I've learned a lot in the last three days at Tanaka Business School. Our mini-mini-mini-mini MBA is actually rather interesting.
Thursday was all about strategy - lots of chatter about vision and missions and objectives and internal analysis and external analysis and resources and capabilities and core competencies and gaining a competitive advantage. After 5 hours of intense lecturing and applying the theory to an education case study I am still confused by a lot of it. Nevertheless I got 100% in the multiple-choice test (perhaps evidence that certain assessment strategies aren't always that useful).
Friday was all about marketing. More jargon again. This time it was about creating a marketing strategy based on segmentation, targeting and positioning. There were the three Cs and the four Ps and various other random words here and there. Again a steep learning curve but I found the education case study today a lot easier to get my teeth into. I think this was because I was still enjoying the positive reception my PitPads had received.
Yes, that's right, the PitPads are back. We had to create a marketing strategy for a product and I managed to persuade my group to use PitPads. Lots of excellent marketing ideas and possibilities for the product led me to thinking that perhaps there's hope for the idea after all. However, this has rapidly been dashed since I got home and found out that another name for what I thought was my unique idea is "dress shields", which lots of companies seem to already make. Bugger.
Saturday was all about Finance. A bit of a cheat for me really since it was all about balance sheets, P&Ls, and cash flow statements - stuff I've done at Deloitte already. Very funny lecturer, who complained about his wife's spending habits. When trying to persuade him to buy her a £600 Gucci bag, apparently she said to him that it was "very strong". "So are two Tesco carrier bags put together. And they're free," was his reply. Anyway, enjoyed that quite a lot, and also the afternoon case study on trying to sort out the budget deficit for a fictional school. It was good to see the kinds of ways schools make and spend their money, and how teachers are such a huge expense. Good thing TF is out there providing all these cheap teachers!
All in all, Tanaka was really useful and engaging, at least for me anyway. Shame I don't have thirty grand to spare - an MBA could have been the way forward!
Tomorrow I start my three week summer project with Business in the Community. Just when I was getting used to a holiday!
Thursday was all about strategy - lots of chatter about vision and missions and objectives and internal analysis and external analysis and resources and capabilities and core competencies and gaining a competitive advantage. After 5 hours of intense lecturing and applying the theory to an education case study I am still confused by a lot of it. Nevertheless I got 100% in the multiple-choice test (perhaps evidence that certain assessment strategies aren't always that useful).
Friday was all about marketing. More jargon again. This time it was about creating a marketing strategy based on segmentation, targeting and positioning. There were the three Cs and the four Ps and various other random words here and there. Again a steep learning curve but I found the education case study today a lot easier to get my teeth into. I think this was because I was still enjoying the positive reception my PitPads had received.
Yes, that's right, the PitPads are back. We had to create a marketing strategy for a product and I managed to persuade my group to use PitPads. Lots of excellent marketing ideas and possibilities for the product led me to thinking that perhaps there's hope for the idea after all. However, this has rapidly been dashed since I got home and found out that another name for what I thought was my unique idea is "dress shields", which lots of companies seem to already make. Bugger.
Saturday was all about Finance. A bit of a cheat for me really since it was all about balance sheets, P&Ls, and cash flow statements - stuff I've done at Deloitte already. Very funny lecturer, who complained about his wife's spending habits. When trying to persuade him to buy her a £600 Gucci bag, apparently she said to him that it was "very strong". "So are two Tesco carrier bags put together. And they're free," was his reply. Anyway, enjoyed that quite a lot, and also the afternoon case study on trying to sort out the budget deficit for a fictional school. It was good to see the kinds of ways schools make and spend their money, and how teachers are such a huge expense. Good thing TF is out there providing all these cheap teachers!
All in all, Tanaka was really useful and engaging, at least for me anyway. Shame I don't have thirty grand to spare - an MBA could have been the way forward!
Tomorrow I start my three week summer project with Business in the Community. Just when I was getting used to a holiday!
