Final thoughts- Never stop learning

-Hi everyone, I am one week away  to finish my internship, so this last blog may reflect some mixed feelings. Of course, I want to go back to business school, but as I’ve been saying before, my internship has been a great experience.  First, I had relevant and very interesting projects, second I have a great work-life balance that allows me to take advantage of NYC and third, New York itself, which is a great city to be in the summer with tons of free activities.

To wrap up my blog series, I am going to talk about the final presentation. During my last post I talked about a group project, do you remember that? Well, once we submitted the project, we needed to present to the top senior leaders of the organization, our managers and the rest of summer interns. Basically the auditorium was filled with around 50 people. The combination of the quantity and quality of the audience were factors that created a very stressful, and busy week. I am not the type of person who likes practicing presentations, but given the context, we practiced 6 times. The good thing, is that the official presentation wen very well. We were able to convey a heavy-data-driven project, and all our international accents with some fun examples, which helped to engage the audience and make the presentation more interesting.  Two big take aways of this final presentation: Again, a group works in which is important to establish roles and identify peoples’ strengths to divide better the presentation and set a positive tone, or simply manage the flow.

 Also, as international student, I would say that I had to step back and be humble to asses this US professional landscape, learn more things and be very open to feedback. Back in Mexico, I was so used to give presentations to big audiences and important people that I hadn’t had feedback for a long time ago, but in this context, I did, and it made me change my mindset for good, as I realized that there are always ways to improve. This conclusion was a constant during my internship. I got 6 years of work experience before coming to the MBA, and, at least for our group project, I was the one with more experience. I can say that this professional experience definitely  helped me to navigate Citi as a big organization, create good networks, solve business problems and approach the things that I was asked to do.

However, sometimes experience may cause less willingness to learn or take feedback. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the things that I learned from many people, as I’ve been saying, Citi is a very diverse organization, in every sense.  I found that I always had something to learn. Yes, I know, an MBA candidate has to be open to learn always new things, but the truth is that many times it is more a mantra than something that people take into practice. So, this summer I really practiced doing this, learning by doing and being very open to feedback with a true willingness to improve. Which in the end, may turn to be a good impression when feedback is internalized and put in practices. Not only for the summer, but also in general for a good professional life.  Finally, I think that by keeping this mindset, I am going to leverage more on my Ross classmates and learn the most during my last MBA year.

Diversity, Exposure, Cooperation and Work-life balance.. Loving NYC

Hello friends. This was my 7^th week , one more week down in my internship at Citibank., so I have 3 more to go. This was a veeeeeery busy week, for me that I really care about work life balance, I can say that the past days were the only in which I really had to stay late. This week was about working in a group project, which basically is solving a business issue for a division that is not familiar to the team, and working with 7 people. It may sound easy but it wasn’t. The big challenge was to deal with so many people in this team, so I had to go back to my MO classes and take many useful tips. 

Another thing that happened this week, was our speaker series with Vikram Pandit Citi’s CEO. Needless to say that it was great, very smart guy who was born in India, and very down to earth, even charismatic. Which takes me to the first topic of today, the company culture. Which has three major components.  First, diversity across divisions and business units. It is very natural to see people from everywhere interacting with each other. Which make sense as they are know as the global bank. Citi is not the biggest bank in US, nor in the world, but is the only bank that has presence in more than 180 countries. Hence, diversity plays a critical role and you see this in all different levels. A CEO who is from India, another who is from Mexico,  directors from UK, Venezuela, Italy,  China, and you name it. For me it has worked very well, as being international student, you feel that you are in a very open space where they are willing to promote and develop people from outside of US. 

Another important component of Citi’s culture, is it openness with senior management.  This speaker series with our CEO is only a good example, but we’ve had had this type of thing with other very senior leaders along the summer internship. Twice per week to be more precise.  This exposure not only has helped to understand other areas of the organization, but also to get worthwhile tips about personal and professional development. I found this very relevant, as in my previous work someone told me once. “In a company it is not only about delivering and working hard, you have to develop leadership behaviors and get exposure from senior levels” The latter helps not only to learn, but sometimes it may connect you with someone who share your background.  Another aspect that I have enjoyed so far, is the cooperative culture. It is important to note that I work in consumer banking, whose culture may vary from Investment Banking and Sales & Trading. Departments that are also part of Citi, but that require more daily hours, which changes the dynamic of the work. 

Well, as I was saying, in consumer banking it is very common to work in cross-functional teams, and being evaluated by your pers. This two things push the cooperation among team-members, as you know that everyone needs from everyone, and that your rating or the decision of hire or not hire will depend on the evaluation of your teammates. I enjoy working and interacting with people, so it works for me. However, it may be people who like more the individual work. But as I said, there is no good or bad, the only important thing is to understand, and look for the right fit. 

So far, I have had a great experience at Citi, and I love that they foster these three things on Citi’s culture: Diversity, openness with senior leaders, and cooperative teamwork. And probably, I will add another component that creates a good environment, good work-life balance. Here In NYC I ‘ve had the opportunity to read, work out, work, and go out on a daily basis. Which at least for me, is a great experience. This is it for now; I hope you have enjoyed my stories so far; I will be posting soon my last one. See you until then.

Miguel

Networking is actually part of the job

Hello, this is me again. This time I am going to talk about networking in the office. Has been 5 weeks already of my internship, and as we have been advised in school, networking is very important at Citi, as at any other company.

The good thing is that Citi also knows this, so they foster networking among people in the organization. Even, for my first week, I ad already a mentor assigned. Every intern has one, so this mentor may help you to answer all the questions that you cannot ask to HR, and help you introduce to new people. She, my manager, and my teammates have been the main sources to be introduce to more people. And it started naturally, since in order to understand the projects or the landscape, it is important to meet with many people, and those people will refer you to other group, and so on an so for. Also, I reached out the people who interviewed me, and they also gave me more contacts. Now I have a list of people that I cannot find the time to schedule meetings with them. I would say that in this 5 weeks I have been successful at creating networks within the organization. Part of it has to do with my genuine interest of knowing more people and understand what they are doing. Which in the end will give me a better perspective to decide in case that a job offer comes. People have always different roles, backgrounds and experiences with the companies they work for, so networking for me is helpful for both understanding the organization and gaining future sponsors within it.  Since Citi foster this, as I said, it is relatively easy that you can meet with senior people, and in the end, those are the people who can give you a better advice. Another piece that has been critical, is come prepare to those networking meetings. It is like the process that OCD gave us for recruiting. First send a short e mail explaining who are you and you motives, schedule a meeting. And come prepare for it. Understanding your objectives and of course, have clear and smart questions. That is the way  they automatically will say. “You should meet x” so there you go, you have another contact. Ok, that’ it for now. I’ll keep you posted. 

A well-rounded work plan

HI Everyone, it has been a while since my last post. And time has gone pretty fast for my internship; I cannot believe I am halfway already. This is my 5 week out of 10. Currently, after having several discussions with my manager and teammates, I came up with a defined work plan. It was not surprising for me that some thing will be ambiguous, and that I would have to step up and starts my own work plan. By saying this I don’t mean that they didn’t know what I have to do, but I am saying that they were not 100% sure about what would my contribution look like. Which doesn’t surprise me, as in my previous work at P&G things were like this, but I can say that it is a much better way to learn things and develop different skills. It is like a consultant job, without the same pay but certainly without the same working hours. Well, to make the story short, I realized that I could match my personal objectives in terms of skills/experiences to gain, and what Citi needed. So I came with 3 different projects a) Develop a competitive analysis of different potential suppliers b) Develop the template/framework of the steps to follow in order to close a deal of a new business model, with the top retailers of US c) Asses the social media landscape and come up with a strategy that differentiates Citi (and its new business model) from other companies. It took me several meetings and talking with different people to gain sponsors for my projects. Citi, as any other big organization, works a lot with this corporate dynamic of aligning different stakeholders. However I am very satisfied with the outcome, as I will build experience in strategy, business development and social media. Now, in order to get things done, I built a timeline, develop and aligned different frameworks to approach each of the projects, and committed my deliverables, in a very specific way. For example, in the social media I will deliver an executive summary in a word document, and a deck with all the insights, next steps and success criteria. This may sound logic, but when it comes to people, everyone is different. I learned in my previous job that it is better to over communicate and set the right expectations, using measurable criteria. (Similar to the START concept we revised at MO 503). It happened some times before that if these things are not stated, there may be some miscommunications. The other thing is that in big companies, that work as matrix organizations, you never know when a person working close to you moves to a different role or simply leaves the company, so it is very important to have a clear work plan.

