It is delightful to see everybody coming back with great smiles and more energies after the holidays. Yes, more energy is indeed called for to survive the heavy loading of Term 2. We have about 180 pages to read each day, let alone numerous cases and group projects. Basically our daily activities are studying, doing teamwork in workgroup, eating, reading and sleeping (hopefully for 5 hours a day!) nothing else. Some of us manage to do some sports like swimming and playing basketball every Friday after school. It is cool!
What’s the strategy of surviving this term? Division of labor. As no one can finish all the assignments, it really matters how well your workgroup works together to get things done in an efficient manner. Most groups divide 8 people into 2 subgroups with different combinations of functional experience and industry focus. Then one subgroup comes up with a draft and have the other subgroup comments on it.
I really love my workgroup. It is the most culturally-diversed team I have ever worked with. Our team members come from (see photo, from top left to right) Russia, America, Lithuania, Hong Kong, Italy, Argentina, Columbia and Portugal. We had a fanstatic team building workshop in mid-Nov in basketball games. There is an on-going, structured assessment program we give 360 degrees comments to each other from term to term. This provides invaluable insights into our Personal Development Plan for two main areas of leverage: 1. Analytical skills, decision making skills, 2. Interpersonal & practical skills: persuasion, cooperation & communication.
I am really looking forward to enhance a great deal of both core business skills & soft skills in this term.