Coming back

Here I am again…. I will restart slowly otherwise other activities will have to wait. Just updating that I passed on the first exam 0f Stage 1 and also delivered and passed on all the assignments. Now started the Stage 2 which has the following modules:

• Strategic Marketing
• Global Business Environment
• Strategic Direction
• Corporate Finance and Governance
• Leading the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Function

I have to say this was a tough year. However, with lots of learning and personal development opportunities. 

Two more years to go.

Drop of Knowledge October 2010 – MPP Reflection

I started this module thinking I would gain knowledge only in the HR versus line manager context, organization structure and cultural issue. However, it proved to be much more than that. I went across papers from people such as Goshal and Ulrich which are considered the ultimate resource when it comes to HR practices. I also enjoyed the reading of Kaplan and Norton on Balanced Scorecard. This opened my mind to a different perspective and the one I am planning to use as an entrepreneur in my own business, if it is not possible to use in my organization already. I also didn’t know much of the practices used to work with outsourcing companies and the HR policies as a whole at the IAEA. This assignment made me aware of such structures and will be helpful in future whenever I interact both with outsourcing resources and HR. I also had the opportunity to interview people from HR and my line manager.

At some point I was running with shortage of new ideas to the assignment and felt literally blocked by it. The solution was to give a time from the reading and restart once I felt I had acquired a good sense of what was missing in the assignment.

Now is the moment to start diving deep into MPSP.

HR similiar to IT?

We take for granted the activities under HR responsibilities. At least this was my point of view until I start the readings and perceive how strategic it can be down to the line managers, which take responsibilities for the then assumed HR tasks. I’ve seen the same trend happening in my field — Information Technology. We sort to try to gain our piece of the organization’s main pillars and try to show that we are strategic partners, so HR, Financial Department, and so on. So, how strategic each of them are and to which extend? How to measure the importance of the different departments in an organization? These questions start to poping up as the new HR knowledge starts to gain a body.

This post is also to mark a point which I have posted my very first “unfinished draft” assignment with 1.400 words just to have a feeling what is like to have a work in progress in a place where others can see (under Team Locker/MPP). The quantity of words and its related quality have to increase exponentially for me to reach the deadline with a reasonable piece of work. Still, a bit scary but with much more perception on what HR can offer to the organization. With this thinking I guess I will be more equipped to tackle the coming knowledge I still have to distill.

Good news from Which MBA

Today Which MBA released the results of the rankings. Henley Full Time MBA is on the 17th position in the world. I believe it is a very good news as this places Henley before others high profile MBAs such as London Business School, Yale, Duke, Cornell and Warwick.

Congratulations to Henley staff for the continuous hard work.

Drop of Knowledge for September 2010 – Be or not to be scared?!

18 days to delivery the MPP draft assignment to mates in the team to review it. 39 days to delivery the assignment for the markers. I am already with that scared feeling question which keeps saying to myself whether I will be able to do it. I wrote in total so far one thousand and five hundred words for the assignment and have interviewed two key people in my Agency’s HRM. Today I arrived to the point which I believe I won’t have a problem to deliver a good assignment. At the same time, there are different aspects of our business which I would like to talk, differently from the original theme I was thinking about, but there is the risk I cannot explore enough because it is one of those dilemmas that nobody really wants to talk about and in my case it is the seven years mobility process that at the end of the day means I loose my job after seven years.

I will start discussing about how the performance is tackle by HRM in this complex organization and how it impacts line managers. Also, I have a lot to talk regarding our benefits, which implies more complexity to be aware than in private sector.

I changed my approach for reading. I am going to read all the core reading summary, write more words for my assignment and come back to each core reading and try to read it all. If I don’t have time, at least I had done a scanning on all.

PD: still have to put my mind on.

MFR: the same as above, but I think it will be the challenging one.

MPSP:  the same as above but I guess it is going to be the one which I can elaborate more.

In short, 3 months have passed and I feel I can do a better job on the reading business. The good news it is that I am improving on that.

Let’s see what October brings.

As usual, please find below the statistics for visits in September:

Keeping focused

It is very easy to loose the track in a Distance Learning study. While I am able to starting write the MPP assignment referencing the material, this is happening with me and a red light of needed discipline just turned on. I am not only thinking in read the mountain of  texts we have but also finding ways to record in a easier to remember mode. The Cornell note taking technique has been very handy on this and hope using it well to help me with the exam next year. The another aspect is to divide the time for the four modules I have ahead until May next year. The prioritisation so far has been in terms of first-in-first-out assignment delivers. Therefore, it means I am focused in the MPP assignment. It is trick, because the next one is MPSP and I cannot just leave all the studies on that for November, just after delivery MPP assignment. Also, I cannot leave MFR neither. Above all, I have to find time to work with the PD, which is key to both the Programme and myself. Organisation has to play a good role here, but nothing is more required in times of pressure than hard work and energy to working hard. It started means, sleep later at night and wake-up earlier in the morning. At same time I cannot only work harder, but smarter.

A framework study has to be built and hope I am finding a reliable one.

Changing the Blog’s name

When I first started to blogging (ever!) here, I didn’t know exactly where it would bring me. By that time, saying I was distilling the blog itself made sense. Now that it’s all set and I am diving deeper on the MBA endeavour, no reason anymore to give that title. That’s why from now on I am distilling the Henley Business School — if it wasn’t clear before –, and looking forward to be distilled by it.

Hope you like the new name.

p.s. I only need to findout whether I am going to change the url as well.