The AIM Blogger

The elective terms of Cohorts 2 & 3 begins today and this is one of the rare moments that the terms of two MBA classes coincide. This development brings the total students for this elective term to 157, which is quite high (at least in recent years). Add to that the fact that MBA students have the option to take extra electives and the Action Consultancy (AC), then that means that there will be more students per class. During our time, each class averaged around 20-25 per class. Now it's around 40 per class. Also, this is the first elective term that the class I'm co-teaching is offered to the MBA's. Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics has 42 MBA student registrations and I'm looking forward to handling my class sessions. The faculty for the class (Prof. Ricky Lim, Jayvee Fernandez, Anton Diaz, Prof. Richard Cruz, Edwin Soriano, and I) have lots of exciting ideas and plans for the class. :)

Just a quick one: I've realized one thing from one of my mentors in AIM, Prof. Jun "Junbo" Borromeo, said in one of our classes. He shared before that a lot of his past MBA students before shared that they appreciate his Human Behavior in Organization (HBO) class after they themselves joined an organization after graduation. Why? Because the very first issues they face is HBO-related issues. (In other words, people problems). That's why I'm submitting the concept of Junbo's Law: The very first problem an MBA graduate will face after joining an organization or starting a new job  is HBO-related. Junbo's Law... it has a nice ring to it. What do you think?

Six months after we graduated as the very first 16-month MBA class at the Asian Institute of Management , folks who are here in Manila had a small reunion. We did have a reunion of sorts last February in our classmate Michelle's wedding, but this get together was really organized to reconnect with good friends. Seventeen of us met up in the new Chili's restaurant in Greenbelt 5 and it was a the first time a group that big got together. For most of us, it was the first time seeing each other again since we all got our diplomas . So how's the very first 16-month cohort so far? Most of us either have have jobs already, involved in the family business, or still in the final stages of securing a job. (At the slow rate the global economy's turning a corner, it's not surprising.) Professional stress has replaced the rigors of reading cases and battling for CP (class participation), but the friendships have not changed at all. Significant others of some of our classma...

If you ask me, MBA's have gotten a lot of flak in the last decade because of the messy situation the business world is in. From the Enron Scandal  to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis , a lot of the blame is being passed on the MBA-trained financial managers that turned their backs on their ethical and social responsibilities. This now raises a question that probably been asked countless times when the aforementioned financial and corporate scandals broke: Are MBA programs too focused on the bottom line, on the numbers, and on the final results that they have lost sight of the proverbial "Big Picture?" While we at the Asian Institute of Management have a healthy amount of courses on ethics and social enterprises, I personally think that there could still ways to have a deeper appreciation and awareness to the manager's social responsibility. (To be continued...)

My CAN groupmate Cheska Herrera posted a scrapbook she made about her AIM life and it is so impressive. She documented her Asian Institute of Managemement MBA journey with photos, stickers, and other colorful scrapbooking materials and it's just so awesome. Here are some of the photos of the scrapbook: You have to see scrapbook in its entirety (or at least the photos of it) to really appreciate what Cheska has done. You can check out the photos of the layouts in her Multipy site . Well done Ches! :D

Two Indonesian MBA students from Cohort 2 has made the AIM community proud! Oni Brotoseno and Nurkholis Majid prevailed over other teams in a case competition held in HEC in Paris, France. Both Oni and Nurkholis are exchange students in the European business school. To be honest, I'm really not surprised that AIM students excel in these types of competitions because MBAs here are practically inundated with cases and have to analyze them insightfully almost all the time. I'm sure both of them bested the competition thanks to the brand of education AIM provides. :D Congratulations to Oni and Nurkholis of MBA Cohort 2, you are continuing proof that AIM students are truly world class. Now, if students could only get past the WACs easily... :P

If you have been following this blog, you may have noticed that the blog posts have been coming few and far between since December 2008. What's the significance of that date? That was the time when the very first class of 16-month MBA's from the Asian Institute of Management , our class, graduated and earned its stripes. The AIM Blogger has always been about the MBA student's life at AIM-- I said before that as long as there are MBA students who are struggling and learning, The AIM Blogger will have a reason to exist. After my graduation, the theme of this blog has been my learnings from the transition from a student to becoming a part-time member of the faculty (I've been tabbed to create and handle the Internet Marketing classes with other faculty in AIM.) That experience has been enriching, but not as colorful as my MBA student days where it was really like a sitcom, a telenovela, and a sci-fi movie rolled into one. (Or as one AIM student once said, it's...

The spread of influenza A (H1N1) as a pandemic has become a cause of alarm for academic institutions, since the risk of transmission is high and hard to keep track of. This is also particularly and area of concern for the Asian Institute of Management , since it's an international school-- people form different countries (even countries that have high incidence of  influenza A (H1N1) come and go here. W. SyCip Graduate School of Business Dean Victoria Licuanan recently sent the AIM community a message to be vigilant in reporting and following the government-recommended preventive measures to keep the campus safe for study and work. She also shared that AIM has developed a contingency plan to address the scenario where there becomes a local outbreak of the influenza A (H1N1) in the community. My advice to the AIM folks is to keep healthy & maintain good hygiene, use the sanitizers scattered all through out the campus, and be wary of flu-like symptoms of ...

During AIM Previews (sort of like an open-house events to prospective AIM Students), one of the most common questions is "Do I really need two years worth of work experience?" The answer there is a resounding "Yes!" Experience is worth a LOT here at the Asian Institute of Management . This may be attributed to the Case Method the institute uses as its teaching methodology. In the case method, in my opinion, insights are very important and case discussions are enriched by the student's own insights learned from work. Apart from putting one's self in the shoes of the protagonists in the case, the student can compare and contrast his/her experiences. This will lead to either acceptance of the point being brought about the case or a criticism of that point based on one's experience. This really makes the whole learning experience a rich one. (Well, maybe except in Financial Management, if you ask me :P) This also applies outside of the classroom, par...

Still on my reflections after the " Business Leadership for Emerging Futures " I took last week, one of the most insightful things I picked up came from Prof. Sonny Coloma. Here it is: Don't ask "Why?" It doesn't make sense at first but the rationale is that being a leader today means having a great sense of almost everything surrounding him/her, and one of the skills that will facilitate that is asking the right questions. According to Prof. Coloma, the best questions to ask are open-ended & non-judgmental questions. Open-ended questions are questions that encourage objectivity and comprehensive responses. An example of an open-ended question is "What do you think about about the MBA program?" instead of "Why is the MBA program good or bad?" Non-judgmental questions are ones that don't put any opinion or pointed conclusions. An example would be asking "What events led to this outcome?" rather than "Why di...