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Diary of an MBA

Date: 19 Apr 2010

Published: The Sunday Times

Author: Siobhan O'Dowd

Management Accounting is not going to be one of my core competencies. Within the first ten minutes of the first class there was a moment so beautiful that it could not have been planned. Our lecturer was explaining the component parts of financial documents - balance sheets, cash flow, income statement and so on - and was making a point on expenses. He was prompting us for an answer, the question: “What do you expect in return when you work hard?”.  The usual answers were coming through about remunereration.  He asked what would you expect on top of salary when you work really hard, and I put my hand up and innocently suggested “job satisfaction and support?”.He looked at me like I had grown another head, and said “wrong class” while the other students fell about the place laughing. The right answer was a bonus. If you didn’t laugh you’d cry - or at least wonder what the hell you were doing there. I look about as natural wielding a calculator as a body builder icing cup cakes. Luckily my class are a nice bunch who tend to kick me awake when nodding off, prompt answers when I’m put on the spot, and take notes for me from the workshop on how to use the library (it was the same night as the Electric Picnic launch).

It's no easier at the office of Pod, the music promotion company where I work.  On a day like the one on which I started this column, work is one drama after another. I was at my desk from 7.30am and left it only to attend a lunch for class reps.  I was hoping that nobody in Roly's Bistro in Ballsbridge noticed the frantic tapping on the Blackberry under the table and praying that nobody at work noticed I’d left the office at all.

Much later, after another five hours at work, I tucked into dinner: packet of chocolate biscuits. I started this column in between waiting for artwork for a new event to come in from the designer and an emergency evening study group. The study group is for an operations management presentation on Commerce Bank that we had to do the next night in class.  By 10pm, tea is bypassed in favour of wine.

Either the summary comments on the slide are pure genius, or this group is certifiably insane as a consequence of sleep deprivation and over exposure to calculators. Describing a bank’s Operations as “If Carlsberg made banks” is probably safe enough, but describing the corporation’s control as “The Spanx of banks” might have been taking it a little too far. Cut to 11.50pm, I had just in the door, and by way of welcome home, the dog gives me a look of reproach and refused to get out of his bed, which pretty much tops it all off. The joys.

To be fair though, the dog and I had plenty of bonding over the Easter weekend with a potter around Bushy Park on Friday, a road trip to the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta in Trim on Saturday, and a run on Sandymount Strand on Sunday. Friday and Saturday were also my days for setting up the work-but-not-really meetings that can't take place during office hours. With the MBA,  I have to tread  a very fine line. Leaving the office early two evenings a week is pushing it as is, without having it encroach on work time on other days.  So I try and keep it separate. There can be crossovers however. 

On Good Friday, I had a really interesting meeting with Colin Lewis, Head of Marketing at CityJet and an MBA Alumnus of UCD Smurfit School.  Our chat about potential parallels between marketing an airline and a music festival gave great food for thought. Colin also recommended a book by Timothy Ferris called The 4-Hour Workweek. I’m half way through, and not entirely convinced I’m in a position to “outsource my life” at present, but there are some really interesting concepts. I particularly like “the new rich” who are "seperated by goals representing distinct priorities and life philosophies”.  I can also understand the concept of  “the freedom multiplier" whereby "money is multiplied in practical value depending on the numbers of Ws you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it”.  

Speaking of what you do and when you do it, this semester we have operations management and management accounting. Four weeks, eight nights, sixteen classes, umpteen study groups, five assignments and one exam between now and the summer. It will be an endurance test.

I get operations management. Or I kind of get. I like having systems and processes.  Having been a dedicated fan of the golden arches for many years, I understand the fast food operational process framework and McDonalds analogies perfectly.  I too thought it was a mistake for Burger King to veer from its core competencies and offer a bespoke burger service, I just couldn’t have pinned it down as being an operational mismanagement.  Management accounting is a different matter entirely.  Still, I can’t quite believe I’m almost half way there. In the words of Bon Jovi, living on a prayer…

Siobhan O'Dowd is a student on the Executive MBA at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.