I have to be completely honest with you… I never quite bought the idea of Executive Education being able to reproduce the real world. I believed one thing definitely added to the other, but that both could not coexist.
So you can imagine that the IMD slogan “Real World. Real Learning.” was intriguing to me…
Only 2 weeks into the program and IMD already proved me wrong big time!!!
In Ralf’s Economy classes we learn the concepts and fundamentals, the theories and different approaches to any issue and then… we talk about how things really happen in the real world. No BS, real stuff! Humans, mistakes, things we cannot predict. And how to manage them in a realistic way. Refreshing! (and all of that interspersed with his German humor that cracks me up all the time)
Last week we were also divided into groups and met the Start ups we’ll be working with for the next 3 months in the Entrepreneurship stream. I was surprised with the Swiss entrepreneurship scene. There are so many cool start ups here!
We cannot say much about those projects, but I’ll tell you this: just by meeting the selected companies (15 out of 125+), I had a peek into life as we don’t know it yet for the following years. The future is being built here, and we’ll have a chance – and a duty – to make an impact on each of those companies. It doesn’t get more real world than that!
On a more personal note, I started to feel the IMD load and got a bit overwhelmed with the overlapping tasks! It sounds weird for someone who worked 14 hour days with a large team and simultaneous critical projects. But it is a different type of workload! I was surprised with how easy it is to get behind.
So, no time to lose. Breathe in, breathe out… and GO!
Have a great week everyone.
SS
