A European at Darden

Giving Back.

2010-04-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Despite my having been out of touch blog-wise for a while, I did have an array of amazing experiences. One might wonder I haven’t been blogging about them (right, Paige and Sukanya?). Well, I can only say I will try to make up for my absence in these last weeks of school.

One of the greatest experiences of the past months has been working with the Darden Annual Fund, as one of the four co-chairs for the Class Gift. We are raising money (or pledges to donate) from the graduating class.

Whenever I mention the word “gift” my classmates ask me whether we are donating a fountain like the one standing at the end of Flagler Court in front of Thomas Jefferson or a modern version of Café ‘67. The answer is no: the money goes into a pool of “unrestricted” fund the school uses at its discretion. These funds are spent for alumni relations, prospective students’ events, communication and marketing. The second question students raise, especially international ones is more or less “Wasn’t tuition enough??” The reality is that only a part of the school’s costs are covered by tuition, and it is not to say that we are not a fiscally responsible institution. We are! It’s just that these beautiful grounds and the rest of our experiences don’t come for free…

As good MBAs would do, we hired others to “do the dirty job” – in our case a committee of 30 students, chosen because they either honed their persuasive skills at Darden, because they are “celebrities” in our community, because they are extremely energetic, the type of person you cannot say no to, or all these things together. Our campaign officially kicked off at the end of March after Spring Break. We took advantage of a wonderful March evening and invited the Second Years to Mellow Mushroom for an evening of pizza and trivia. It must have been the prospect of a large gathering after the weeks abroad, the free pizza or the trivia - we had a wonderful participation. Our campaign was off to a great start.

Few weeks later we had tables outside the mailrooms, in an area of high traffic, and since then we have resorted to every possible marketing tool we know to promote the Cause. Email being officially last century, we are using our Facebook Page, competition between sections, announcements in classes, flyers and word-of-mouth. After all we are competing for attention during the last weeks of our Second Year, and believe me our “competition” is fierce and organized. I’m talking about beautiful weather and golf courses , not classes!

The idea is that giving now, before year ends, will help instill a habit, which should make our job easier in the next years. We are one of the b-schools with a higher participation to our Annual Fund and we want to do even better in the future. Hence our main goal is participation of the entire class, or at least beat last year’s 99% participation. Darden 2010: you’d better represent!

Fall in Charlottesville, and why I love Second Year.

2009-11-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

UVA's first football game against William&Mary

U2 and Muse in town on Oct. 2

Oktoberfest at Darden, Sept. 26 Second Years David and Jen

First Year Section E T-shirt

My second time hiking Old Rag, a Blue Ridge classic.

SY: not just cases, lots of dinners and parties as well...
A Pic from the Francophone dinner. Second Years Summer, Emily, Miranda, Catherine and Meredith

Pie eating contest: Scott, a first year beats Brian, second year. Not a glorious day for SYs: we had been defeated at apple bobbing as well...

Darden Cup: soccer, some real talent on the field, including Professor Landel and FYs Andrea and Carlos

Cases never die

2009-09-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

Last week…
or was it two weeks ago?

Don’t worry, this thought is triggered by a healthy *fear of Paige* us bloggers all suffer from – she is our ‘policeman’, and even though she is currently on crutches, she can be quite intimidating…

Anyway, last week I told a nice story about how cases are born. What I wasn’t aware of is that cases never die. Yes, you heard me. Just another good reason to come to Darden, as if you, prospective students out there, already didn’t have enough.

This is the story. I was the Second Year networking night yesterday, talking to Laurie, a representative of GE, with my good friends Nidhi and Sukanya (how’s your ‘fear of Paige’?). Laurie is a Darden grad, too. She told us about her work at GE, and about the value of business education. At one point she mentions how much going through cases during b-school has helped her become a ‘serial problem solver’ in her profession. Then she paused and said: ‘… like some time ago, I had to work on sizing a sales force, and I looked at one of my old Darden binders…’.

A look of dismay on our three faces, I could see what Sukanya and Nidhi were thinking: ‘Damn it, she’s talking about that ZS Associates case! It wasn’t completely useless after all….’.