That’s it for know, but I’ll keep you posted.

My first two weeks in New York Citi- Part 2 of "from CPG to Banking"

Hello everyone,
Has been a while since I posted my first blog. You may think that the title of this  second one is a miss spelling, however it is not. I just didn't want to be one more person talking about Citibank, as I just saw that my intern classmates have been very active.
The ver first week went by very quickly. We had a trainning during the whole week, along with some networking events and an speech of the CEO of Citibank consumer banking division, Manuel Medina Mora, who happens to be a mexican that has a long career in the banking industry. This conference, was just the cherry on the cake that confirmed the things that I am enjoying at Citibank. First. Diversity of backgrounds, and second,  approachable senior management. As I consider both relevant elements when it comes to build a strong organizational culture. Also, they come very useful when evaluating whether I see myself  working for Citi in the future, because, from an international student perspective, I would not like to be working in a place in which thediversity in background is not appreciated. Another thing that I have enjoyed from the program so far, is the caliber of the interns. I can tell that I've had interactions with people from all of the  top 15 business schools. Which has been a great opportunity not only to expand my network, but also to realize that The University of Michigan, Ross Business School, is very well positioned in the MBA market. Now, starting my second week, I have to confess that  going back to work after eleven months, is like working out, you need to keep up with your condition! It is not a big deal, but it is something that needs to be practiced again. Additionally, as it has been for other classmates, when  defining deliverables, it is not as easy as I had thought. I realized that my project is more ambiguous than I though, as it has to do with launching a new business model, which deals with increasing revenues, strategy and marketing. As a result, there are some roles that are still unclear in my team, but, the upside of this is that I am having the opportunity to work in something entrepreneurial, something very rare in a big organization like Citi. (You may have seen that also Citi just turned 200 years, and it is just  starting the 3th century of life ). The project has been great to leverage on my previous MAP experience as a team-member and on my Strategy classes. So far, I can tell that the project has exceeded my expectations, even though I still have to figure things out and develop many frameworks to deal with the unknown of a new business model.
I will keep you posted.
Miguel

From Consumer Goods to Banking

Hi, this is Miguel Martinez, mexican MBA at Ross.  This summer I will intern at Citibank, within the Consumer Banking division. Although specific projects have not been released yet, I know that I will be working for Credit Cards in New York City.

I am very excited as this opportunity represents a change in industry. I come from the CPG industry, where I  developed experience/skills during 6 years at Procter & Gamble. I did  sales, business development, strategy, in-store marketing, and category management. Now, I will have to leverage on  those experiences and the soft skills to have a successful internship.

Coming from CPG helped me to being able to try another industry, as currently, many companies are focusing on the final consumer to deliver a superior "experience" that engages current consumers (create loyalty) and attracts new ones (bring more consumers) by matching the benefits of the product with the needs of the specific segment. Something very common in CPG, but not very adopted in the rest of industries. Specifically in my internship, I know that I will have to understand the consumer and propose specific actions/changes in the value proposition of a given category of cards segment, while understanding the dynamics of banking industry. The idea of the program, is to start in this credit cards track for the internship, and then rotate or have different assignments as a full time. The  program objective (internship +2 years of full time) is that in the end, the person has a well rounded picture of Consumer Banking industry, and takes more important roles.

Having to transfer my skills not only to a new industry, but also to a different country, are the things that I see as the biggest challenges. Also, transferring skills is what makes me excited and at the same time makes me a little nervous, as I know that the culture in banking is very different than in CPG, not sure to what extent, but definitely I am anticipating to face different networking styles, and probably  different politic issues. On the other hand, I think that my knowledge about consumer behavior, and business acumen  will help me to navigate and have solid proposals. Besides, I already have a great test of transferring skills with my MAP (Enjoy, Chile), so I think that it will also help me to have a safe landing with Citibank.

Final weeks…

Hello!

How are you doing? So far I'm doing well, but I'm approaching the end of my internship… well I still have a good 3 weeks or so. This last weeks are going to be very busy because I need to wrap up my projects, speed up the networking and prepare for moving back to Ann Arbor!.

The most urgent thing for me right now is to finish my final presentation of my core project. I want to finish it as soon as possible so I can concentrate my last days into networking in order to leave a fresh image of me into the organization. Actually I think that today I'll share a couple of recommendations that I believe are working well for me:

1. For your final presentation "Tell everybody what you are going to tell to them". Usually I like to share my thoughts on the project to my manager and other stakeholders, actually this is something most people do, but I like to take it one step further. I like to present and discuss the final presentation structure, drafts, etc. with each one of the stakeholders I'll have to present at the end of the project. I know that this kills the surprise and a lot of the wow factor of all the work you have done because by the final presentation they already know all the story… but well, you know what people says: Nobody likes surprises!. And certainly you don't want surprises in your final presentations, so is better to talk to all your audience before the real final presentation in order to get their feedback and have it covered in the final product.
   

   
   

2. As important as the work is… is not everything!. Delivering a great output from your internship work is just half of the battle. You need to create relationships within the company, meet all the people you can and try to know better the company. If you only focus on getting your job done, no matter how good it is, people is going to see it and say "yes that was done by that intern that used to sit in the cubicle at the back" and certainly you don't want that. You would want people to remember your name, have some stories to tell about you and consider you for a full time offer. So one of this days dropping the Excel and going to have lunch with your manager or the guy next cubicle can be a good idea.
   

You may be wondering if I actually follow my own advice… and I can say… more or less, yes, hehe. This week I have a dry run of my final presentation with most of my stakeholders (3 weeks before final presentation) and certainly once I have figured out the final structure I'll go more aggressive in the networking side of the equation. So I'll keep you all posted of hows everything going once I get closer to my last day, for now I think I need to go back to PowerPoint. See you later!

Traditional industry… more dynamic than it looks

Hello everyone!

How's the summer going? Hope everyone is enjoying these days and making good use of them. In my case I'm more than half way through my summer internship at Cummins. It is time to start wrapping up my projects and put everything in order in order to prevent rushing in the last weeks here.

By now I feel like I've learn a lot about the diesel engine industry… well actually about more things because Cummins not only does diesel engines but also power generators, exhaust solutions, components and other things. But most of them gravitate around diesel engines. It is really interesting to see how all this businesses, although with the same core components, differ one from the rest. For example, the product characteristics requested for one type of power generator used at a hospital could be radically different from one (of the same size) to be used in a power generation plan.

One thing that surprises me the most is the fact that diesel engine-centric products have a lot of way to go in terms of growth. Probably you, as me in the beginning, could think that the oil-feed engines would have their days counted, but actually, that's apparently not true. In the short term there are no hybrids and other "greener products" that actually could cover, at reasonable cost, the space that diesel engines cover in trucks and industrial applications. Additionally, the new environmental regulations and continuous improvement of companies like Cummins are making the old Diesel Engine a way efficient and clean power source, even comparable to some of the most recent alternatives. And don't get me wrong, Cummins is working hard to provide alternative power sources and greener alternatives; actually they are one of the world leaders in emissions control equipment.

Additionally, there are still a lot of opportunities to grow geographically especially in emerging markets like the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) were an ever increasing economy demands more power and equipment. So we should not disregard the potential of companies working into the "traditional" industries. That would be one of my key learning from my internship. I feel that sometimes, as MBAs, we feel that the only way to work in a dynamic environment with high growth potential (personal and professional) would be in the high tech, green or CPG industries. Now, after my internship at Cummins, I think that some "traditional and established" industries could also offer exciting experiences and we need to be open to understand and consider them as a place to develop as professionals.

