Okay, semester four ended two weeks ago and, without a significant break, semester five came around and the cycle begins again. Semester five is different, which is something I probably say each time. The reason it's different this time is I'm back doing a core module, which means 14 units and an exam. I've not done an exam in a year, but I can't say I'm concerned about it. The second intriguing thing is the core module is Managing Information (strategic IS/IT and then statistics) and the elective is Business Transformation, which means it's six months of IS/IT-enabled business transformation.

What's very interesting is it's my home territory. I've been head of IS/IT at an international company and managed IS/IT to enable and drive business transformation. I've also approached things from an external perspective in terms of consultancy engagements supplying IS solutions and associated business transformation. A number of the methods featured in the module are known to me or I recognise the methods I've used in the past as those methods as a product of actual experience (after all, the methods arise for a reason). I read the Benefits Management book some time ago and then again a year or so ago. I've managed an application portfolio within a diverse multifaceted business. I've also ran a number of agile projects.

At times, the MBA isn't about completely new subjects like economics and finance, but about adding a wider perspective and focus on things you already have a very good practitioner grounding in. This is a good thing.

The two modules have different content, but are obviously complementary. They are also very different in how they are assessed. Managing Information is exactly the same as all other core modules: TAA, ECA and then exam. Looking at it, the TAA is a relatively perfunctory question about agile projects. The ECA is a statistics question. This leaves the Benefits Management core of the module for the exam. It seems to me, at the moment, to be a module that can be managed to the assessments. I don't mean I'll trivialise it and study to the assessments only, but it does mean it's clear how to manage your time effectively and not over study. In a way, you can't over study, but I live in the real world of distance learning with a full-time job so it's something you have to consider. It's more expectations management, I guess.

Business Transformation is very different. An elective is normally TAA and then ECA. Business transformation gives this a twist. The ECA is three pieces of work that amounts to an ECA length, which is worth 75% of the final mark. It is suggested you use your own organisation as an example. The remaining 25% is based on contributions online, some of this dictated by continual pieces of 'work' after each unit and an expectations you'll just contribute to the various online resources. The continual pieces of work isn't so much an issue, it just makes the schedule of work a bit more constant which dictates your study schedule. It will be good if the interactive nature of it takes off with the promise of more interactive seminars online and the like.

Anyone who reads this blog will know where I see the issue with the business transformation assessment set-up? The fact the elective seems orientated to being valuable to 'your current organisation' as that is the suggestion in the assessment. I agree, that's a fantastic way to do it, allow the student to apply immediate value from his studies. If you are in the right type of role to maximise that return it is amazingly valuable, especially if it's a new skill for the student. Regrettably, if you're working on contracts or short-term contracts that have a particular focus you don't necessarily have the remit to do such things, as you tend to be applying your breadth of skills to solving a particular thorny, priority or strategic problem. Initial queries suggest you don't have to use your current organisation, but I still need to assess the degree to which this makes the assessment process less...natural.

It's going to be an interesting six months. I've already read a lot of the core text books for the IS/IT and business transformation material, due to natural interest, and it has allowed me to adopt different perspectives on my practitioner orientated skills and experience.

As already mentioned, the Distance Learning programme for the Durham Business School MBA, has been re-named the Global MBA. This isn't a bad thing, it's a better name, it rolls off the tongue and certainly reflects the cohort on the programme at any particular time. I'm also a big fan of being able to do electives via residential study and hope they do more of that even though I'm probably too late in the game to use it to its best advantage.

One of the other ideas that was rumbling in the background when the programme was in transition was the idea that the residential seminars would be longer. Not a bad idea. I've yet to have a bad residential experience and they are certainly one of the best parts of what was the Distance Learning programme. They work because you get to meet other students and discuss ideas. It's great to hear what other people do and how they approach things. The residential seminars were also perfectly placed in the semester process, they sat just at the point in time it was worth considering what might be on the exam and the ECA would have just come out so that could be discussed face-to-face with students and tutors. This is worth remembering, the semester process has a rhythm to it through building blocks like the TAA, residential, an on-line assignment and the ECA. The semester rhythm and the key points of value (the residential and its placement being a main one) is one of the key things you learn in your very first semester.

It would seem the Global MBA won't have residential seminars any more, instead it will have Summer School. Once I'd reduced my expectations involving California beaches and women in bikinis I started to get a handle on the detail. Initially, it wasn't that bad. There is five days worth of on-site activities, albeit one day is dedicated to career development, which isn't a bad thing in my view. Initially it seemed to be a good idea until I realised there is only one summer school in September and that one summer school doesn't match with the release of the ECA. I've had a think about it numerous times and I'm still not convinced this is an improvement to the programme.

One period of residential time is a blow in numerous ways. First, it makes the five days summer school covers a bit of a joke as you're actually losing residential teaching as two residential in a year (one per semester) meant you had six days of residential teaching now you have four (due to the career development day). That's a loss of two days. Second, it comes as double blow as the January to June semester won't have any residential time at all. No asking about the ECA at the residential because it's released on the same weekend (the Monday it finished often enough). There was a reason that happened, I believe, it allowed the distance learning cohort to discuss some ECA generalities with a key lecturer just like the full-time students would (this was particularly effective if you'd tied your studying to the modules on the residential). In a similar the opportunity for face-to-face exam advice and example questions is gone. Third, it's also a triple blow, because even for the July to December semester you can't tie it all up either as the summer school takes place a week or two before the ECA is released. This radically reduces the benefits of the residential component. It was part of the structure of the semester, a process which added a value beyond the some of its parts and allowed for expectations and unknowns to be better managed. Now it's pretty much semester independent and doesn't add any value to the first semester and adds less to the second. Are the business school even aware of how critical the placement of the residential seminar was in the overall flow of the semester? I thought that was the actual point.

I find myself looking at it and being happy I didn't study the four semester I have studied under the summer school structure and I'm a bit frustrated I'll be studying my final two (the third is the dissertation) under this structure. In a way, summer school 2010 will be my last module useful residential component! I just can't fathom the change as a value driven decision. It makes little sense. It seems to be a net dis-benefit for the student on almost every level? I can fathom the value from other angles, but they aren't student centric.

If I'm missing something I'm all for hearing it.

The final ECA has been submitted. Normally this would have happened two weeks ago, but the Strategic Marketing ECA was subject to an extension because of a late release date. That is semester four complete. Another one down. Three more to go. The next one even sees a return to sitting an exam after two semesters without any. In a very strange sort of way, I'm looking forward to it. There is a bit of a focus to things when an exam is looming on the horizon. It's also a focused challenge. It will mean I'll have to move on essays early as I like to have them out of the way before revision.

I'm glad the Strategic Marketing ECA is done, it's been an experience worthy of reality TV show clichés. There are a number of reasons for this. The difficult nature of essays involving 'your organisation or one you are familiar with', the degree to which contexts are superfluous (or not) and the difference between questions with multiple parts and those that are open-ended (essentially involving different levels of directed guidance). The Strategic Marketing essay was the worst of all three.

It basically comes down to the ECA Economics of Scarcity. You have 4,000 words and a very open-ended question. Exactly what elements of the course do you include? How much research do you put into the organisation itself? What if you organisation isn't really appropriate? You never have enough words and quite often the final work is defined as much by what isn't in the text as what is. The usual result for an essay of this type is you are never fully satisfied with what you have produced. The concern is what you've chosen to address in the way you've addressed it isn't agreeable with the individual marking the paper. I don't care what anyone says, I still insist a high degree of individual preference factors into these things. The strategic marketing essay went from me not looking forward to it (not because of the subject, just the framing of the question), to enjoying it and thinking I had it nailed, to coming back down the other side a bit and just wanting it filed and off the agenda.

Currently, I'm in the position of liking the framework I've used to structure the essay but I'd never be able to convince myself I've got the balance of content right in any other area. If this was a truly real world, practical application of what had been learned it'd be a lot clearer and easier as you'd have a practical, commercial objective.

This is one of the 'interesting' things about the MBA: value against marks. I've been satisfied with my marks so far, but it's even occurred to my the value of a module isn't directly correlated to the mark. The study of any particular subject gives you a perspective you didn't have before, or enhances one you did possess. It provides a new way of looking at things and new forms of language. All of which is very valuable. I'm just not convinced those value elements are enhanced with a higher result. Obviously, you've done something right academically, and that's good and all, but I'm not sure getting the highest mark possible translates to necessarily having gotten the most value out of it in a practical way.

The major pain now is I don't have any break between this semester and the next one, which has an official start date of next week. I'm used to finishing the essays before the exams for the most part, which gives me a month before the next start date. This means I do some basic studying and ease into thing gently. Not this time, the clock is ticking just as the current one has wound down.

Saying that, I have read a substantial amount of the core textbooks in next semesters modules, so it's possibly not that bad.

There was a period of time, probably some way through semester three (July to December 2009) up to and including the residential seminar for semester four (January to June 2010) in March , when those on the MBA Programme via Distance Learning were wondering what was going on. Things just seemed to be getting slightly sloppy and confused. It was also annoying that we seemed to be suffering a reduced elective set due to old ones being taken away and new ones taking a while to come on stream. There was also staff exits and the like. There was certainly reasons to wonder what was going on and an undercurrent of complaint was in the air.. At the residential seminar for semester four we heard about the expansion of the Distance Learning implementation of the MBA programme to allow us to do residential study in the Caribbean and a few other carrots that seemed a bit muddled.

All great, but I'm unlikely to spend a grand to do my residential component abroad at this time. Now, things are becoming clearer though, the Distance Learning Programme has been re-branded the Global MBA. The three delivery methods now being MBA Full-Time, Executive MBA and the Global MBA. The Global MBA is the distance learning option, named global because of the global nature of its student base, which is certainly true. Now, if this was a renaming alone, designed to avoid the distance learning moniker, I'd be as cynical as the next man, but it does look like some new options are coming on stream.

The main area of interest is a more blended programme between distance learning and full-time. In 2011 they are offering residential elective modules, essentially taught programmes. As far as I can tell, this means 3-4 days of on-site classes and then an essay to be completed within four weeks of the course finishing. This costs the same as studying for an elective via the distance learning method. I have a few concerns on the idea, such as whether 3-4 days is enough time to cover an elective? It may well be, as that's 2-3 units a day, and they probably do hit them hard and fast on the full-time MBA? After all, you have to get all the course into a year on the full-time delivery method. In fact, I think the students on the residential electives are signed up Global MBA students and individuals on the Executive MBA studying part-time (on-site). These on-site classes are delivered in Durham, Frankfurt and the Caribbean.

This is a great idea. In fact, it's so great I wish it had been part of the programme since I joined. As a student, with only three semesters left, and one of those being the dissertation, I'm not in a perfect position to take full advantage of it. I only have one elective left to select, since I'm studying the fifth (of six) in the form of business transformation next semester (July to December 2010). I could squeeze one of these residential electives in, but that would mean studying Managing Social Marketing Campaigns as my sixth elective. I'm not sure about that. It has significant applicability if I remain in the public sector, but I'd have to think about it. The advantage of doing it this way? It provides more face-to-face time with people on the Global and Executive MBA programmes, which is always a good thing. It also gets an elective done via what, I presume, is a more intense method. It depends what other new electives come on stream for 2011, if a new one comes up that is very interesting I'd probably still take that over the current residential option.

Still, this is a magnificent addition to the programme, without a doubt. As I say, it's so good I really wish it had been an option a year or so ago as, being so close to Durham.