So it may appear that after you have discussed cases in learning team, then again in class, then reviewed them for exams, you can bury them forever (especially some cases), but you can never be sure. ZS Associates may come back to hunt you!

How cases are born

2009-09-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking about applying to Darden then you are a believer in the Case Method®. If you are a First Year, you’re ‘in the process’ and you also ‘trust the process’: cases are on your bed when you wake up (yes, they have multiple uses including sleeping aid) and on your table when you eat (far from recommended). Some bring cases at the gym, and the most technological students, e.g. our lucky Section D class of 2011, have the Kindle read the case for them while they are driving in their cars (again, far from recommended). If you are a Second Year, you’re a serial case reader: you’ve gone through hundreds of cases already and, as Depeche Mode would put it (in a more rhythmical manner), you just can’t get enough.
Since I worked as a research assistant over the summer, I thought I’d give you an insight into how cases are born. (Had you told me a year ago that I would get excited about case writing, I would have told you, in a slight Italian accent, to sod off).

The conception. So this is how it works. Every year the faculty writes a number of new cases, sometimes about a company they’re excited about and think represent a good class discussion; sometimes the goal is to replace an existing case that is outdated or no more interesting. This summer we replaced a finance case about cost of capital. In that specific class you are given a technical note about how to calculate cost of capital and at the same time you read a case about a company to which you apply the concepts learned in the tech note. Pretty straightforward, but a few things can make case more compelling: an interesting company, one that students may want to read about or work for, or a sector in the spotlight. For example, we considered solar energy companies. The faculty is looking for ways to add a twist, a particular circumstance that affects the company and that allows the discussion to focus, beyond the mechanics of calculations, on how assumptions influence results. In the WACC (weighted average cost of capital) case we tried to look at companies that had undergone changes affecting the cost of capital (changes in the stock price, credit rating and so forth).

The birth. There’s a lot more to a case than meets the eye, especially when you think that companies and stories are completely real, because you have to find reliable, updated and interesting data. Darden has a great variety of resources, including incredibly skilled and nice librarians, who can help you nimbly navigate through the gianormous amount of databases and publications. My finance research entailed finding a set of similar companies (comparables) and performing on those the same type of analysis as the one on the chosen company.
Generally one also wants to give a general overview of the industry. In HBS cases the term overview has found new meaning as the description of an industry can last a good four-five pages, with the history dating back to the ancient Romans, and factoring in the tiny Harvard font. At Darden we usually keep it shorter, and I hear it’s because of the largest number of cases our students actually have to read. The idea of the overview is to give a sense of the relative importance of a company in a sector and in an economy, and the competitive forces into play.
Now, I don’t want to brag nor whine but when I spent 50+ hours on a 2-page case + exhibits I got a sense of the amount of research that goes into writing a single case, even a ‘small’ one.
I also co-authored a joint finance and operations case about Carded Graphics, a smaller private company based in Staunton, Va. We visited the shop and met with the executive team, which was great. Carded Graphics is a folding carton company that recently purchased a new state of the art printing machine, the ‘Heidelberg Speedmaster’, the only one of its kind in North American, and that is planning another big equipment purchase. Believe me I’m not your average geek, but I took several pictures of the Speedmaster and I generally was amazed at the quality of operations and the quality of information management was willing to share with us.
I think the birth technically happens when the faculty decides to adopt a case and use it for a class discussion (if you’re a faculty remember: adopt a case, you can make his and your life better).

Maturity and death. The heyday of a case’s life is being picked up from the packet, read, commented in a learning team and discussed in class. The case may be taken into consideration again during pre-exam reviews but it will inevitably be put in a corner. With some luck, it could be used in the following years: cases may have a shelf life of up to 15 years. Lastly, our Darden case collection is pretty good and several other schools use it, hence and I am sure that each case secretly hopes for a long shelf life in a variety of geographies.

Case writing is a nice experience you can try in your second year, as a research elective. It’s also a great way of getting to know the faculty and deepen you knowledge on a company or industry. (Plus, my mum thinks it’s pretty cool to be published, but that’s another story…)

Sitting at that same spot

2009-05-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

First of all, apologies for not writing for so long. I guess the bloggers recognition meeting at the Dean’s house next Monday, as well as some nasty looks from Christof, our current bloggers leader (just joking Christof! but you can be convincing) forced me to restart writing again and continue sharing my Darden experience.