Socializing in Columbus

Hello fellow readers,

So this is it, my third posting on this blog. So far I have told you about the work, the city (town?, community?) where I live and so other interesting topics… but what's about with the social life when you are an intern?.

Let me say that probably mine is not the most interesting experience in this field, but I'll give it a try. As you may recall I'm doing my internship in a city called Columbus, Indiana. Is a small city (village?) with little to do. Thanks to that, managing your social life become extremely important, you need to organize things with the other interns, do some networking to meet people you can hang out with, etc. Something that has been really useful is that Arjun (another intern from Ross) took the role of a Social Coordinator and frequently organizes card nights, happy hours, trips to watch World Cup games at our local BW3 and things like that. Leveraging this "Social Coordinator" role has proven very successful as slowly (but steady) we have been increasing the number of people participating in all this activities thus relying less on what the city have to offer to the individual.

So probably you are wondering how a typical day looks like? Well I arrive to the office at 8am, check my e-mail, go to a couple of meetings, have lunch, do some slides and around 4 or 5 I'll receive a mail from our Social Coordinator, or someone else, proposing to do something in the evening. So around 5:30 or 6:00pm I would leave the office and go to play badminton, bowling, watch a movie or do something else. In the weekend we have organized events like paintball, trip to Indy 500, going to a food festival at Bloomington an things like that. Thanks to all this organization effort and willingness to proactively look for other people and activity ideas have made my summer internship an interesting experience filled with a lot of activities that I usually wouldn't do while living in a bigger city.

So let's see what happen in the following weeks, we are planning on going to a County Fair (which would be a first time for me), play more badminton, and I'll probably will take my car to the track for a good day of racing (which I haven't done in several years). I'll let you know how this is going.

Job flexibility

Howdy readers!,

Hope you are doing great, last time I wrote here I talked you a little bit about Columbus and what is my work. Today I'm going to update a little bit on that. After a couple more weeks in the job I found that this is an interesting job with nice people. Everyone is very relaxed and there is not much rush around… at least is what I feel. Probably this will sound weird, but this is new for me. Given my previous experience as management consultant I feel this urge to "run" with all the work I have to do and to "react" immediately to every new fact or meeting, regardless the time of the day. Apparently, here people take it a little more relaxed. Don't get me wrong, everybody works a lot, but no 12 – 15hrs a day. That's a good thing, but I have to get used to it, let's see how it works in the next weeks.

Something interesting about how the work is done here in Corporate Strategy is the fact that at the beginning of the summer I just got my project, a deadline and a pat on my shoulder. I have little or no supervision, unless I asked for it via peer reviews or meetings with the Director I'm working with.

This is something I like a lot, because it gives me a lot of flexibility to work at my own pace and to do other things (but don't tell my boss, hehe). The only drawback with this kind of jobs is that you need to be really responsible for what you are doing, I doesn't matter if you work a little everyday or you procrastinate from Monday to Thursday and work like crazy on Friday… you need to deliver sooner or later and you better do it because people is trusting you to do a quality work and have high expectations. Fortunately I think I can do it and I'm pretty sure I'm in the way to do it.

In order to keep myself on track I like chatting informally with my boss in a regular basis and give small updates of how I'm doing and probably ask some questions I could have (like who to talk with to solve an issue or get guidance on an idea). In addition to that, this Friday I want to present the work I have ready into something we call "peer review" were all the people in the strategy group get together to watch presentations of on-going projects and provide feedback and ideas that can be helpful for the owner of the project. I hope that presenting this Friday will help me boost the speed and insight of my project. I'll let you know later how it went.

Well, I think that's all I have to tell you this week… this was a really short and non-insightful post right?. To compensate I'll leave you all a photo of a bunny with a pancake over his head. See you later!

Old Ice Cream Parlors, Projects and Bananas!

