Monthly Archives: October 2013

My future career development

How do I see my career developing and how will an MBA @RSM help me achieve my goals?

I want to become one of the best conductors of customer journeys. Removing the  hurdles customers are experiencing when interacting with the same company through different channels and touch-points. Optimizing the outcome of the interaction between organizations and customers from both the company and customer’s perspectives.

At this point in my career my focus is shifting from solving technical problems to spotting business opportunities and making the most of them. One of the hottest topics in my field is CXM most companies are planning to implement parts of this concept. The holy grail of CXM is creating compelling and fully integrated customer journeys across touch points.  Only a few organizations seem to be successful in consistently creating customer journeys and the million dollar question is: How do you create an organization that can consistently generate new profitable customer journeys while executing and optimizing the existing ones?

In my opinion creating, executing and optimizing cross channel customer journeys will demand a huge increase in cross functional cooperation. The current operating model where organizations are made up of a number of loosely coupled functional or product oriented silo’s with each their own unique KPIs and targets, is not designed to facilitate the necessary level of cooperation.  To effectively facilitate the necessary inter functional cooperation, organizations will need to change drastically and become more customer centric.

To change organizations from their product or functional grouping into a customer centric organization, and in the same time losing as little of the advantages of its previous organizational form as possible, is a job I am pretty excited about. It will take a lot of pioneering, determination, creativity and leadership to drive such change.

In order to be successful in such a role I will need to develop a broad skill set in business administration. It will require learning about business economics, strategy, marketing, human resources, organizational behavior and operations. I could acquire these skills by following separate courses on each subject, go to a university and get an academical degree, learn on the job or get an MBA.

Acquiring the skills through separate courses will not provide me with enough insight into the intricate couplings between the different aspects of managing a business. The university option would provide me with a lot of know how, but fall short in giving me a good sense for the context in which to apply it. On the job training would provide the necessary context, but might prove to be a long journey.

An executive MBA offers both the content and context I am looking for. The context might be less then I would get with learning on the job, however this is easily compensated by the much shorter period in which the skills are acquired.  In addition it will provide me with a network of successful and motivated individuals across industries and functions which is a nice bonus.

My reason for choosing an MBA at Rotterdam School of Management is partly based on practical grounds. It will allow me to keep my job at Deloitte Consulting and give me the opportunity to directly apply my newly acquired knowledge and insights into a professional environment. The other taking argument is the focus on leadership development. Leadership is, in my humble opinion, the most important skill for a business leader to be successful in any setting.

Note to readers: This is one of my admissions essays. Please provide me with feedback.