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Day 5 - Executive MBA Classes Continue
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Wednesday turned out to be another absolutely gorgeous day in Lviv. After a leisurely breakfast at Cactus (my third meal there this week) with Gary, Jon, Sarah and Joanne, I spent some time at the internet cafe and then went for a walk. Gary and I explored a huge park between our apartment and the school. It had a very nice entrance gate - white and marble-looking, very Greek - beyond which was a sprawling park with interconnected walkways, benches, and an amazing soccer stadium. The stadium was dug into the side of a hill, so that one end of it looked like the sides of a giant green bowl. The seats were about to fall apart. But it had a nice view of the area, since it was up on a high hill, and there were a number of soccer teams there playing games or waiting for their turn. Gary and I watched for an hour or so, then went to find a shady bench to do our lesson prep.
The class session tonight was great. Gary led the class in a discussion of the GE Capital Canada case, covering loan application analysis. The case went quite a bit over time, so I was left with only 40 minutes to do my lecture- discussion. I gave them a choice - either an exercise in pro forma statements or a discussion about financial risk and debt vs. equity. They chose the exercise. I had put together an example of a fictitious Ukrainian PC retailer going into second year of operations, and I had the class prepare together a pro forma balance sheet and statement of retained earnings. What followed was the most intense class discussion I think I've seen to date. They were all totally into it, I was cold-calling like crazy, and they questioned every assumption that I or anyone else made. It felt absolutely amazing, and I walked out of there totally charged. The following day was to be our last class with the Executive MBA students at LIM, and although I was excited about the Entrepreneurial program to come, I felt a little sad to leave this class.
The LEADER teams in the other cities have reported some absolutely hysterical stories, and there was one in particular, from the team in Moldova, that is worth sharing:
'Leonard and Francis managed to undue all of that hard work and established good will with a chance "meeting" with the police. Apparently, the two managed to draw the attention of themselves on the street and when stopped were lacking some "mystery" papers that the police wanted to see. Some negotiation and 360 Lei later bought the two a hand written note from the police on some scrap paper signed by the captain. We had this very official document translated after the fact, and as we have found out it reads in Russian:
"To all other police men - make up some story to these two about not having the right papers and threaten to take them to jail. They will be scared and offer to pay you money. They are good for at least 360 lei, and maybe even more."'
Thankfully we hadn't been had in any similar way. I thought this story was just a joke, until Leonard showed me the note after we all met up in Prague.
©2004-2005 Kamal Gautam