Hello again!, as you may remember in my last post I told you all that I was coming to Columbus Indiana to start my internship at Cummins, a leading diesel engine manufacturing company. But well I'm here, actually I been here for a little more than a week. My first week at Columbus (and Cummins) has been interesting. I moved from Ann Arbor without more complication than missing an exit at the highway and making an extra 30 min drive. But when I arrived I discovered that I had neither TV nor Internet at my summer house!. So I decided to go out an know a little more of the city. There I found some nice restaurants, a couple of interesting buildings and an Ice Cream Parlor call Zaharakos that date from the early 1900's.

But well, let's leave the city stories for later and go into what is more interesting, my summer internship. As I told you in my first posting I'm intering at Corporate Strategy at Cummins. My first day wasn't very interesting, just a lot of HR stuff; policies of the company, paperwork, receive laptop, learn how to use e-mail (really… they gave us training on that). But later, at the second day, I finally came to the area were I'm working and I meet a lot of the people that I'll be working with during the summer. They all seem to be nice. That same day I also learned about the project… or more precisely, projects, I'll be working this summer.

I cannot tell what are they about, but they look interesting and a little challenging. What I can tell you all is that they are intented to analyze the potential entry to some new businesses. I don't know if any of you are used to work in a strategy project based environment, but this type of projects are usually very abstract and require that one can be comfortable with huge amounts of ambiguity, because usually nobody really knows what the project should be about. Imagine a conversation like this one:

• You: Hello
  


• Manager: Hello (put your name here), you know, we want to know what the opportunity is for the company in the banana business. Wanna do that project?
  


• You: Yes, I like bananas, what kind of bananas are we talking about?
  


• Manager: There are different kinds?! Well… I think we want to explore what bananas are interesting for the company...




• You: Great, any idea where do we want to sell bananas?




• Manager: That's also a good question... and I don't know if we want to sell bananas probably there are other options...




• You: Ok, I'll figure it out

After this conversation you go to your desktop, work for a couple of hours to figure out what "bananas", "participate" and "options" possibly mean and then you are ready to start working on an initial approach to your project… obviously the definitions will change as long as you develop the project and talk to more people… but well, that is the fun part, right?

Personally, I like working in this kind of environment because it has endless possibilities of what you can do and also usually have a very flexible scheme; you manage your time, resources, etc. So as you can imagine I'm happy with my summer assignments and I hope to deliver a quality result for Cummins and probably read about the fruits of my work it in the newspapers in the near future.

Well I think I should go back to work, those… "bananas" are not going to analyze themselves! Haha. See you soon!

Indiana... here I come!

Hello everyone, I'm Edgar, and MBA 1 from Ross... well I guess now is MBA 2 as I already finished my first year at Ross and I'm heading towards my summer internship. To give you some background let me say that: I come from Mexico, I have an undergraduate degree in Mechatronic Engineering (sounds cool, huh) and 3 years experience as management consultant at the BCG.

But, ok, what I am doing this summer? Well, I'm going to intern at Cummins Inc. as Corporate Strategy intern. Cummins is a company with almost 100 years of historty; they are one of the leading diesel engine manufatures in the world. But that's not all; they are also leaders in design and innovation. I wish I could tell you more about the work I'll be doing during the summer, but the true is that I have no idea!, haha. I guess we both should wait till May 10th (my start date) to know. I'll keep you informed.

This summer internship is a great opportunity, because I will be working with a Fortune 500 company at a position that usually is reserved for people with more experience and therefore you don't see at an MBA 1... err... MBA2 resume that often. I'm sure that I'll do a great job, I'm looking forward to start so I can leverage all this experience to continue my professional and personal development.

As speaking of the personal side, the only thing that worries me a little is the town I'm moving to for the summer, Columbus, IN. This is the hometown for Cummins there they have their Corporate Offices. Nevertheless, Columbus is a very small town with little to do... but well, let's see what happens, good thing is that I'll live across the street from a golf course and that Indianapolis is just a short 40 min away ;)

Well, I have to go for now, time to start packing and to take the little MX-5 for an oil change before leaving for Indiana!