The bad thing about theory? It is quickly forgotten if it’s not put into practice immediately. That’s why you should make any reasonable effort (and more) to apply the theory you learnt to your day-to-day work. It will not only reinforce the concepts you’ve learnt, it will help you deepen your knowledge in the areas you are interested in and provide immediate returns in your career.

A good way to exercise this is to identify existing problems in your work and apply what you’ve learnt to solve them, or at least to flag the problems and propose a course of action. This proactive approach is always welcomed from companies (and most welcome if you work for yourself) as it shows your willingness to take the lead in improving the area you are effecting.

Managing change

At work, I am experiencing first-hand a transformation process of an R&D-focused, fast-paced startup becoming a commercially ready engineering company capable of fulfilling moderate to big orders from utilities.

Before starting the MBA, this process might have looked scary to me, but I now understand what I should look for during this transition, how to anticipate foreseeable problems and be prepared to step in when required.

Applying the concepts learnt in Organisational Behaviour and Operational Management, I can help the company in its course to establish a robust supply chain to process the customers’ orders and shape the organisational culture moving forward.

Establishing the supply chain proved to be an easier process in the sense that it is driven by qualitative comparison of different partners, although establishing the criteria to be applied is key for a swift, overall process. Understanding concepts like reducing waste in the processes, establishing a Corporate Social Responsibility framework and Just-In-Time manufacturing helped us approach this task with a very clear idea of what the outcome should be and be confident in the result that will be obtain.

Overcoming resistance

Created as an engineering startup, the recruitment efforts (so far) had been focused on boarding people capable of working with minimal supervision, with a high degree of creativity and flexibility to react to changes in the environment.

Transitioning into a fully-fledged engineering company able to serve orders of thousands of units to utilities in a highly-regulated market presents several problems apart from the mere logistics and certifications. Typically people that thrive in an R&D setup are not equally fitted to working to tight-deadlines, deterministic, streamlined mode that is normally required to fulfil medium volume orders.

The transition period is the most delicate. Hiring enough personnel to create a completely new division to handle the operations – while the original team remain focused on R&D – is not really an option until the orders are received and cash flows generated.

Keeping balance

This limitation forces us to divert the existent resources into these new tasks, which are more tedious, and the current workforce feels less motivated to work on them. Balancing these tasks and R&D activities is important so as to keep morale high while attaining targets. In the longer term, there will be hires to carry out the bulk of the delivery and support activities, but for the next few months we will be busy keeping the current staff able and willing to perform these tasks.

Organisational Behaviour is a major enabler to understand the psychology and team dynamics. It doesn’t provide you with a universal recipe to handle all (or any) situations; rather, it opens your mind to better analyse each situation and know what the different theories say about them and what the pitfalls are, so you can be prepared to react if something doesn’t work as you expected. It did make a huge difference for me when I had to face these issues.

Alberto Perez Sanchez
Executive MBA (2020)