The greatest pleasure in life is to walk free, but to be able to walk free, one must deal with a management problem, in the optimization of resources, time, knowledge, contingencies, and planning. Learning how to address management problems is the foremost contribution that Desautels has made to my life, but it is not the only contribution.
Since graduating from the MBA in 2014, I have had the opportunity to explore and get involved in a diversity of projects around the world, to the extent that even I don鈥檛 know how to formally present or describe myself anymore. These projects have included:
- Consulting for ;
- Policy initiatives that have lumped me into ;
- Citations in Canadian , for work done while at Desautels;
- The Presidency of the , the largest organization for people who speak 6+ languages;
- of a startup that has been featured in ;
- Giving business school students ;
- Regular appearances and , and;
- including , among others.
How is it done?
I maintain a , something I learned to do during my Desautels experience as I managed an exchange program, consulting contracts, and MBA studies. But Desautels鈥� impact has been far more direct in the free-roaming path of my life.
Desautels has an outstanding mentorship program, which connected me with the brilliant 海角社区 academic and World Bank official, , who played a critical mentorship role and co-authored works with me. He gave me direction and insights in how to manage my MBA and plan for life after it. This led to engagements with the World Bank, which in turn led to a PhD in Australia to build the underlying theories behind the work that the World Bank was engaged in.
Just as important as the mentorship, 海角社区 also helped me to hone my quantitative and qualitative skills which I I continue to deploy both in the academic and practitioner spheres, including strategic planning, financial modelling, and negotiation among many others.
Then there are the indirect impacts of Desautels鈥� philosophy that also cannot be overlooked in my personal and professional evolution. Unlike the plain-vanilla business schools across North America that are virtually indistinguishable from one another, Desautels is a School of Management.This means that it lays emphasis on the artform that is management, rather than on the process of exchange that is business.
We 鈥渕anage鈥�, to varying degrees, nearly all aspects of our lives. Desautel鈥檚 focus is on developing the psychological, interpersonal, professional, and analytical skillsets that help us to 鈥渕anage,鈥� in the broadest, most abstract, and most versatile sense in which that semantic construct is applied.
So I can walk free because I have learned the process of managing how to walk free, thanks to Desautels.
Walking into Desautels as I did, anomie-stricken and inarticulate, I instead walked out of Desautels with a sense of the 鈥渕anagement鈥� and the strategies required to realize projects in both a wide range of geographies and disciplines. The aspects of management and strategy are not relegated to the course of professional affairs.
I manage to read at least , I manage to sleep an average of 9 hours a day in a , I manage to , and I manage to live in different countries during different seasons of the year.
With such a sublime work-life balance, close friends and colleagues have said聽that all I get done must be due to a form of magic. While I take it in jest, and enjoy the ring to it, there are no superstitious variables, but rather the optimization of a management problem in resources, time, knowledge, skills, and planning; which Desautels taught me how to do. Or rather... if it is magic, it is Desautels that taught me that mystical craft.
My experience at Desautels has resounded strongly with many others. My own brother, as an example, was moved to see the change in my life that the MBA at Desautels had brought, both in my professional and personal life. He therefore decided in 2017 to apply for the MBA as well. From everything I get to hear, he is now enjoying it as much I did. So it is with supreme satisfaction that I say here: I continue to owe a great debt to Desautels. I walk free, seeking out challenges in the private sector, the public sector, and academia, and then mustering some of that 鈥榤agic鈥� towards addressing (read: managing) those challenges in a systematic way. So I will always thank Desautels, for that freedom, and that magic.
About the author
Originally from Pakistan, graduated from the 海角社区 Desautels MBA in 2014 and has since been selected as one of Australia's 50 Top Thinkers. He has a diverse set of experiences that took him all across the globe, including the USA, Canada, China and Australia.聽
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