IMD MBA Blogs : MBA Blog class of 2013

The Blog Team

Natalia Filchakova
A passionate learner and speaker of five languages, I was raised in Moscow, helped cities become more sustainable, worked in Germany and Canada, and set up an own strategy consulting business in Switzerland. Now I’m excited to be at IMD to pursue my passion for excellence. Join the ride!

Vikas Menon
Indian by heritage, I grew up in Dubai and later ventured out to the USA for 8 years. Along the way I translated my passion to work with people into a sales career in High-Tech. Join me on this global IMD adventure of discovery, enrichment and excitement!

Hammad Hussain
I grew up in Abu Dhabi but moved to Karachi, followed by London to grow further. Most of my 11 years career, I've been learning to improve processes in Oil-and-Gas industry, but I’m here to learn more (about myself), and would like to share what I learn, with you.

Other Blogs

The life of a CEO

Modi, Aman Calendar

Friday, 31 Aug 2012 11:09 Comments

1 Comment

As you know, we are in the middle of our third leadership experiential. As part of one of the exercises today, I got to experience the life of a CEO.

Let me warn you, this post is going to be rather incomplete and might leave you hanging on a bit, because I’m yet to make complete sense of it myself.

In our task today, we had to work along with 4 other study groups, making a mega team. We could send five briefing leaders, and we chose to send one briefing leader from each of the five teams in our “universe.” I should mention that this task was considerably easier for us than for other teams, as other universes had six teams, not five.

So, somehow my team chose me, and then when five of us came back after the briefing, again, somehow, I became the CEO of the team. From there on, it was an interesting journey.

I have to state here that our team won, based on our performance in achieving the assigned task. But as the CEO, what I felt is something I have never felt before.

I felt pressure like never before. I was totally overwhelmed in between the confusion and the chaos. I felt out of my depth so many times. I felt like I was being pulled in several directions; it was as if I didn’t know what was going on and what my team was working on. At times, I saw people who were disengaged, and wanted to go and talk to them, but I felt I was always “fire fighting” to go and do that.

It was so intense that at times, I felt like escaping, like running away and curling up into a ball and hiding in a corner where no one could find me. But I couldn’t do that – I felt an equally intense sense of responsibility towards “my people.”

I don’t know what the entire situation represented. Honestly, I’m yet to make sense of it all – what I did, why I did it and what impact did it have on the people around me.

All I can say for now is that it was an amazing, intense experience, which was like nothing I have experienced before. It will take me some time to reflect and explore, but I promise you that the day I know a bit better, I will write more about it.

Aman