One of the most exciting parts of the trip to China was our consumer field study.

We were given the challenge of exploring China’s retail industry across a number of districts. I felt like we were on a Chinese version of The Amazing Race, walking, riding taxis and the metro system to get to various locations all over Shanghai. Some groups visited farmers markets, karaoke bars, multinational franchises and Walmart China just to name a few.

This gave us the opportunity to break into our smaller teams, explore, get lost and find our way back to the hotel.  My team had the opportunity to speak to a recent undergraduate student along the way and we asked her questions to really break down barriers of preconceptions and stereotypes of Chinese people and their culture.

I think in America we sometimes overlook how many of us live in ideal magazine image of our own making. We take for granted freedoms and civil liberties, whereas in China, they don’t have the freedom to express fully ideas of creativity and innovation, and failures are not tolerated.

Last semester, when I arrived for my one-on-one meeting with Mark Gumz, President and CEO of Olympus Corporation of The Americas, I was armed with a notepad and a pen — prepared to document any business advice Mr. Gumz had for me.

However, after Mr. Gumz and I exchanged our initial introductions, it quickly became apparent that Mr. Gumz would be the one listening.  I thought, why in the world would someone as successful as Mr. Gumz want to listen to me?

Listening is arguably the most important characteristic a leader can posses.  As Mr. Gumz explained to me, his willingness to listen to others helped him become the first American-born executive officer by Olympus Corporation.  I was amazed by how much I learned from Mr. Gumz, even before he uttered a word.

After he listened to me discuss everything from my background to my future plans, Mr. Gumz finally decided to offer his advice to me.  He didn’t tell me what I should do, or how I should do it, he made suggestions based on what he learned from listening to me.  The advice wasn’t a canned response — it was tailored specifically to my interests.  During the conversation, he mentioned a book that I might enjoy reading.  As I started to write the title of the book, he told me to stop writing because he was going to mail me a copy of the book.

Honestly, I wanted to write the title of the book on my notepad, because I thought there was no way he had time to mail me, a graduate student with little influence on Olympus’ bottom line, a copy of the book.  Guess what?  The book arrived five days after our meeting, along with a personal note from Mr. Gumz.

After I received the book, I started to question my excuses for not having enough time to participate in extracurricular activities at school.  Am I busy creating financial spreadsheets and reading what seems like the entire collection of Harvard Business Cases?  Yes.  Can I learn to manage my time more effectively so that I can invest time in the activities that will truly have an impact on me? Yes.

Mr. Gumz’s position of CEO is extremely challenging and time consuming.  The fact that he took time out of his hectic schedule to spend a day at the Mason School of Business, and personally mail me a book, speaks volumes about his character and leadership.

The opportunity to meet with Mr. Gumz was an invaluable learning experience.  The faculty and staff at the Mason School of Business are not only focused on preparing our business skills in the classroom, but also dedicated to providing access to world-class business leaders.  Access to current and former business executives makes the Mason School of Business a truly unique place to learn

Our goal in China was to visit businesses across various industries in order to get a better sense of the economic environment and culture, and more specifically, to witness first-hand China’s growth as the second largest economy in world.

We visited a number of companies, including Disney English, Cargill and Ecoprogresso. Disney English was one of my favorite meetings.

This company teaches English as a second language to children using the Disney characters and stories. The first Disney learning center opened in Shanghai three years ago and the company has grown and expanded all over the country.

The Senior Vice President and Manager in charge of making this company such a success in China is a William and Mary alumnus, Andrew Sugerman. We also met another W&M alumnus working for the Center of Disease Control at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. This was a great opportunity to learn about business development strategies, emerging consumer market trends and to network with W&M alumni working around the world.

The Mason School’s “Revolutionaries Welcome” campaign is built on a set of principles I can relate to. As a 1983 BBA graduate and faithful member of the Tribe, I will always strive  to reflect its core ideals.

My particular “higher calling”  is digital technology. As the Founder of the Social Media in Organizations (SMinOrgs) Community, I’ve spent the last two years helping people understand the applications and implications of social media – beyond marketing/branding, sales, public relations and customer service.

Targeting organizational leaders who are social media rookies, for example, my Social Media Primer provides a conceptual foundation, puts Digital Era realities in perspective, and offers strategic guidance.  I’ve also written extensively about human capital management issues and legal concerns. And most recently, I’ve started addressing the need for social media expertise and the ways in which education and training can help develop that expertise.

My (somewhat revolutionary) thinking has evolved beyond social media, to focus on digital technologies more broadly, for reasons I articulate in this SMinOrgs blog post. And my interest is also broader than the technologies themselves, highlighting what I refer to as Digital Era Leadership. I have recently shared my ideas about the role of business schools in developing Digital Era leaders and the opportunities for cities, states and regions to develop into Digital Era leaders and role models.