I've talked about the looming dissertation before, in the sense that the work has the potential to be overly academic and that's not overly what I'm on the MBA journey for. Still, it's part of the course, and a lot of it has had value so far, so I'm confident the dissertation will. Hopefully. It's still a year away, but if I can see something on the horizon, even a distant one, I like to address it and put some analysis and thought into it so I've broken down some of the issues before it's sitting on my desk looking at me all threatening like.

A part of this strategy is my current evening reading, which consists of 'Researching and Writing a Dissertation: An Essential Guide for Business Students' by Colin Fisher, a book specifically focused on the MBA student facing their first dissertation. This is the only book I've started to read on the subject but I get the sense that it's a pretty good one and seems to cover all the bases. Is it helping? Yes, for the most part. It helps because it turns a 100% unknown quantity into a known quantity, even if you don't like some of what you are reading. It's a big piece of work that is going to take some thought. Literature reviews. Assessing a framework for the piece. Quite detailed critical analysis on existing articles. Research and analysing it. It is reminding me why I'll never do a doctorate. Obviously, all the research comes in numerous types. Various theories and approaches on everything it brings up. Do you use your framework to direct your dissertation or be a bit more free and bring it into focus at the end? All sorts of stuff. Filling the vacuum is good. Knowledge is good.

It is very helpful to start early! But not just because of the dissertation itself, it strikes me that Fisher is a very good thing to have absorbed for the ECA work throughout the course?

Basically, an ECA is an academic piece of work, not really a practical report (though some frame their questions as such, which I think is incorrect), focused on critically analysing and applying the material of the course (frameworks, studies, ideas and concepts) to a context. At times, this context can be almost superfluous, it just acts as a thin context to focus some of the criticism and examples. This isn't that different to a dissertation, which is the application of academic theory and thought to a business problem or enquiring question. In the ECA you don't have to write up a literature review unless specifically asked, but you will do a miniature literature review in preparation for the ECA. In a similar way, you will select and use frameworks and tools in the ECA that you should probably critique for good measure (one reason why it's not a practical report as suggested in many of the questions). You also need to reach a robust conclusion. All of this is in Fisher, in good depth, and with a practical slant, all you'd do for the ECA is strip back the bits you don't need but certainly take on the ethos of the approach and its context.

In short, Fisher gives you a window into the sorts of things that I think are required in an ECA but is so badly communicated by and large. It starts to add even more clarity of the ECA game. As a result, I think people should start reading a good dissertation text early, like in their first semester, and then take the approach it espouses and apply it to the context of the ECA. As it happens, I've been doing pretty good, and I can certainly see dissertation elements in my ECA work, but it would still have been handy to have this knowledge in my head from day one.

I'm moving onto the third essay and it's probably the most problematic one. It's problematic for reasons I've discussed before, which magnifies the funny old ECA game. Basically, as soon as an examined coursework assignment asks you to critically evaluate something 'in your own organisation', or 'an organisation you know well', I think things get tricky if you don't immediately have that contextual experience. In this case it's a critical evaluation of a marketing strategy.

So, the first problem is the current organisation I work for isn't a valid candidate. I could probably get hold of the marketing strategy, but its a County Council which makes it less interesting for me and I'm not sure I want to get into seeking a high mark with an example so far removed from actually marketing products or services that are purchased (either by businesses or consumers). That shouldn't be a problem, but I'm not interested enough in that slant on it to challenge the issue. The second problem is none of my historical employments are great candidates as they never really had a marketing strategy written down or even one that was largely consistent in the sense of an unwritten framework (not good enough for this assignment anyway).

What you are faced with then is how far does the 'or an organisation you know well' stretch to? The Strategic Supply Chain ECA got around this problem by making it a 'case of your choice', which keeps the direction nice and clear. If you have an example from your career good. If you can find a detailed enough case, that's also good. Interestingly, speaking to the lecturer during the Strategic Marketing seminar, when someone put forward the question they don't really have any valid examples they've actually experienced, he said finding a case was fine and he could supply some. I was sent one by him and it provided a company and a case, but there was actually surprisingly little meat to it. Anyway, use of cases is good, but it's all part of the funny ECA game that they just don't phrase the question in the clearest way possible.

The issue of not having relevant experience was queried for the Strategic Supply Chain essay and the answer concentrated on the 'supply chain chosen being important for real life information' and that it may be a supply chain 'you have access to through your professional setting' or 'experienced as a customer' but 'it is not expected that you will provide a detailed account of the supply chain you have chosen to analyse'. The reason for this is the 'descriptive problem'. This is because it's the ability to synthesis and put forward arguments regarding the module materials and the relevant literature. The rest is just context. In fact, at times, I question how critical the context is, as I suspect you'd get more marks for criticising something, say SWOT or some other tool, then you would anything you could add pertaining to the context (such as the use of SWOT to the context). Not only that, utilising the context to such an extent it makes course material irrelevant can result in you getting a mark you disagree with, so the lesson seems to be course content over context (and shove it in some way anyway). I also sometimes wonder if the best strategy is even to put criticisms in that don't apply to the case just so they are present.

The narrative is the course material, not the context.

I was going to go with my practical experience of trying to grow the business around a specific software product, it did involved identifying customers, assessing their needs and wants and segmenting the market, etc. Lots of good stuff, but it doesn't feel rich enough. As a result, I'm going to use a case. I'm going to vouch for Research in Motion.

I've made this choice for a number of reasons. I'm interested in the smartphone market and being interested is always good. There is quite a lot of information about RIM on the web, plus their website is good. It's also true that US firms have to file details with the Securities and Exchange Commission that can feed into certain theoretical models that will have to appear in the essay. The strategy essay also featured RIM, so some of the groundwork is done. I don't feel entirely confident using a 'case', as I don't actually have a 'marketing strategy' to evaluate. It'll exist as a document that I don't have. I can only go back to the fact we've been told cases are fine. It also suspect it doesn't require a 'detailed account' of the marketing strategy just like the Strategic Supply Chain essay doesn't demand a detailed account of the chosen supply chain.

That's the plan, anyway. I have to admit, I'm really wanting to get them out of the way now.

On paper, a Center Parcs holiday should be a nightmare for me. You're stuck in the middle of nowhere, well, as close to the middle of nowhere you can get in the UK. You have your access to a lot of modern conveniences removed, such as the Internet, cable television, you're PlayStation 3 and posh TV. Each time we book one there is something in the back of my mind that makes me think I'm partly mad.

The reality is very different.

A Center Parcs holiday is a bit like being in an episode of The Prisoner, especially the new show, the pilot of which aired last week. You don't get attacked by giant inflatable balls when you approach the outer perimeter, but there is an outer perimeter marked by small fences in the forest. Inside the parameter, you are presented with a very unique environment. It's quiet and tranquil, the loudest noise you get is the birds in the trees. The chances are you'll have rabbits playing outside your accommodation and squirrels willing to come into your accommodation and eat off your coffee table. Those squirrels love biscuits. It's a place that inspires you to do very little, and get great enjoyment from that. The main thing we do is walk around the place and just chat. It's fantastic. Very relaxing. It empties your mind.

The place does have a few interesting...quirks. The main one is the obvious market segmentation that Center Parcs uses. It's so obvious it does verge on being slightly surreal and comical. The place is populated by a certain type or class of person depending how you want to define it. All the children are well behaved. There is no young men walking around with their tops off. I firmly believe the concentration of men wearing no tops is an indication of...something. I've yet to witness or hear groups of people walking 'home' drunk. Everyone is relatively well dressed. People haunt the few shops available and buy 100 GBP Berghause coats. You also get phrases like “Don't be a silly sausage, daddy is going to play golf”, which does make you smile. All this makes the whole place very pleasant and quaint and I suspect it's a core part of why the holiday works and as such it's critical to Center Parcs. If the market segmentation started to fail, there would be a chance for the tranquillity to be disrupted. I certainly know Center Parcs has a very fierce and defiant approach to its pricing, setting them relatively high at key points because people are willing to pay them. The 'people are willing to pay' response is the standard reply to the consumer shows that try and complain to them about it every year.

Ironically, I'm not willing to pay, and we always go when the price is as low as it can go, and many people here with us might have done the same thing, but that doesn't seem to change the feel of the place. The most surreal part of Center Parcs is the posh accommodation, it is straight from The Prisoner. The two story villas are like downsized American country lodges which have just been dropped into the forest. They even have their own mini-gardens with a lawn that just artificially stops to give way to the natural forest. It looks really weird. Like some society is living some sort of bizarre life having been picked up by aliens and just dropped into the forest. The advantage of going for the top accommodation is you don't have to give up on your modern conveniences as you have the Internet, an LCD TV, a PlayStation 3 and potentially a hot tub.

Center Parcs does seem to have allowed the modern world to penetrate its bubble slightly, or at least it has in Sherwood. You can get a mobile signal, which may not be anything to do with Center Parcs in Sherwood, but I know when we've been to the one in The Lakes, you can only get a signal in the car park. They've also introduced WiFi, which is great. If you pay a premium you can get WiFi in your villa. You can access WiFi at key amenities throughout the park. This has meant the iPod Touch has come in very useful as I could quickly check the Internet whenever I passed or entered one of the amenities or walked through the village centre.

It was another great experience. We even seemed to lose weight, that's what all the walking does for you.

One of the 'interesting' things that came to a bit of a head at the last residential seminar, was the funny old ECA game. Well, it would be funny, if you weren't paying such a lot of money to join 'the table'. The problem comes in two forms: the asymmetry of information between the academics and the students over requirements and expectations and the fact any communications designed to mitigate that asymmetry of information just seems to make the problem worse.

Let's consider two different philosophies.

When I started the MBA in mid-2008 the message was clear. Reference everything. Fair enough. More importantly, it was about including the academic theory. Also fair enough. This message was put forward so much it was almost smothering. This philosophy took hold in the first TAA, due to getting 80% for my Managing People TAA which was pretty much an exercise of connecting referenced sentences (and it was creative only in that sense). That is an astronomical mark in postgraduate MBA terms. Then you have an ECA in which the issue of being descriptive was repeatedly drummed into you as a cardinal sin, to the extent students were scared away from certain sources, such as Mintel, despite them being fine when used in the correct context in the correct way. You get emergent behaviours when a message comes across so consistently and strong. Then you had the collusion message, which tends to cut off discourse surrounding ECA activities so early you might as well not start. An ECA was about 'examplification'. It's an academic reality.

Then there is the other world, introduced at the residential this semester. Four semesters in. In this world the ECAs are creative, exciting, involve aspiration and should be fun. It's about putting your personality into the work. It's about speaking to people and putting primary research (actually contact with people) first and the secondary research (the theory and papers) well...second. It's about getting together, discussing each others work. Possibly even reviewing each others. It may even involve swapping assignments when part of the question is to critique an earlier part so you can critique a partners rather than your own. It's about mixing it up creatively. An ECA was aspirational and inspirational, to an extent it seemed to be an 'ECA world' that belonged to some idealised 'US drama' about university.

It's worth noting the second world was portrayed by two academics now out in the real world, working in entrepreneurial affairs and having a very practitioner focus to balance out their academic achievements. When the discussions arose to get to the bottom of the two messages it gets interesting. It gets interesting because there was some admission that the University might have overstated the situation during a certain time window due to previous problems with low marks (and potential failures) due to people being too descriptive. In short, the academic body in the University had their own emergent behaviour and 'overcompensated' for past events. I only have one source on this, but it was honestly given to a group of students. Seems believable? As I can fully understand experienced, real world practitioners making that mistake quite easily.