This morning, as part of the ‘Disorientation program’ that marks the official end of our first year of classes, I sat at the same spot I sat through the First Quarter. I vividly remember my first day in class and how I thought, as we began discussing our very first marketing case about Starbucks, ‘how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-get-through-this’. Everybody around me seems smart, smarter that I did. Professors spoke a new language, not so much English, which clearly is not my native language. They spoke the language of business, talked about companies I had never heard of, imagine having an opinion about their business! They made jokes I did not get. My classmates were eager to participate, people (some other people, not me, thank god) were being cruelly cold called and kept on the hook for what seemed like long hours. The weeks were such a blow to my self-confidence!

Today Professor Spekman asked about our impressions of the first days and a classmate a dear friend, Sukanya, said ‘everybody in this class looked extremely tall’. Or maybe, I thought, we were fighting the impression of feeling small(er)…

And there I was again, today, sitting next to my old neighbor Jon - who I like to call my first ‘cultural mediator’, my old dear Section D mates, Professor Spekman and Davidson. It felt great. It’s not so much what I know, but the belief that I can make it in new difficult environments. That I can take the workload, the tough schedule, that I may not be the smarter kid on the block, but I can be hard working, I can build lasting relationships, make great friends and make the most out of my experiences. As I said more than once, this is so much more than just about learning the language of business.

Networking with the penguins

2009-02-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in Boston, at the European Career Fair. Since my dream internship did not materialize, I thought it a good idea to explore more options at European companies. So on a freezing Saturday I was sitting at MIT and chatting with Fabio, a classmate, and Denise, of our Career development center when Fabio said ‘Oh, Irene is a great networker’. At which I replied “Yes, put me in Antarctica, and I’ll network with the penguins…’. The truth is that after months of networking, company briefings, resumes, cover letters, online applications, job treks, interviews and thank you notes, I don’t have an internship yet. Yes, I thought it’d be easier.

I know you learn invaluable skills in the process, to market yourself, the art networking in the US, and making connections. And you may even enjoy it. Not networking per se, especially not at company events; I still consider them to be a pain. For me it often means standing with a glass of wine in my hand and listening to endless conversations about American sports, a subject I don’t yet master – and probably never will. Most of the time I am even sure which sport the people are talking about. The other great topic here is ‘where you went to college’ and I did not go to college here, so I’m left out. So some conversations with me usually revolve around my Italianess: “Oh you come from Italy? I went on honeymoon there’. And I love to talk about traveling.

I know you must ‘trust the process’, I know it’s a difficult year. I know we are all in the same boat. I hear ‘hang in there’. I know recruiting requires patience and fortitude. But still. I have a bottle of Prosecco in my fridge and I’d like to open it for the right reasons. Otherwise I’m off to Antarctica. Apparently penguins don’t discuss American sports.

Refreshing perspectives

2008-12-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

During the finance conference, Darden had the privilege of hosting two outstanding individuals, professionals and speakers, Jim Holmberg, a VP at Goldman Sachs Investment Banking, and Bill Richards, a senior executive at UBS. Their speeches have truly represented a breath of fresh air. We come from months of banking briefings and recruiting events in which on one hand we could feel the difficulty of the present moment, on the other were somewhat often presented a sugar-coated version of this financial crisis. Although different from one another, the refreshing perspectives of Bill and Jim, two high level bankers, were indeed very welcome.
Jim had been invited by the Darden Christian Fellowship to speak about the importance of his faith in his career in investment banking. After a career in the military, Jim went to Darden, graduated in 2002 and was subsequently hired at Goldman. Faith and investment banking are not things that you would easily see hand in hand. Yet Jim managed to explain in practical terms and with a humbleness that you don’t often see in bankers, how he lives his everyday life by the belief that God is the ultimate goal, and how that has helped him maintain an equilibrium in his professional as well as personal life. With his wife and six-month old daughter in the room, he said that losing his faith, more than anything else, would be the one event he would not survive. He told us he reads the Bible in the subway on the way to work instead of the Wall Street Journal and that he and his wife lead a weekly fellowship group in their home.
Jim tries to stay away from he refers to as the ‘air of entitlement’ that pervades our generation, the conviction that what we have - great opportunities, education, and jobs is a given. Instead, he reminded us that we are all extremely privileged individuals, and we should be thankful for this.
Bill Richards speech was different but equally gave us a sense of perspective. His message was that great opportunities that arise after deep crises. ‘Big fortunes will be made in the next ten years’ he said and he strongly believes that it is people like us, well educated, who will thrive in the new economic environment. We only have to maintain the drive and the spirits, the energy and the willingness to learn and try new things. We left our table with a different sense of purpose and a new energy.
So not all investment bankers are equal and Jim and Bill are a living proof of this.

