Conversations with MBA alumni Kelliann McDonald: Royal Holloway MBA Director at large

MBA Director at large: 

Catching up with Kelliann@Tate Britain

Kelliann McDonald, Royal Holloway MBA@Tate Britain, London

Kelliann McDonald MBA, met up with MBA Director Justin O'Brien recently for an in person networking update, just one full year after her graduation.  

Opting for a creative meeting venue rather than a ubiquitous Starbucks, or average restaurant they chose to suck up some very British high brow culture at the Tate Britain, which is located just across the river Thames from the infamous and iconic MI5 headquarters (as featured in the last two Bond movies).   

Kelliann is a consummate networker (and social media expert) so limited time together was efficiently interspersed with rapid fire updates on respective career developments, highlights from recent travelling and news from the Royal Holloway MBA programme, whilst strolling around the impressive range of historic and contemporary art and sculpture on show in the expansive gallery space.  

Francis Bacon, Henry Moore, William Turner, R.S. Cooper, Gilbert and George and Hockney got big thumbs up, more challenging and provocative work such as the Turner prize winning soiled bed from Tracey Emin perhaps less so.

Kelliann, who returned to UK for a weeks vacation to visit old friends and bring back the enormous London buzz she loves, is now happily settled as a management consultant in Washington D.C., USA. Currently she is working with a public sector client base for a well known, leading international consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton, consutlancy a very popular career choice for an increasing number of MBAs.  

Success (so far) a year on from MBA graduation includes (naturally beyond challenging and interesting work) having her own place, with a nice car in secure garage downstairs and a washer dryer inside the apartment. No more dull laundry runs for this sassy management consultant.     

So....was the MBA investment worth it ?

Out of professional curiosity Justin had to ask the big question "Was the MBA investment worth it ?"  Kelliann answered immediately "Yes !", it very much delivered the international experience she was seeking. 

"I am able to use my understanding of a bigger picture and analytical capability to help my clients become more efficient". "I gained invaluable worldly business experience that makes me stand out in the workplace".   

By way of example she was able to point to an image of Lloyds of London in one of the museum stores many books as a recent, real example "Uniquely, I was able to bring in my global knowledge base as we looked to identify best-of-class brand guidelines, thanks to my international study experience, no one else had even heard of Lloyds of London".  

Capturing content: Kelliann is an accomplished vlogger

What had Kelliann missed in a year away ?  An interesting year of authentic anti-establishment politics (e.g. Labours Corbynista revolution), the hit (free but book ahead) sky scrapper viewing space at the Sky Garden (20 Fenchurch Street, the high rise that looks like a mobile telephone) and Kinky Boots the musical - which theatre producer Alex Turner (who led some of Kelliann's drama classes) is actively involved in.  

Previously in this series:

Ibou Barry - Bermuda beverage industry

Other alumni stories can be found here:

British Airways Revenue Management: Jerry Foran guest speaker

British Airways' Jerry Foran

On the week British Airways was named by the Centre for Brand Analysis as the UK's favourite brand for the third year in a row, MBA Director Justin O'Brien invited one of the world's favourite airlines senior managers, Jerry Foran, to give a prestigious guest lecture to his MA Marketing Services class.  

Students got to see how theory they had already learnt about, concepts such as the Net Promoter Score, were being used as strategic dashboard measures to drive the international airlines service excellence.  

Questions came particularly thick and fast when Jerry shared insights into dynamic pricing and flight inventory management.   The topics of over booking, denied boarding compensation and upgrade policies were enthusiastically discussed, perhaps not surprising given the context of previous class content on service excellence and service guarantees.  

Innovative Flipped Classroom Learning

Royal Holloway's Justin O'Brien, who has been innovating with a flipped classroom strategy this term, has invited students to undertake key theoretical learning using text books and wider reading lists ahead of workshops.  Contact time is  then focussed more on engaging with the material and discussing how they would be applied in the real world, more interactive workshop than knowledge cascading lecture.

