(Some of) what I learnt at INSEAD

Hello from Portugal y'all.

Classes are over, and I am back home. In the meantime, I wrote another post in the INSEAD official blog, which you can find in this link.

For the lazy ones, I also posted below a summary of (some of) what I learnt at INSEAD, during the best year of my life (so far). [By the way, I would rather have you clicking on the link because that will increase the number of clicks on my article and, therefore, make it more successful. hehe]

Let’s start with the basics. Academic wise, I learnt quite a lot. I learnt the basics of finance, accounting, macro and micro-economics, marketing and entrepreneurship. I know better than ever how to value a firm, how to assess a project, and how to relate income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement. I know how to interpret market signs, which personal investments make more sense, and the whole theories behind price discrimination, auctions, and supply and demand. I know about agency costs, wrong management decisions, and operational efficiency metrics. I know how to position a product, how to create a strong brand, and how to price it. I would certainly be more capable now to open a new business than before my MBA – too bad I am not the most creative and risk taking person in the world. I know this and more – and I learnt it only in a few months.

More important than what I learnt, was the network that I built. Even if I am still not an expert in many of the topics mentioned above, I now know better than ever who to reach out if I have any question. Moreover, I now have contacts literally around the world, in as many sectors and functions as one can imagine. And that’s not only incredibly powerful, but also something that INSEAD is especially strong at.

Because everyone knows about different topics and wants to discuss them out, I’ve had daily contact with questions I have never thought about before. I just feel that, everyday, my knowledge and curiosity grows. And, the more I know, the more I want to know. The more I read, the more I feel that I gotta keep reading. The more questions I am asked, the more questions I need to ask myself. The more I write, the deeper I want to go. It’s like a (good) vicious cycle.

What else have I learnt? I learnt about different cultures and working styles. More than any other experience, INSEAD promotes diversity, both in terms of gender, nationality and background. It taught me how to adapt to different contexts, and how to strive in different environments. It also taught me more about my working style and how I should take advantage of it while dealing with different people and styles. Also, all the travelling and relationships with different nationalities taught me ever so much about different behaviours and values across cultures. I know better than ever the similarities and discrepancies among cultures, and that’s even slightly reflected in my group of closest friends. European countries with Latin origins, Southern American countries and Middle Eastern ones are more similar than one would ever imagine.

Another major learning for me was related to the Women in Business topic. I found out that most ambitious women struggle to ensure a good work-life balance, together with a successful career. I read a few books and blog posts about it, and I even got some female friends of mine interested in creating some kind of informal group to discuss these issues and go through all this together. I wrote about it already, here.

For many people, INSEAD was a good wake-up call in what concerns to relating with other people. In general, it is crucial to maintain relationships, work on them, renounce certain things. Doing an MBA can put anyone in a bubble, and it is important to keep long relationships healthy while enjoying a new network of friends and contacts. And trust me, this is only one of the life lessons we get at INSEAD.

Last but not least, I learnt A LOT about myself – what characterises me the most, which are my main strengths and weaknesses, who I am and who I want to be in the future, what I should do to get there, what I value in other people, what I can do to help them improve, and so on.

Thank you INSEAD for so many learnings. To everyone out there, don’t even think twice if you are considering doing an MBA.

What P4 was all about

P4 was my favorite P so far. I don't think I ever reflected so much in my life. And that happened not only because of the classes I took, but also because life in Fonty is totally different.

Let's start with the Fonty living. Fontainebleau is a town Southeast of Paris, literally in the middle of the forest. It is more of a weekend getaway for wealthy Parisians than a real suburban town. Other than the best business school in the world (INSEAD), it has Le Chateau de Fontainebleau - a palace built by the French royalty -, a hospital, several schools, one street with bars, a few restaurants (including a Michelin-star one), and not much more. It has more houses than buildings. It is quite homie and cute.

I live with the rest of the Portuguese Mafia (aka my kids): Thomas Teixeira da Mota, João Jalles, Zé Viana Baptista, João Viana Baptista and Miguel Moura. We have a 3-floor house 30 minutes away from campus. I am literally the princess and the mom of the house. It's been awesome living with all of them. In fact, we started having fun from day one.

There is one or two things about the Mafia Maison that I cannot help sharing with you. The first one has to do with how we chose each other's room. The other with some rules and habits we have in place.

Our house has 5 spacious rooms and a smaller one, with a single bed. As soon as the guys arrived in Fontainebleau, which happened a week before me, a dispute not to get the small room started. João VB and me, being the calmer and nittier ones, were supposed to stay on the last floor, not only because it would be easier for us to get there as we get drunk less often, but also to avoid being waken up by the others' parties; Jalles really wanted to stay on the ground floor; and Thom, having found and booked the house himself, had the right to get the best room, on the medium floor. Before arriving in Fontainebleau, we were not sure in which floor the smaller room was located. Jalles said he could take it if, and only if, it was on the bottom floor. Guess what? It was not, and everyone refused to stay there. After discussing the issue, Thomas came up with the idea of doing an inverted auction. We set the price of the small room at €0 and checked who would be up to stay. After some time, the guys concluded that the only person willing to pay €175 for the room was Miguel (FYI: after working 3 years in Switzerland, he is probably the richest one too, haha). Just to give you some context, the rent of the other rooms was ~€650. When I arrived, I checked the small room, and decided to bid €175 for it too. I promise it is not that bad at all. It is as big as my room in Berkeley, where I survived for 10 months! After some hours of negotiations, I got the room for €275, and can proudly announce that with this will save €1500 until the end of the MBA. A second dispute started when they realized they had to move someone to the upper floor and no one wanted to. After another good hour of discussions, Thomas ended up offering to move there if he paid less €100 than the others. They accepted the deal. Jalles keeps complaining about living with 5 consultants in the house. He thinks that we overthink everything in life. Poor Jallito!

