Management Practice

Three weeks in and term two (Lent) has so far been a welcome upgrade on term one (Michaelmas). We started Michaelmas with a focus on the fundamentals of business – Accounting, Corporate Finance, Microeconomics, Organisational Behaviour – a solid back four in a 4-3-3 formation if you will. You don’t necessarily love any of them but you know you need a decent defence to survive.

Lent term has widened the net a bit and brought with it subjects either completely new to me, or those which have changed fairly dramatically in recent years as a result of the tech revolution. I still enjoyed my old friends Accounting and Corporate Finance but they’re a bit Puyol and Pique compared to the flashier big hitters Marketing, Digital Business and Strategy (Neymar, Suarez and Messi, respectively).

I’ve also begun studying my first electives. I’m following the Marketing concentration so have chosen to do Managing Big Data Analysis, Strategic Pricing, Digital Marketing and Building Customer-Centric Organisations. I've provided a graphic at the end of this blog if you'd like to see how these fit in to my team.

One of the revelations of this term has been in the second round of our Management Praxis course. Our professor is the mercurial Mark de Rond, a Dutch author who studies how team works by living with them in the environment in which they operate. His opening salvo was to tell us about the work he’s done studying teams including the Cambridge rowing team in the build up to the boat race (their success is determined by the outcome of one race each year and nothing else), observing war zone surgeons in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan (very difficult personalities when they’re not engaged but work together almost flawlessly in surgery) and a group of vigilante paedophile hunters who he is currently studying for his next book. He immerses himself in the lives of the people he studies, living alongside them to understand how they work so he now spends weekends with paedophile hunters, observing them on every aspect of their mission. His account of his time in Camp Bastion is worth a read and he brings a different perspective to class along with some novel anecdotes and a fair amount of debate.

The course is centred on negotiation but later in the term we also have a few speakers coming in. Most notable are Michael Foale, an astronaut who has spent over a year in space, and Lord Bilimoria whose talk is titled ‘Inside the Brexit debate in the House of Lords’ which should be enlightening. Annoyingly, becoming an astronaut isn't a feasible internship option for June but I’m loving the class and it’s exactly the sort of unexpected highlight I was hoping for when I came here. Stretching the football analogy a bit to far, I'd say Mark could be considered the MBA's Johann Cruyff and his different way of thinking is our answer to Total Football.

The new year brought with it the more impending matter of three 3,000 word essays to round off our assessment for Michaelmas.

I can’t pretend I’ve missed writing essays since my undergrad, so with 9,000 words to write in 10 days I wasn’t overly excited but on reflection they were worthwhile and kept me busy in the early days of a dry January.

For Economics, Organisations & Incentives, our essay was centred on CEO pay and its composition which felt timely in the wake of the news that Bet365’s CEO took home over ￡300m last year and that the average FTSE 100 CEO earned the UK average salary in the first week of January.

For Organisational Behaviour my essay was on motivating under-performing employees so I delved into the key factors that make employees happy. My favourite concept from this was the notion of ‘contrafreeloading’ whereby people prefer to exert effort to attain a reward than to do nothing at all. It’s best demonstrated in rats in a lab who, given the choice between open access to food and pushing a lever to attain the food, choose the latter because it’s more rewarding.

I covered a lot of research around extrinsic motivators (money, commission, rewards) vs intrinsic motivators (a sense of achievement, status, meaningful work) and the overwhelming evidence is that, once a base level of financial security is achieved, intrinsic motivators are far more impactful than extrinisic. Fairly interesting and, more importantly, quite useful to bear in mind for my job hunt when evaluating roles.

I'll be returning to the real world in just a few short months and Venture Capital is still very much the dream but I'm also having a look at strategy roles at early-stage businesses, marketing strategy roles and even some finance positions.

I'm looking for internships at the moment, ideally at a large corporate where I can learn the ropes for 10 weeks, meet as many people across the business and determine where exactly I'd fit best but I’m also meeting every VC fund I can for a coffee and keeping on top of any roles that pop up. It’s an incredibly competitive industry and opportunity is limited so I'm trying to build relationships as fast as possible.

In March we start our Global Consulting Projects – 4-weeks of full time work with sponsor companies who want us to take on a strategic project for them. This could be anything from operational improvements to defining a market entry strategy to identifying an investment target. There are a few projects that I’ve got my eye on in SportTech, VC and Aviation. The global part means that some companies are sponsoring students flying out to New York, Dubai, India and others so those are in high demand. I'm looking forward to hearing finding out where I’ll be - I'm hoping for New York but expecting London.

Outside of work, sport is still ticking along. We got off to a winning start in rugby this term against the Penguins Invitiational team and we have matches against the RAF, Navy and Army in the next few weeks. We're already building to Varsity in December and, as I’m not here next year, I’m playing far less but still hoping to get a run out where possible. I'm currently sitting 3rd in the top try scorer rankings and feel like I've got a few more in me before I retire.

A couple of the lads in our squad have been called up to U20s squads for the 6 Nations and Coreen Grant is in the full Scotland squad after her awesome solo try at Twickenham to win the women’s Varsity which is pretty cool so keep an eye out for them over the coming weeks.

The reduction in training means I have a lot more time on my hands. I made it to a Burns night formal at Fitzwilliam College last week, our MBA team finally won the Monday night pub quiz at the Six Bells last week (picture below), Ban-Ki Moon came to visit the Cambridge Union and this weekend I’ve sorted out 20 tickets for Cambridge United vs Colchester at the Abbey Stadium. Colin Calderwood has just been fired as their manager so I might send over a CV and see if my new management skills could be of use there.

Winners (I can't share our team name because it's not LinkedIn appropriate)

Last term was fairly stressful with plenty of work, a fair bit of sport and a lot of finding my feet. This term is far more enjoyable so far. Modules are interesting, England finished off South Africa in the cricket so I can finally silence my South African classmates, Euro 2020 is on the way, Alireza Jahanbaksh scored the greatest goal ever seen on new year's day and my marks so far have been pretty good. Can't wait to see what 2020 has in store - let's hope it's a good job and more overhead kicks for Brighton.

Happy new year!

In case you’re wondering, we'd play 4-3-3 as below:

Here's a nice pic of Downing College to finish: