The Blogger Goes for a Swim- French Style

I’ve mentioned the swimming pool next to INSEAD in a previous blog post, but last weekend I finally broke down, pulled out my skimpy thong-style Speedo swimsuit and went for a swim at the ambitiously named “Stade Nautique de la Faisanderie”. The chart you see above resembles the process flow charts studied in our Operations Management class, and is displayed prominently at the pool entrance. Of particular interest is the last caption where the boy eats his sandwich and remarks, “J’ai passe un agréable moment en respectant les règles d’hygiène et de sécurité.” (“I had a good time in respecting the hygiene and security rules.”) This mantra sums up the bizarre philosophy of the swimming pool management, who in their zeal to create an efficient pool have managed to diminish the user experience, by eliminating convenience and fun.

After paying admission and buying an obligatory bathing cap, swimmers are forced into a unisex change room after passing through an antiseptic foot bath. No benches or counters are present in the changeroom, to eliminate the risk of losing belongings or having them stolen. Individual change booths are provided for dressing, but there is no private same-gender space to engage in locker room chatter. The emphasis here is on efficiency– get in, change into your swimsuit, and get out.

I’m told that many swimming pools in Europe follow this strange model, which in my opinion robs customers of the whole experience. There are no free towels, no convenient place to hang your coat or relax. I remember the gym I went to before I came to INSEAD. The facilities were just as good, but everyone seemed more chill. A group of Russian pensioners used to do vodka shots by the pool, every Saturday afternoon, after their swim. The whole point of going to a swimming pool is to escape from the everyday grind and misbehave. Kids love to run on the pool deck, scream, dive into the pool cannonball style, engage in towel fights, make floods in the change room etc.

Men and women seek kinship in the locker room, seeing others naked and in being exposed to a wide range of body types. It’s not an erotic experience, but rather an opportunity where you can learn to feel comfortable about yourself. As my youth disappears, I find myself checking out the bodies of older men– looking for the sags, wrinkles, and grotesque scars which in time will visit me too. But enough of my strange nostalgia.

I am amazed how water parks have recognized that customer willingness to pay is enhanced by emphasizing the fun of the customer experience, while swimming pools like the Stade Nautique de la Faisanderie blindly assume that swimming in an inherently fun activity for which customers will pay, regardless of how bureaucratic they make the experience. I still might return to the pool, but only because I would like to amortize the cost of the bathing cap I purchased, in order to see its Cost per Visit come down.

The Blogger Answers Questions You Won’t Find in the INSEAD Brochure

I haven’t written in a while because of the crazy pace of P2 and the fast approaching exams. We’re almost finished the semester, and more shockingly, the senior December 2007 graduating class is almost finished. Come January, we will become the seniors on campus, and a new batch of P1s (the December 2008) class will arrive. The early-birds are already on campus in Fontainebleau, for the Business Foundations program which commences this weekend. As you will recall, I skipped Foundations, preferring to spend the week in Amsterdam.

I’ve decided to dedicate this post to answering a few questions that I’ve received from my readers, as well as a few of my own. Let’s just say, these questions don’t appear in the official INSEAD marketing brochure…

Is INSEAD really worth 48,800 Euros?
It depends where you’re coming from and where you want to go. If you already earn a high salary and intend to stay in the same industry, then maybe not. If you want to leverage your INSEAD experience to change careers and the school opens doors that were blocked for you, then of course it’s worth it. Some mistakes that I’ve seen other MBA participants make include failing to do adequate research about their chances of finding their dream job. These tend to fall into 2 categories: 1) Nationality, and 2) Career change. Work permits can usually be obtained (except for the U.S.) but more difficult, is to convince a company to hire you if you’ve never lived in their country before, if your command of the local language is poor, and if you can’t demonstrate a rational connection to the country in question. Career change is easier when the economy is good. If you’ve been a circus trapeze artist all your life, and managed to score 750 on the GMAT, you might get into INSEAD, but you need to appreciate the difficulty in making a career change. Not every door will be open for you, and you must be very focused on your job search.

Another mistake I see increasingly, are students who come to INSEAD but aren’t interested in business. I’ll probably take a lot of flack for this comment, but it drives me nuts when my classmates talk about saving the world, working for NGOs, developing alternative fuels, ecotourism, and microfinance. This is a recent affliction that has overtaken many business school students, but my objection lies in the fact that INSEAD is a really poor path into these fields. It’s pretty expensive to study at INSEAD and the MBA program is honestly designed to create management consultants and general managers. There are many programs that are far more effective at training students to work in development.

