Electives and Beethoven

The first week of electives is halfway done and what a ride it has been. We are definitely back in "class" mode: reading cases late into the night, showing up on time to class, and throwing ourselves back into heated discussions. Well, some of us are, at least. Some, on the other hand, are checked out, arriving at class late and unprepared; I feel like only a subset of us have successfully re-engaged.

I try not to be resentful of the "slackers" but it slips out sometimes with snide remarks. Perhaps I'm the stupid one, clinging religiously to school rules and assignments while I neglect my career search. However, my intention in coming to IMD was to learn, not to "get a job." I'll be OK with continuing my career search into 2009 if it means I can focus more on the few weeks of learning opportunities we have left here.

And speaking of which, our classes have been really excellent so far. Global Strategy is taught by IMD newcomer Cyril Bouquet who will later be joined by IMD president John Wells. We have visited some interesting topics so far: how to choose the right internationalization strategy and how to build the best cross-border consensus in international M&A.

Managing Change has also been great. The first half of this course was taught by Anand Narasimhan, who used many movie clips to help illustrate techniques for creating a sense of urgency, building a guiding team, and defining an inspiring vision. Old favorite Maury Peiperl (whom we first met in Leading People in Organizations) is back now to finish up the course and focus on implementation. 

He began today's class, as he did in LPO, with a musical piece that he was able to tie into today's class objectives. I recognized it as I walked in as Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D--such a tour de force and one of my favorite classical musical works of all time.

A performance by Leonidas Kavakos with the Houston Symphony Orchestra first impressed upon me the incredible difference between classical music on CD and in the concert hall. The intensity of the piece was communicated not just by the sound waves coming from the 1692 "Falmouth" Stradivarius he plays, but also his body movements, breathing, and facial expressions. It was amazing.

Perhaps someday we too will be virtuosi of business--I'm working on it!

Leading People in Organizations

I've made it to 1971 in my American popular music journey. This year marks the first major appearances of Rod Stewart, Carole King, the Bee Gees, Al Green, Bill Withers, solo Beatles artists, and many others. It also marks Tom Jones's surprising (to me), continued popularity.

As I find lyrics distracting, I've been listening to a great deal of classical music while working. It's been mostly Beethoven so far with some other classical-era composers mixed in. It still never ceases to amaze me how Beethoven's music can take me through such a range of human emotion and mood: joy, sorrow, anger, tenderness, triumph, loss, chaos, serenity . . . Who would have thought that notes scribbled on paper by a crotchety, deaf, old German would inspire such feelings in people two hundred years later? Incredible!

Maury Peiperl is a piano buff and opens each of our Leading People in Organizations (LPO) classes with a musical passage that relates in some way to our lecture. I've identified two of the three pieces correctly so far, which isn't bad for someone whose only classical music education has been concert attendance. Credit the special women in my life for being my dates to the Symphony and for introducing me to classical music in the first place.

Whereas our Leadership class focuses on deep personal introspection, LPO is about leading and motivating teams, managing HR issues, and creating situations/environments conducive to peak group performance. Tomorrow is our first LPO session in a while. After our intense week of Industry & Company Analysis/Economics last week, I am eager to return to this softer side of our studies.