Moving on to rules and habits... Our house has, at least, a Portuguese meal per week. All of us brought frozen food from home, and the boys bought an entire leg of smoked ham on their way to Fonty. From week one, we established "family dinners" on Tuesdays, with the six of us and three to four guests. Supposedly, guests should rotate every week, but there are one of two friends (namely Stef and Dani) who have made it to our Tuesdays dinners quite some times. To be honest, they are the closest of being part of the family among all of our INSEAD friends - Dani lived with two of us in Singy, and Stef dates João VB. Other habits include Catan evenings (fun!) and movie nights. Jalles and I are especially homey, and have had most of the dinners since we arrived in Fonty at home. Another (not so fortunate) habit is that Momma Marta is the Mom, and cleans up the kitchen almost everyday. I am a bit of a cleanliness freak and would rather do it myself than annoy the boys. To compensate, they give me rides and worry about me much more than they need to. I never felt so protected in my life - 5 bodyguards, and good ones!

What about P4 classes? Let me tell you that I was quite lucky with my choices this period. I did Brand Management, Communication and Social Media Strategy, Private Equity (PE), Management Decision Making (MDM), and the cherry on the top of the cake: Psychologic Issues in Management (PIM). I learnt tons and tons with most of them.

Brand management was a case-based class taught by the superstar Pierre Chandon, the L’Oréal Chaired Professor of Marketing, Innovation and Creativity at INSEAD. It aimed at understanding when and why consumers cared about brands, teaching a detailed approach to build a strong brand, and strategies to maximise its value. It was a fun class in many senses - the cases were interesting, the professor was entertaining (on top of being very knowledgeable), and classes were highly interactive. I don’t think marketing is really my thing, but it was quite useful to learn more about it.

Communication and Social Media Strategy was a light course on the new dynamics created among customers, brands and other stakeholders due to digital and social media. The big assignment we had for this class resulted in the (hopefully) viral video that I shared in the previous post.

PE was a very useful class too. It was incredibly well planned, and gave us a very good overview on venture capital, buyout firms, entrepreneurial startups, investment funds, and high growth corporations - i.e. the entire private equity world. It taught us the structure of the industry, its stakeholders and incentives, the way of working and thinking, the legal terms, and the most relevant trends in the recent past and going forward. About half of the classes were led by external speakers, in general quite prestigious people from the industry. Outside class, our professor organised coffee chats with all of those guest speakers, so we ended up having big exposure and straight contact with very relevant people in the private equity world. Additionally, as a group project, two Portuguese friends of mine and I decided to write a case study about Oxy Capital - a Portuguese private equity firm - and ended up having lots of fun working together with one of its partners - Gonçalo Mendes. We are quite proud of the final result, and feel quite lucky to have had this opportunity.

MDM was an interesting course on the psychology of decision making. It aimed at making us more reflective and effective decision makers, able to identify traps, decision styles, and probable decisions from others, while enhancing our intuition, reflecting on how we used to act in the past, and being mindful. After every class, we had to write half a page on the topic discussed in class, which resulted in an Individual Reflection Paper to hand in by the end of the course. Additionally, we had a very open-end group project where we had to test one of the concepts taught.

Last but definitely not least, comes PIM - my favorite class ever at INSEAD. It was a class on mindedness - the ability to attend to, reflect upon, and learn from our experience in our daily life and work. It required an incredibly reflective effort, both individually and with others. It was dynamic, interactive, and sometimes polemic, as different people have different experiences and opinions. The main assumptions behind the way PIM was taught were that managing and leading well involve an individual’s whole self, that contemporary workplaces require the ability to understand and be able to work with uncertainty and emotions, and that there are “identity workspaces” that can help us clarifying and shaping who we are. PIM made me question and reflect upon my experience, my opinions, and my definition of myself - today and in the future. It put me out of my comfort zone as it made me think and share very distinctive aspects of myself. Activities included a few business case discussions, developmental group exercises, tests, role playing, a 10-year personal profile, an a personal development reflection paper. BAM! This is what made me a better person in just 7 weeks. What also made a better person in just 7 weeks was having Sujin Jang as my PIM Professor. What an outstanding performance she had. My friend Chantal and I keep saying that we have a woman crush on her.

P5, bring it on!

Say yes to diversity

In a time in which everything seems to go against diversity, in which global politics are at heat, and in which countries are closing borders and becoming more and more racist, INSEAD promotes multiculturalism and diversity.

This video was shot in a few hours, outside INSEAD's main reception. It reflects what INSEAD truly is, and one of its main differentiating factors. I feel so lucky and proud for being part of this.

#diversityINSEAD
#diversityisINSEAD
#inseadmoments

Special thanks to Gorda for having helped Chantal, Thomas and me putting this together!