My First Days
“Wow, that’s niche!” This is the response I received several times over from nearly 90 new MBA students I met during my first week at IMD. The conversations that followed were filled with curiosity, enthusiasm, and more questions than I had good answers for.
When I came into the IMD space I was worried about fitting in. My professional background is in the rock-climbing industry. I worked for 10 years as a coach for high performance competition athletes and a product designer. I came to IMD with dreams of driving change, growth, and excellence in the communities I care for.
Climbers are an innovative bunch, characterized by dreaming of impossible feats and making them a reality.
Climbers care about impact, stewarding wild places full of natural beauty for future generations and mentoring each other in the name of community responsibility.
Climbers care about excellence, showing up to achieve improbable goals.
As I’ve learned, IMD cares about these things too.
In my new cohort at IMD, I expected to be surrounded by traditional business professionals – and haven’t been disappointed! Bankers, accountants, and general managers from all walks of life are here. I’ve also been surprised to find an impressive number of unique backgrounds, geographies, and experiences–many more unique than my own. Engineers, entrepreneurs, nationally-ranked athletes, corporate bankers, activists, life coaches, sailors, and so much more. And don’t get me started on the cultural diversity, with more national flags than I knew what to do with. I don’t think anyone expected a rock climber.
Yet, as I shook hands and met more people than I could possibly remember, I started to see the similarities: behind every CV, behind every handshake, behind every eager pair of eyes I saw a person. Curious, hopeful, and driven to excellence. Here at IMD.
Being in a room with 90 people who left their lives behind in pursuit of a dream is life-changing. And I find us united in purpose and clarity of intention. Which means we’re all somehow the same, if also impossibly different.
My first days on campus at IMD.
The First Weeks
The first weeks unfolded as the first days vanished behind us. IMD started us out with Strategic Decision Making for our first module: exciting, relevant, and sexy. Believe it or not, I think there’s a method to the IMD logistical madness. Priming 90 driven young people with the tools for complex decision-making is, well, strategic.
To start, they put us in teams. They asked us to find a solution. Oh, and they asked us to find a problem, too. And since day one of that first class in strategy, I’ve looked at everything through a lens of curiosity, skepticism, and systems thinking.
Yes, I’ve spent a good amount of time working on teams. But I’ve never been in the basement room of IMD negotiating the terms of a treasure, a quest, and a dragon with five people who speak five different languages, from five different continents. Yup, that’s IMD. Pretty cool if you ask me.
As our group navigated the uncertainty of incredibly challenging questions using what little light we each could bring to the topic, we evolved into a team. When all you have is your limited perspective, it feels like a dim flashlight casting about in the darkness. But something powerful happens when 5 people shine those dim flashlights together, in the same direction: you illuminate a path for each other.
IMD tells you they build leaders. What you don’t realize is that leaders also build each other.
When I first walked into the IMD MBA, I was nervous that my flashlight wouldn’t work. Turns out, it worked just fine. Turns out, we all had dim flashlights. And it turns out that we all were pointing them in the same direction.
Shoutout to Patrick, Leticia, Felix, and Pooja for shining the light through those first hectic weeks together!
Our First Year
One of our first guest speakers was the President and CEO of the World Economic Forum for Sustainable Development, Peter Bakkar. Peter’s presentation was scheduled to run for an hour. Yet, as the deadline came and passed, he remained with us. More than half our cohort gathered late into the evening with Peter as we searched for hope in our turbulent world.
A photo with Peter Bakkar after his presentation.
I know of only one business school on the planet that starts the MBA program with a conversation on global impact. If that doesn’t make a difference, I don’t know what does. I remember sitting on a bus after his presentation with a new IMD friend. We looked up at the Swiss mountains sprawling as far as we could see as our bus rolled on its predictable way. Snowcapped peaks crest endlessly into the distance. Just moments earlier we were sitting with Peter at IMD, hungry for answers to the surging catastrophe of climate change. As we gazed out at the mountains, the threat of climate change loomed larger and more real than ever. And in that moment we debated the answer to a simple question: can we make a difference? I don’t remember my friend’s exact answer. But I do remember the feeling it gave me: hope.
Our first year as an MBA cohort is well underway. I feel more sure now than ever that I am in the right place. And that I belong here. That I can have so many questions and so few answers. But with each passing day the path ahead is illuminated by the hopeful curiosity of my colleagues.
There’s a lot that makes IMD feel special. But if I had to point to one thing so far, it’s the people.
People who care about impact.
People who are willing to innovate amidst- and despite- a turbulent world.
People who will settle for nothing but excellence.
And at that moment, I remembered that rock climbers are not so different after all.
