The AIM Blogger

It's been a while since my last update, but I'd like to plug my book: Did You Read The Case? 16 Stories on How to Get Into the Asian Institute of Management and Survive the Case Method MBA . The book is exclusively available at the Amazon Kindle store and priced at $0.99 if you're in the US, and $2.99 if you're in the Philippines. Why the price difference? Well, we'll have to thank Philippine tax laws for that. In any case, the book is a project that stemmed from my MBA days at the Asian Institute of Management up to early this year. With the e-book boom, distributing the book electronically would be the practical way to go. As for the book contents, It's intended for aspiring MBA students who want to get into AIM and current MBA students who are struggling to deal with the rigors of the program.The main topics of the book include getting admitted , starting the classes , dealing with pressure , grappling with grades , and rising above the challeng...

1030 was the time that we ended our learning team meeting last night. Slowly but surely, we are getting into that pace wherein we now spend less time working with our assignments as a group. I'm not really sure if it is an improvement in time-efficiency, or some other productivity thing, but from what I can initially observe is that people are working faster when they know that they have a lot of work left to do for the following day of which the odds of successfully finishing them all are low. In short, once people know that it is almost an impossibility to finish everything in one night, people start going against those odds. Which comes to this entry I'm writing here. It's about good things. About how some people and organizations, despite the odds, still strive to go about creating and contributing positive changes to our societies. Among these things that we can probably brag about as authentic human beings is the recognition of one of the Philippine's own, ...

If you've noticed that I haven't been blogging here as much I used to, you're spot on. But there's a pretty good reason for that. I'm working on a free book project about my experiences in studying and teaching at the Asian Institute of Management 's MBA program. The free book is called " Did You Read The Case? - 25 Tips on How to Survive the Case Method MBA and the Asian Institute of Management " The book is meant to be a pocket guide to folks who are interested in taking the MBA at AIM and a source of inspiration to MBA students who are cursing the high heavens during their Financial Management exams. Here's a draft of the cover: The book is still in its early stages and I've gotten Prof. Ricky Lim to write the foreword. Included in the book are tips on how to get admitted into the MBA program, how to make the perfect class participation (CP), and how to work with Filipinos and Indians without going crazy. But I promise it will be ...

I was reading news about the NBA when I read about an issue about Allen Iverson of the Memphis Grizzlies. For a good portion of the decade, Iverson was the leading scorer the team he played in. He was a gutsy player who played with much heart and even won the league's Most Valuable Player award once. He was admired of his style of play that defined the play of his team. However, when age started to rob Iverson of his athleticism, he was expected to take on a reserve role and play less time to give his body more rest. At the same time, the less playing time meant that his younger teammates would get more exposure and experience playing at a high level. Iverson resented his new role to the team. When he was not leading the team's efforts, he was a distraction to the team and disrupted the flow of the game. But when he was given the chance to start when another player was injured, he excelled and led the team like he used to. This behavior from Iverson led him to be traded...

It makes me feel grateful, to be writing this, after the worst storm hit the metro. Last Saturday was depressing. If anyone stayed online for extended periods of time, the neverending calls for help or the announcements of villages and household getting completely submerged by the floods will eventually take its toll on someone. Add to that the knowledge that some former colleagues are spending their weekend stuck on rooftops, seeking shelter in schools and desperately waiting for supplies of food and fresh water that might not come. I believe the internet is already swamped with stories and pictures and videos of this incident. But more important than posting and talking about that is actually doing something about it. I guess the first problem that all of us face, is the sense that we are not important enough or that we can't do anything. But if we really think and ask that question from ourselves, we know we can always do something, no matter how small. This is one of the ...

For the past few days of meetings and classes, I learned that one of the most important things that AIM students value was the rare commodity called TIME. The professors weren't kidding when they said that the pre-MBA class(with courses which would have lasted for a semester in other schools) was nothing compared to the actual MBA. I've acquired a taste for coffee of the bitter and sugary kind. I've learned to value breaks more and plan ahead when it comes to readings and meetings with my CAN groupmates. While it is a technique still far from being perfect, at least I've started to make more use of the available time at hand. You have to learn to manage the time you spend when doing case readings and meetings as a lot of Cohort 5 can attest. Even some of our professors constantly reminded us to spend just 1 hour and 30 minutes with our case discussions with the CAN group. It was an adjustment period for most of us I think, with the in-your-face realization of wha...

The Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics class I'm co-teaching had its Internet Marketing plan presentations last Monday. While MBA students at the Asian Institute of Management are used to presenting (I'm pretty sure that the average MBA will present at least 20 times in the course of the 16-month program), it was the first set of presentations where I'm on the other side of the fence, so to speak. There were 13 groups that made plans for 13 companies, but since the class was over subscribed (we initially envisioned 8 groups), 5 groups were not able to present. Too bad. As for the plans, over-all they look promising, but most of them disregard the fact that they only have one month to run their respective campaigns. The objective of the project is to have the students try out practical campaigns on real companies, but also keeping in mind the results. Another limitation is the budget. All groups were given at least PhP1,000 worth of online advertis...

Last Saturday, I had my first two sessions in the Winning Internet Marketing Strategies & Tactics elective for the MBA students.(Last term, I handled several sessions on the Online Marketing elective ). To be honest, it felt kinda weird since most everybody in class are my friends, but I think I was professional about it. The discussion was about building relationships with your visitors/customers/users online and it was a lively discussion because it had the right elements: marketing, business, and sex. (Yes, sex :P) Here are things I realized during that half-day session: Apart from the hair, I see some similarities between my class discussion style with Prof. Tommy Lopez '. Amazingly, it's easy to remember who gives good class participation and those who don't, and those who don't speak. :P More on CP, I got the practicality of Prof. Gallegos & Bolante's CP-recording methods.  There are 60 people in class and it occured to me that I've only...

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?

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...

I just finished the Business Leadership for Emerging Futures program at the Asian Institute of Management . The course is a five-day program on leadership and it focuses on emerging & contemporary frameworks for being a leader. I was attracted to the program because after the Human Behavior in Organization (HBO) class during my MBA student days, I didn't take any other class to sharpen my leadership skills. The program centers on Theory U , a framework where leadership is seen as a process of inner knowing and social innovation. The faculty in the course were Prof. Ging De Guzman, Prof. Sonny Coloma, Prof. Poch Macaranas, Prof. Ricky Lim and a guest resource person, Ms. Ana Valdes-Lim (yes, she's the same Ana Valdes-Lim from improv theater/comedy who conducted a communication workshop for us MBA students in 2007.) After taking the course, I had some new insights on being a leader: For one, I had to let go of the notion that a leader has to be perfect, someone who ha...

If you ask me what is one of the most unpredictable things in MBA life at the Asian Institute of Management , I'd say it's getting the grade for the Written Analysis of Cases  (WACs). Why? It's because of the WAC readers-- There are many variables surrounding them: Culture - WAC readers are alumni from all over the globe Experience - Alumni who gets asked to read WACs range from grizzled executives to fresh graduates Industry - Regardless of the topic of the WAC, the reader from different industries (IT, manufacturing, retail, education, etc.) will be asked to be WAC readers Attention to Detail - Some WAC readers will be happy with broad, but substantive analyses, but there will be very anal about the specifics That's why it's easy to take a defeatist stance when it comes to WAC's (e.g. "What's the point of excelling in WACs? It's like playing the lottery!"). A great deal of folks in my class hated the WACs, because it was hard and i...

For the past couple of days, I sat as a panelist in the Development of the Enterprise (DE) final project presentations of the MBA Cohort 3 students. The panel was composed of Prof. Titos Ortigas, Prof. Ning Lagman, Mr. Dickie Gonzales (one of my former DE teachers), Mr. Eric Fajardo of LearnIT (also an AIM alumnus), and myself. Personally, I found it weird because it was not too long ago when I was one of the students presenting in front of a panel, showing why our projects should work and our recommendations should be rock solid. Make no mistake, the experience of being a panelist was learning experience. I see it as one of those activities that's part of the "I'm no longer an MBA student" theme of my posts in the last few months. How were the projects? I was able to give meaningful feedback for those projects that had a website component, whether it was core or a supplementary component. My comment is that a lot of the groups relied on the internet advertising ...