Students following this exciting services marketing module have, in addition to guest speakers like BA's Jerry Foran, also been invited to get off campus and attend a tourism experience (Warner Bros. Harry Potter), analyse the servicescape of a traditional English pub and engage with craft beer entrepreneur foundering partners at the Windsor and Eton brewery.  

Learning Adventures in a Pub Servicescape: Are you pulling my pint ?

Are you really pulling my pint ?

Services Marketing students from Royal Holloway were taken by surprise on Monday when halfway through their workshop they were invited to pack up their stuff and head out into the big, wide world.  

With a significant storm passing through the idea of intrepid adventurers is perhaps only modest puffery.   Having engaged in MBA Director Justin O'Brien's flipped classroom lecture, that had considered service quality and the service environment (or Bitner dubbed 'Servicescape'), students were invited to put their learning directly into action with a nearly spontaneous field visit to the university staff's little known drinking hole, The Happy Man.    

This innovative servicescape seminar experience took place on Chinese New Year, so the MA Marketing students were not really being cheeky monkeys by engaging fully in a  multi-sensory experience that took in all five senses of the ambience.  One of the locals, bemused by the swarm of mid-afternoon customers, was overhead lamenting "I wish my university lectures had been like this."

Working in small groups the highly motivated masters students were challenged to put learning from the preceding lecture directly into action, seeking out examples of  signs, symbols and artefacts, assessing the service layout and evaluating the ambience,  from inside the warm and cosy pub (it was blowing a gale outside thanks to Imogen).  

Most students were unaware of the Happy Man, it is rather tucked away, but literally just around the corner from the students favourite 'Monkey's Forehead', which is also managed by landlord Dave Lacey. Both pubs are located just a few steps beyond Royal Holloway's imposing Victorian campus walls, but the mostly international student group were quite unfamiliar with the myriad of rituals that accompany English pub consumption.

Students toured the modestly sized, traditional pub searching out signs, symbols and artefacts. From pump ring logos to branded Guinness drip maps, Kozel beer signs and the last orders bell (see above photo) this authentic cottage bar offered much more than initial impressions might have suggested.  What does it mean, some pondered, to have charity collection containers nestled amongst the pumps ?     

Justin's favourite element of the Happy Man servicescape is the beer label murals, carefully and consistently fixed on top of the flocked wall paper to create a visual history of the many and varied guest beers consumed by regular customers.  Whilst perhaps a little quirky and unusual, each cask of new, guest beer is promoted using these modestly produced plastic laminated signs.  

Pragmatically even sometimes just a hand written sign on any old spare piece of white paper (see example above, centre photo).  To the cognoscenti the wall decor, which covers most of the vertical surfaces in each of the four separate rooms, provides a clear symbol of a "proper beer" pub, championing the CAMRA inspired grass roots craft beer movement, which seeks to celebrate small scale, local beer production by encouraging consumers to vote with their spending power.




The Happy Man is popular with local residents and regularly hosts beer festivals, where a wide range of different craft beer, often sourced from all over the country, is available to taste. The staff's favourite pub secret is now out, will Justin ever be forgiven ?

Experience marketing - English Premiership Rugby

Royal Holloway MBA students joined MA Marketing peers studying the term 2 Services Marketing elective were offered the opportunity to attend a thrilling eight try festival at Harlequins, one of Englands top class club sides whose players regularly feature at international level including current internationals Joe Marler, Chris Robshaw and Mike Brown.

Harlequins Rugby Football Club play at the Stoop, literally just over the road from Twickenham, (& pictured in the background above) England's national rugby stadium, offering a near campus experience allowing highly motivated students to test their theoretical knowledge in the real world. 

Elite professional sporting events offer a wide range of marketing dimensions, from specialist rapid batch service Guinness beer pumps, in stadium wifi based enhanced reality aimed at galvanising ongoing support and a plethora of creative advertising and sponsorship offerings (e.g. Hoardings, shirts, B2B focussed executive entertainment in premium seats) targeting both the stadium and television audiences.