One of the significant implications of the dialogues I’ve started on Digital Era leadership is that there is a very powerful role for academic institutions to play in helping individuals, organizations, and communities successfully navigate the revolutionary conditions in which we now find ourselves.

Though it may be the second oldest institution of higher learning in the US, William & Mary has been in the vanguard of leveraging new technologies for its own communications. It would be great to see a similar commitment manifest itself in the Mason School, not just in terms of communications and pedagogical practices, but also with respect to the curriculum in all functional areas, at all levels, and in terms of research. Ultimately, I’d love to see the establishment of a Center for Digital Era Leadership at the College or in the Mason School.

The theme of the Mason blog is “Everyone Has a Story,” but this one has yet to be written. I’d like to hear what other people think. More importantly, I’d love to know if there are others out there – students, alumni, faculty, staff – who share my enthusiasm and are willing to devote the necessary resources to turn the vision into reality. Revolutionaries Welcome…

As a Flex MBA student, one thing that attracted me to participating in the Emerging Markets China course was being able to attend a class and network with the Full-Time MBA students.

We all have different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to contribute and I was proud to be a part of a large ethnically diverse group representing the Mason School of Business abroad.

Like most people in our group, this was my first time going to China. I’ve traveled to many countries for work and leisure but China was a whole new experience. The flight to China didn’t seem like it was 15 hours long. I spent most of my time trying to learn “survival” phrases in Mandarin, getting to know everyone in the group, and chatting with strangers who were interested in William and Mary and our MBA program; more importantly, why we decided to go to China over spring break instead of somewhere warm!

When you speak with business leaders in India about their challenges today most want to talk about their challenges for the last 200 years first.  It is obviously a very rich culture and  recent history has not been kind to them.   How would Americans feel if our power was stripped for several centuries and then “granted”  back to us suddenly? The Indian people are fatalistic and forgiving.

Let me briefly reiterate what many of the business leaders we met on the EMBA international residency in India said about the beautiful, but complex Indian society. The great Indian enigma is before the British Colonial period, India operated on a feudal system where the land provided and your caste was absolute.  You did not question authority whether it be a ruler or your elders.  India skipped the industrial revolution and went straight to a global service economy.  Indian business leaders will tell you that it is difficult to innovate when you are emerging from a society where you do not question authority and you do as you are told.

At India’s premiere business school, the Indian Institute of Management, they are calling for a decade of supporting innovation to acclimate the culture to a global economy.  The problem is that India is providing world-class business outsourcing in countless verticals, including biotechnology research, software programming  and financial analysis.  They typically offer a low level of professional support — the grunt work if you will — at an attractive price to Western business.  What will happen in two or three decades when this wage arbitrage is squeezed? India must move up the value chain if they wish to sustain an economic growth rate of 8 percent.

When we visited Evalueserve in Delhi they acknowledged the value chain problem.  Their solution is an expansion effort to regions such as Eastern Europe and South America in order to put “boots on the ground.” Evalueserve understands that their clients eventually need to view their services as peer quality, and as such charge peer prices.

My first impression of India was that change is so rapid that it literally unfolds as you walk down the street.  After several days of visiting India businesses I began to wonder if India could move up the value chain.  India seems to embrace servicing global business in lieu of creating new business. Then on our final day we visited perhaps the most exciting business venture in India.

If you travel to Bombay, land of 21 million people, you will find an exponentially expanding cityscape. Towards the Northeast there is a neighborhood called Vikhroli, a hilly region of suburbs dotted with speculative business ventures.  In Vikhroli there are entrepreneurs operating out of garage-like facilities converted into commercial space.  You get off the bus and walk past one garage building office chairs, and another that’s refurbishing bicycles and scooters. If you walk up the hill a bit you come across the home office of  “Goli Vadapav No.1,”  where they have created “an ethnic snack chain offering the staple Mumbai street food vadapav in standardized, yummy, hygienic manner at economic pricing there by becoming an alternative to traditional fast food.”

The entire staff of Goli greeted us as if we were foreign dignitaries.  We walked past a few cubicles and were excitedly ushered to their boardroom where founders Venkatesh Iyer and Shivados Menon were eagerly waiting with the Goli story queued on a small computer monitor.  OK, so the boardroom was really more of a conference room meant for a 5 or 6 people and not the 25 we managed to squeeze in.  Yet the passion with which Venkatesh told the Goli story made everyone forget the tight quarters.

