16 October 2013

Sponsored post: Take the EMBA plunge - it's worth it

There are lots of reasons to take an Executive MBA: gaining skills, confidence and discovering the direction your career should take. Hina Wadhwa and Dawn Bournand have the low down.

Having spoken with numerous EMBA candidates over the last decade, the main piece of advice we would give anyone considering this prestigious degree is to put themselves in the right frame of mind: success inspires success. The results of pursuing an EMBA can be spectacular, but the journey itself is exhilarating and life-changing. Most of all, you come out of the program richer, not only in terms of knowledge and skills, but also because of the unique moments you will share with the people who will become part of your close network for years to come.

Take the plunge – it’s worth it!

Invest in yourself...

It’s a question of setting off the right signals. By being prepared, in your mid-thirties or forties, to sacrifice your evenings and weekends to develop your skills and broaden your horizons, you are showing those around you that you believe in yourself and that you are gearing up for success. As Emilio Veiga-Gil, Director of Marketing for Latin America and the Caribbean at Moneygram and a University of Chicago Booth School of Business alumnus (Class of 2011) puts it: “I think of a Chicago [E]MBA as a signalling device: it conveys to current/prospective employers something about your intellectual ability and your capacity for commitment.”

It’s easy when you are in a comfortable position to get stuck in a routine. Whilst some employees are lucky enough to have a flight plan for their career mapped out within their organizations or as entrepreneurs, others find themselves stuck in roles that offer little evolution, positive challenges and intellectual stimulation. You sometimes have to break your own glass ceiling and pave your own path to success. The Executive MBA could be your ticket.

Almost a decade on since graduating from university, James Hickson’s, IE Business School Global Executive MBA alum (Class of 2012), career had provided him with some fantastic overseas assignments, yet as he climbed the ranks of seniority, he felt he lacked a broader frame of reference for tackling new challenges. “I wanted to add value but I lacked the content to do so,” says the Global Head of Strategic Projects (Workforce Strategy and Operating Model) for Morgan Stanley New York – a position he can credit to his Executive MBA. “Over time, I identified I needed to take charge of my career and invest in myself if I was to maintain my career trajectory and broaden my horizons.”

“I found I really needed to answer some tough questions, such as ‘Where was I going?’, ‘What are my passions?’, ‘Where were the opportunities for personal growth?’and ‘What value was I going to add to society at large?’ The EMBA proved to be a lens through which to pause and evaluate myself,” he adds.

... and in your network

The Executive MBA is an exciting journey not only because you are back in the classroom revisiting business fundamentals and picking up new skills, but also because you are constantly working on group assignments and case studies with participants from diverse cultures, backgrounds, industries and job functions. All at once, you learn to work with people who are marketers, engineers, financiers, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, mid-managers, senior executives, directors, VPs, CEOs, members of boards; talented young executives on the fast track as well as more mature classmates in their fifties.

Ryan Bogan, alum of TRIUM Global Executive MBA (an alliance between New York Stern School of Business (NYU Stern), the London School of Economics (LSE) and HEC School of Management, Paris (HEC Paris)) and former chief operating officer of LMI Aerospace explains that his EMBA experience was a transformational one. “My cohort consisted of 67 senior business leaders, representing over 35 different countries, each one of whom had lessons to teach, not only about becoming a more effective business leader, but also about being a more thoughtful, focused and globally aware individual,” says Bogan.

EMBA graduates report that one of the aspects they most cherish is their experience with the people they meet whilst on the program. “You embark on an EMBA because you want to learn new things, find a new job, increase your networking opportunities and develop your career in general, but you never expect to find such good people. I have made very good friends and we are still in contact. I have also learned a lot from their experience and knowledge, and a lot about myself,” says Rosario García Pecci, Compliance Senior Manager at Grünenthal Pharma and ESCP Europe alumna (Class of 2012)

Gain confidence and rediscover yourself

It’s all about the soft skills - which aren’t actually so soft. If you’ve ever been in a class on effective communications or improving your presentation skills, you’ll know that it’s hard work. Somehow, though, as you go through the program, you get used to standing up in front of an entire classroom full of people to present your case studies and group assignments. You also get more comfortable voicing your opinions, even if this is something you are not used to doing, because that’s the only way to participate in class and group discussions. Moreover, you learn to do this more and more diplomatically, especially because you know you have to work with your classmates throughout the entire program.

As TRIUM GEMBA alumna Florence Klein (Class of 2005) sums up, “You grow up a lot by being exposed to so many cultures, so much high-quality information, and pressure. Even though all of us had stressful careers with long hours, no one could imagine we had the inner resources to do it all. You have to develop survival skills to give your best everywhere, in your studies and of course at your job. It is a real commitment, a two-year period where your life changes but it was the greatest thing I did for myself.”

Take the helicopter seat

For professionals with a sound number of years of experience, it’s refreshing to be back in a learning environment where you are encouraged to leap into a helicopter to look at the world from a different perspective: the big picture view. Understanding the dynamics of general management and the responsibility that goes with it, the political framework of a corporation, as well as the fundamentals of corporate finance and financial accounting, gives you the tool kit you need to be able to manage, lead and innovate.

Moreover, Executive MBA participants tend to get more out of their MBA learning because they are able to look back at their experiences and decisions made in their companies, and analyse the outcomes with a different pair of shades. “I wanted to enhance my skills to better deal with complex business in a broader perspective. I knew that the EMBA would provide me a lot of opportunities to experience many business cases in a short period [of time]; otherwise I would have had to go through many trials and errors in real life, which would have taken [me] a long time,” says Hye-Min Seo, INSEAD Global Executive MBA alumna (Class of 2008) and group product manager for Beiersdorf Thailand, in charge of marketing NIVEA in South East Asia.