Should I go to INSEAD if I want to work in Finance/Banking?
This is a tough question and it requires an explanation of the way that finance recruiting occurs. Most 2 year MBAs who want to work in finance benefit from the fact that students are able to spend their summer between the first and second year, interning with investment banks. At INSEAD, this option is available if you start in January, or if you are willing to do an internship, the summer after your graduation. INSEAD’s finance recruiting is heavily focused on London and Hong Kong. Some international firms might recruit for their New York offices, but this is usually secondary to their primary recruitment efforts for Europe and Asia. The talent pool for the banks includes all of the top schools, so when Morgan Stanley interview students, they are measuring them against MBAs at LBS, Oxford, Cambridge, HEC, and IMD. Some students feel that studying at LBS provides an advantage for banking, but perhaps the biggest advantage that a student can bring to the table is work experience in Finance, and perhaps a Masters in Finance. This will sound depressing to people without those backgrounds, hoping to break in, but when the markets get tight, the bar goes up. To summarize, if you have a solid background in Finance then INSEAD will open the same doors as other schools. If you don’t have a background, then it might be better to find a program that specialized in finance. One other factor to consider is the value of foreign language skills. INSEAD’s career services office is always posting job ads for fantastic jobs with tough language requirements- Goldman Sachs looking for people who speak Russian or Vietnamese.

What’s Fontainebleau like and will I need a car?
Like most INSEAD MBA participants, I’m used to living in a big city with good public transportation, non-stop supermarkets, cafes, and restaurants. Fontainebleau is a quaint little town with small shops and supermarkets that tend to close each afternoon for siesta and increasingly the surrounding area is being overrun with U.S. style urban sprawl big box stores. If you want to shop at a big supermarket, it helps to have a car. After 3 years of having a company car with free unlimited gas, I chose to live this year car-free because I wanted to walk everywhere. It works out well during the day, but I need to rely on friends for lifts to parties at night, outside of Fontainebleau. All of the major weekend parties organized by the school provide free bus transportation to and from INSEAD, but attending dinners hosted by my classmates requires advanced planning.

How smart are the MBA participants at INSEAD?
I usually notice this when I meet people outside of INSEAD, and think to myself how slow they are! There are several types of intelligence you find at INSEAD. Many people are ‘math smart’ and are geniuses at solving quantitative problems. It always impresses me how my classmates, even if English isn’t their native language, always manage to articulate complicated ideas and concepts. INSEAD MBAs are quick at finding logical flaws in arguments, which makes us a very tough audience. But usually this is done politely in the most disarming way.

Are there many women in the MBA class?
The number of women keeps increasing and although men are still in the majority, with one third women, you definitely feel a female presence. On the other hand, not a single one of our 13 core subjects were taught by women. Other sections had female professors, but I have yet to have a female professor at INSEAD.

Are there black students, gay students, disabled students etc.?
Diversity at INSEAD is measured primarily in the wide pool of nationalities. Sadly there are only a handful of African students, and maybe one or two black students from the U.S. or Europe. That’s not to say that they wouldn’t feel welcome on campus, but they would likely be perceived based on their nationality. (ie. An African-American would be looked upon as ‘American’). Gays and lesbians are present, but perhaps less so than at schools in big cities. On the other hand it’s hard to tell sometimes, because so many men at INSEAD are European. Gay and lesbian partners of MBA students are warmly welcomed by other partners and many companies haul out their gay employees to participate in recruiting events. The INSEAD Fontainebleau campus is somewhat accessible, but there are no disabled students that I know. There are lots of stairs between split levels of the campus and the amphitheaters have steps. The Singapore campus is probably more accessible.

What’s the food at the INSEAD cafeteria like?
The prices are good because meals are subsidized and the selection can be good, depending on how picky an eater you are. If you eat meat and seafood without any restrictions, then you will have 5-6 good choices everyday. There are pizzas and vegetarian dishes, but these can be repetitive. On a typical day, there will be a shrimp salad, grilled salmon, rib steak, grilled turkey breast, beef stew, vegetarian dahl, and of course a salad bar. One source of amusement for us, are the politically incorrect combinations which the chef insists on… for example, he is not ashamed to offer “Beef Curry” or “Pork Tajine”. Rumour has it that the Desi cook makes an earnest effort to prevent Hindus from ordering beef, or Muslims from ordering pork.

Is INSEAD really the best year of your life?
Before you graduate, the INSEAD marketing department offers to repay all of your student loans, if you sign a covenant agreeing to tell everyone that it was the best year of your life.

If you had to do it again, would you choose INSEAD?
I’m still in the middle of the program, so I can’t say where INSEAD is going to lead me, but I can’t imagine wanting to go to any other MBA school. Some skeptics might call me on that claim and say, “Isn’t [fill in the blank] a better business school?” My response to that would be that I feel that I have the same access to the recruiters and business opportunities as I would have at other top schools. Many people forget that after you pass a certain level, the focus shifts to your skills and your ability to sell yourself. INSEAD just provides you a stage… it’s up to you to bring down the house.