Q1 exams - Swimming in a sea of 'constructive ambiguity'

2008-10-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach physical education.

(Woody Allen)

I survived my first Darden exams. To know how well I did, we’ll have to wait for another couple of weeks. But discussing whether I got that net present value right in DA (I doubt it, as I could hear the voice of Anton, my DA faculty and the usual “hmm… ok” he reserves for plain wrong answers), or nailed that capacity calculation in Operations (no doubt here: my calculations showed that my company could produce way too many printed circuits boards - and no, I still have no idea what they are), is not interesting. Nor would it be interesting to describe my accounting exam trial balance sheet (it didn’t balance, even after applying some form of ‘creative accounting’). It’s what I learned taking those exams that matters the most to me.

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, I did learn a great deal in my first quarter at Darden. I know that learning should be a predictable consequence of attending a top school, but you don’t always get the impression that you did, in fact, learn while preparing for exams. In reviewing my notes I realized that in some instances I couldn’t remember what some cases were about. Sometimes, I didn’t even remember that having read a case on that specific company. And I am not that old!

With Case Method, this phenomenon is normal. As the ‘100 Case Party’ of last Friday reminded us, we did, in fact, prepare more than a hundred cases. So one (normal person, again, not too old) loses the details, and sometimes sadly, even main points. But while I was sitting quietly in my room, making sense of the exam cases, I could actually think of a great number of ideas, solutions and (a miracle!) I was even mastering some helpful techniques, techniques that were completely foreign to me when I started Darden. Also, I became quick, much quicker. Suddenly, having had to work on hundreds of spreadsheets, the long hours, the frustration, the uneasiness were payout out for me.

Another thing that drove me crazy in some of the class discussions is the notion that there is no right or wrong solution for a case. Here we learn that there is an array of solutions, some better than others. They call it ‘constructive ambiguity’. The first time I heard that expression, I didn’t like it too much. Where I come from, there is a Right and a Wrong, and the faculty kindly lights the way. Here, faculty engages students in endless discussions and after some classes I wondered what I actually learned. The answer is that you learn how to think, and which tools can make you more effective. So while writing exams, I wasn’t too worried about getting it right, as my main priority was that of making a logical and sound reasoning. I am now swimming (still floating...) in a sea of 'constructive ambiguity'.

The last thing is the realization that this program is teaching us not only to reflect, but also to act. A sound analysis is only useful if associated to an action plan. So maybe Woody was right after all, those who can, do. And I hope that, seven quarters from now, I will be in a good position to put all this learning into practice.

I survived the first two months

2008-10-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

It’s been two months. Two months!

Picture me two and half months ago: an accomplished professional, a well-paid job, a fulfilling social life, my morning cappuccino and newspaper at Sant’Ambroeus, my Saturday stroll through high fashion shops. I was deep down in my sofa, and it was oh-so-comfortable.

And here is a picture of me now: 11 pm, still discussing cases in my learning team, my hair unkempt, a dinner based on food scavenged from company briefings (‘I think there is some Deutsche Bank cheese in the neighborhood of classroom 130’), and, icing on the cake, 25-years old (yes, the same people that at my job would do the dirty work) lecturing me on the secrets of spreadsheet building. Trust me, it is very scary.