The Cohort 3 folks are going to have their Action Consultancy (AC) breaks soon and they're going into it in a totally different situation. The current class of MBA students have the option to take the AC and enroll two extra electives, and will be eligible to be their final requirement, in lieu of the classic Management Research Report (MRR). (If you recall, our class had to take both the ACC and the MRR together) So, the AC now becomes a very important stage in the MBA's at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). If people used to look at it as the precursor to the more difficult, yet rewarding MRR, the AC should be viewed with more importance (most MBA students I know look to take the AC option for their final requirement). As someone who's done the AC, here's five tips I'd like to offer the current (and perhaps future) cohorts regarding the AC projects: Specialize . AC projects by nature are "deepening" in nature, that is, if you're targeti...

Credibility, whether on the physical or virtual world, is not easy to gain. It takes time, a good track record, and good relations with people. Like what I learned in Social Entrepreneurship (SE), one builds " Social Capital " as he moves around and interacts with society. In the real world, it's easy to imagine how one gains credibility-- one can get it by good character, proper actions, or deep knowledge. A simple act of honesty can help one's reputation and credibility. But when it comes to the online world, how does one gain this valuable commodity? My research brought me to a recent study entitled " Web Credibility in Online Journalism " where the researcher sought to find the link between web credibility and several factors, among them the author's identity. The study cited a work by MIT Media Lab expert Judith Donath: The writer’s identity – in particular, claims of real-world expertise or history of accurate online contributions – plays an ...

I've had my share of mistakes, but there has been one mistake that has come to bite me in the @$$. When the a certain forums site was launched a few weeks ago , I welcomed it with open arms. I saw its potential of being an avenue of intelligent and meaningful discussions among AIM stakeholders, particularly the students. A few weeks has passed and that site has accomplished none of what I thought it would do. Instead, we saw people posting crass criticisms like crazy, discussions focusing on "who's doing who," and doing very, very little to create a positive change. The moderators eventually saw the lack of responsibility in the postings of the message board, and disabled anonymous posting. The quality improved a bit, but the general atmosphere of that website still remained-- a raw environment filled with character assassinations. What was my mistake in what I've mentioned? I grossly overestimated the benefits of that forums site and underestimated its ne...

The Online Marketing mini-elective I taught with Professors Richard Cruz and Titos Ortigas had its 10th and last meeting yesterday and I had the pleasure of closing the class. The class session was brief but we recapped what we learned for the last 10 weeks and had some final tips for the groups will be competing at the Google Online Marketing Challenge . We also had a quick evaluation of the strategies of the different groups for their respective companies/clients. We rounded out the class with feedback on how the class was handled and the course content. Thankfully, the feedback of everyone in the class was generally positive. (Well, I wasn't expecting a vicious feedback a la AIM Bloggers Forum on the Professors , but you get the picture :P) I handled three sessions of the 10-session mini-elective (regular electives usually have 20 sessions), and I think it was a very good experience. I was there in almost all the 10 sessions to observe and learn as much about handling an M...

Yesterday, I was having a nice Sunday afternoon snack in Greenbelt 3 when a text message from my good friend Mae went to my inbox. Mae alerted me that someone was using my Plurk account on the AIM Library terminal and that person was not me. (For the uninitiated, Plurk is a micro-blogging tool similar to Twitter ). I got worried when another text message came saying that the person was threatening to do nasty stuff with my account. (View the transcript of their Plurk chat here ) My initial thought was that my account was hacked because I was pretty sure that I only used Plurk on my personal notebook. I hurriedly went to the AIM Library (Greenbelt 3 is a 5 minute walk to the Asian Institute of Management ) and I saw this young guy who was probably in his early 20's in front of a computer. Undoubtedly, he was using my account to post micro-blogs as I saw him from a unobstructed vantage point. I immediately called his attention and asked him to log-off using the account. He exp...

I'm reading a book now entitled " Subject to Change ," written by the folks at Adaptive Path . The book is about putting the focus on the experience and systems of interaction a customer has with a product or service. So far, I've picked up nice insights such as the importance of context in coming up with product/service design and innovation. I like what I've read so farm, but there's one part in the book that resonated with me. In the chapter about exploring what tradeoffs you should make when you develop your "experience strategy," someone from McDonald's innovation center said this: It [the innovation center] allows us to fail fast so we don't invest in the wrong things. Well, I'm not sure if  all companies can afford to build a lab or innovation center to try our new products, but what I like is the idea of "failing fast" -- failing sooner than later so that you can adjust and adapt to your situation. I'm not sayi...