“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”- Henry Ford.
The International Consulting Project is a very good opportunity to apply our learnings from the leadership stream to become a high performing team. The mix of our four backgrounds – Technology, Global Retail, Accounting and Oil & Gas – is what makes us stronger.
We started the ICP two weeks ago and I did not expect how difficult it would be.
- I think that the first challenge is the timing, because in October, we also have to organize our agenda around interviews and job-search, with the additional stress coming from the pandemic crisis this year.
- The second challenge is the client expectation, because our client is paying for a consulting service, so we must deliver high-quality, professional work.
- Finally, the last challenge is the team dynamics, because we have to adapt to our different backgrounds, ways of working, and motivations.
Mrunmoy (Indian), Rui (Chinese), Fayçal (French/Moroccan), Aditi (Indian)
Our client is a Swiss company, and we are working directly with the CEO and the executive team. We are lucky to have two faculty, Professor Dominique Turpin and Professor David Bach to guide us and give us a critical opinion on the quality of our work. The goal of our ICP is to provide an international go-to-market strategy because our client wants to expand its services worldwide.
The first week was about the industry analysis. After a kick-off meeting, we divided the work amongst ourselves to look for insightful data that could help our client better assess its international strategy. The quality of the work does not depend only on the quality of the data – no excuses for that because we have access to the amazing data center on the IMD campus – but on the quality of the messages we deliver as a team. That’s why, we strive to meet as often as possible on campus and on zoom to debate, argue and finally converge on the message we want to present. We still have five weeks to go and here is a list of challenges we will have to overcome: interviewing our client’s employees remotely, investigating our client’s competitors, convincing our faculty directors of the decided strategy, and most importantly supporting each other throughout the whole project.
I think the ICP is one of the most important, if challenging, exercises of the MBA Program, because it is the right moment to use what we have learned throughout the year. I am convinced that it will be fine because my team sticks together.