Although the weather had turned chilly, with an early morning snow fall, students were rewarded for braving the cold with a thrilling match that ended with the home side winning 34-26 against the visiting Welsh side Cardiff Blues. For many Royal Holloway students, who hail from all over the world, this was the first time that they engaged as spectators at a rugby match. 

As part of the MA Marketing degree programme serious rugby fan Justin O'Brien requires students to analyse a range of service encounters to identify satisfying and disatisfying factors by collecting reports in a diary.

Aside from the typical winter weather (heated seats needed ?) students noted that quite a lot of the action took place at the other end of the pitch, which helps explain why Dublin's Aviva stadium seating is laid like a rugby ball, the best seats that command the highest prices are to be found along the sides around the middle point. Sitting behind the posts you hope that at least some of the action takes place at your end. A couple of disatisfyers logged for their end of term assignment no doubt.




Thanks goes out to MA Marketing and MBA programme administrator Michelle Casey for sharing some of her photos from the match.  

Research Proposal: The Jigsaw Metaphor

Starting out on a dissertation or individual business project may feel like being presented with a 1,000 piece jigsaw with no reference image to work from.  

The training, mentoring and other forms of support offered to students during this form of "sustained, independent research project" hopefully helps scholars identify a range of techniques and critically a process so that they are able to complete the picture themselves.  Ok, let's be honest, sometimes with a good dose of painful iterative learning-by-making-mistakes in the mix too.  

Key here is not to be overwhelmed by initial (typical) feelings of confusion and anxiety.  Parents, older siblings and university graduates in your family social network can often be very useful and cost effective resources. Don't be proud, some will be delighted that you asked for their help. Overcome your fear of talking to members of the wrinkly generation, their experience of having climbed this mountain before can be very, very useful.  

Dissertation Proposal 'Jigsaw' Metaphor

Image source:  scrapbookcampus.com

Playing jigsaws children often learn short cuts from experienced adult puzzlers, like 'find the corners', 'separate out all the edges', 'put pieces in groups of similar colours and patterns' that might suggest colocation.  Whilst making sub-piles from a big pile is not really making progress in building the jigsaw picture, it can give powerful feelings of achievement and provide a sense of direction.  Sometimes momentum and generating positive feelings can be instrumentally powerful.  Small steps and all that ?

Through experience we learn that dividing the tasks into sub-sections and focussing on sub-elements can help focus and motivation on a difficult roller coaster ride.  Bite size challenges that measure progress one piece at a time can usefully distract the researcher from the overwhelming disorder that surrounds the project and potential feelings of hopeless disorientation.  Here a plan of actions can be very useful, keeping a tick box record of achievements helpful in rewarding hard work that might not seem to be progress.  

So why the weird structure ?

At Royal Holloway we usually invite students to submit a research proposal that contains;  (1) summary introduction, (2) the beginning of a literature review and (3) an outline of the methodology.  It is assumed that this will also include an extensive bibliography, although often a big problem is that the initial 'deep research' that indicated 'reading around' is severely limited to a handful of sources (far too narrow !!).  Gasp - four double spaced pages of bibliography is a good start here.

As markers we look to see if the title, theory and research methods line up - can this question be addressed using this primary research and academic theory ?  Often topics are too broad, the question too big to answer given the researchers available time and skillset.  I recommend using a lego style title structure that clearly communicates all key elements of the research project.  

Is the research method proposed thorough and feasible, neither too trivial or huge ?  I use two metaphors here to communicate key content, the upside down tree root decision tree that justifies the choice of research method (using the often dry research methods texts) and writing up the steps to making a pancake  recipe as a science lab test (so others can exactly follow your steps and re-create your findings).  

In addition to showing the theoretical areas covered in the inverted cone,  the partial literature review enables the supervisor identify if basic Harvard referencing conventions are understood, appreciate the depth of research thus far undertaken and assess the authors ability to write critically, that elusive objective academic tone that is best honed by extensive engagement with academic journal reading (or at least wide skimming) many students seem often reluctant to undertake.  