For the last five years they have experienced huge successes and huge setbacks and treated each of these as valuable lessons.  All of this is impressive, but their core values are what made me take notice. Please look at Goli’s Vision Statement as I think it is the most significant vision of any company I saw in India. The last statement is powerful, and I think is the true intent of the founders. The Goli founders are most concerned with creating jobs for any hard-working Indian that wants to commit to Goli.  Venkatesh and Shivados believe that by surrounding themselves with hard-working and smart individuals Goli will prosper.

Is India a country that will only service first world markets or is it destined to become an economic Superpower by 2050? I cannot provide a final assessment at this point.  My classmates and I will continue to debrief the trip until we graduate in August., but if the Goli Vadapavs of India continue to develop and entrepreneurial spirit is incubated, I believe that India will become a Superpower.  All in all, I have never learned so much in a two week period as I did on this venture.

I am grateful to Assistant Dean Prabhu Aggarwal who poured his heart into this experience.  His efforts granted us many opportunities for very candid sessions with India’s business leaders.  Prabhu is one of many fine faculty members that have made the EMBA experience exceptional.

Dean Larry Pulley reflects on Commencement Day and offers a heartfelt thanks to all new graduates.

“Thank you to our graduates for the incredibly remarkable role that you are playing in our progress, in our successes as a business school.”

The Mason School’s EMBA class of 2011 landed in Delhi, India late Wednesday night after about 24 hours of travel from Williamsburg.  Our jam-packed itinerary has provided many experiences since then that I will write about at some point. For now I will try to provide a summation of my first impression of India by using to subjects that are very well known in the US; Walmart and the Taj Mahal.

The gracious folks at Walmart India hosted us on Friday.  We met their management team which included an Indian marketing specialist, a Mexican operations specialist, and guy from Arkansas who is implementing Walmart’s private label.  They are faced with many challenges, mainly in the supply chain arena.  They tried to explain to us how difficult it was to keep fresh produce and meats stocked in a country with:  1) a nascent highway system, 2) where 40 percent of all produce is wasted, 3) and cold storage of food is a new concept.  To be honest, we had trouble conceptualizing how difficult these challenges were.  That was until we took a five hour bus ride to Agra the following day.

Agra is about 180 kilometers (110 miles) from Delhi and a similar trip from a major US city to a smaller US city would take about 2 hours, even with traffic.  Our travel time was 5 hours.  The highway system in India is sporadic at best.  There are few traffic lights and traffic laws are not enforced. There are 31 states in India so vastly different that it is really more like 31 separate countries with a loose federal government.  Anytime you take cargo from one state to another you are taxed.  So a Walmart delivery that starts in Bangalore with a load of grapes or rice might be taxed 4 times, pass through several middlemen, while 30 percent of the cargo spoils during a 4 or 5 day trip to Delhi.  It does not help that there is no such thing as an 18-wheeler in India.

Walmart does not actually have retail stores in India, but rather has entered this market through a partnership with a company called Bharti which is actually known for its cell-phone services. This was necessary because of complex regulations.  The viability of these retail stores is in doubt because of the supply chain issues.

Walmart has had success with their Indian equivalent of the Sam’s Club.  Unlike Costco and Sam’s in the US, these warehouse clubs are not available to the general public but rather only to licensed vendors.  Walmart is doing well in the wholesale market because regulations allow direct-to-store deliveries in this type of store and they can avoid middlemen.  The Indian government is under pressure from just about everyone except middlemen to loosen regulations on interstate commerce and expedite the completion of an India-wide highway system.  Most of us felt Walmart is biding their time and getting a feel for the land when this opportunity arises.

Our trip to Agra took us to India’s most famous site, the Taj Mahal.  It is more beautiful than any description I have ever heard or any picture I have ever seen.  The ironic juxtaposition of a Wonder of the World and the extreme poverty we witnessed en route was not lost on the group.  Along the streets of India trash is piled upon trash and sewers flow next to drinking water. Many homes in the countryside are thrown together with loose timber and tarps.

But what is most troubling is that wherever you go you find people sitting around as with no purpose and nowhere to go.  We were all very impressed by the Taj and glad to have seen a bit of rural India, but after an 18 hour day trip the group was exhausted and many were beginning to develop “Delhi Belly,”  including myself.  Our guide told me that there is a local saying directed towards tourist: “You should try everything in India… once.”

Andrew Ross Sorkin begins by asking the audience where they were at 2:30 a.m. on September 20th, 2008. That was the day he realized the financial crisis was much worse than he originally imagined.  Rushing home to share the news with his wife who, like many of us, was in a deep sleep – Mr. Sorkin realized he must put pen to paper and write a book about what was happening.

