Aswin Chandrasekharan

Armed with a Masters in Software engineering, I started my professional career as a functional consultant with Deloitte in Bangalore, India. During my consulting tenure, I had the opportunity to work for diverse technology transformation engagements serving North American clients in the telecommunications, Fast-Moving consumer goods (FMCG), and financial services industries. Serving in challenging client-facing roles, combined with the many leadership opportunities that were presented to me, honed my people-management, time-management, and communication skills. It served as a perfect platform to gain industry insights and provide thought leadership in the form of point-of-views and whitepapers. Within four-plus years, I had positioned myself as a subject-matter expert in key financial functional verticals and was recognized with several awards and an ahead-of-track promotion.

My quest to expand on the horizontal knowledge areas motivated me to consider an MBA. Fully aware of the risk of letting go of a very rewarding career and the significant investment costs in a second master’s degree, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and experience a holistic learning opportunity. The case-based learning method and unparalleled reputation of the one-year program at Ivey motivated me to apply to the school.

In the last few months, I have steered through the most exponential learning curve thus far in my life. The case-based teaching method, in addition to being very informative about industries, companies, and key management issues, skilfully draws on the diverse experience of fellow classmates in their past careers. In the last four months, I have realized that it is not uncommon for one to learn about the intricate processes involved in brewing beer, aircraft design, or kitchen cabinets even from fellow classmates! Outside the classroom, working in teams towards assignments, reports, and graded simulations is a real-world reflection of future career paths available post-MBA.

At Ivey, I have had three key learnings. First, any business environment is bound to be ambiguous and finding a path through that ambiguity and helping others at the same time can be very challenging. However, with the right mix of structuring, modularizing, and analyzing numbers and patterns, a calculative guesstimate can help navigate through the ambiguity. As future managers, one has got to love the numbers! Second, it is not possible to pursue every opportunity available with full justice. One must constantly deal with trade-offs and prioritize to maximize throughput. Time is of the essence and managers of the future need to differentiate themselves by making great decisions over average decisions. Lastly, there are going to be failures but the key is to fail fast and be agile in strategizing. The competitive landscape can be unforgiving for delayed responses to failures.

With these learnings in my pocket already, I look forward to the many more pockets that I have yet to fill. I look forward to an intellectually stimulating time that will help expand my career in consulting and position me as a competitive consultant in the global arena.