The big jigsaw metaphor reveal

For me the image below as a metaphor is what a research proposal seeks to achieve, not a complete picture, but an indication of the shape and size of things to come.  With corners marked and most of the edges in place, some of the central connected and unconnected linkages have already been put in place, whilst others sit in less clear groupings awaiting more attention later.  

The idea of the picture is beginning to come across (literally in this case an elephant like animal surrounded by green bushes and some blue sky).  It has some clear form and there is evidence of a systematic approach.  It is far from complete, but you can see that success is likely with a bit more effort.  

Image source:  scrapbookcampus.com

Where else to go for help ?

I like Stella Cottrell's writing style, her academic skills books benefit from student friendly pricing too !  Too few students invest in Stella's books.  My own, modest, free and concise blog based dissertation guide may also be useful ?


The inspiration for this jigsaw metaphor post came, perhaps not unsurprisingly, whilst in discussion with a dissertation student.  I would like to recognise my undergraduate BSc (Hons) Management mentee Natasha, whose enthusiasm for this jigsaw metaphor has inspired me to author this post.  Thank you Natasha.  

Crafting an Executive Summary: Are you fit for business ?

Booted and suited: Royal Holloway MBA students Rodrigo and Hannes  royalholloway.ac.uk/mba

Crafting an Executive Summary: Are you fit for business ?

So what is an executive summary ? 

Introducing a problem or opportunity, it is likely to summarise the skill and hard work that demonstrates credibility of the author (detailed analysis in the report body) and provide an unequivocal hard sell of the benefits vs. risks offered through a single, clear recommendation.

A page or two long, designed for the C-suite executive speed reader, it should "include news you don't want anyone to miss"

Why ?

In business the skill of writing concisely is an important skill.  Engaging functional summaries are required in many different communications formats including infamous elevator pitches and one liner email title headings.  The ability to get a clear and complete message across efficiently is very important.

On an industry focussed programme like the Royal Holloway MBA or my wider marketing teaching in the School of Management I believe it is very important to  challenge students to develop a full range of communication skills.  In my view writing short is under taught at schools and universities, but a critical skill for business.  Long is lovely, but short has impact.

How is it different from an traditional essay introduction ?

Whilst an academic essay introduction might seek to engage, surprise and entertain the reader using an evocative quotation or two, the odd metaphor and a hook to snare the reader to want to read on, and on, and on....... 

An effective executive summary should quickly establish a meaningful problem and show how it is going to be resolved, identifying costs, risk and a clear measure of successful business impact.   

A traditional essay might leave the big reveal (the answer or recommendation) until the end in the results or conclusion, hoping that the reader has not given up the ghost or topped and tailed the report (reading the first and last pages, skipping the rest).  

Essentially with an executive summary you are bolting together a summary of the introduction, conclusion and recommendations in as few words as possible.  

When do you write it ?

Whilst a essay introduction might be written first, sign posting the structure of the document, effective executive summaries should be written last.  Remembering that essays, unlike reports, require full prose and no headings.  

In many ways the executive summary is an elongated abstract, that concise and highly functional summary of an academic journal papers content designed to quickly answer the readers question "Is this useful to me ?"  

Tips ?

MBA Director: Justin O'Brien

(1) The executive summary should not be rushed, even though it is last on the to do list.

  

(2) It is your most important shop window, thus it must be written in flawless English. Check and double check for grammatical accuracy, flow and meaning. First (& only ?) impressions really count.  

(3) It should be concise, less is definitely more. It should carry only the most important details.  

(4) Read a range of academic journal paper abstracts and try to craft a 90 second elevator pitch to identify the bare essentials.  

Have you noticed how clipped this blog post is ?

Like this and want more study skills links ?  uni study skills

MBA 2014/15 Graduation @Royal Holloway

Proud to see this cohort of professionals sign off in some style.....  

Congratulations !

MBA International Management 2014/15