Two down, four to go

Semesters, that is.

I enjoyed Leading Strategy quite a bit. Turns out to be another thing I never would have guessed I have an affinity for in a million years. Ironically, in preparation for my review at work, I looked up my "strengths finder" scores and Strategist is one of them. Funny.

The main book we read for class "20/20 foresight" was pretty helpful. Dense, very business school-y, but not too hard for me to adapt to different situations. I think what I like about strategy is it's about the business of marrying ideals and vision to execution and operations. Visionaries can drive me nuts because they often don't want to deal with mundane things like reality and ambiguity. But get too caught up in execution, and you get blindness to what's screaming down the highway at you. So, since I've been discovering that I myself am someone kind of in between the visionary and the executor, strategy fits me. Cool.

I'm loath to post much about what I've disliked about the program so far, but I did have a really unpleasant time in the previous class. The style of teaching was very much a do as I say, not as I do kind of paradigm, which I find fairly limiting. I was confused, after spending fourteen weeks of encouragement to think critically, challenge perceptions and authority, and openly disagree, to find myself being penalized, judged, and eventually verbally abused for exercising those skills. It was not a fun experience. Hopefully the other classes will more fully align with the mission of the school, which includes creating critical thinkers.

My next class is Foundations of Ethics, a topic I am very much looking forward to. I'm also looking forward to being back with my cohort, we have our own unique style, and I enjoy it very much.