On Thursday April 21st, 2011, Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times writer and bestselling author of  Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves spoke to William & Mary MBAs, faculty, partners and members of the local Williamsburg community at the historic Williamsburg Inn.

Before his talk, Mr. Sorkin attended a luncheon where W&M MBAs had the chance to talk with him candidly. Our discussion about the leadership succession plans of Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett were of top interest.  Particularly because Mr. Sorkin will moderate the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder’s meeting on April 30th in the massive Qwest Center in Omaha, NE.

When asked about Mr. Buffett’s heir apparent, David L. Sokol, Mr. Sorkin admitted a number of the 35,000 shareholders who will attend the event expressed interest in discussing Mr. Buffett’s successor. Mr. Sorkin shared with us that as the moderator, he’ll ensure a discussion about Mr. Buffett’s succession plans will receive attention for at least 20 minutes during the 6-hour meeting.

During his lecture, Mr. Sorkin stood personable, poised and confident as he told us the story of an informant he met only after the book was released.  This gentleman shared with him how Mr. Timothy Geithner, then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, tasked him with forecasting what unemployment would have looked like had there not been government intervention. 24.6 percent was the figure he came up with.

Mr. Sorkin’s talk highlighted a number of additional insights including his expectation that because of apprehension on the part of lenders, consumers are avoiding debt – the primary driver of financial crises. Further, without large amounts of outstanding debt, our economy should be crisis-free for at least another seven years.

Lunch with Mr. Sorkin was another example of how my MBA experience has extended beyond the classroom. Hearing first hand from a noted expert on the reasons for, as well as the far-reaching implications of, the crisis was riveting particularly because the discussion mirrored many I’ve had with classmates. As I look to begin my post-MBA career in just a few short weeks, I can’t help but reflect on how I’ll miss classroom discussions on relevant topics like this.

But thanks to Mr. Sorkin’s continued search for the truth and commitment to keeping the public informed, I’ll never have to look very far for inspiration.

In addition to the joy of being a Mason MBA student, I have had the privilege of being active in my community. In the 2010 fall semester, I received a notice from Assistant Dean Jim Olver about available board positions at the Historic Triangle Senior Center (HTSC), here in Williamsburg.  I had been looking for an opportunity to serve my community and give my time at Mason more meaning. As someone interested in the intersection between for-profit business and non-profit organizations, I also wanted to  learn about how companies can become better corporate citizens by assisting non-profits to fulfill their missions.

Since being accepted to the board, I have had the opportunity to use much of what I learned in my classes at Mason. As a member of the board, I have had to rely on what I learned in Dr. Brad Lindsey‘s Financial Accounting class to review yearly budgets and financial statements. As secretary to the board, I have also practiced the communication skills I learned in Dr. Robert Stowers‘ class on Management Communications.

Though the Mason MBA program provides the strong analytical foundation required for every professional, it also give students the soft skills that make true business leaders. As a Masonite, I have had several opportunities to contribute to my community. However, few have been as enriching as the chance to use what I learned in Dr. Ed Felton‘s class on Ethics. As a member of the HTSC board, that class has enhanced my decision-making context, emphasizing a duty to act in the interest of the disenfranchised seniors in Williamsburg and James City County (JCC).

In the JCC FY2012 budget, the HTSC was set to lose its operational space, as well as a substantial amount of its funding, which were both provided by JCC. The reasons for the cuts were to eliminate HTSC’s “unfair” advantage over other non-profits, and to reallocate the funds to “better use.”  I recently spoke about HTSC at one of the regular meetings of the JCC Board of Supervisors.

At the meeting, there were many impassioned comments about the need for the HTSC and the services it provides to Williamsburg’s seniors. Many comments highlighted HTSC’s vital role in aiding interactions among seniors, providing transportation assistance through its RIDES program, and hosting services that enhance the well being of the senior population in Williamsburg. Using the invaluable lessons I learned from my classmates in the Ethics course, I called on the JCC board to consider the context of its decision to essentially decimate the HTSC and leave our seniors without a valuable community resource.

At the close of the public comments section of the JCC meeting, three of the six supervisors asked for further review into the budget cuts, expressing significant concern about withdrawing support for the HTSC. As of today, the cut to the HTSC’s 2012 funding from JCC has been reversed, and our seniors can continue to thrive.

I am grateful for the skills I have learned at the Mason MBA program. Specifically, I am thankful for the opportunity to use what I have learned, to advocate for those less powerful.

My experience in Mason’s Leadership Advantage program has refined my personal leadership brand, presenting myself as someone who is always prepared to be a value creator.