Graduate Studies Blog

NANYANG MBA

MBA Graduate Business Forum

Attendees – Sky Yang and Narendra Pingale

This was the 34th of the Graduate Business Forum (GBF) and this year it was being hosted by CUHK, Hong Kong. It was attended by GBF alumni and Presidents and VPs from MBA schools from all over the globe.

It started with a dinner on the 24th of March where we all got to know the organisers and the participating teams. The organizers and the volunteers were extremely helpful and friendly and made us feel at ease, even though they had to finish their last exams, presentations and assignments in the following days.

Format: The format is divided into 3 sections, where each day has a mix of all the 3 sections. The topic for this year’s GBF was ‘Doing Business for Good’.

Panel discussions: These included 5 industry experts from various fields who had extensive expertise in Social enterprise and things future leaders should be aware of when starting or mentoring our own social enterprise. There were 2 panel discussions, one was on the topic of including CSR in Fintech and the other was about how to help Social enterprises develop a business models and generate revenue. Both the discussions were very insightful and listening to the points of people from other colleges only added to the value of the discussion.

Talks from Global Heads: We had 2 talks from the global head of Cosco Shipping and the Head of the ESG practice of KPMG. Both stressed upon the importance of CSR (which is now transforming to ESG) and how more and more companies are including a sustainability report in their Annual Reports. Both the sessions were very insightful as well.

Best Practice Sessions: These were the best parts about the conference. We were grouped into 2 sections and the floor was left open for us to discuss how our school functions, the issues we have and best practice we might have that can be helpful to other schools.

It was great to realise all schools face more or less similar problems and there many different ways that each school chose to tackle them. We got a lot of pointers that we could use to strengthen the functioning of Exco or how students work with other departments of the college.

I am going to outline below the extract of the topics discussed and the solutions offered in brief:

Item TOPIC SCHOOL ADMIN
Question Frank Best practices of cross-collaboration between admin teams
Susan Weekly meeting with heads of Silos – discuss welfare, dispelines, parties, budgets etc. – Gets everyone on same page.
Zia Whole student society body weekly meeting
Neelam Monthly dinners with the team – 15 stduents can RSVP and meetin with Deans
Naren Learnt to take best practices from each streams, made them more consistent – learnt from each other
Navin Cohort reps raise issues
Joe All issues go through Joe, so students don’t publicly complain and cause issues with other students and staff. Discuss issues discretely.
Regular surveys throughout the year – 5 mins short surveys
Susan Surveys from schools departments, surveys also from student society regarding school departments. Pres’s then take this info to the staff body.
Stusoc prefer to send out one larger survey to improve engagement.Live response for feedback on the student society in lecture theatre. Careers coach sit in on these sessions to provide feedback on how to receive and respond to the feedback
Eric – Saint Gallens Website setup that enables people to send feedback directly. Public for all student and anonymous.
Q: Any issues with Trolls?
A: Haven’t had problems with this..
Comment May be cultural thing – some people may prefer anonymous
Rene Regular focus groups – students asked by student body – focus groups mixed up each time.
Constant feedback through whatsapp
Qualtrix and google Docs – both can be used for anonymous feedback.
TOPIC EXEC TEAM TRANSITION
Question Whats best practice
Rene Everything is documented – roles, expectations, minimum obligations. Transition meeting, several meetings to go over everything.
Frank Strategic plan developed in retreat
Eric Each exec writes a script of all the roles, which is passed down
Oral fedback
Face to face sessions
Naren All minutes made public
Fortnightly skype session
Question Frank How do you engage part-time students – 300-400 part timers, only 10% engaged?
Colin Parttime program. Completely separate to full time.
Erin 3 different part time programs – problem bringing them together
Zia Part time program interacts with full time – formed connections though shared classes
Susan Initiated appointing part-time industry club presidents (CUHK tried this but couldn’t get commitment – Zia)
Host events in the city where they can join from work

These were just 2 of the 6 main topics that were discussed and it was an amazing learning experience.

Experience:

It was a great experience to meet so many impressive people from all over the world. Making life long connections and sharing knowledge with future leaders was an enlightening experience.

Conclusion:

We would definitely recommend it for the next batch.

Academic Experience