4 Takeaways from Week 1 of Business School at Oxford

Finished with week one and wow, an ‘intense one year MBA’ was an understatement! I have barely had time to really process everything and everyone in front of me the past five days. Now out of quarantine, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to study at Oxford. Despite the COVID situation, most programming has exceeded expectations and restored hope for the year ahead.

Though I do not typically journal, I decided a reflection paragraph each evening would be useful to make sense of my time. I think there is value in being open and vulnerable with my thoughts in public while they are still fresh. With that, here are four takeaways from Week One of Business School.

1. BE AN ACTIVE LISTENER

I have a lot to say and with grand changes like starting school, even more thoughts have been racing through my mind: from a career pivot to family/my partner overseas to how quickly England got cold! Yet, I want to absorb as much as possible. During several of our Zoom breakout sessions, I resisted the urge to take the lead and tried to really hear what peers were saying. There are so many talented men and women in my program.

Admin mentioned that our sections of 80, class groups of 20 and study groups of 5 were chosen carefully. I took this as ‘nice to say’, but we will see how it goes. My study group hosted a Zoom to get to know each other and it turned into an incredibly engaging one hour session – a former Facebook employee from Texas interested in VC, a Consultant from South Africa, a Thai woman tired of banking and looking for social good, and an Indian development statistician. We talked about alternative plant-based meats, sanitary pads for women in rural areas, and a list of other topics. While I imagine these conversations take place at many top business schools, something about Oxford’s social mission reminded me that this is exactly the place I need to be right now and these are the people I want to be around.

And listen to the tense conversations as well. When our cohort heard of the hybrid online/in person class organization through a webinar without Q&A there were a flurry of naturally panicked responses. I was getting a bit annoyed at the negativity and wanted to chime in with some hopeful message or reassurance of a silver lining. Yet, I held back and restrained my comments. Sometimes you need to just listen and give people space to feel.

2. BE DELIBERATE ABOUT DIVERSITY

I identify as a few things: an American, an adopted unofficial Singapore resident, a gay man, a finance bro’ at times, a progressive liberal with a fiscal slant, an endurance sport enthusiast, a vocal vegetarian, and a sustainability advocate.

So it would make sense to start looking for people like myself – and to an extent that happens. We form Telegram channels that fit these various affinities. I’ve already met some of the Singaporeans as well as a few of my LGBT peers.

However, I think the single greatest quote from the first launch week came from Dean Peter Tufano; something along the lines to say that with 312 of us from 67 nationalities, this is the one time in your life where everyone is a minority in some way. Though I consider myself quite cosmopolitan, I want to embrace that more than ever. I speak a patchy amount of Spanish and have been to Africa a couple times but know very little about Latin America/Africa.

Especially as the UK currently only allows groups of 6 to socialize, going out of my way will be an advantage.

3. KEEP NEGATIVE FEELINGS FLEETING

I had a few moments where I felt quite uncomfortable as well. We broke out into sessions to give our ‘elevator pitch’ in front of peers we just met. There was a heavy dose of imposter syndrome on my end. I think I look alright on paper and of course I try to structure my CV and social media presence that way. I learned awhile back that while your story can make a nice introduction for a bio, you are judged on merit, ever looking forward on what you bring to the table, not how you managed to get to that table.

I think something like less than 10% of my peers in high school graduated college. I grep up in a poor rural area of the Midwest and ended up going onto a top school for my undergrad degree, worked to brand myself out of school with the World Bank then worked a fairly linear career path over 6 years to manage millions for an investment fund and travel the world. On paper this sounds amazing, but I wasn’t exactly happy when I got to the end – I was tired of the trading aspect in my job, the small team structure, and the lack of recent travel. I cringe when I share these details about my professional life as it sometimes feels insincere. I’m still the fresh student at Georgetown failing miserably at college level Calculus I never learned from my high school: embarrassed and feeling less than for not understanding simple concepts.

So I pitched myself as well as I could, and within 8 seconds (the pitch was 90 seconds just about) I wrapped up the past three years of my life as an afterthought. Of course, I am in am MBA for a change – most people tend to be; whether that be a geographical change, role or industry.

I’m as passionate as ever for the consumer and retail sectors. I think I will always find these areas fascinating. Yet, I want to use my skills to affect change with businesses. Consulting is high on my list right now. In a previous fund, I was traveling more often and heavy in consumer research. I was most lit up sitting in front of C-suite management discussing expansion plans or pricing or whatever it may be around Asia as long as it involved strategy and connected to the consumer space. I fell in love with this function. It’s still early days, but I’m hoping to do this in a way that doesn’t necessitate a trade/don’t trade or make profit on the stock/don’t make profit manner – something that guides businesses to solve problems, to think hard and develop a solution.

How does this relate to my moment of awkwardness? Those 8 seconds came across as crass and negative. In my second run, I included details and the ‘why’ from the above paragraph. The point being, that there are ways to learn and grow from the negatives. Acknowledge them and let them go: moments of professional frustration or personal upsets.

You are the only one giving them the weight they do not deserve.

4. SHARE YOUR STRENGTHS

Finally, a few words on graduate studies versus undergrad. In college, you enter tabula rasa. That is to say, you come in clean and are trained in your profession along with peers. Sure, some may have had a better secondary education and understand ‘how to learn’ better than others, but in general you go through college, come out with a job and start the deeper learning outside of theory.

After a few years, you go back for an MBA. Everyone brings different skills and life experiences and ideas. I think we have a duty to be pro-active and help where we can.

There was a South Asian woman who spoke up as confused in one of the finance sessions (the concepts were straightforward to me as well as most of my male peers who have been in the industry for awhile). It took so much courage and bravery to stand up and share her doubts in a white male dominated field. When possible, help someone who possesses the will to learn.

This probably got me in trouble in previous jobs, but my own work would take a backseat when I got a new batch of interns. I ended up taking over the summer interns out of personal interest (I was fairly new and learning myself at the time, explaining concepts helped solidify my own learnings). Two interns ended up as Analyst on my team; taking one from confusing revenue and profit into a contributing team member, redesigning our financial modelling philosophy and assumptions. My own work suffered, but I have no regrets on how that turned out. I was there to help new hires and interns when they were confused and in need. In retrospect, I’m proud of taking the time to serve that function. I want to be an advocate, mentor, study partner, whatever..whenever the call comes.

I’m going to need a lot of that myself in the year ahead. My analytics capabilities in Python are low and while I think I know marketing, it will likely take me for a ride when I get to the course. I’m willing to share what I’ve accumulated and hope others will do the same!

Hopefully these comments were useful. I tried not to think too hard about this and just summarize a few things I jotted down from the previous few evenings. I really encourage everyone to do the same. What were your biggest takeaways? Whether you’re in business school now, recently, or 30 years ago : )

Michael