You also learn that it's known some of the questions they ask on the ECAs are...less than ideal. Yes they are a bit fake. Yes they seem to involve a lot of complete fancy and fabrication in order to generate material to put through the 'theory mill', but we're going to keep using the questions anyway. Yes, it asks you to write a business report, despite everyone knowing (hopefully) that it's the last thing they want as a business report wouldn't be full of theory 'examplification' and criticism. It might also be said, in some cases, the students are coming from different places and going to different places than what used to be the case for an MBA. In fact, some of them can involve a heck of a lot of jumping through hoops to show your knowledge of theory through context never mind trying to be inspirational and creative as well, as that seems to take you so far away from the question you'd worry the marker might think you'd drifted. Despite all these reservations the 'less than ideal' questions are still used.

Now, I know that it's possible to combine both world views. After all, they are both about applying context to the theory, just from radically different perspectives. The problem was it was such a turnaround in philosophy and pitch that it didn't sit well within the established modus operandi. If it was just me, I'd have put it all down to me misinterpreting the issue in my early days on the program, but it wasn't just me, and I'm very representative. There was also some extremes in the second aspirational pitch that just seemed destined to put you on a track to being given the dreaded under 60% mark or the barely over 50%. The feeling of having 'just passed'. That's possibly wrong, it's possible the overly strong message from the first two semesters kicking in again. Who knows? In truth, the second philosophy sounded more like the aspirations you'd have for your dissertation, but for every ECA (which is a bit of a stretch I think).

In truth, the asymmetry of information around the ECA is a problem. The attempts to communicate to minimise the problem never seems to work. Is it the students? Possibly, but then we're dealing with intelligent, experienced students with careers who, at least for a core, are used to change and ambiguity. It does make the whole process a game. I haven't even begun to include the personalities of the individual lecturers, which means one person demands every other sentence to be a reference the next one sees that as a negative. One persons pet theories over another, etc. Or the fact the tutors in each module may have significant variations.

It's a game. You play the game and as you go along the journey you selfishly strip away everything of value from the process and apply it in the real world and to change your own attitudes and approaches which is where the value comes in. The randomness of it would seem to make it hard to get a distinction. Possibly the process feels different when it's much more intensely interactive on the full time course and the psychic distance between tutors and students is vastly reduced. It also isn't necessary, as not all the ECAs have questions that magnify the problem even further. It just seems a bit careless, the process could be more orientated to the customer and less ambiguous (which doesn't mean less rigorous). The variables in the game could certainly be reduced.

In the meantime, one keeps rolling the dice.

I've been doing a bit of thinking for myself and discussing the dissertation with fellow students and the business school in order to plan my end run strategy. There is an option, theoretically, for me to not do a dissertation, and instead do two more electives and a business report (and drop Methods of Inquiry). You can tell it's not advised, it's also not an option for students who started after a certain date. It also feels wrong not rising to the challenge to do the dissertation and even more odd having MBA after my name and not being able to say what I did for my dissertation. I'm also aware it's not the doing it that concerns me, it's having a valid, practical and achievable idea due to relative career instability. It's just a bit of an unknown at the minute, with no feeling of progressing to a solution. I'm sure it'll sort itself out with a bit of effort.

Anyway, the business school tells me that many students do the Methods of Inquiry module last, followed immediately by the dissertation. I did query the fact that you have to have a dissertation topic submitted 6-months in advance of doing the dissertation module. This is because a tutor has to be assigned. They were of the view all that what was needed at that point was a topic area, an example given being Human Resources. Not a full proposal. I'm still not 100% convinced on this, but it may actually make some sense? If you submit a topic area six months before doing the dissertation, you should have your tutor in second half or final third of Methods of Inquiry just in time to do a proposal as the ECA for that module? I've also checked my old introductory material, and in the various study schedules for finishing the MBA in 2-4 years it always has Methods of Inquiry in the slot immediately preceding the dissertation.

Anyway, if it holds true, it gives me a strategy for completing.

Basically, in semester five (July 2010 to December 2010) I'll do Business Transformation and Management of Information. That's an elective and a core. They both have IT elements and the second part of Management of Information is the statistical methods that may well be used in my dissertation, should it involve a quantitative element. I'm really looking forward to Business Transformation. In semester six (January 2011 to June 2011), I'll do Methods of Inquiry and another elective. Not sure what that might be at the moment, it may be Project Management, or a new one should the business school finally get some of the promised new electives out. Semester seven (July 2011 to December 2011) will be the dissertation. I want to complete in 2011. I just can't bring myself to still be studying the MBA in 2012. Not sure why.

While I still have some small reservations about not doing Methods of Inquiry a full six months before the dissertation, the six months run into option seems to make sense in my mind. It also gives me another six months to change my mind about the dissertation if it proves particularly problematic, or my work arrangements may have changed to make a work-based dissertation more likely.

I think the chances of me choosing not to do a dissertation is infinitesimally small.

Historically, I've been against copyright piracy of all sorts. I was pretty hard line. I never copied anything...period. I remember being pretty disgusted the first time I went to a Leeds comics mart (I'm sure there is a more official name for these things) and saw the handful of stalls with people patently making a living out of pirated videos. If I was against piracy for personal use, I got pretty irate over people making a profit out of it. Of course, we are going back a bit here, and it's worth noting that obtaining and creating pirated material was much harder. I'll admit to not being perfect. When I used to go science fiction conventions (many, many years ago now), the TV episodes we used to watch in the various screening rooms had to have been flagrantly pirated. I had an illegal copy of MS Office on my PC for a while, but this hasn't even been the case for many years now. In fact, in terms of software my PC is completely legal, even down to more esoteric stuff like my wed development tools.

Now, of course, with everything going digital, it's so damned easy.

Personally, it's not about just flagrantly copying everything I want. I'm not sure my psychology has moved on that far. I'm not going to be downloading every film I want to own any time soon. Neither am I going to have a stock of music MP3 files I've never paid for. Neither was I ever a gamer, and will probably never be one, that would organise his whole gaming life around titles I've never paid for. I always remember the attitude to copyright I encountered once within a gaming community: they'd copy every single game and film they wanted. They had a whole factory going of renting and copying. The irony was, they'd not play most of them, but just the fact they did it was pretty disgusting. I remember their key reason for not playing World of Warcraft was they had to pay a monthly fee for it. It wasn't that the fee was monthly, it was that they had to pay at all.

What gets harder to resist is the grey areas. Okay, one could argue there is no such thing, but I'm starting to see them so. Considering my historical stance, you can bet other people have shifted their mindset whole lot more. Let's take one example. I'm playing in a 4E Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It's great. I play in it. I don't run it. I've not signed up to the whole ethos of the MMO content model D&D has always subscribed to in one format or another. I don't even value the 'off the table game' of levelling. On this basis, why should I pay for books or a subscription to software services just to be able to level my character between games? At times, considering the speed at which we level, it would be amazingly useful to suffer the process between sessions. It's not worth the cost though. If I was to obtain the illegal PDF files, have I really done any damage as there is no way I'm a lost sale? The whole argument I've stolen something is based on lost sales. If I was ever to run D&D I'd undoubtedly buy some books, for instance.

Then you have stuff you'd really like to scan. You're not going to use it extensively. You're not even going to read it from cover to cover. In fact, what you get out of it has only marginally more utility than if you'd scanned it in the store over repeated visits. This can happen a lot with gaming material. In fact, there was a period of time in which the gaming industry was largely surviving off people who bought games to read and never actually use. A number of companies even created content for this model of purchase. You know, you're running with an idea for a game you have purchased but getting a bit of spot inspiration in terms of imagery and approach from another game is useful. It's another time when it's tempting, after all, you'd never buy the game, you're just saving yourself a handful of scans in a store.

It's a softening in attitudes that makes things more tempting. In the past, I'd just have never even momentarily considered it. One aspect is the fact it's become much more easier to do. I suspect the other is a drop in perceived utility within myself. Ironically, though it's probably different for others, as my margin of utility drops the temptation to pirate probably rises. In a way, it's possibly the other way around for some people, surely you'd want to pirate the items of maximum utility? Possibly, but in my case I then want to 'own' it.

I suppose I'm saying I pay for things I see as truly having worth, while the pirating temptation comes in the form of things that have low utility to the point I'd never purchase them anyway. I'm not saying this makes actually doing it right, but it seems to be the way of things.

I've known since the beginning of the MBA that the dissertation was the elephant in the room. I say this because there was, and still is, a number of risks associated with it. The first is that I'd not be in an employment situation that stable and interesting enough to provide a basis for the dissertation. The second was that the dissertation itself would be too academic. The third is I'm not 100% sure my reasons for doing the MBA align with the idea of the dissertation. I'm perfectly happy to be wrong on the third one.

I hope I am wrong on the third one.

One of the hardest days on the residential seminar was Sunday due to the Methods of Inquiry session (the module with all the research methods in). The delivery of the session was very good, but the overall intent of the dissertation just confirmed all the negatives about the dissertation. The goal seemed to be to build upon academic theory that had gone before, ask a series of hypothesis and then use various research techniques to test those hypothesis. Not a surprise really, it's a research-based university, but It just seemed very academic. Yeah, I know, not that surprising. I didn't decide to do the MBA for academic reasons, I'm taking a very practice-based approach to it and it's working on that basis. The dissertation just came across like the academic pain that I need to suffer in order to pass the course.

That's all good, but a literature review? Give me a break. I can't seem to put this into a framework or through a practice-based filter that turns it into something remotely useful? Hence, it just remains a task that is a burden and only useful if you're going to be an academic. Okay, it teaches you to be critical about existing ideas, I get that, but if you haven't got that from your MBA already, or didn't have it in the first place (but that may be my career background), then something weird has happened. I'm not sure you need the literature review to learn that skill, it's just something that is done in academic circles to further the academic field, it has very little practice-based usefulness. I understand the usefulness of the more academic and rigorous papers, I use them and read them to balance out the Harvard Business School practice orientated stuff, but that doesn't mean I want to write one. I'm not even remotely considering doing a PhD for numerous reasons, this being one of the major ones.

Can the dissertation be given more of a practice-based spin? Possibly, to a degree. The restrictions on giving it a practice-based spin are obviously the fact that it has to be grounded in academic theory, further testing hypothesis-based ideas around an academic theory or two. So it seems. That seemed a common, recurring theme. You also have the literature review. The other problem relates to how supportive you're employer is, as some of the more practice-based ideas are easier to pull off if it is being done for an employer that considers the dissertation part of your work (though not 100%, of course). The more distant your dissertation becomes from your current employer the bigger the chance it'll become more academic. This isn't as true in the full-time MBA, because they assign students to organisations to do their dissertation on a business problem, but that's hard to do with 'time constrained' distance learning students (unless it happens to be your own organisation).

I'm also having to consider restructuring my course plan. I've always planned on taking Methods of Inquiry the semester before my dissertation. While this is possible, a certain interpretation of the MBA guidelines suggests doing it six months before starting your dissertation 'module' and after a discussion in the Methods of Inquiry session on Sunday, this seems practical. I want to finish in 2011. I just need to finish in 2011. That means doing my dissertation July to December 2011 and that means doing Methods of Inquiry July to December 2010. In short, next semester. When you throw in the fact some of the statistical methods are in Management of Information a part of me thinks I might just do two cores next semester and get them out of the way. That's back to two 14 unit modules and one with an exam (and the other a larger ECA).

Will I be able to give the dissertation a practice-based focus to balance out the academic naval gazing? At the moment I'm not so sure, so the dissertation remains the elephant in the room and I need some serious convincing I'm going to remotely enjoy it. Bit of a pain.

