Hi everyone. It has been already 6 weeks since I started the summer internship. Wow time does fly by~ Today I want to share how communication is important during the internship. The communication problem almost cost our project.
Since our project mentor had to take care of three other projects, we, three MBA interns, did not have real chance to talk to him for about two weeks. Yes, he was really busy and could not review our progress neither. Then problem occured. Our approach of project was not following the intension of our team leader, which he never mentioned before. A week before the interim report to team leader, our mentor noticed this issue and ordered us to redo the research in 4 days, which we have been doing for last two weeks.
Suddenly, we were under pressure. We decided to re-schedule the project and, painfully, shorten the project scope because we did not have enough time to complete the business proposal. To make the matter worse, we also had to complete extra report for the interim report: don't ask me why we have to write a report for a report. I guess that each team has its own working culture. Well, we did our best, and the interim report got a bad review by the team leader. But our team leader's frank opinion on the report greatly helped us to have clear understanding and picture of the project. His sharp comments helped us to build better framework, problem solving, and recommendation.
I am not blaming our mentor. It was our fault. We should have actively talked to the mentor, even though he was super busy. Helping him by not bothering him (no conversation) is not real help for both us and the mentor. Well, good news is that our project is heading right direction, and our team leader is fine with shortened project scope. We will see how our final presentation goes.
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