I should know better that getting into people venting off their frustrations online believing these could be serious or productive discussions online. Yet it happened to me just yesterday, believe it or not!

I find difficult to leave unchallenged rantings that I perceive to be shortsighted, unfair or too imperative. Specially if they affect me directly. So I step in, and politely challenge them, supporting my points of view. I do not want to focus on what happens when you step on people venting off their frustrations, because this is not a ranting blog, because I try to be above ranting.

So let’s focus on the positive. Here is the goal of this post: I want to thank everyone who engaged in a serious and respectful conversation with me, both those who agreed and those who challenged me with different perspectives.

And special thanks to all these people who greeted me today along the LBS corridors and said, “I agree with you, great email” or “Thanks for sending that email!” . I really appreciate the support.

Even if you feel like alone while standing up, someone is always listening!

In response to those who wondered how study teams work, I would say that they typically go through three main phases: Honeymoon period, conflict, and then norm&perform. First phase you believe the group is the best thing has happened to you. Then reality kicks in, and thanks to the conflict, there is growth opportunity and the possibility to define norms that ease coordination among members.
In our case, it was clearly like that, and now we have reached a plateau of performance, with norms about our performance and a high quality output.
All in all, it takes work, practice, involvement and some luck (in terms of having the right people in the team). I would say that, of all, luck might be one of the least important.
And how it feels to work in a good team? It is difficult to explain. It brings a great feeling of effective output, members committed to the outcome, effective coordination and excellent results.
The best way to illustrate the effective teamwork can be graphically:

Alternative youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5MLNMgpywk
As per my previous post, I am not one to give answers to essays, but this video might give you some inspiration. Or at least, 3 minutes of classical music fun!
By the way, the guys playing are available for parties: http://www.stringfever.co.uk

This is the first week without finance classes. That might explain why my mind is playing tricks on me. After a weekend stuck in airports waiting for Ryan Air flights to take off, I had time to represent the reality of flying with that company in financial terms.

As per my image, flying Ryan Air has the same payoffs as writing a call. Instead of the “option price”, the customer gets “the savings from the ticket” (compared to other airlines). Then the exercise price is the time they tell you the flight is going to take off. In this special type of options, maturity is when the plane actually takes off and price at maturity is the time that the plane takes off.

The profit? If the plane happens to take off in time, it is good. All the savings are yours (see smiling face). As the plane gets delayed, 15min, the writer of the option (the customer) is still smiling, but a little bit less enthusiastically, because he/she is wasting time.

After 30min, there is no smile in the face. We reach the break even point: “If I knew I was going to be delayed like this, I would never ever buy this ticket.” But things get worse, after 1h you get the suspicious look “Do these people own any planes?”, then anger, then despair and then desolation.

This weekend, I had a political family meeting, back in Spain. Guess what, even if the flight time is about 2h, I spent more time waiting for the planes to take off than actually flying. 5h30 stuck in airports! And every time I book with Ryan Air exactly the same thing happens. Delays are guaranteed!
It’s official: I am done and not flying with Ryan Air anymore!

Then do your homework, your research, and if you ask questions be smart and upfront:

OK WAY: Send an email, introduce yourself with a real name (smaartmbaer2009 is not a proper name) and ask directly for help and support. There is a bunch of people out there who has got my support during their applications process.

And they got support that way, mostly from cold-emailing me. I have reviewed essays, given free advice and done a couple of mock interviews. I am happy to help, although my time is extremely limited. I pass on the help I got from friends while applying.

NOT OK: Leave a comment on my blog, without a proper signature or introduction, without telling explicitly that you need help, with plenty of typos and asking questions that can be googled or are directly a verbatim copy of the application questions.

It deserves a public exposure to the post (wall) of shame:

[…] Would you pls tell me what the VCIC is about? ANy links that contain information on it?

Also, what role do you play in your study group? What reponsibilities does your role entail?
What about other memebers of your group?

Sorry for the typos, they are verbatim. And my reply:

Hi countingcrows,

Normally I am very nice with people asking questions, both in real life and online.

However,

.a. If you want info on the VCIC, have you Googled it? It comes as the 1st search result!
.b. If you need an answer to London Business School application question 3*, be upfront about it! I do not support deceiving approaches.

Good luck with the application,

Patxi

* Question 3 Please describe your experience of working in and leading teams, either in your professional or personal life. Given this experience, what role do you think you will play in your study group, and how do you intend to contribute to it?

The moral of the story: Always be polite, use Google beforehand and be nice to other people.

PS: I try hard to give a polite reply, but when people waste my time rudely it really displeases me!

My English speaking friends always find fascinating the concept of gender applied to day to day items in latin languages. Why is el coche masculine in Spanish? And then la voiture is feminine in French! I must agree with them that it is puzzling and there is no strong rationale for any choice. Actually, although my French is damn good after living one year in Paris and doing business in France for 2 years, I always struggle to remember which words use a different gender than in Spanish. There is no rule!

Given this antecedents, it strikes me the strong gender of chocolate in the UK. While for me it is just one of the four basic groups of food {animals, chocolate, fruits and vegetables}, a day-to-day item, in the UK has strong gender connotations.

Do you need proof? See how it is marketed. I am shocked at Yorkshire chocolate bars motto: Not for girls! and the logos they carry on the wrapping (see image). Even they declare that their chocolate is “not for hanbags!”.. Ok, if these statements make Yorkshire consumers feel more macho, so be it. When I saw that, I found it quite surprising, a very strange approach to marketing chocolate.

But then, I started to spot a trend. One of the school bars sells the delicious chocolate Divine (Any relationship with the Divine Miss N?). The chocolate quality is far superior to any other “candy chocolate bars” widespread available in the UK. This is actual chocolate, and within their range I favour the dark chocolate bar. But look at the image: The wrapping is clearly “girly”, with the heart replacing the V and the golden tones à la Louis Vuitton with a modern twist, and in the previous package it was even more obvious, with the heart painted in red.

I find this chocolate gender positioning surprising. Is this normal? Am I missing something about chocolate in the UK?

In any case, I am so pleased of not having doubts on my masculinity: I can walk around campus enjoying a bar of Divine and focusing on the intense pleasure of good dark chocolate. Thanks to life for not having to eat Yorkshire to keep up a “chocolate eating macho façade“; because, frankly, the taste of the “chocolate-candy bars” is plain disgusting.

Priceless blogger ego cartoon from geeky comic at http://en.tiraecol.net/modules/comic/
 
Dedicated to all my fellow London MBA bloggers, they are doing a great narrative job, a cubist approach to the realities of an MBA.
 
Keep up the intelligent, entertaining and funny writing!
 

I think this is one of the most funny parodies of the mac ad campaign.
The best line: PC “It’s all explained in those old boring spreadsheets that I like”

More here: The PC vs Mac ads return - now from the PC’s perspective!

Another useful link. I always forget how to do a sensitivity analysis with Excel. Thanks to Decision and Risk Analysis (DRA) teacher, now I will always remember that the way is using “data > table”

Useful file XLDataTablesMonochrome2001.pdf with exercises and tutorial.

By the way, the DRA teacher is good, very engaging and energetic. And he knows his way around Excel. If anyone can teach me a new Excel trick , he/she definitely knows tons of Excel.

Kudos to him!

Interesting link: The Encyclopedia of Private Equity and Venture Capital