There has been a bit of a drama over the Strategic Marketing ECA, namely that it has been revealed 1.5 weeks later than it should have been. This isn't overly an issue for me as they have extended the deadline accordingly, but it is a bit worrying. It's a bit worrying because it's the first time it's happened to me. I also understand from the Facebook chatter that it's not the only ECA that has been subject to delays. I sense a whiff of things being a bit stressed, disorganised or both within the Distance Learning Office at the moment, but then they have lost a 2-3 key staff. I suspect there will be a series of complaints raised at the residential if this hasn't already happened.

The other thing that's revealing is the nature of the Strategic Marketing ECA that finally was released. It's the basic 'analyse the marketing strategy of your organisation or one you are familiar with'. No case study. If that was always going to be the question I'm at a loss why it needed to be delayed? It's a default question, the type they must have in stock as a possible all the time. I can only assume there was another question, possibly with a case study, that didn't come up to standard, got delayed, had issues or something and they've fallen back on MBA questioning 101. I did feel like I'd been short-changed a bit when I read the question. It felt a bit lazy.

The fact the question is a 'of your organisation' question makes it a very random question. It's random because your ability to answer the question with a rich 'case' is highly dependent on where you currently work or have worked recently. These things can be compensated for, but that takes time and effort someone living and working in an 'appropriately rich case environment' doesn't have to apply. It also creates another problem which makes me wary: the individuals involved in the marking regime can't rely on having a common context for the 'case' being analysed as everyone will be writing an essay using a very different context. This also creates issues on how to write the paper as you have to include enough of that context in your word count, while with a commonly supplied case study you still need to do this, but potentially not as much. Let's face it, the 'case rich environment' is expected to be a company (a) with a marketing plan and (b) numerous products at different stages of the cycle and (c) is business to consumer not business to business. The paper doesn't demand that, but let's say it's the one that would offer the best environment for putting the various bits of material to best use. The organisation I work for now and the ones I've worked for in the past have been a degree or two away from those criteria (all of the business to business for a start).

I'm going to utilise my experiences working for a small start-up trying to get its product to market, a posh way of saying the first critical sales, and see if that seems to have legs. I know it should, but I also know these MBA papers can be a strange business.

The ECA work is going well so far, though I've had a week which hasn't seen much actual effort spent on them at the keyboard, and I'll be away at the residential this weekend. Still, the framework and material for the Small Business Management ECA is coming along fine, and I've written the first draft of the opening and content for section (a) (of a-d). This is a good position to be in as it's your material, content, frameworks and arguments that are important to define and have sorted even if you've not written any of the final word count.

I've got a few goals at the residential. I'm looking to nab another key text or two when I'm at the Business School as they are notoriously bad at transferring their books to Queen's Campus Library for collection. I'm also looking to glean a bit of information regarding an initial strategy for the Strategic Supply Chain Management and Strategic Marketing papers when your organisation ain't appropriate. Still think I'm looking forward to the Strategic Supply Chain Management one the least.

Without doubt, the ECAs are one of the core elements of the MBA. They are the core of the process in a number of ways. First, they account for 50% (core) or 100% (elective) of your final mark in any particular module. Second, they are the point at which you practically apply your knowledge to a context. Third, they are one of the principal differences between doing an MBA and just reading books on the subject. Fourth, depending on the nature of the question asked they can be interesting or a complete pain in the arse.

Since I have three to do this semester, albeit with no exams hovering on the horizon, it's either going to be a lot of work, but fun, or one 3-month period of pain. Two of the ECAs have hit the learning environment, the third seems to be delayed for a week, which makes me think they are thinking up something fiendish.

Small Business Management went through a mini positive to negative to positive cycle last night. Broadly speaking, a venture capital firm are funding a management buy-in of a small, private family firm and this context is to be used to cover such issues as succession, small business growth, venture capital and entrepreneurship (in the context of small businesses). The initial panic was seeing the research root, as finding that root is pretty critical. It basically involves locating the content in the course material pertaining to the question, as that acts as a firm root which hopefully lead to verdant branches of studies and other material pertaining to the question. If you don't find the root, it's much harder to find relevant studies and articles in the mass available. After 90-minutes of work yesterday, I think I've got the chapters and course material content for my root. I think so anyway, sometimes there is a bit of vagueness in the question, but it's looking good. Certainly good enough to follow the branches and see what results. The interesting thing about the Small Business Management ECA is it specifically asks you to fit four areas into your report, which is always good, as you can then divide the end product into 800 words here, 1200 there, etc.

The Strategic Supply Chain Management ECA is a bit of a different beast. The question isn't as fine grained, being split up into only two parts. It tasks you with selecting and critically analysing a supply chain of your choice and then in the second part identifying some improvements based on saving costs, relationships, etc. Now, the issue with questions like these is it's much easier if your current work environment provides a relevant context for the question. If I was still working for the OBC Group I potentially could have stretched it, possibly. It's ideal if you're working in a manufacturer with an extended supply chain. Regrettably, the 'of my choice' bit ain't going to come from my current work environment. This means I have to default to a case study, which raises two problems. The first is finding a case study of a supply chain that provides enough information and enough interesting points of analysis (and the details necessary to use the models and tools). The second is finding a case study that doesn't go on to answer the second half of the question for me. You'd think that'd be a good thing, but it never feels right and I've never tested the resulting mark in that scenario. This could be a thorny one, so I'm doing it second and I'll see if anything comes up during the residential seminar. There is a case study of Wal Mart in the course material. It may be there for a reason, but I suspect their supply chain is pretty good already. We shall see.

The delayed Strategic Marketing one is the one to watch. The chances are it'll be case study based, which always stand the chance of being a complete pain. The risk is the case study is a bit brief and lacking in information and then they combine this with a stipulation not to research the company to a ridiculous degree outside the case study. It tends to leave you a bit frustrated. I also tend to not like case study questions, no doubt because they do sometimes provide you with some information but no real context of being there and absorbing and experiencing the moment. It's a story written afterwards.

The next task is to download FreeMind as a way to plan out and create a skeleton of the ECA from the disparate different sources. I need a better way to martial ideas and links to studies and articles, etc. That's it. A proportion of my spare time for the next three months accounted for.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been a bit inundated with something I particularly dislike: people putting their opinion forward with a lack of wider context, history and no sense of perspective. I want to get something straight first, I'm not someone who goes around in life getting frustrated by these things continually. I'm constantly embroiled in bringing about change in organisations and within groups of people, and ensuring people understand the wider context of their decisions is a major part of that, so I'm used to it, understand it and usually enjoy the process of changing and debating that out. At the same time, when it happens on a more macro scale and in a less personal context, it does raise the odd eyebrow.

Let's consider incident one. I've got around North Yorkshire a bit lately due to my current job and it's been brilliant meeting people and seeing the different areas. What was interesting was some of the comments I was privy to about Selby. There wasn't anything nasty said about Selby, but the odd comment came across about it being flat and full of power stations. A relatively minor comment. It was the power station comment that got me. I'm sure some people who know me can guess why? An area had a negative connotation because it had power stations, and that was largely coming from an area that had the 'pleasure' of living without them. You see, I'm sure no one wants a power station close by, but they want the electricity don't they? It was the usual thing of people living in a relative nice, rural, one might say blessed, area and commenting (albeit passingly and not overly vindictively) about an area providing their power. Context, history and wider perspective needed.

Incident two takes us to the national scale. It's a more difficult one because you get your views defined by the inputs that are available to you, so I do accept that and keep it in the back of my mind, but it still leaves me a bit frustrated. Germany has a trade surplus. Good for them. The UK should have done a lot better out of the bountiful period that has been in existence through most of my adult life, but it doesn't mean a surplus country can denigrate and look down on deficit countries (or at least not generally). This is particularly true of Germany as it has weak internal demand, so where has its surplus come from? Exports. They sit on their surplus, which is fine, but then denigrate some of the countries which undoubtedly funded that surplus by buying their exports. Would Germany be in as good a situation if certain countries had been less proliferate and not purchased their cars and engineering goods? Again, context, history and wider perspective needed.

Incident three brings me to the proposed high speed rail network. Ignoring the fact that it may never happen, the inevitable happened and people started complaining about how it was a waste of money. The main thrust of the argument was a high speed rail network is a waste of money as local services should be improved first. Might have a point, other than the fact the largest group with that argument were people commuting into London. I can understand their frustration, but what's the bet one of the other issues some of those said same people hold are things like: Why is the south east so congested? Why do the south east effectively fund areas in the north? Well, I'm pretty convinced those two issues aren't going to be solved by improving the infrastructure in the south east and not making it easier to at least try to spread out the economy geographically. I've not heard the arguments of everyone and his brother not wanting the trains near them yet, but I'm sure it'll come. Again, context, history and wider perspective needed.

You know, it's life. These things happen. I understand that, and by and large I raise an eyebrow and move on. It does strike me though, that the ability to see the wider context, history and perspective of things and ideas, and make the case successfully, as in part what leadership is all about. I'm never one to sit in my personal bubble and think of only of me. Sometimes I might like to, but the thought never seems to last for long.

So, I submitted my Tutor Assessed Assignments (also known as Formative Assessments) a couple of weeks ago. They are basically the 'make sure you are studying and taking things in' assignments. It's good that they are there as a check, at times they can even be a useful dry run for the ECA, but it is a mixed bag on that front.

This time, I had a marking incident in that I got a result back I wasn't happy with and the tutors reasoning failed to convince me I deserved the mark. It was generic to the point of useless, and felt a bit rushed, and had too many generic statements like the oft quoted and irritating, without context, critically evaluate statement. I tend to believe it's the tutors job, with any mark that isn't a 100%, to have you nodding your head in recognition for the shortfall. The difficulty is, the reason for the short fall can be quite random across modules and sometimes the reason is the exact same reason that got you the 81% (Outstanding) result in another. Since the TAA only got 56% (Satisfactory), significantly below my marker of 65% (Very Good) or higher , it was even more important. So, I put forward my argument and, as agreed, I got the more useful feedback a week later.

Having gained some distance from it as time has passed I think I've re-learned a few things. The first, is it's possible to try and be too clever on the TAA. The second is to remember to push in course material even if the question leads you another way.

The module was Small Business Management and the question was to 'select a franchise concept of your own choice and write a report in which you come to a critical evaluation of the concept from the perspective of a potential franchisee.' There was three parts to it: an introduction of the franchise concept, an assessment of the franchisee's dependence and an appraisal of the advantages and disadvantages of the franchise concept. Note, it seemed pretty clear it was the advantages and disadvantages of THE franchise concept, not the general concept of franchising. I took the whole question to be in the context of critically evaluating the chosen franchise concept for the franchisee. I chose Domino's Pizza, they where very helpful. This meant I focused my analysis on introducing the Domino's Pizza concept and its issues, the dependence of the franchisee in the context of Domino's Pizza and the advantages and disadvantages of, you guessed it, the Domino's Pizza offering. I even included examples of further reading from numerous 'Journal of Business Venturing' articles. It did mean I didn't list in that 're-write but basically re-iterate the course material' way the advantages and disadvantages of franchising from the text book because they were generic advantages and disadvantages a core of which didn't apply to Domino's Pizza (and the ones that did were mentioned, though possible obscured in the way I answered the question) or I felt there was more important fish to fry (such as issues restriction entrepreneurship in the contract in terms of marketing, operations and financial structure).

