It is quite normal to wonder about the nexus between the rain, umbrella and GMC. I will maybe explain it implicitly while talking about “Telco Venturers” participation in the Global Management Challenge; my team.
Have you ever experienced the emptiness of achievements when you don’t have enough things to do per day? It was my case for months. Boredom was my friend. I got more and more lazy then I decided to move on through my life, to act in the way of gaining useful knowledge and consolidating my professional.
It was my rain… reflections’ rain of how could I change this situation.
Sport? Oups, no I’m not ready for that and it’s cold in Rennes (France). Reading? Yeah, maybe it can be a solution as it was in the past years, but in that time, I lost that pleasure I had before when reading a book… many ideas came across my mind…and one email solved the situation it was about a competition. So, I peeked in the school website and I found a competition in which I can participate. It was about ethics. Ok, I will participate but it’s not enough.
Few days later, a friend in Paris suggested me to participate in a worldwide management competition. What a coincidence! Of course, I will. It was the Global Management Challenge. I read about its concept. We’re two members from two engineering schools; Hanane performing a master in Network Engineering at Telecom ParisTech and I, performing a master in Business Development Management at Telecom Bretagne. We needed at least one additional member to form the team.
OMG! It stopped raining… no no no! It didn’t. I just found two activities that fit with my goals and that will make me busy along the week. GMC was the umbrella that protected me from the boredom rain.
We had to form the team as soon as possible so as we could benefit from the training session. I though that a guy in my class would be interested and decided to talk to him the next day to check if he would like to join us. The next day I couldn’t find him and decided to talk to a second person. Both of them are engineers in mechanics and good friends; Gabriel and Raphael. So, both of them suggested their participation. They were excited about taking on the challenge and I could not reject their willing to be a part of my team; our team.
We were four members. We prepared our resumes, wrote our career plans and subscribed to the challenge.
Starting from that day, it wasn’t only about learning new disciplines through GMC but about winning the competition.
Many questions have been asked by my teammates and I had to answer and sometimes make them a source of motivation. The impressive and the obvious one was about our ability to win, knowing that it’s a management competition and we have numerous competitors studying management, commerce, finance, strategy… We are all engineers and we haven’t enough management knowledge! That was the words expressed by my team members.
First, it was a duty to say “No it’s wrong, We Can” and in a second hand I didn’t agree with them because more than being engineers we are a business students that have several skills in different specialties. My studies may not have only a commercial focus but it covered several disciplines; IT, finance and accounting, management, marketing, e-business… In their side, the’re skilled in telecoms & network engineering, in mechanics, in accounting and financial analysis, in project management… Actually, our competencies were covering all the enterprise functions, in other words all the parameters we will decide on for the competition.
I seize the opportunity to say to all engineering students that you widely have the skills to compete in the challenge. And in addition, GMC, through its manual, trains you very well in strategy and enterprise management. So, take on the challenge. You are the potential winners.
I think I succeeded to set this idea in each team member’s mind. And by collaboration and teamwork, we proved that I was right, we are good competitors and we have all the chance to win.
The first step was to gain as much as possible experience through the training session. We agreed to make the maximum number of mistakes to assess each parameter impact. But, before doing that we should know exactly what the competition is about.
It’s a management competition consisting in leading a virtual company. This company sells three products in Europe, ALENA and Internet. At the beginning of the competition, the organizers should send to the participants the history of the company that contains decisions sheets of a 5 past trimesters, tracks the activities of the company during these trimesters, its revenues and expenses, its turnover and financial situation and also the economic context.
Based on this historic and the detailed explanations afforded through the GMC Manuals, teams should take decisions for the next trimesters in order to reach the best stock performance compared to the other teams. In this way, participants must fill in the GMC business simulator their decisions of investment and expenses in each commercial area for the following functions:
Corporate image, product marketing, forecasted production, R&D, material quality, products improvements, subcontracting, sales management, human resources management, finance, competitive advantage…
The simulator compares teams performances and generates a management reports that exposes all the decisions, the results and the competitive information.
And for each phase, teams take 5 decisions concerning the 5 coming trimesters
We found this very challenging and an interesting exercise to evaluate our skills and leadership.
– First round was impressive. We got used to the competition and we had the impression that we are leading our own business. We afforded some mistakes but never neglected what our competitors were doing. We made it, we were second ranked in our group and we moved to the second round.
As we were composed of members from two schools in different cities, our meetings were help through videoconference tools. However, before any meeting, each team member peeks in the management report (results) and tries to highlights the points in compliance with our forecasts and the points that constitute an issue we have to deal with.
– Second round was more than challenging. No mistake is allowed and it was time to take the high road. We clung to the competition more than ever. We’re not only taking on the challenge but also managing our enterprise; an enterprise we didn’t create in the beginning but to which we defined global and specific strategies.
All discussions were fruitful. Each one of us defended his ideas using every possible argument. And everyone was trying to fill the gaps in the reasoning of the other. The goal was to take into account all the parameters when making decisions. A large part was devoted to analysis, group reflections and debates. But it wasn’t enough for us. We did never underestimate our competitors and the market volatility. Thus, trying to predict strategies of our competitors and anticipate their next steps was strongly required. We fully achieved the mission and passed the challenge.
– Our travel in the GMC 2014 stopped in the semi-finals, we got ranked second again (the same as the first and the second round). Unfortunately, this time it wasn’t enough to compete in the national French final.
Certainly, we have not reached our ultimate goal but we cannot deny that we widely reached our objectives of learning, setting up an outstanding group synergy, defending ideas … Unmatched participation with remarkable gains… this was our experience in the GMC.
Today, I move from the participant to the organizer. My main goal is to develop the concept in Morocco and to extend both the participation at the GMC Morocco and the support of this competition by local enterprises. So, I invite you all to be a part of this experience and to contribute in its success.
Form your teams, participate, learn as much as you can, fight till the end and seize every single opportunity that will unleash your talent, that will make you improve and that will impress you for a life.
By Soulaimane AMRI
Team leader of “Telco Venturers” – GMC France 2014
Manager GMC Morocco 2015
World GMC – GMC Morcco (Fb) – GMC Morocco