Undoubtedly Nicholas Bate was the teacher who had the most impact on our class this term. Mind you, he is not a WBS teacher. He is a consultant and trainer who has given us about half a dozen sessions on varied subjects, all dealing with personal development. You know that kind of self help and life philosophy Americans seem to like so much? Yeah, exactly that.
I personally don't care for self help books. How could I? They are extremely boring. They do present some neat and interesting ideas, but they rely on repetition and exhausting explanations to present you what is, usually, pretty much obvious stuff, good sense. OK, their merit is to put obvious stuff black on white and present it to you. On hindsight, everything is easy, remember Columbus' egg. But they are boring and patronizing anyway, most of times. So I shouldn't like Nick's sessions, right?
Well, what he does is to get all the clutter out of the way and present what really matters. And he does so in a consistent and excellent way, with all the meaning of the word. But more on that later. So, personally, I found his sessions good, will use some of what he has proposed, but not all of it. But that's the hang of it: you have to endorse what he is doing.
It seems that his way of teaching is, at least, very striking: many of my colleagues have written about him in their blogs, and his phrases or citations are common vocabulary in the cohort: "Love the dip, love the plateau.", "No failure, only feedback.", "Be here now.", "Be your own hero.", "MEDS", "Be distinct or extinct." and so on. One of Deepak's first blog articles was about Nick. Praveen has written about him. Chris also. And Marwa is a big fan. No other teacher we had made people think as much about themselves.
We did have great teachers. And Ben Knight is, from WBS, surely the one I liked best. He has an extreme enthusiasm for his subject, economics (the mother discipline) and he obviously has fun making everybody participate in his class. And he knows the students in the group. By name, nationality, experience. He put effort into getting our particular experiences out to illustrate his points to the class. Five stars for him.
Then we had the energetic Stuart Chambers, Operations Management. For me, one of the most entertaining classes. As his colleague Nigel Slack, which we had for only one session, also created an impression with his knowledge and humor.
Nigel Piercy, Market Analysis, was, IMHO, a very good teacher. But one with a mixed feedback. I liked his classes a lot, many people could not deal with his cynic and sarcastic style. Sometimes you were not sure if what he meant was what he wrote or the exact opposite. But that was fine for me. Our marketing course was very much a first grade strategy course and it treated marketing from an updated point of view. No 4Ps or established (and usually still valid) theories, but more about customer value, customer relationship, strategic advantage, effective communication. I believe we could not have had a better marketing course. And, for me, his slides and his presentation style, though monologic and maybe boring at times, worked well.
In organizational behavior we had so many teachers, that only the first and main one remains in my memory. Nick was a very pleasant guy and his classes are interesting. But sorry, didn't work for me. I couldn't find a structure in his exposition and this made it very confusing for me. I am not expecting to get a good mark in OB.
Accounting was well taught. But it was a technical subject, nothing special to report.
And we had other speakers and teachers coming in and out during the term for one day sessions. Graham from Sykes Fairbairn stood out and his colleagues were pretty cool. Not to mention Mark and Dana from Penhela, who fortunately I will be meeting again and listening to their extremely fast paced speech in Mannheim in April. These are some really expert recruiting consultants!
But Nicholas Bate was surely the most impacting character during these 3 months. And, for me, it has more to do with the way he presents things, than with what he actually presents. He clearly has control of the crows all the time. When he is in class, he means business, and you know it. He does joke from time to time, but he is dead serious. He is extremely well prepared. He know his handouts by heart. He doesn't use powerpoint slides. He speaks clearly and loudly. He repeats and emphasizes. The course of his lectures is dynamic and diverse. He has catchy phrases. No bullshit keywords. And, obviously, he likes what he is doing.
So, that's it for today. I gave you all an overview of the types of teachers we had and singled Nicholas Bate out. I hope this gives you a good idea of who we faced during the term and I'll end up with the weblink to Nichola's blog. Its feed is on my reading list.
http://nicholasbate.typepad.com/
Cheers,
Fernando, heading to the Practice of Management report which should have been done long ago.
P.S.: The geese are back. They disappeared for a week, when it was really cold, but it is warmer now and they are there again, although not as loudly as usual. But this is an old pic.