Basically, I read the question and forgot that no matter what, make sure the course material is front, centre and visible. Normally, I do this, as I'm using a model or framework for the analysis, but no such thing was present, it was just an extensive list of pros and cons. It probably didn't help I answered the question like an ECA (the examined essays) in essay format. I should have just constructed the TAA as if each point to be addressed was a question, as I do suspect the obfuscation of my answer (though not that bad) didn't help.

Personally, I still think it's a 60% plus, but I can't be arsed to argue it out. I didn't literally follow the format of the question which I do accept as my main mistake (just from the point of view not making it difficult) Deep down I know the point is to bring in course material, I just didn't feel some of it was right for the context (and the question did suggest the context was important). As I say, if it was a model of analysis it would have been used, I spent a bit of time trying to search for one to use, it just didn't occur to me when writing the assignment to put a bit more force, and literal visibility, to those pros and cons on page XXXX handily pointed out in my more advanced feedback. Hell, it's not like I wasn't aware of that list, the book was quoted in my answer and references. The feedback also included a real world example about Domino's Pizza that I could have mentioned, there stores always being in run down areas, which I'm not sure is universally true and is anecdotal on the markers part (and it's not in the domain of a TAA to research the truth of that).

Ironically, despite all this, my conclusion was apparently 'comprehensive' and 'very useful for the franchisee', the mistake I made was thinking that was the point of the exercise.

If there is anything I detest it's negativity (and its close cousin cynicism). I just can't abide it and, by and large, I don't suffer it. The simple reason for this is my life experiences haven't engendered within me a raft of negative attitudes or my character makes me filter events that would have resulted in negative and cynical attitudes out of my system. It's probably a bit of both, as I am a bottle half full person. It's a essential that I am, if I was laden with negativity and cynicism the majority of things I do in my career would just collapse as I'd spread the foul disease to everyone I 'touched' and I'd achieve nothing. Negativity and cynicism generally lead to the evil of inaction and paralysis.

I have to say though, for those unwilling to fall to the tide, it's currently involves a significant amount of effort to not be weighted down by the overbearing tide of negative waves cascading out of every available outlet and associated input. It's almost impossible not to drown in it at the moment.

It's got to the point were I find myself not wanting to read or watch the news because of the continual tirade of information and opinion designed to inform us about how we are going to be living in the stone age and nothing good will come of the next few decades. Every bit of news is designed to support this view. Nothing positive can be reported. Nothing to balance it out. Why do we hear so little about the Olympics? Because it's currently on plan and going well, so there is obviously nothing to report there. Why do we not hear holistic and cohesive strategies, backed up by sound arguments, to dig us of the mess? Then throw in the fact that every country is obviously doing better than us, at everything, and experiencing no problems at all, so the news tells us. That's because another countries own issues and problems are rarely reported and you can bet they exist (they may still be doing generally better, but the dichotomy is still out of balance).

This isn't helped by the election campaign which just needs to get moving already. This is the chance to inspire, to get the country moving, to start to alter things for the better (even if it is a long-term plan) but instead we are in a ridiculous situation. Whatever party you support, or if you tend to be the quintessential floating voter like myself, it is absolutely ridiculous that Labour are so well represented in the polls. Statistically no party wins a fourth term. They've dug us into the mess having peaked some time ago. Gordon Brown is an absolute joke in terms of being able to lead due to public perception and the fact everyone obviously wants him out (how many leadership challenges has it been now?). Hell, even though you don't vote on a Prime Minister, supposedly, there is every chance Gordon Brown wouldn't be the Prime Minister by the end of the fourth Labour term. This then brings me to the Tory party, again whether you support them or not, their leadership has been an absolute disaster. Any party that cannot lead itself to a high poll position when facing the dead in the water Labour party with all the old faces has to have done something wrong. Where has direct, honest and substantive leadership gone? I'm not even looking to agree with any particular leadership direction at the moment, just it existing would be nice.

The final annoyance that constantly preys on my mind is it doesn't really matter who I vote for as I can't imagine Labour ever losing in my region. Institutional, generational voting, is something I particularly despise.

As I say, it's difficult at the moment to keep one's head above the negativity waters. I refuse to drown though.

As the last days of February pass by, the end of the first phase of the semester is reached: the TAA deadline. A strange interlude then exists for two weeks before the ECA's are released and the 3-month rush to hand in the examined papers begins.

I completed two of the TAA's in one sitting and the third in two sittings. That was a good way to do it, as it meant they didn't hang around for too long. It was particularly good getting the first drafts done in a single session, especially since those drafts held up very well. I never can avoid editing as I go. It'll certainly be the way I'll do them in the future. It's going to be interesting to see how this influences the ECA's. In a similar manner, some other students seem to sit down and do each of their ECA's in one sitting, while I develop, stir and marinate over weeks. Since I'll be doing three of them this semester, leaving about a month for each, I certainly don't want the writing process to hang around for weeks on end. We shall see. It'll come down to the content of the ECA's, as the nature of the questions can vary considerably and thus some can involve significantly more effort than others.

At the moment, the electives are a mixed bag. The Strategic Marketing module is interesting, as it is a subject I naturally drift to, but the core text book is awful. It's not that it isn't full of content it just seems to be written in a way that forces you to disengage with the text. Not that great for a marketing text. Strategic Supply Chain Management has been a bit of a surprise, in that some of the module is very interesting, such as supplier relationships and trust. The core text with this module is also pretty hard going, but does contain a lot of interesting information on procurement processes, which aren't overly an interest of mine but I think it's good to know something about in a 'wider context' fashion. I really enjoyed the TAA related to Small Business Management, which involved analysing a franchise opportunity (and Domino's Pizza were very helpful), but parts of the module are a bit too theoretical, being research on small businesses instead of it being focused on the practical aspects of running one. The practical side is in the module, but for me, it should have been everything in the module.

So far, none of the three electives this semester compare to the brilliance of Change Management, which was interesting, it organised the narrative of its content well (which you'd hope it would considering the subject matter) and the session during the residential seminar was brilliant. Still, a good ECA can be a game changer, so we'll see.

I've already started thinking about what to do next semester as I have a variety of options. Do I do my two remaining electives or do I do an elective and the last remaining core with an exam? A part of me thinks I'll do two more electives and one will certainly be Business Transformation, the other is a bit of a mystery as the reduced elective set we now face is lacking a bit of inspiration. I could do Business Transformation and the Managing Information core in the hope that more of the new electives are released? I'll probably query the release schedule of the new electives to see if anything will be released for the first 2011 semester or not. If not, I'll certainly just do two electives. The issue will be what to do along with Business Transformation? I'm really looking forward to Business Transformation though.

The strangest feeling at this point, is I can see the end in sight? This is strange, as there is still three semesters to go after this one. I'm not really that close to the end. I'm just over half way. I think it comes down to the fact the end can be comprehended. Two electives, the remaining core, Methods of Inquiry and then the dissertation. It doesn't seem that bad does it? Hell, the dissertation semester is so close to the end it almost doesn't count as a semester. I certainly feel like the crest of the hill has been reached.

As for March? I'll face the ECA starting pistol, the results for semester three and, at the end of the month, the residential seminar. I always enjoy the residential and I'm hoping to go for more of it this time, possibly sampling a few elective options.

Just over a year ago I posted about a tale of two recruitment streams, the focus primarily being on the job market via CV and the job market via direct application and how they differed. At the time, experience was telling me I did much better via direct application, the primary reason being direct applications invariably provided the tools to target one's skills and experiences effectively. Once you get to a certain point in your career, especially if that career could be interpreted as wide rather than focused, it's all about the context in order to market yourself effectively so the potential employer can see how your skills, brand and experience works for them.

This continues to be true, the dysfunctional nature of the private sector job market at the moment aside, the usual strategy of (1) a quick summary of the job, (2) not being told the company at CV stage and (3) submitting a CV in the hope the employer will catch something he likes is positively ludicrous. You are simply not given enough information to target the CV or, more often than not, the information to actually target it via research. I no longer believe my CV writing skills aren't up to scratch, after significant improvement in early 2008. I continually test the CV against practice and I can usually tick most of the boxes and refine as appropriate, it is a lack of information to adequately target. After all, I'm nailing the skills testaments on application forms, a targeted CV is just a bullet point, highly focused version of that.

On the other hand, consider the rich nature of the direct application form with the role specification and person specification documents. You have all the information you need to target and research your testament of skills on the application form. Not only that, it works as a tool through the whole process as the person specification is often tagged with where the skills will be assessed. As an example, I'm researching and preparing a presentation at the moment, but I can see the six areas that are assessed by the presentation on the person specification, 3 are general presentation, research and communication skills and 3 are specific strategic skills for the role. That can act as my guiding light for presentation content and delivery. The same is true of the interview, I can prepare and mine my rich experience for achievements that match the person specification items that will be assessed in the interview. It allows for a targeted, multi-layered approach which can only provide benefits to both candidate and potential employer.

No one can lose by doing this. There is nothing really to be gained from obscuring these 'employer' desires from the CV submission process or the interview process. How weird is it that most private sector processes I've experienced leave it up to almost complete chance a CV will be targeted correctly or that the candidate will pull the right experiences out of his ass when hit with the questions he can only use 'vague interview experience' to establish a framework of likely expectations? The chances that the private sector, sans visible person specification process, could result in the strongest candidate losing out in the CV submission stage seems obscenely high? What I suspect they get is individuals who happen to have a targeted CV purely by virtue they are within a similar role domain already, if I was employing I'd not be satisfied with that implicit filter due to the process.

Having both private and public sector experience on both the supply and demand side, I'm in a position to make observations on how both work. One observation I will make is, there may be plenty of things the public sector can be criticised for, but I'm not sure their recruitment processes are one of them (since they invariably go for person specification focused, direct recruitment). I believe the risk of finding the wrong candidate, or unknowingly losing the right candidate, is mitigated via their process.

The fact their list of candidates, historically, may have been found wanting is another issue. As is the fact they can have a bias towards internal candidates even when they are sometimes not the best candidate.

Week A. I was getting up at around 0645. The pattern of the working week was similar to most weeks. I finished work at the same time. On an evening it was an exercise in some MBA stuff, Mass Effect 2 and continuing with notes and ideas for my Space Fantasy experiment. All good.

Week B. Is surprisingly similar to Week A. It involved getting up at the same time. It involved doing similar things. It involved finishing at the same time. The evenings involved a general lethargy, zero MBA stuff (though I am ahead to be fair), minimal Mass Effect 2 and certainly nothing significantly imaginative such as my Space Fantasy experiment.

What's the difference between the two weeks? A complete lack of 'mental space' in Week B and also the fact I was working from home in Week A.

What's interesting thing about the two weeks is the only difference is literally the location. The work was no more or less interesting in either week. Obviously, despite getting up at the same time and finishing work at the same time, I do have a 45-minute journey when working in the office, but I don't think this is a significant factor. Hell, in Week A, I was also dealing with the stress of trying to arrange a gear box from a series of parts dealers like Watto from Star Wars: Episode One. I'm half convinced there is something about the office, it seems to induce the same 'mental fatigue' as being in meetings (assuming one is actively contributing and thinking during said meetings).

What this results in is a distinct lack of a valuable resource: mental space. It just vanishes completely, like a vampire has sucked the capacity for it out through my nose. This isn't a good thing, as it represents life just coasting by with no real value to it. The reduction to complete banality and the inability to engage in any sort of imaginative activity on an evening is intensely frustrating, whether it be the MBA, a computer game or role-playing game stuff. It represents a loss of momentum. It doesn't have to be volumes of text written, tens of studies read or anything like that, just active thought and the odd note. Momentum gets lost and it makes it harder to get started again. It's even creates a small barrier to re-entry for Mass Effect 2, never mind tasks that need more active engagement. It's not insurmountable, we're not talking about a weeks lost training for an extreme marathon or anything, but still, momentum is good.

