The 2017 Fudan MBA iLab kicked off in November. It’s been the 13th year Fudan has jointly worked with a group of enterprises to provide this platform where students can put what they learn into practice.
From November 13th to 15th , Fudan MBA Program invited outstanding business experts to give three inspiring iLab lectures to 2017 Fudan IMBA students, as part of the iLab program.
Management Consulting & Successful Consulting Skills
The first lecture was given by Mr. Norman Yen, an executive coach as well as adviser and trainer specializing in Maximizing Influence, Team Impact on Innovation and Digital Transformation via Action Learning.
Mr. Norman Yen is giving the lecture to Fudan students
Mr. Yen’s speech fell into three parts: a brief introduction of consulting industry, four essential consulting skills and where to start consulting. In each part, Mr. Yen introduced a unique perspective for students to better understand the contents.
What’s most impressing the students was what Mr. Yen talked about on how to utilize the brain. He suggested that mind is limited so people have to keep it short and simple when offering advice. So when people are trying to put forward their opinions, it is better if they summarize them into several points to make it easy to remember and understand.
Learn to Ask the Right Questions
You may experience a lot of lectures and Q&A sessions in study or work. Then what kind of questions would be recognized as high quality questions? In the second lecture, Dr. Zou Deqiang, from Department of Marketing, Fudan School of Management delivered a speech on “asking the right questions”.
In this lecture, students learnt how right questions develop high quality solutions. Dr. Zou reminded that we couldn’t solve the problem and answer the questions before the problems turned to be clearly defined. It should be noticed that the truly serious mistakes are made not as a result of wrong answer, but because of asking the wrong questions. So, the first step of successful consulting is to learn to ask right questions.
3.What’s Crucial in Managing a Project?
On Nov, 15th, Mr. Zhang Kun, a professional trainer from Shanghai Changeway Management Consultant Company, was invited to deliver a lecture on project management to 2017 IMBA students.
In the lecture, Mr. Zhang Kun introduced to the students some important contents from project management, including the concept, scope and requirement for project management, as well as the methodology of team management.
Through the lecture, the students realized that project management was the comprehensive application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques. Project management is accomplished through five interacting processes: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, closing.
In addition, Mr. Zhang demonstrated that the current engagement level of all stakeholders needed to be compared to the planned engagement levels required for successful project completion. Stakeholder engagement throughout the life cycle of the project is critical to project success.
The series of iLab lectures brings to the students profound insights and the latest industry trends. The students felt great inspired and better prepared for the future practice.
