Bean counters and brand managers

Exhaused and elated. That pretty much summarizes how I am feeling today. This weekend we had our second WAC - the last one for this term. In all we spent 6 hours discussing the Accounting WAC in our team plus another 2 hours with the entire stream. 8 hours of non-stop focus on the problem, followed by a quick dinner and back to report writing all by myself.

By 4am in the morning, my progress had drastically gone down but I wasn't feeling sleepy either. Nevertheless, I decided to give my eyes a bit of a rest and the moment I hit the sack, I was fast asleep. 3.5 hours of undisturbed sleep and I was digging back into the report by 7.30am. It wasn't until 12.30pm that I was done with the report and quite pleased with it too! I was in no hurry to go over and submit the report. I had a nice hot shower and a good lunch before proceeding to the campus to hand-in the 16-page document. This was followed by a couple of beers at the Socials to sooth my nerves.

But the WAC wasn't the end of a work-weekend. We, i.e., my learning team, also had to prepare for our 'Strategic Marketing Success' presentation which was scheduled for early in the morning today. The Strategic Marketing Success, or SMS as we call it, is part of the Strategic Marketing module. We are expected to choose a company which we think has executed a successful marketing strategy, write a 2500 page report on the topic as a group and present the topic to our stream as a group. Our company of choice was Netflix, the American online DVD rental and on-demand video streaming company. This was the first report that we wrote as a group and I must admit that the learning team almost came apart before we were done with the report! The team dynamics had gone astray and our effectiveness was at its lowest.

However, I believe that we made up for it with the presentation. With all the other things on our plate last week, we had failed to even come up with a storyline for the SMS presentation. We met at 2pm on Sunday and worked 8 straight hours together until 10pm and got the presentation in order. I must admit that it was one of the best teamwork that I have experienced in my learning team until now. We all knew that we were extremely short on time and we all gave our best to get the script right, to connect the dots and to prepare ourselves for the big event the next day.

And the teamwork was clearly visible in today's presentation. Today, we finished it well within the time, the props worked, the handovers were smooth, and most important of all, the audience easily grasped the storyline. Way to go, Team B4!

The WAC!

Today we submitted our very first WAC - Written Assessment of a Case. What a concept! I wonder if this is unique to Cranfield.

Here are the important highlights about the WAC.

WAC Weekend 

This crazy thing called the WAC starts on a Friday afternoon, typically at 14:00 hours. Our WAC was an exception as this Friday happened to be day of the Indian festival, Diwali, and many Indians in the cohort requested for a small change so that they could get some time on Friday to celebrate the festival before jumping in into the WAC. So the WAC weekend began at 16:00hrs this Friday on the 5th of November.

The idea of a WAC is fairly simple. We are given a case to analyse and to prepare a 1500-word report providing our recommendations/suggestions on the case. Simple, isn't it? What makes the WAC different is that the report has to be presented within 24 hours of receiving the case. The case is handed over to us at 14:00 hrs on a Friday afternoon and the report has to be submitted by 14:00 hrs the next day i.e., by Saturday afternoon. This is the WAC weekend.

WAC Dumps

Cracking the WAC involves the usual learning layers of the self, the learning team and the stream. Once the case is handed over, we took some time to go through the case individually. Then we spent a couple of hours discussing the case as a team. Discussions in the team, just like the usual daily discussions, are only meant to bring about more clarity on the topic. There is no guarantee that all the team members will arrive at the same conclusion on the case. In face, this is not the intention.

After the discussions in the learning team, we had what is known as the stream dump. The stream gets together and with one or two people leading the discussions, we go through the case as a stream - without any professor or lecturer. Again, the insights from 50+ people is absolutely valuable to get a good hold of the case. The stream dump is generally planned for 2 hours and I found it to be the most valuable two hours for the WAC. No thought is ridiculed or hushed down in the stream dump. Every voice is unique and respected. There are no arguments because there is no pressure on anyone to accept any line of thought. Thoughts are just spoken out and it is up to you as an individual to decide if you want to consider that thought for your own report.

It is just amazing how over 50 people come together and so constructively discuss a case and arrive at meaningful conclusions in such a structured manner. This reminds me that every bit of the Cranfield MBA is an awesome learning experience.