On a gaming front this is one big difference between gaming before and gaming now, and it's what actively needs managing. I never had a problem with finding mental space before, for one reason or another, and my general life was full of continuous inputs that helped with the momentum. My life was mental space and imaginative input rich. Hence the strategies to try and solve the input problem and set aside time. Still, when a week like this week happens, it hits pretty hard.

I usually spend a good while obsessing over MBA assignments. This is a good thing for the most part, especially on the marked assignments. It can also absorb a lot of time. Due to the existence of Facebook you get an idea of how other members of the MBA cohort are doing their assignments. A few sit down and finish them in one sitting, often ridiculously late in the game. While there is a lot of context missing, such as how they studied and prepared up to that point, finishing them in a short burst of time had some appeal.

So, I thought I'd give it a go with the tutor assessed assignments (TAA).

It went well and I got the first draft done today in about five hours. What was even more noteworthy is I actually enjoyed it. The goal of getting it completed, the knowledge it wouldn't be hanging around for several weekends in a row. All good. In truth, the preparation and the writing can't be separated. What I did this semester is focus on the TAA before I even cracked open the study materials. This meant I studied with a focused awareness of the questions and how the topics in question were distributed through modules one to four. In short, rather than the TAA just focusing what I learned it focused how I studied. This seems to have translated into me being more prepared for the essay, who'd have thought? It wasn't a specific, more intense effort, it's just you pick up what is necessary as you have it in mind. I'll also admit to focusing my efforts a bit more, rather than cramming in too much, and brought in more real world examples. You only have 1,500 words. It's not a mark that contributes to the final result.

The other TAAs present a few wrinkles that the Strategic Supply Chain Management one doesn't have. The Strategic Marketing module requests that you analyse a few different sales forecasting methods, ideally in the context of 'your organisation or an organisation you are familiar with'. I know why they do this and I agree it's great. The problem is if the question just happens to put you in the situation of your current organisation not being applicable and one you are familiar with not helping either (like a past one or a supplier, etc). It's also a bit of a pain finding any studies or discussion of the topic. Tricky one that. I can hit the second part which is about product development and market penetration.

The Small Business Management one isn't to bad, but I need a franchise to analyse. Domino Pizza have sent me through their franchise contract, and they have the usual investor information on the web. I'm going to try and get the franchise pack they send to interested parties. That'll take a call or two I suspect (my first contact gave me the necessary names).

The conclusion? Subject to the marks coming back and telling me this was a disastrous way to do it. I like this method better. I think in the past I've spent too much time on them for no more a guarantee of a 'reward'. This is inevitable as you gauge effort for things over time. Taking the one I did today as an example, it doesn't feel significantly better or worse than the others I've done. We shall see.

A day late, mostly because I'd half convinced myself I wasn't going to bother. Then I see other people posting up there aims, resolutions and general intent for the year ahead and I can't resist it. It's not as negative this year, in fact, taking them as a holistic whole, it's a pretty grand set.

Become An Obsessive Note Taker

Not the biggest resolution known to man, but it's a problem I've known I've had for years and I know the solution and I never do anything about it. I have a prodigious long-term memory (for important things anyway), but a pathetic short-term memory for anything. I've lost count of the amount of nuggets, ideas, concepts, models and just stuff that enter my head and leave it at some point in the future. That's value I've lost. I did this with the personal branding. I wrote everything down that I'd done and achieved, along with hobbies, and mapped that to frameworks and transferable skills. Brilliant.

If something pops into my head I note it down. It doesn't matter how random it is. Invariably, I know it's something I should remember, a key skill of achievement in a new light, a visual idea, a model for looking at a specific problem, a sequence for a role-playing game and the issues explored. Whatever. Note. It Down. It works because it builds up momentum because what you've written down and not forgotten spins off into other things you'll not forget. I've lost count of the things I've solved with my pure genius which seems to peak between 0400 and 0600 am, or a walk over dinner. Now I won't forget them.

Sprinkle MBA Dedication Amply

In 2008, I made a resolution to adopt a strategy of time management on steroids. Though I didn't know it then, I would start the MBA in the second half of the year and time management would kick in big style. What has also happened over the last 24 months is the application of a level of dedication I've not applied to anything outside of work. Work yes, personal time, not so much. As can be appreciated, it's had fantastic rewards and has seen great results on me personally and my approach to certain objectives.

What can be achieved if I apply that level of singular dedication to other things? Okay, hard to do at the same level while still doing the MBA, but it's a mindset issue more than just a matter of pure time.

What's going to receive this dedication, it's not anything specifically, but certainly the rest of the things I mention here. It's also going to involve some aggressive time management. The plan is to be able to look back at any point in time in 2010 and see virtually zero temporal wastage. In work, I'm happiest when I'm 110% occupied, ideally weaving together multiple strands of work, all of which have a level of challenge, grandeur and achievement about them. This needs to happen in my personal life more, the MBA has it and as such it's a success.

Navigate To More Lucrative Shores

I undoubtedly entered the eye of the economic storm in late 2008, and I happened to enter it on a small, rubber dingy (a 4-man micro-company). The result, as you can imagine, wasn't good. It was a tumultuous year during which I learned a lot about myself. While getting all my work through connections previously is a great selling point, it did mean I never built up skills of selling myself effectively to people who didn't know me at all. This has now changed. The MBA, a personal branding exercise, an excavation of even further value within my experience and any murky territory with respect to selling myself, the language I was using and what I stand for, has been eradicated. While this is a continual exercise, the results have been significant.

Having secured financial revenue throughout 2010, the aim is to take things further now I'm standing on firmer ground. While the storm isn't over, it's probably safe to say I'm now in the severely choppy waters on the edge of the storm but I'm in a sturdier boat. The intention is now to navigate it to a more lucrative shore, whatever that happens to mean.

Resolve The Input Problem

There was a time when I was surrounded by gaming and genre related inputs. I lived it. Every breath I took was soaked with it. Computer Games. Role-Playing Games. Films. TV. Novels and, to a lesser degree, comics. Last, but by no means least, conventions and the synergy and fabric of them all woven together. While I'm certainly not looking to return to a pre-1996 orgy of such inputs, I do believe I have a lack of inputs problem, which in turn creates an output one. It's not coincidence that bursts of imaginative outputs coincide with periods of concentrated inputs.

One way I'm looking to address this is Mega Gaming Sunday, the aim being to do something genre and / or gaming related on Sunday afternoon. A proportion of this time will be taken up with the activities of the gaming group, currently the 4E Campaign, the weeks not doing that will be spent doing something else. Initially, this will almost certainly be computer games (a form of valid input), but I just hope to mentally grow into the space being used for that purpose and see what happens. It's in my Google Calendar for the foreseeable future, so now it's pre-destined to happen. I'm aiming for a 'force of habit' effect combined with applying MBA dedication to take me in interesting directions in the medium term.

Return To The GM'ing Chair

I've not came even close to running anything for the last 29 months. I've even resisted guest spots. A few things have changed though. I understand my gaming brand. It's big, heroic, brash and involves protagonists doing big things in exciting ways while undergoing a range of dramatic and personal crises. I understand my commitment level. I'm not going run the next 4E Campaign involving an 18+ month commitment. I'm firmly in the sporadic specials (think Doctor Who in 2009) or failing that the mini-series end of the spectrum, ideally quite intense ones. The MBA has given me God like expectations management skills. If you don't learn personal expectations management on the MBA you die a rabbit in the headlights death as things you've never done, about things you initially know nothing about, are thrown at you constantly. The 'take this all in your stride' policy can be applied to running games. I was guilty of trying too hard.

So, what, when and how? At this point I have no idea. The gaming group needs to settle into 2009. We need to finish the 4E Campaign. Possibly accommodate a model of less players, not entirely a bad thing. That's fine. It's not a grandiose return, it may end up just being a guest slot or something. It also depends on how we structure our gaming as a group post-4E. Personally, I'd be an advocate of 4-8 (average 6) session mini-series to stand a chance of getting three of them in a year (you could also come back to S2 of one after S1 of another, etc). We've done seasons (each Tier in 4E is analogous to a season) longer than that but I'm not sure the value has been much more enhanced (it's just stretched things out due to system specifics like encounter lengths and / or issues remaining in stasis for longer).

All I know is I used to enjoy it. I happen to think I was / am pretty good at it. I think my life is better for being in that chair, occasionally. We shall see what 2010 brings and build on that.

Conclusion

This was hard. I think was because there is an element of none of these resolutions being discreet. They are holistic in that their application as a whole may end up being greater than the some of their parts. It could also be I'm just shallow and had to kick a load of bollocks out of my head in order to do the obligatory early January resolutions post.

I guess I'll find out in December 2010.

As mentioned in the Resolutions for 2010 I'm naming Sunday afternoon Mega Gaming Sunday. It's a re-branding of Sunday afternoon, specifically the hours circa 1300 to 1900 hours. Basically, those six (possibly four when busy) or so hours on a Sunday afternoon are now Mega Gaming Sunday, colloquially known as MGS, and will involve gaming of one sort or another.

MGS is born out of the MBA. Which is a bit weird when put it like that, but more specifically it's born out of the time management of the MBA. It demands you put time into it. In my view, regular time, constantly hit with military precision. Historically, this semester aside, this has meant slots 1900 to 2100 on most evenings and when writing essays usually Saturday and / or Sunday morning. It seemed to work. I'm going to do it for my leisure activities, and MGS is it. I've put a repeating 'appointment' in my Google Calendar, it doesn't get more official than that.

So, what is going to happen on MGS? You know, nothing that special, it's more about actually doing it. Obviously, 50% of Mega Gaming Sundays, on average, will be taken up with the regular campaign of the gaming group. Currently the 4E campaign. The remaining days might be spent playing games on the Xbox, such as working my way to some sort of interesting plot in Grand Theft Auto IV, it's rumoured to exist. I might also be be getting blown away by the space opera awesome of Mass Effect 2. I may also put time aside to watch a film or TV shows.

There is another angle to this: the fact I have an inputs problem. True, I have the MBA, which does work for me on a similar level, but that input translates into something different than what watching films, TV shows and playing imaginative games of various types translates into. Basically, playing games begets more games which in turn keeps the imagination active. Watching exciting genres films and TV shows has a similar effect as does playing awesome computer games. The weighting has been too focused on the MBA. If I'm a bit more aggressive with my time there has to be space for both.

After some random cursory reading of the various text books, I've come to the conclusion Small Business Management is going to be very intriguing; Strategic Marketing is a more detailed study of the topics covered in the core module, and that's fine, as I tend to see a level of marketing in everything I do; Strategic Supply Chain Management may well turn out to be a bit of the pain. There are parts of Strategic Supply Chain Management I like the look of, such as trust in supplier relationships, but while it's interesting on some level to understand the supply chain purchasing processes of larger companies, it's not immediately and directly relevant. Everything has some relevance, I'm all for the value of holistic learning, bu, out of the three, it's third place.

I've also revised my study schedule. Instead of doing the units for each module in parallel, I've decided to end run the first 1 to 3 (and the 4 for Small Business Management) units of each module in the first three weeks. Small Business Management first, followed by Strategic Marketing and then Strategic Supply Chain Management. The reason for doing this is simple: the formative assessment (the TAA) task is based on the content of these first three units. The 'end run' approach allows me to start considering the TAA for any particularly module up to a week or two early. As an example, I'm studying 1 to 4 of Small Business Management currently, which is proving a pleasure as it's well structured and effectively interwoven with the text book (and studies). I'm doing this with the TAA question in mind: the critical evaluation of a particular franchising concept. I'm thinking of using Domino Pizzas as a my case, I've begun some initial enquiries regarding this.

