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!