I'm a dull boy
... but that's work for you.
For the first time ever I am seriously making some resolutions, not just for the New Year (by the way, Happy!) but with half an eye on future developments, which are becoming less foggy.
I've recently been offered a sponsored MBA if I want to do it.
At first the concept seemed particularly bizarre, even though I have very fond memories of auditing the Sloan School programme at MIT for a week a few years ago (even sat in on some seminars at Harvard after having done some pre-reading of the cases of which the one on marketing, IP rights and profitability in consumer markets was excellent and got me quite involved, and another on geopolitical risk treatments in the oil and gas industry - the case was based on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline deal that guaranteed a big share of the revenues for social programmes, but has been redirected by the dictatorship towards military spending and perhaps secret Swiss bank accounts, sigh - was an eye-opener involving manipulation techniques suitable against sovereign states, in retrospect fairly ineffectual ones but at the time it was quite startlingly explicit).
In any case, it was great to be challenged that week by fairly well-read and quite smart people, and I'd really like that feeling again (doesn't happen too regularly at work, where I'm some kind of go-to-guy when people who should know better need to ask about what it is that they're supposed to have been doing for the last few years).
I'm not a natural manager (although I am particularly bossy at times), and while the intellectual challenges of business and the economy are fascinating, I can't see myself enjoying line manager operational tasks
("have you talked to them about it?", "perhaps if you try ..." gah). So, still some questions about this opportunity as a tactical direction forward. That's to be expected, I think.
I've got a marvellous Moroccan-inspired cassoulet in the oven, with lamb bones, mergez sausage, white beans, tomato and confit de canard slowly baking away for dinner with friends tonight at an old country estate a few hours by train away. Om nom nom.
Ok. Well, back to the grind.
For the first time ever I am seriously making some resolutions, not just for the New Year (by the way, Happy!) but with half an eye on future developments, which are becoming less foggy.
I've recently been offered a sponsored MBA if I want to do it.
At first the concept seemed particularly bizarre, even though I have very fond memories of auditing the Sloan School programme at MIT for a week a few years ago (even sat in on some seminars at Harvard after having done some pre-reading of the cases of which the one on marketing, IP rights and profitability in consumer markets was excellent and got me quite involved, and another on geopolitical risk treatments in the oil and gas industry - the case was based on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline deal that guaranteed a big share of the revenues for social programmes, but has been redirected by the dictatorship towards military spending and perhaps secret Swiss bank accounts, sigh - was an eye-opener involving manipulation techniques suitable against sovereign states, in retrospect fairly ineffectual ones but at the time it was quite startlingly explicit).
In any case, it was great to be challenged that week by fairly well-read and quite smart people, and I'd really like that feeling again (doesn't happen too regularly at work, where I'm some kind of go-to-guy when people who should know better need to ask about what it is that they're supposed to have been doing for the last few years).
I'm not a natural manager (although I am particularly bossy at times), and while the intellectual challenges of business and the economy are fascinating, I can't see myself enjoying line manager operational tasks
("have you talked to them about it?", "perhaps if you try ..." gah). So, still some questions about this opportunity as a tactical direction forward. That's to be expected, I think.
I've got a marvellous Moroccan-inspired cassoulet in the oven, with lamb bones, mergez sausage, white beans, tomato and confit de canard slowly baking away for dinner with friends tonight at an old country estate a few hours by train away. Om nom nom.
Ok. Well, back to the grind.