I still have that moment every day, when I think ‘what the heck am I doing here’ and asking that question forces me to answer other questions. What have I learned? And what has helped me survive? Because if there is one thing you learn after two months in the US and at Darden, is that you have resources you didn’t even know existed.
1. At Darden, if you think it’s not important, you are probably wrong. Preparing for courses, going to company briefings, ‘office hours’ & cocktails (gosh, don’t those people have to work? Is it because Wall Street is collapsing?), being on time, getting to know more people than you ever imagined, participating to an ‘innovation challenge’, doing a new uncomfortable thing every day, all that is important, and the possibilities are endless.
2. Engagement. Darden is all about engagement, and, alas, never about quietly watching. Sounds like a clever concept for an MBA brochure: hello Case Method, goodbye boring lectures, hello learning team, goodbye individual study. But it is immensely tiring. You are always expected to prepare, collaborate, discuss, carry your point of view forward. And after a whil that expectation becomes you and you become the infectious carrier of a chronically collaborative culture.
3. Stretch, stretch, stretch. Nothing is really what is seems at first glance, here. Take your pre-conceptions and throw them out of the window, because they are useless – just another painful activity. Some examples? You can learn from a 25 year old. And that quiet classmate is probably a genius.
4. And finally, though it may seem like a contradiction, at some point, after two months of engaging, stretching, learning, you have to set your priorities. So maybe you won’t be completely prepared. Maybe you will have skipped exhibit 2 of the last Operations case. And maybe you’ll have to pass on that company cocktail (which may actually be a sensible idea: do you really want to work for a company that holds a reception at ‘Buffalo Wild Wings’?!)…

So a lot of stuff still drives me nuts but, hey, I am growing up here, I am learning and I am (almost) enjoying it.

The real me

2008-09-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today, in the middle of a busy Wednesday, I had a meeting with Darden Director of Student Affairs, Marsh Pattie. Marsh wanted to know how I was doing and wanted to discuss my application to the International Students Advisory Board, a group that will advise the Office of Student Affairs.
Marsh embodies the typical Darden staff. He is polite, smiling, professional. He speaks fondly of his work. He’s human, kind. His office is a friendly place. I’ve only been at Darden for two months, but I have seen many people like Marsh in all offices and positions. With what is left of my traditional Italian skepticism and my proverbial cynicism, I sometimes wonder - I have to wonder, is this place real?
I remember going to the Office of Student affairs of my university when I was preparing the documents of my applications to business schools. I took an hour off from work and went to Bocconi with my Vespa. Milan is not big, but it’s a 20 minutes ride. The lady greeted me with a not-so-friendly look and I said I have graduated in 2000 and needed my transcripts. She told me that, if I still have my student ID card, I can print a transcript at one of the machines. For a split second I thought of where possibly I have put that card, but then I thought ‘I paid a lot of money to this institution -money that financed a huge and ugly expansion project’, so I told her that I didn’t have the card. She printed the transcripts and it took thirty seconds. I was pissed, but I wasn’t surprised.
It’s not so much that service is always terrible in Italy, it is that we are used to terrible service. So when someone is actually professional and nice, especially in public or semi-public offices, we are surprised, it’s a big deal!
And here I am, at Darden still amazed, every day. One could say that business school is expensive and that there is competition among schools, that competition is on service, as well as on a number of other elements, but my university a home is expensive and has to be competitive. No, the comparison simply does not hold. The mentality, the expectations are different. We don’t expect good service and we certainly don’t expect kindness. And in many ways it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Marsh enquires about my time at Darden. He wants to know about the Diary Project. About ways to improve the international orientation. About culture shock. About what it is like to adapt to a new life in Charlottesville. About academics. We discuss the grading system, class participation, the involvement of the faculty in all activities (including softball). I realize that, although everything is not perfect at Darden, and life can be tough here, every new sentence I make expresses my surprise and appreciation.
What has happened to the real me? The me that would be suspicious when someone is overly nice (‘hidden agenda syndrome’), the me that, as many of my fellow educated countrymen, thought (or thinks?) that clever people are at least a little cynical, a little distrusting of their institutions?
Shouldn’t culture shock prevent this, making me hate the changes, even the good ones, building my wall? Scary enough, Darden has changed me, already, and there is nothing I can do.