ISSUE FOUR • June 2018
/ Student Experience
The MBA Boardroom Exercise 2018 One of the final modules of the Full-time MBA is the Boardroom Exercise, a five-week long project which aims to give students an insight to what it’s really like to be an executive director in a boardroom.
Our challenge? To work together to plan, create the necessary materials for, and run a successful 90 minute board meeting for the senior staff of Whitbread Plc. The first step was compiling our boards. We students were put into teams of five or six, and assigned the different roles that make up a typical board. I took on the role of CFO. As for my classmates, Irene Liu became our Marketing Director, Na Li assumed the role of Business Development Director, Annanth Syam Mohan was our COO and Ying Yang was appointed as CEO. To oversee our activities, each group was also assigned a Chair and two or three NonExecutive Directors who were all business professionals with some link to the Business School. The introductory three days at the beginning of the exercise gave us a clue as to the hard work that awaited us as we were introduced to the responsibilities of the Board, and what should be included in a set of board papers, as well as having gained a brief insight into the company. Our task was to devise a strategy for the future of the company Whitbread as well as provide a report on the company’s current performance, so it was particularly interesting to have a presentation by the former Financial Director of Whitbread, who gave us his own opinions on the futures of two Whitbread-owned companies: Costa and Premier Inn. The following five weeks were extremely intense as we endeavoured to learn as much about the company as possible and prepare our materials. Key to this was working together as a team, setting objectives (and sticking to them) and taking responsibility for our own progress. During this time the support from the NEDs and Chair was invaluable. We met with our advisers at least once a
Natalie Podda, Full-time MBA
week to discuss our ideas and ask for their feedback. The vast levels of knowledge and experience these successful business people possess provided us with a learning opportunity we would not have found in a text book or academic journal. Similarly, the support we received from the School’s academic staff (all of whom have extensive business experience) was also fantastic. The various preparation sessions, such as the ‘pre-board’ meeting, allowed us to reflect on our progress as well as how we were working as a team. Guidance from Alan Ross, an executive coach, helped us to evaluate our individual performances and identify opportunities to improve and overcome any issues. He also introduced us to the concept of ‘mindfulness’, and stressed the importance of setting aside time for personal reflection and relaxation in our professional lives – which is something I’m sure all of us needed by the end of the project! The culmination was a 90-minute boardroom meeting, where each member of the group had the chance to present their report or proposal to the Chair and NEDs. True to any real-life board meeting, our ideas and key points were challenged and queried throughout the meeting, forcing us to think on our feet. Our group had to tackle some rather difficult ‘curveball’ questions on more than one occasion. This experience quite possibly would have reduced some of us to tears if it had occurred five weeks earlier, but the learning and skills gained from the module enabled us to answer with confidence and professionalism. Our thorough preparation enabled us to work effectively as a team, contributing to the discussion if someone found it difficult to answer a question and recognising the individual strengths and personalities of each team member.
The MBA Boardroom Exercise has been one of the most challenging, interesting and rewarding parts of the programme, and I’m sure we will all remember it for many years to come.
