Fun & Learning @Wharton

"What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand." - Confucius

I just completed the 5 week intensive program (Advanced Management Program - AMP) at Wharton, and was reflecting on the learning process. The program was awesomely experiential, and hence the following upgrade on Confucius.

"What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I understand. When it’s fun to do, it’s profound” - Confucius++ (not Chat GPT).

The best of the learning came from interactions from 47 wonderful class-mates from 6 continents. The "challenges" presented to us: the social enterprise project, or simply learning to row in one rhythm (or learning to pronounce “Schuylkill”, the river), or the make-a-movie-in-6-hours,  were moments for not only learning & fun, but also for building life-long friendships.

 And of course, there were hastily planned crash courses in global cultures, sport, geo-politics etc. etc. enabled through multiple dinners sampling Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and of course Indian (Ammas!) cuisines. (Basically, we had fun!)

A big thank you to all my friends from AMP84 - the best team ever assembled.

Abdullahi Ibrahim Abhijit Gulanikar Adrienne Bloom Amit Agarwal Carlos Eduardo Mello Celso Rocha Claribel Caraballo Davin Augustine, AM, CSM Emma Shand Haruna Musa Hideto Hirata Javier Jean-Denis Mariani Jeff Beals Jesús Bonilla Jitu Shah Jose Fraga Lucas Perez Averastegui Masa Sano, Masamichi Tanaka Masayuki Sato Mateus P. Michael Courtney Motselisi G. Molapo CA(SA) Noopur Chaturvedi Paulo Jesus Praveena Rai Pushp Raj Singh Renan Piamonte Ritesh Shukla Roshan Lal Tamak Sanjay Khanna Seiji Furusaka Shanthan Rajalingari Sotaro Harasawa Steven Bird Subhendu Bal, MSc, FIA, FIAI Sujatha Mohan Olatokunbo Alli M.D, MPH(Yale), GHD(Harvard) MRSPH Toshimichi Ito Tosin Adewuyi Umair Ansari Victor T. Thomas Viju Varghese Panicker Xin Yao Yoshikazu Matsuda Young Joe Yun

I risk sounding as if the program was “all play and no work”. But the reality is that most, if not all of the in-class modules were experiential and/or exhilarating.

Sample the class menu:

• Simple and yet compelling Leadership sutras from the one and only Ram Charan

• Leading up & down from the very wise Michael Useem ,
• Macro trends from Mauro Guillen , Brand value by David Reibstein , Operations by Christian Terwiesch , Scaling by Gad Allon
• Negotiation by Richard Shell , Strategy by Nicolaj Siggelkow , Value Creation by David Wessels , Accounting by Brian Bushee
• Life lessons from Nadya Shmavonian , Jeff Klein & Dr. Preston Cline Ed.D
• Acquisitions by Harbir Singh , AI by Prof Tambe, Culture by Mae McDonnell , Strategic assets by Martin Ihrig , Leading Change by Nancy Rothbard , Divestitures by Emilie R. Feldman , Power Relationships by Samir Nurmohamed , ESG by Witold Henisz , Analytics by Raghu Iyengar , Macroeconomics by Jules van Binsbergen
• Special treats were the sessions by industry leaders & practioners Raj Gupta, Jeffrey Nussbaum Neha Shah Nance K. Dicciani
• And importantly, some unforgettable inspirational sessions by ageless Rodrigo Jordan & John Kanengieter MA ABS .
• Grateful also to the 1:1 coaching from Ilene Wasserman, Ph.D. Big thank you to Joe Waclawski & team for making the whole program a once-in-a-lifetime experience. (I suspect I missed a few...)

My personal special moment was the opportunity to extend gratitude to the Aramark team that took good care of all of us at the Steinberg Conference centre        

All-in-all, an awesome learning experience that I will remember for life. Special mention to my friends from AMP 83 Bharath Sastry Sayantan Dev Sandeep Saini Sumit Kumar and other alumni Abhijeet Angane Sudarshan Chari Sandeep Sabharwal

I hope to share some of my learnings / takeaways over the next 5 weeks with you. Watch the space.