia for my second.

Working with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures in growing markets such as Myanmar and Cambodia has taught me invaluable lessons both personally and professionally. I’ve summarized some of my favourite takeaways from my Action Learning projects below:

Team and host communication are crucial to project success. We would meet our hosts regularly within the week to keep them updated of our progress. I found it very helpful as our hosts would provide feedback on our market research and the data we analysed. We also learned our hosts’ management styles so we could align our expectations to theirs.

Your team will always have your back. During our second onsite visit in Myanmar, which lasted almost two weeks, one of our team members caught a bad viral infection and needed to be on a drip, and I severely injured my back which, as a result, limited my range of movement. It was very stressful because there was so more market research that needed to be done but we learned to realign our team’s expectations to our current situation. Luckily, we had each other to rely on.

Want to understand local culture and brand perception? Conduct home interviews. Home interviews are the best way to understand the local culture and the end user’s perception of a brand: Many Burmese families, especially in cities, live in apartments and buy most consumer products including cosmetics from the stores below their apartment blocks. My Action Learning team and I would visit home after home with a translator to conduct interviews. It was an exhausting task, as we needed to climb many flights of stairs just to talk to a handful of people. Nevertheless, it was truly a pleasant experience as they are very welcoming even though they barely knew us.

There’s a world of possibilities in start-ups and incubators. The start-up community had never been particularly exciting to me until I joined ASB and started engaging with entrepreneurs in Cambodia. Among these entrepreneurs, a common trait is grit – they would get back up as many times as they needed to, because failure is never an option. I remember meeting an entrepreneur and talking for over 2 hours about his idea and how passionate he was about the potential for growth of his business!

Value bonding time with team members. We would spend time exploring food in Cambodia and I got to know my team on a personal level as we ate most, if not all, of our meals together. I even had a memorable birthday celebration with my team while we were there. This bonding helped with our project too, as we understood how each team member thought individually and could increase overall team effectiveness through honest feedback amongst ourselves.