“Also, I liked the fact that I didn’t need to stop working while doing my EMBA, so that I could apply the learnings from the class to the daily business in real time,” adds Seo. In effect, past work experience and immediately applicable knowledge make up the experiential learning that gives the Executive MBA an extra edge compared to full-time MBA programs. From learning how to assess an investment decision or prioritise key projects, to reading a company’s annual report, or implementing change in your organization, the Executive MBA is a polyvalent advanced degree.

Are you ready to take the Executive MBA plunge? Come find out by speaking face-to-face with admissions directors and alumni of some of the world’s best business schools at the London World MBA Tour & Executive MBA Tour fair on Saturday, 19^th October 2013. For more information and to register: www.topmba.com/NewStatesman

This sponsored post is in association with QS TopExecutive Guide and was written by Hina Wadhwa and Dawn Bournand, Editors of the Guide

› New Statesman cover | 17 October

Campus life: Take the time to rediscover your ambitions. Photograph: Getty Images.

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Brexit

29 November 2016

Ken Clarke: Angela Merkel is western democracy’s last hope

The former chancellor on how anger defines modern politics, and why Jeremy Corbyn makes him nostalgic for his youth.

Ken Clarke is running late. Backstage at the Cambridge Literary Festival, where the former chancellor is due to speak shortly, his publicist is keeping a watchful eye on the door. Just as watches start to be glanced at, the famously loose-tongued Tory arrives and takes a seat, proclaiming that we have loads of time. He seems relaxed, his suit is loose and slightly creased, and his greying hair flops over his somewhat florid face. His eyes look puffy and slightly tired – the only obvious sign that at 76, retirement is not far off.

Despite his laconic demeanour, the former chancellor says he oscillates between being “angry and depressed at the appalling state politics in the UK has descended into”. After 46 years as an MP for the Nottinghamshire constituency of Rushcliffe, he will not stand for re-election in 2020. His decision was announced in mid-June, just before the Brexit vote. Europe has in many ways defined his long career. He feels sharply the irony that the cause that drew him into politics was the 1961 campaign by Harold Macmillan's government for Britain to gain access to the European Economic Community, as it was then. Now, he will be bidding farewell to Parliament while the country prepares to exit the European Union. “The only consolation I have is that the UK has derived enormous benefits for being in the EU. . . I hope future generations don’t suffer too much with it coming to an end.”

Clarke is here to promote his memoir, A Kind of Blue, for which he received £430,000 – a record for a British politician who has not served as prime minister. The apt title reflects his own status as a Tory maverick as well as his love of jazz hero Miles Davis. He seems to enjoy the attention that book promotion brings – joking with the former Labour home secretary Charles Clarke, who happens also to be speaking at the festival.

Beneath his good humour lies a deep unease about the rise of populist, far-right forces that are rampaging through western liberal democracies from the US to France. “It’s resistance to change, resistance to the modern world and a desire for simple solutions to very complicated political problems,” he says. “The manner in which the political debate is publicised has changed, the mass media is hysterical and competitive and social media is taking over with short soundbites. It has thrown politics into complete confusion.”

Although he cites coverage of the New Statesman’s recent interview with Tony Blair as an example of media hysteria, he is positive about Blair’s intervention: “My understanding [of the interview] was that Tony only wants to play a part in trying to reform centre-left politics, and that’s a good thing . . . I want to see the sensible social democrats win the argument in the Labour party.”

Aware this might sound surprising, given that Labour are his political opponents, he justifies it by stressing the need for a credible opposition capable of putting pressure on the government. Jeremy Corbyn might make him “nostalgic for my youth when there were lots of Sixties lefties”, but it is clear he holds his leadership at least partly responsible for the “total collapse” of the Labour party, which has seen it lose “almost all of its traditional blue-collar base in the north and north midlands to reactionary, prejudiced, right-wing views”.

He is equally scathing of Corbyn's praising of the late Fidel Castro as a “champion of social justice”, after news of the communist dictator's death broke late on Friday night. “[Castro] is a historical throwback to a form of simplistic ultra left-wing orthodoxy . . . He achieved some things in health and education but combined it with an extraordinary degree of cruelty and a denial of human rights.”

Clarke still has one political hero left, though: the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently declared she would run again for a fourth term in 2017. He describes her as the only politician succeeding in keeping the traditon of western liberal demcoracy alive. “She is head and shoulders the best politician the western world has produced in the last 10 to 20 years,” he says. If successful, the Christian Democrat would equal the record of her mentor, former chancellor Helmut Kohl, and provide some much-needed stability to European politics.

Less of a hero to him is Theresa May, who he famously referred to as a “bloody difficult woman” in July during an off-camera conversation with Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary, which Sky News recorded. The clip caused a sensation. “I brought great joy to the nation,” he says, chuckling. “My son rang me up laughing his head off, and said it was the first time in my life I’d gone viral on YouTube.”

Today, however, he expresses some sympathy for the tortuous political situation the Prime Minister finds herself in, saying she must have been “startled by the speed” at which she suddenly ascended to the role. He is prepared to give her time to prove that, “she has the remarkable political gifts which will be needed to get the politics of the UK back to some sort of sanity”.

Later, during his talk in the historic debating chamber of the Cambridge Union, a more sentimental side slips out. His wife, Gillian, died 18 months ago. His book is dedicated to her. He rarely discusses his grief, preferring to keep that side of his life private. But when asked to recall his fondest memory of his student days at Cambridge University, he says simply meeting her. “Let me give a corny answer, it is going across to a girl at a [disco], picking her up, getting on quite well and staying married to her for over 50 years,” he says, his voice slightly trailing off, before he recovers, shakes his head, and pours his energy back into politics once more.

Serena Kutchinsky is the digital editor of the New Statesman.