{"id":117,"date":"2009-08-24T23:32:49","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T06:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2009-08-24T23:32:49","modified_gmt":"2009-08-25T06:32:49","slug":"intentions-and-conversations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/20090824\/intentions-and-conversations.html","title":{"rendered":"Intentions & Conversations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I talked to Liz Rockett, Haas 2010 and the President of Haas MBA Association about my blog post “Doing an MBA is like shopping in a grocery<\/a>” from her speech in the Orientation week. \u00c2\u00a0Liz is very generous to share the text of that portion of her speech about setting intentions and “grocery shopping” through business school.<\/p>\n

Here is that part of Liz’s speech:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

>> Second half of O-Week welcome speech — intentions & conversations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Take this week to make notes to yourself of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to you, what you want to focus on this year. Watch for your own stress points \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what is likely to cause you to lose that composure, that effortlessness?<\/p>\n

With that in mind, whatever you know now about what you want to focus on and what your likely stress points are, you want to take this week to set your intentions. As you are at the threshold, what do YOU need to get out of this year, what will you gain from this experience? And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that you need to know exactly what career or job or whatever you want \u00e2\u20ac\u201c plenty of us come here with the intention to figure out what lights us on fire. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intention. Figure out if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like consulting. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intention. Figure out what it takes to serve on a board, and if you could try that out. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an intention. Figure out if you can show a side of yourself that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never been able to showcase before.<\/p>\n

Each of us walks in with a set of intentions, but if we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t set them down before we get into the smorgasbord of Haas, we risk deciding to take the approach of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153try one of everything,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or worse the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel like I have to do it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mentality that causes you to do things you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to \/ can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \/ don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have time to do. By setting your intentions early, even if they change mid-course, you avoid some of the perils of business school \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the perils that can cause you to lose your intensity.<\/p>\n

Without your intentions\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6well, the best thing I can think to compare it to, is that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like walking in to a grocery store with no list \u00e2\u20ac\u201c something I personally do all the time. You walk in, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re on the phone, you circle the aisles, you inevitably spend 3 hours on a task that could\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve taken 30 minutes, and you invariably walk out with a lot of stuff \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a lot of tasty stuff even \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but without the ingredients to make a single meal.<\/p>\n

Haas is a grocery store \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot to offer.<\/p>\n

To navigate it well, as you push your cart around, you want to know what you are trying to create \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you need your list.
\n–\tTo build a career you need a lot of ingredients \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and you have a finite time to shop. Walk in with a grocery list, plan, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re more likely to walk out with what you want
\n–\tYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll still want to have your eyes open for other ingredients, other things you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have thought to try, or always wanted to try and see available for the taking\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one other thing that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really important as you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting ready to shop the aisles of Haas, even if you do have your grocery list and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re ready to keep your eyes peeled for fun new ingredients<\/p>\n

There are other people shopping alongside of you. Your classmates, with their own plans and lists, may have something to share that will shape your own plans for something you could never have even thought to prepare on your own.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of this recently at an event for our alumni leaders, who spent the day debating how we can help Dean Lyons push Haas to the next level. I was chatting at the end of the day with one of the recent alums who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken a leadership role in our alumni community. He was asking if I could get all of us, the current students, to start pushing out information on what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being talked about on campus. And when I asked him what he meant, what information, he said \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s those conversations in between \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the conversations between a few people after class or in the courtyard or over a beer. If you could package up those courtyard conversations and broadcast them out, that would be like being back on this campus. Those conversations define the cutting edge of thinking in such a range of industries. That is what I miss. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get anywhere else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In this store, you are surrounded by people who are constructing their own fabulous plans for incredible lives, careers, heck even incredible weekend plans. The conversations that happen in between the meat and potatoes of classes and recruiting nights and consumption functions and everything else \u00e2\u20ac\u201c those conversations can flavor what you are creating. The ingredients that others are adding to their own basket can make the meal that you are preparing even more exceptional. Use them, make time for those conversations, but to have them you HAVE to pick your head up you have to engage the people around you and not just be going for the ingredients that you think you need \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they will be perhaps the most invaluable part of this balance that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trying to strike.<\/p>\n

So now, before I close, if you haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t written anything down yet \u00e2\u20ac\u201c write this down.<\/p>\n

Set your intention.<\/p>\n

Make time for conversations that will flavor your own experience You are about to open that gift that all of you have given yourselves \u00e2\u20ac\u201c this week, you go BACK TO SCHOOL. Your time is yours \u00e2\u20ac\u201c life is good.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Haas. Welcome home. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so glad you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re here.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Liz, thank you very much for the speech.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I talked to Liz Rockett, Haas 2010 and the President of Haas MBA Association about my blog post “Doing an MBA is like shopping in a grocery” from her speech in the Orientation week. \u00c2\u00a0Liz is very generous to share the text of that portion of her speech about setting intentions and “grocery shopping” through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,24,28],"tags":[34,35,36],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni","category-berkeley-mba","category-careers","tag-berkeley","tag-haas","tag-mba"],"views":14764,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freemanding.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}