Managing Teams

Just finished my first week of school and I surprisingly learned a lot about myself and working in teams. The first course "Managing Groups & Teams" in the "Orientation to Management" section of the new curriculum was very interesting as we:

-solved a murder mystery
-survived a hurricane
-participated in a biased market trading poker chips (go red squares!!)
-built a lego man in 2 minutes
-commanded a battle tank
-learned a lot about our mentorship team members

I learned the consequences of "group think" and how important structure and processes are to creating an effective team. My mentorship team is awesome and I look forward to working with them throughout the first year. The diversity of my team is just a representative cross section of the diversity in the class of '08. There's an investment banker, operations/engineering guy (me), education background, investigative journalist, military guy, consumer goods guy, and joint forestry/mba student. We worked effectively and acknowledge we still have areas to improve upon.

The social aspect of last week was pretty intense as we ended up drinking nearly every night. Yale SOM rented out a bowling alley one night and everyone showed up. The party at Playwright was fun because drinks were free!! I sense things will slow down next week as classes start getting harder.