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Michael Dell Just Started Speaking…

rob — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:02:01 +0000

…about five-hundred feet away from me in Spangler Auditorium. And instead of being there, listening to this celebrity CEO discuss how he “grew a $60 billion company in 14 years”, I’m sitting in my room about to start preparing cases for tomorrow’s class. What do you think — am I making a poor decision?

Today is a very busy day. Along with the usual load of classes (and a three-case day tomorrow), there are career team meetings, student panels, improv classes, a venture capital club meeting, an outdoors club meeting, and… of course, the Dell CEO. If there’s one thing to be said for HBS, it’s that it forces you to be a brutal time manager. You start to evaluate every activity and compare it against the world of amazing possibilities that lie at your finger tips every hour of the day.

As I was standing in the shower after a quick racquetball match today, I think I finally developed a framework for screening activities. The framework is something like this:

Will it help me develop lasting relationships?
Will it offer a chance for experiential learning?
Will it add value to my resume?
Will it allow me to explore new ideas?

In that priority. Unfortunately, listening to Michael Dell talk really only hits #4… and even that one’s uncertain (depending on how much the Q&A draws out beyond what I could read in a magazine article). It’s interesting… I wouldn’t have given the same answer two hours ago. If someone asked why I was going (which no one ever does), all I would’ve been able to say was “Well, he’s Micheal Dell. He’s fabulously successful. How can you not go see him talk?”

I guess it would’ve given me a good photo and story to post on this blog. Anyway, the sun finally came out today… here are some celebratory photos from around campus:

Across Baker Beach in the Sun

Baker Library in the Sun

Out the Window of My Dorm

Two Weeks into the First Year

rob — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 02:00:09 +0000

The passage of time is a mystery to me. I’ve only been in Boston for a little over two weeks, but the day I arrived feels like years ago. At the same time, I feel like this past week has shot by in the blink of an eye. I don’t know if I can explain the paradox…

So, how do I feel about HBS? At the moment, exhausted. This is not a place to be if you prefer to take things slow. The school calendar system, myHBS, shows that there are 10-15 events going on every day this week! Then there are the section-related events. Then there’s meeting with your learning team every day. Then there’s the need to attend class 8-3 MWF and 8-12 on TTh. Oh, and I almost forgot — you also need to find some time to read, study, and prepare 13 case studies each week… kind of important when your grade revolves around contributing insightful comments during class discussion.

Let’s add it up and see what we end up with:

Classes for around 30hr/wk
LT for another 5hr/wk
Cases at 20hr/wk
Section events at 10hr/wk
School events at 15hr/wk

That gives us 80hr/wk! And we’re skipping 75% of the school events and avoiding networking like a weird social hermit. (Not to mention the neglect on all outside relationships and activities). It’s easy to see how this place can wear on you if you’re not careful.

So, how do I feel about HBS? Well, fatigued, yes… but also excited! This truly is a “Disney World for business people”. There’s no other place on the planet where you actually consider turning down the chance to listen to a Fortune 50 CEO take Q&A because there are five other events going on – at the same time – that all sound fascinating and intriguing. If you took all the events going on in one day and spread them out over an entire month at my undergrad, I would’ve gone to every one of them and talked about how fantastically lucky I was. Here, it’s simply commonplace. Not even worth mentioning. I’ve heard that CEOs routinely find themselves with half-empty audiences as the year goes on…

This place is awash in possibilities. It will definitely be a challenge to take advantage of every bit without burning out on all of it.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini

rob — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:57:30 +0000

One of the amazing things about HBS is how big-name speakers are on campus all the time. Intel’s CEO was on campus today to chat about the future of technology… small classroom, huge name. I think they picked a small classroom on purpose — he mentioned at the beginning of the session that last year when he was in this room, only 1/3rd of the class was full! Can you imagine that? CEO of one of the largest companies in the world on a campus with 1800+ business students and an empty classroom. Incredible.

It just goes to show how jaded HBS students quickly become. It gets even worse at times… I’ve been attending lots of events and info sessions lately, and it’s commonplace for these experienced, world-class students to just get up in the middle of an event and walk out of the room! I guess it’s caused by a combination of “Fear of Missing Out” (FOMO) and the consistency with which so many impressive people cycle through the school.

Anyway, Otellini was very entertaining. He gave the typical canned corporate speech, but where it really came alive was in the Q&A. This is something that HBS does particularly well… the questions from the audience were all first-class and really pulled some interesting points from Otellini. He was entertaining, too. I love that he started drawing a chart on the board in the middle of answering a question on Intel’s cost structure and said “assume this is a log-log graph”…

I can’t wait for more of this…!

Intel's CEO in an HBS Classroom