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Oksana Chikina, who hails from Uzbekistan, is an international development professional on a leave of absence from Population Services International (PSI), a U.S.-based non-governmental organization. Having spent the past 12 years living and working in 10 countries on four continents, she is spending a year as an international student attending the executive MBA program at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. This is her 10th post in a series.
It is Thursday, a day when I habitually read through the latest issue of The Economist. I have been doing this for years but the experience today is very different. Remarks in the business section bring about memories of diagrams from my macroeconomic course and my mind starts calculating effects of exchange rates on GDP and capital investments. The mental pictures look like snapshots of physics equations, and the realization that they make perfect sense is equally thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I certainly hope this will help me during the final exams.
The fourth term of my EMBA program is all about big picture concepts and all our courses help us appreciate the interconnections between global and local issues. We focus on cross-sectoral application in the courses in international business, macroeconomics, government relations and innovation strategy. Some of the concepts are counterintuitive and others test commonly accepted beliefs.
For example, when do you start preparing children for successful careers and why is early childhood development at the heart of a country's competitiveness on the global market? How do you evaluate quality and, most importantly, potential of GDP growth? What is the effect of cultural similarities or differences between countries in terms of international trade? Is a stronger Canadian dollar better for Canada or worse? Answers to these questions are quantified, calculated and analyzed in our courses in international business and macroeconomics and tie to today's newspaper headlines. It honestly feels like somebody turned a light switch on. Life will never be the same.
The sessions of the government relations course have been full of guest speakers and we get to meet Canadian politicians, lobbyists and civil servants. Being from outside Canada, I cannot help but notice a significant difference in the way Canadian bureaucrats embody the idea of public service compared with others around the world. I cannot imagine a federal or provincial minister in Indonesia, Russia or Kenya taking the time on Saturday morning to meet with students, regardless of how far on the executive ladder these students are. Canadian public servants talk about their careers, personal lives and tough issues, and they invite us "to stay in touch." This simply blows my mind.
As do the final team presentations for the course. Asked to apply the strategies and frameworks presented in the course, my classmates get extremely creative presenting the business ideas way outside their professional scope.
The innovation strategy course content is so different from everything else we had learned that it takes us a while to get used to the new pace. We are asked to learn new frameworks and then apply them to our organizations or projects. And then, once comfortable with the essence, we have to critique somebody else's application of the same framework in a completely different industry.
The nature of these assignments helped me internalize the new concepts and, most importantly, appreciate the diversity and nuances of the backgrounds of my classmates. The final team assignment was to create an innovation strategy for a company or a product. A wealth and depth of talent in the class was unleashed.
We are in the phase when the end is not only visible but is also easy to reach. With just a few weeks left, we all have an acutely deep appreciation for the journey we have made together. As tired and eager to finish as we are, this period is bittersweet. I'll only have one post left to share.