INSEAD Kicks Off

INSEAD's December 08 promotion had their opening ceremony today. I slept poorly last night, the excitement really got to me given how long I have planned and looked forward to this.

There was a lot of admin in the morning but all very well organised. In the afternoon the Dean of the MBA Programme gave us an informal welcome session. He was a very good speaker, relaxed and fun loving and yet very precise and knowledgeable. I can see how he would also be a great economics lecturer (his subject). He shared a number of statistics about our class with us and also a very basic overview of the coming 12 months. This included things to be watchful of - such as the completely opposite sins of complacency contrasted with being too focused on grades. In keeping with the spirit of the school he highlighted the need to learn by sharing experiences and learning new things from the extremely diverse faculty and student body. Learning and achievement should be paramount, but grades secondary.

He also highlighted the incredible diversity of our class with statistics such as that we now have 30% women at INSEAD and that the there are more than 20 people in our class from each of the following countries: China, India, France, UK, Germany, USA, Canada.

Later in the day we had an official opening ceremony where other life lessons and wisdom were shared. In short -

1) Use this year to find out what you want to do next
2) Be focused and prepared in the manner in which you try to achieve it
3) Do what you love and you will do best at it.
4) True entrepreneurs are extremely passionate about what they do and are driven by the passion, not the opportunism alone. The passion allows the intensity to work as hard as needed to be successful in the face of adversity, where an opportunist without passion would give up.
5) Enjoy INSEAD, be open to the diversity of experience and perspectives and learn from it, embrace it and have fun.
6) You are not invincible - with reward there is risk, be humble and "good".

It may sound like uninspiring "common sense" stuff but it was clear that the eloquence and sense of occassion were inspiring to the 153 INSEADers and their partners.

Throughout the day I met with people from everywhere - I am struggling to remember even 50% but there were management consultants from each of Bain, BCG & McKinsey and other firms from their offices all over the world; bankers from Citigroup, Deutsche, Morgan Stanley & Macquarie; Accountants/Consultants from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst Young & KPMG; Managers or Engineers from P&G, Shell, Schlumberger, Maersk, T-Mobile, Nokia, Motorola, Singapore Airlines; Lawyers from Cleary and Ashurst; Scientists from the leading scientific research institutions; Civil Servants from India, Japan, UK, USA, World Bank and Singapore - I could go on and on and on and the list remains as awe inspiring. And these are my classmates ! I am looking forward to learning from them - in their experiences and stories lies so much....

Tomorrow is about more admin as classes only begin next week..... but I'm still excited. Thursday is an all-day session at Outward Bound - I think its where we do some good old fashioned "team bonding" in our little groups.... more fun.....

All right - more on Friday or maybe Saturday or something..... who knows.....