The TAA run has begun and they all have to be in on the 1st March. The above schedule allows me to have completed all the units needed for the TAA by w/b 18th January giving me plenty of time for the assignments, though I'll also be studying the remaining four units for each module in time for the release of the examined assignment released on 15th March 2009.

The Small Business Management units have proven intriguing. As usual it's taking what you perceive to be the case via experience, and refining it through a wider perspective, theories and academic models to provide a much firmer understanding and wider perspective. The material on the disparity between marketing as taught and marketing for the small business was enlightening, a mixture of experience confirmation and new ideas. I could view the material through the filter of having been involved in a micro-company and marketing and sales activities within a specific sector. You get the usual result, some good ideas on what was potentially done right, and things you could have done better. It again makes you realise what achievements and experience can be mined from your CV and how to sell it in the wider context.

In fact, the current spurt of studying has allowed me to refine what the MBA does into a single sentence: It takes knowledge created out of enacted experience, challenges you to processes it, producing proactive learning formed on a base of wider and deeper understanding. This is what's it's doing for me anyway. It's genius and great. It's worth a holiday or two a year.

I remember being a bit tired of the whole resolutions and review a year later process in late 2008, so I thought I'd not set any out. When I checked, it turned out I did drag some resolutions out of my head a year ago. It was a bit of a surprise. Since I did, it would be a disservice to not give a picture of how things turned out.

Navigate The Hell That Will Be 2009

I've always worked in small and medium enterprises that are customer focused and driven by customer demands. You know, the type that fail by the thousand during recessions but never get on the news? At the tail end of 2008, I was working in a particularly small, start-up, micro-company and as close to the commercial front end as you could get. Delivering client projects, consultancy, marketing and sales. The financial crises had hit in the last quarter of 2008 and had taken hold by the time I wrote the resolutions at the end of 2008. World trade was grinding to a halt. The word from customers I'd secured into the channel was the breaks had gone on dramatically. Everything had just stopped. Apocalyptic images of ships parking up off the coast of Singapore, the lot. If those ships weren't moving it meant the global supply chain had seized up. I had a first hand experience of how difficult things were going to get in 2009. It was...impressive in its size, scale and speed, as well as being scary.

I wasn't wrong. Half of the gaming group lost their jobs and were unemployed for one reason or another and for varying lengths. The half that didn't were ensconced in education and as such were relatively immune. The gaming group was formed by people who had gaming high on their agenda, 2009 probably proved that's still the case by virtue of the gaming activities surviving. The MBA and social networks connected me to others who suffered the same fate. Highly skilled and amazing people having to radically alter the lives they enjoyed to find work. Navigating 2009 was the perfect phrase. It was like navigating a storm. Unemployment. Job hunting. It wasn't great. In truth, it was pretty depressing, and I suspect it was the same for at least one other member of the gaming group though, like me, outward positivity was almost always present. If I wasn't such a bottle half-full person I'd have entered a pretty dilapidating downward spiral. I will say this, I've learned a lot. A heck of a lot. I understand myself a lot better, but it's probably the subject of another entry.

Due to sound financial management in previous years (mad Australian journey aside) we can survive off very little money, though it impacts long-term fortunes (don't get me started on pension impossibilities), so we navigated 2009 without losing our house or any other serious catastrophes. Work still to be done in 2010 though. I know of people in previous recessions who suffered much worse in much lighter recessions.

A success, we navigated the storm, and while the ship suffered damage, it never came close to sinking.

The MBA Trail

This one has been a complete success. 2009 has seen me complete another two semesters. It has also seen me break my own financial rules with respect to the MBA only slightly. I've had my moments when I've begun to question it. I know the MBA has had a significant, beneficial effect on me over its course and I soon realise I'm really stupid to doubt it when I go to the on-site seminars or an MBA event. These are always a positive experience, thought provoking and empowering for a variety of reasons.

I did have a minor blip during semester three, caused by the finance exam fiasco and the struggle to meet my own financial rules for semester three. I only did one elective in semester three but I'm back on course by doing three electives in semester four.. The fact I've secured employment through 2010 at a minimum should also secure semester five and possibly six. Not ideal, but it'll be interesting. In truth, when I cut to the chase, the only thing I regret about the MBA is not starting it four years earlier when I originally considered it.

.Net Fandomlife.net

Well, I did try. I downloaded all the Microsoft tools and had a good play with the Microsoft Express products. I even transferred all the data over to Microsoft Server Express 2008. I even started to change bits of the application logic over to .Net. Ultimately, I decided it was way too much work. The reason for this was quite simply because I wasn't going to get much return for my efforts and .Net is just way too heavy for the types of things I like playing around with on the site. Coldfusion is really the best solution in terms of the effort to reward ratio. It's even better now it can all be done for free via adopting an Eclipse development environment. The reasons for moving to .Net can now be met by my Coldfusion set-up.

No More DM'ing Delusions Of Grandeur

A complete success. What can I say? I've never attempted to run anything. I've never started to run anything and then stopped. I have my moments when gaming stuff overflows but it stays on the blog and that serves as a release valve and if it has any use for anyone else then that's fine as well. I've always made my GM'ing status completely clear: inactive. Even a Cottage Con didn't dent that position. Despite making this resolution at the end of 2008, I've actually kept this resolution with an iron steadfastness for over two years, 29 months to be exact, since the last session of Thrilling Tales.

Why has it been kept so easily? It's partly a realisation that being the regular DM is never going to happen because it has never has happened. It's partly the fact I was considering the MBA in the second quarter of 2008 and have been busy with it since the third quarter of 2008 and onwards. Ironically, it's also because I love Spirit of the Century (FATE generally, to be fair), I love Thrilling Takes, I think the characters and the potential outcome of the aspects is fantastic and I think we got within a whisker of producing sessions of grand, manic, pulp brilliance with pacing to die for and Big Things Happening(tm) and I loved that. In every way it represents the rules, characters and concept (or one of them) I've been aiming for since I stopped gaming in 1996. I also must admit, while I'm not perfect, I'm pretty good at it when I get going. I still don't see it as dead, and I very much doubt I'll run anything else without finishing it out of principle, anything else would be a major waste of the awesome creativity that got put into it.

This is a full success, if a rather negative one, looking back on it.

Playing At Maximum Capacity

I'd forgotten about this one, so it came as a bit of a surprise. Looking at it, I don't think I've delivered on this one at all. There are probably a couple of reasons for this. One problem was the nature of 2009, it's suffice to say I had other things on my mind for the majority of it. The 4E Campaign was still a great release and a break from other pressures, but it has been a different experience.

The other issue is the nature of the 4E Campaign, I really enjoy the experience, and it's great fun, but in terms of achieving this resolution, as I see it, there is a disconnect for me. The first is the tactical nature of the game, which is great, but it has positives as well as negatives (it's hardly the dramatically based interactions of Fate, for instance). The second problem is my style and the campaigns style exist like they are offset by a second of time or something. The basis of what is important in the game and the types of decisions that matter are just different to how I'd view it. It's just not a perfect connection. As a result, performing well is akin to being in a job you're not perfect for, it's not that you don't try, or get some way there, but something is always adrift or you always feel slightly off balance. Weirdly, I can look back and see a number of times things connected, the one second offset aligned, and at the point I sparked up a bit.

While the success of this one is something that should be decided by the rest of the people at the table, I don't put it down as a success.

Conclusion

The final score is is 3.5 out of 5 which isn't that bad. The success rate feels a lot worse due to some of the resolutions for 2009 not being based on a negative. A bit of this was due to the on coming storm I could see on the horizon for 2009 and the fact I was making a resolution not to do something (in this case run role-playing games). This isn't like me, but I do put it down to how I was seeing 2009, and I didn't get that wrong.

The materials for semester four have arrived this week in two instalments. Thus the study process begins. In truth, it doesn't begin until the first full week of January, but the mental preparation has started. I've already blocked out the study schedule in Excel. One of the unfortunate effects of the assignment structure is you have to study the first so many units for each module in order to be able to do the TAA. As a result, the first four weeks is a unit from each module, and then I kick into two units from a module a week, focusing on a module in turn until each are completed. As usual, I plan to have encountered all material before the ECA. I don't like studying new material while also focusing on examined essays.

I'll also start to get to know some of the text books, reading a few chapters and getting a feel for the subjects. I'll also investigate the TAA assignments so I can make sure I absorb what I need to know to answer that assignment, and capture any 'out of experience' knowledge or real world data I need to accrue before I can tackle it.

It's a diverse range of subjects this year: Strategic Marketing, Small Business Management and Strategic Supply Chain Management. I think they are all going to be useful. They represent a series of topics I've touched on before in practicality without any of them being the focus of my role. This is inevitable in a career that has been much broader than it is deep. I've done some marketing work and ran a campaign while working for a small entrepreneurial start-up, only four staff, with a unique method of developing enterprise web applications. This experience will also filter into Small Business Management, of course. I've been in charge of IT strategy and operations at an international SME focused on logistics, shipping and business travel, elements of the Strategic Supply Chain Management module will feed into that practical experience. The bits I've scanned regarding strategic supplier base management and trust all got me nodding my head if not because of knowledge of the theories and subject, but because of my practical endeavours in the past in terms of supplier relationship management. It also helps to provide a grounding with respect to such activities in much larger organisations.

It's exciting as I'm not sure what effect each of the modules is going to have on me. This is particularly true of Small Business Management. The success of the MBA isn't so much the letters after the name but how it changes you as an individual and the Small Business Management module is an unknown quantity in this regard. I also like the marketing subject, as so much in life involves marketing these days, facilitating and driving change always involves a dose of marketing.

The one I'm least convinced about is Strategic Supply Chain Management. While I have some interest in the concept of managing suppliers as part of your competitive strategy, I'm not so interested in becoming an anal expert on the strategic re-focusing of purchasing departments (it also gets a bet repetitive after the new strategic focus of HR, the new strategic focus of IT, the new strategic focus of Marketing). The most I'm hoping to get out of it is a good awareness of that part of an organisation, specifically how it might filter into any ERP related products, etc. Anyway, this elective might be hit and miss. The text book seems very American, which is odd, despite being labelled as not for sale in the US in ridiculously prominent text. It also a bit dry in the parts I've read.

It's also going to be a busy year, back to the pace of doing two cores. The three written papers in the second half of the semester is going to be the interesting bit depending on the nature of the questions. The critical point will be whether the questions are of such a nature you have a distinct advantage working in an organisation which can be used as a practical example to align to the theories. The other issue is I seem much more tired on an evening these days, so we'll see how the 2 hour evening slot holds up. I may use an hour at work during the day.

When I finish this semester I'll have received enough credits to be awarded a PGCE, this is cut off point number two. Not only that, it's the last viable cut off point before an end run to the full MBA. There is very little point aiming for the next break point as you have to do the project and everything. I want to finish. Still, in terms of managing the process, I will have reached the PGCE point by my original schedule (I'd planned to only do two electives a semester originally).

So, we've got a new pet. Bella the Hamster. We half planned it. We had some vague idea of getting a hamster when we set off to Pets At Home. A part of me thought the idea would lose any momentum once we got there and had to consider buying a cage and whatever else. Then we saw the 'Black Bear' Syrian Hamster that was way too cute and different to not rescue from her glass cubicle.

