The PowerMBA – it was about time

Tino Cindric

SENIOR DATA ENGINEER

This is the story of one Debbie Downer on the road to the business success.
THE POWERMBA is the name of the game. Please, stay tuned!

Chronology can be tedious, but this is the way how it unfolded:

August 2020

I held the cup of coffee firmly in my hands, it was a way to distance myself and then I heard for the third time: “But that’s going to be great.” I wasn’t exactly convinced, but it looked like I was going to lose anyway so maybe I better surrender. I surrendered.

A colleague of mine has been telling me about The PowerMBA for days now and why I should enlist. This time I allowed myself not to rain on her parade. I concluded that free education is free education (“free” – the company will pay for it anyway), I sent an e-mail and received confirmation the next day that I was enrolled starting next month. What now?

September 2020

“Let’s hurry!” Someone shouted at me.

I was late, in fact I wasn’t. The ceremonial start of the course was yesterday and today we are able to watch the first “real” lectures and we decided to do it together. We booked a meeting room for only 20 minutes to watch the first 15 minutes of the first lecture together. I had no expectations the light was turned off, video started.

And? Well, can anyone conclude anything from just watching 15 minutes video – and not really. I don’t recall what we expected, but nothing spectacular happened. Those 15 minutes went smoothly. They were very well structured, easy to understand, and some future topics were already in sight. In any case, let’s move on.

I set myself the task of being regularly with lectures, or at least regularly on a weekly basis, it seemed reasonable at the time, and now I can say it turned out well.

October 2020

I think I understand the structure now. Large chapters divided into units, and in each unit the first couple of lessons is an introduction to key concepts (tools) followed by examples, examples and a bit more real-life example.

The examples are the most interesting part of unit. All those ideas and all those implementation of ideas – that is just wow. My feelings are divided – some of the examples are so interesting/useful that I would like to become customer of these success stories right away (of course many of them are still local / regional and not available), on the other hand the realization that someone has already used an idea It occurred to me many years ago, and that idea worked was a bit of a disappointment.

You must be wondering what that idea is. Don´t think I am going to disclose it. Maybe you should check ideas by yourself.

January 2021

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” I whispered to myself.

It was late evening and the sun had been long gone, I was sitting at the computer, listening to “THE BLUE OCEAN” lesson, TV was working in the background, the debate was in progress topic: digital transformation. As usual two distinct groups of specialists with distinct views and proposals. Usually I would listen (rather trying to listen/understand) until at some point I would switch to something more interesting.

This time, surprisingly, I have an opinion, the “louder” group of specialists got it all wrong.

I repeated, “Wrong, wrong, wrong!”

April 2021

Flash, flash, and another flash. I was 8 years younger.

It was a time when I was supporting a marketing project from the IT side. It was loyalty program 101 and all tricks were in place to gather and retain customers. It sounds pompous I know, but I only did what I was told to do. Now it was all starting to come back. All that terminology was slowly finding its place in my mind. It seems like I was already half literate (marketing wise), only no one had told me that yet.

July 2021

It’s summer, I’ll take a break, but this is super interesting. Of course, the time is for the NUMBERS! So sorry but this stuff makes me happy. Taxes are not interesting, but their calculation is. So, let’s play.

I know you may be not so keen on NUMBERS, but you should be able to find something interesting, please check list of TOPICS.

November 2021

“Oh la, la,” I said to myself.

This is not going to be fair, but I can live with it. I can’t wait for my next HR review meeting. HR will be under the impression that they are leading the conversation only to find out otherwise.

The HR topic was super interesting, I can tell you that.

December 2021

It’s over. At the end it took me a year and a half, yes it was “long”, but now I have some more interesting book to read, some ideas to investigate…

Instead of the end:

Whether you like it or not you cannot escape business world and that world is coming with its own sets of rules. That world is certainly not perfect, but before trying to change it, it would be good idea to understand it. After all, no one is preventing you from learning the rules. And so, I did, because it was about time.