WAC Pizzas

Following the stream dump, we huddled together back in our syndicate rooms to continue the discussions with our learning teams. By this time, which was around 6 hours since the case was handed over, we had a fairly good idea as to how each of us wanted to crack the case. But Cranfield forces you to still work as a team especially under this time pressure. Although each of our reports would be written by us as individuals, the report had to have a team appendix i.e., a set of appendices that would be common to the entire team. This meant that we had to work as a team and agree on certain things as a group to arrive at a common set of appendices. Believe me, this is not easy when it is 20:00 hrs in the evening, time is running out and the hunger is killing you.

And that is when the WAC Pizzas arrive to the rescue. To ensure that we don't spend too much time on food, the stream representatives collect money from the students and arrange for pizzas to be delivered to the syndicate rooms. Mightily convenient when you are so engrossed in those discussions. By the time the pizzas were finished, we had reached an agreement on the group appendices.

So we had a fairly good idea in which direction to proceed and we had an agreement on the team appendices. All that was left was to actually start writing the 1500 word report.

WAC Night

It's funny how easy it is to stay awake once it becomes clear to you that the entire night is absolutely essential to get that report done. The toughest part lies in arriving at a framework that you would be satisfied with. It is so easy to keep moving those headings around all night long but at some point you need to accept the inevitable, which is that your report will never be perfect. In my case, this realization occurred at around 01:00 hrs Saturday morning. For my next report, I have promised myself not to spend more than an hour on arriving at the structure.

After the structure is in place, the words simply flow (at least for me). So I spent the next two hours until 03:00 in the morning to get a good part of the report ready. Confident that I could finish it on time, I decided to get some shut-eye even though my brain was too excited to sleep. But the moment I hit the sack, I was in deep sleep.

Three hours of sleep and I was back at my laptop tapping away. Three hours of sleep is actually pretty good for a WAC night. For many people, it means a sleepless night. Especially true for those not comfortable with the English language.

WAC Buddies

And this is where the WAC Buddies fit in. ‘WAC buddies’ is a support system offered by the Cranfield School of Management for non-native English speaking students through which the students can avail help with respect to grammar checking their WAC reports before submission. The support does not involve making any structural changes or offering advice on the content of the report.

The school on its part designates one person, either from the faculty or an external, who helps students with the grammar check. But the buddy system is mostly student run and led by the Diversity representatives. Fellow students whose native language is English volunteer as buddies to help those who need their reports to be checked for grammar. This typically takes place a few hours before the report submission deadline, around the time when the volunteers would have already submitted their own reports and would have the time to support the others in the cohort. 

WAC Deadline

A soft-copy of the report had to be submitted to the online plagiarism detector tool called "TurnItIn". A hard copy of the report is submitted to the security guys at the Security Gatehouse since the administrative offices are closed on a Saturday. The reports are time-stamped at the security gate. Late submissions incur a penalty of 5%.

Our submission deadline was at 18:00hrs today, the 6th of November, thanks to the Diwali festival. It is amazing to watch the printers working relentlessly just around the WAC deadline. Fortunately the school has ample number of high-speed color laser printers across the campus. The IT guys at Cranfield have setup a smart print-queuing system which means that you print to a queue and not to a specific printer. Once you have sent the document to a queue, you can print from any available printer using a special printer-access card. This really saves the bother of physically queuing at a printer or for that matter the problems of broken-down printers.

WAC Beer

There is one place where every student turns up right after submitting their WAC report and that is the Social club. You haven't slept much in the last 24 hours, you haven't eaten properly either and nor have you had the time to take a shower (or even brush your teeth!). But there you go - a beer is the only way to bring the WAC to an end!

WAC Learning

So, what's the point in doing all this? I definitely kept thinking about this for a while. Why subject us to this mad concept of analysing a case and submitting a report in 24 hours? I am sure we could have come up with much better reports had we done this in a more relaxed manner.

But isn't that true for everything? We always wish that we had more time but life just isn't that fair. The whole exercise of the WAC helps you to prioritise what you want to do during those 24 hours. It teaches you to streamline the way you assimilate a vast amount of knowledge, integrate the learning from different subject areas, get the best out of your team and your stream, and importantly it prepares you to cope with and excel under stressful conditions.

The WAC is a true Cranfield tradition and an essential ingredient of the Cranfield experience.