We had a few trials initially, in that we are on our second cage and our third wheel. We initially went for the plastic cage thinking it would be warmer, but she broke the wheel that came with that within an hour so. She basically bent it out of shape so it got harder and harder to turn due to touching the bottom of the cage. We also decided we didn't like the goldfish bowl aspect of it, so we called Pets At Home and they just changed it, swapping Bella over. We didn't even have to pay the 5 GBP extra for the new cage. It was amazing customer service. While this cage was better it wasn't long before the wheel began to squeak at a very high pitch that was driving us insane. It also began to bend and eventually stopped spinning due to rubbing against the side of the cage. Finally, we purchased a free standing wheel with 'ball bearing technology' that has so far proved very silent, though even this has had to be tied to the cage. It works though, it's like a stealth wheel. She runs in it constantly at high speed, I'd love to know things like distant covered and highest speed, etc.

I have to admit, part of my reservations about getting a hamster was I thought it would be very boring. This hasn't proven to be true. She's fascinating. It's all the little mannerisms. Lazily stretching like cat. Standing up and looking around like a Meerkat. The way she has an area that acts as a toilet, and a couple of food stash areas. She religiously takes food to her hut everyone morning so she has it on hand during the day. She'll even get up and amble over to the 'toilet', all bleary-eyed, do her thing, and then amble back to bed. Very funny.

Today we had a strange in cage event. In the space of ninety minutes, between 0900 and 1030 this morning, Bella had somehow managed to get a massive amount of sawdust on top of her hut. It seemed to be a feat of prodigious dedication. We're still not sure how she has physically moved that much sawdust from the opposite corner to the top of the hut. Why? Is she receiving signals from aliens and she's decided she needs to model Roseberry Topping out of sawdust because that is where the aliens are going to land? No idea. I just know we are going to dismantle it. I'd have loved to see her creating it. We possibly need a hamster cam.

In my mind I want to utilise public transport. I'd like nothing better than to have to drive into work every day. The trouble is it's rarely practical and even when it 'sort of is' it's not comfortable. Last week I went to Newcastle on the train. In my mind I had visions of being able to sit at a table, use my computer, and if it became a regular thing, get some work done or use it as study time. Anyone who does this regularly will now be laughing at my naivety. First, the seats are all airline seats. Second, the trains are a bit rickety. Third, at peak times it's like a train from Calcutta, all it was missing was the chickens in the isle. I couldn't blame the smartphone enabled for using them to escape into some virtual world. Fourth, I'm pretty sure it's not any cheaper than the petrol for the car and driving in, and I'd rather queue with a radio in my own personal space than sweat it out on the train. God knows what it's like in the summer!

It reminds me our infrastructure is the pits and causes serious issues for the country.

In thee past three months I've become aware of five people who have moved away from the North East permanently or temporarily with an eye to making it permanent. All of them bar one have moved to London. Now, this isn't very scientific, and it's anecdotal at best, but I do find this a bit depressing. The sad thing is, the Australian migration aside, most of them where happy to stay in the North East and it was work that drove them south. Not saying they aren't happy to be further south, but financial concerns were the key trigger, rather than a lust for the location in itself. In a way, this is to be expected, when recessions hit there is an outflow of people from the region to more densely populated areas.

I find this is a bit sad from a macroeconomic point of view, because it doesn't have to be the case, and doesn't make sense, in terms of long-term strategy, to focus the flow of people southward. You need balance in your geographical economy for the sake of quality of life and maximising resources. England isn't that big a place. In other words, if we had quality infrastructure we'd have a much more sensible balance. At the moment, a quick check puts the fastest train from Darlington to Kings Cross at 2:25, and that's using our rickety old trains that I suspect are going 125mph if you're lucky. Japan is getting trains that are going to go 275mph. If we had a solid rail network you'd have people commuting to London from Darlington without breaking a sweat as it'd take about an hour (and only 80 minutes from Newcastle). It also puts train journey within a whisker of being in 'pop down for a meeting' range, especially if the facilities on the train allowed the continuation of your work (already quite possible on the current network).

I'm not a rail network expert, and I realise some cross-country rail issues may exist in certain parts of the country, but it shouldn't be an issue down the East Coast. Even in my lifetime virtually every North East town and city has been transformed. It's just pity that below par infrastructure seems to leave them disconnected from places that, truth be told, aren't that far away. I remember once marvelling at the fact it didn't take me orders of magnitude longer to get to New York on a plane than it did to get to London on a train, and it was cheaper! In a country the size of England (and I'm missing the wider UK purely for simplicity, but in truth the same applies to living in Newcastle and working in Edinburgh, or Aberdeen and Edinburgh, etc) the need to be geographically tied to a location either as a business, or certainly as a person, should not be as a major issue as it is.

Does it make economic sense? It would seem to. Is it really good for the health of the country or its occupants to have areas of the economy over heating with ever increasing congestion, quality of life problems and costs, while others suffer and have the space and cheaper prices to accommodate? I very much doubt it. It's a proposition that would take a significant amount of analysis, but I do have a sneaky feeling it's one of those ideas that represents a slight 'build it and they will come' factor. It just seems to me, getting our infrastructure right would allow us to capitalise on our countries compact size? I may be wrong.

If you tossed this efficient and fast transport network in with a blisteringly fast broadband network the way we work and where we work would be transformed. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to envisage people going back to working close to where they chose to live, due to fast transport and virtual organisations across high-speed broadband networks.

Vision is lacking in our politicians, regrettably.

I was thinking about the MBA today, something that comes into focus when it comes around to paying for the next semester. I'm paying for it myself, I can't help but question it every time the wallet gets opened. Obviously, being able to pay for the MBA is a product of a time and place and sacrifices are being made to do it (most notably holidays for the most part I suspect). It's also a product of the fact I did a degree.

I don't know what is going on in higher education these days. I can't attest to being on top of all the political arguments or the business ones. I know having a globally respected University education system is a good thing. I know the opening up of the higher education to those who can achieve it is critical for the success of the country. That's it. I'm not going to suggest I know how to achieve this. What I do know, is back in 1989, if I was facing the equivalent bill for higher education that students face today I would not have my degree and in all likelihood I'd not be doing the MBA today. I'd have a different life, one I can't imagine.

This is a bit ironic, as when Labour talks about social mobility, and because of that the need to have more people in higher education, I'm the perfect example. None of my family had gone to University. I was the first to go. My father was essentially an unskilled labourer when you could actually earn a very good living in a variety of roles with little skills, but that ceased to be true after an 80's recession or two. I never questioned my ability to go to University, I just did it. It happened naturally. If my parents had concerns about it socially or financially they never mentioned it. Not even once. It was totally free for me to attend University and I received a grant. I was able to survive on that due to not having to pay my parents for food, lodgings and whatever else. The result was me becoming middle-class in financial terms.

I wonder how the modern day version of me goes to University these days? How do they justify the debt to themselves? If I'd had to finance the MBA through debt I'd have not done it, and that's with a bit of experience behind me and as such a higher theoretical earning power. Ten to twenty thousand GBP of debt on exiting University? Not sure I could have done that, it would have worried me constantly. I certainly know my parents could not have financed it. Is it that society has changed? Has the 'gap' become so big that the current version of me doesn't exist? And instead we have an 'everyone is middle-class' thing going and the 'working class verging on poor'?

I don't know, I just know that my life would have been different for me if University education had not been free.

Semester four is problematic. The main problem with it is a financial one, as I'll be breaking my own financial rules with respect to funding the MBA. The financial rule was quite simple: any particular semester should be affordable within the year it's paid for. The balance of payments over the course of the financial year (January to January) should be positive. This isn't that bad if employment continues in short order past the current project, but obviously it's a bit more annoying if it doesn't. I just never wanted to use savings to do it and I'm still not sure I do. Semester four is certainly a line in the sand and if continuing means breaking that rule again in semester five I'll almost certainly halt my studies for a period. I did consider doing this for semester three, but I took the risk of keeping things ticking over with an single elective.

The financial side of things is confounded by where I am in the study process. I'm following an 'easy win' strategy of always hitting the break points. I don't intend to drop out. I want to finish even if finances mean it'll take a bit longer. At the same time, minimising risk at any particular time is sensible. I hit the PGCert break point at the end of semester two. In order to hit the PGDip break point in semester four I have to do three electives to bring me to 120 points. I can't do less electives and I can't do my last remaining core to get it out the way and minimise the costs in semester four. Three electives it is. If I'm going to spend the money that I can't cover in the same year, at a time when I may have a break in income early the following year, it's going to be to achieve a sensible break point. One advantage the three electives in semester four issue has is I'll be back on track once I've finished the semester.

Having experienced a semester studying one elective, it has given me some pointers on how to handle three. One thing I do know is three electives is going to be pretty similar to studying two cores. There may be no exam but the ECA is a bit more work. You also have to consider that even though the electives have less modules, you can't start the ECA work until they are released midway through the semester anyway. However you do it have three months to finish the ECA work. What I'm going to do is download the ECA assignments for my semester four electives and use them to get an idea of what I'll need to translate from the module into essay format. I realise they may vary the ECA assignments and the essays may not be exactly the same, but the theories that have to be critically analysed through a case study or practical experience lens will be. The aim is to study with electives very much an ECA frame of mind from the very beginning.

At the moment I'll be doing, Strategic Supply Chain Management, Strategic Marketing and Small Business Management. What my final two electives will be I'm not sure. In a way I'm crossing my fingers for a few more coming available.

In the last week I've had received two sets of marks, both my Management of Change TAA and my final results for Managing in the Competitive Environment and Managing Finance. All the marks are similar, solid results. They are in the official, very good range, representing a good understanding of the issues, a well researched hypothesis and substantial conclusions. It's true, I'd love to hit the top 30% of the marking range, but I've never done it yet, 80% on a TAA aside. I have to remind myself, as the MBA staff do, these are very good results, and I'm certainly pleased I survived the Managing Finance Fiasco of 2009. I'm just striving for perfection. In fact, just like my first semester, I did a bit better on the subject I thought I was going to be weakest on. This also means I've accumulated the credits for a PGCert qualification.

The on-site seminar was on this weekend, though I only went for one day, which was a bit disappointing. I did enjoy the one day immensely. It's just great talking to people and discussing ideas. It seemed even more of a laugh this time and the Management of Change seminar was excellent. It's probably the single, best use of on-site seminar time I've ever experienced. You could tell it was going well as he lecturer had got the dreaded Monday slot, a time when people are thinking of trains, planes and auto-mobiles home and flagging a little, yet he managed to pull of a very group-based tutorial structure. These can often die quite quickly even earlier in the weekend. It was very good. In fact, he managed to do the quintessential thing the on-site seminar should do, make you more excited about the material due to engaging with it in a more discursive fashion rather just at home reading books.

The ECA should now be available, but it isn't. I suspect the format of the Management of Change ECA will be very similar to the TAA, but cast a much wider net. Instead of looking at change that you have managed or experienced via one model, it'll be doing the same thing but through wider theories and models. We went through a core of such research during the on-site seminar along with where they fit with each other and how they coincide or conflict. I'm quite looking forward to it if the question is around those lines, it has been on previous occasions. It's a subject I'm familiar with and have been heavily involved with in practice, so it's very interesting to align the practical with the research and come out the other side. Needless to say the ECA is now the focus between now and December, a bit of a lighter work load considering I've only got one and no exam.

I also seemed to spend a core of the day pimping The Wire, personally I'm surprised more people on the MBA hadn't watched it. It's under-appreciated that's what I say.