Youth Incorporated Magazine

EMBA alumni Mr Muhammed Ashik of SP Jain School of Global Management gives a first-hand account of his experience.

Do you think that an EMBA program can help us become better public speakers? It’s a big YES for me. In April 2021 I became the Champion in our Division B Toastmaster’s International speech contest 2021-22. We were given the awareness about the importance of public speaking skills and the exposure I got through our college’s own toastmasters club helped me to achieve this milestone. Interesting, right? 

When we do an MBA, we tend to get attracted to some key concepts and out of 100’s of them the Four (4) key concepts I repeatedly used in my workplace were ‘blue ocean strategy, ‘customer centric approach, ‘consumption chain innovation’ and ‘AIDAS theory of selling’. My CEO to whom I am reporting once smiled at me and asked, “what happened to you, you seem to come up with new concepts from the last 8 months”. I enjoyed sharing the learning with him and my team.

The other thing that astonished me during our EMBA course – “The Field visits”. As part of the Strategic Brand management course, the professor took us to Dubai’s Falcon Museum & heritage center and to the local plant nurseries. From there, we quickly learned the concept of building brands ecosystem around a core business. Being a sales, marketing, and business development professional for the last 10 years I loved these field visits – it was fun!

I joined the EMBA in April 2018 and got graduated in Jan 2020 with a Dean’s List Gold medal for academic excellence. Our batchmates were from diversified sectors with a huge amount of work experience and it was a great experience networking with them. Many times, I was amazed by the fantastic thought-provoking questions raised by my batchmates. I personally like face-to-face classes and I was lucky enough to have all the courses conducted from a classroom.

Do you like case studies? If yes, you would love what I am going to say. We were given exposure to a lot of case studies in most of the courses and it helped me to understand the failures and success mantra behind building a brand or create a strategy to winning a project – Cochlear – Hear now and always; Google car; Black magic: Team New Zealand and winning America’s cup and many more. Our professors came from different parts of the world, from Canada, Singapore, Sidney, India, etc., and it gave me a global perceptive of what we were learning. 

One of our professors send each one of our batchmates a personal letter via Dubai Postal and the message for me was “How important EFFORT is for building a BRAND – do think about it”. Yes, we learned that there is no shortcut for building a strong brand, be it ourselves or my future company or for the company for which I am working now. 

Most of the time I negotiate with my wife before making some decisions of significance. For this reason, I was very curious to learn the next-level tricks during our negotiation course. Surprisingly, the professor also taught us the importance of storytelling to engage, teach and inspire listeners.

An employee or an employer – which one do you want to be? One of the reasons I wanted to do this course is that I want to start my business in the future. Both the ‘Global Immersion project’ and the ‘Applied Business research’ project immensely help me to apply the knowledge & skills I have learned during the entire course. Most importantly these projects supported me to learn the key aspects we must focus on & research before starting our company. During this process, I become accustomed to conducting a good feasibility study about our preferred business. 

During the EMBA course, I felt I was pumped with a lot of positive energy, creative thoughts and I was always focusing on innovation and strategy. Towards the end of the course, I got an opportunity to prepare a ‘strategic business plan’ for a startup company in Kerala as part of their One, Five- and Ten-years business strategy. Their feedback made me satisfied with a WOW feeling!

After my EMBA graduation, my CEO presented me with some gifts and added more responsibility & accountability with regards to our company business. I felt my open-minded approach helped me to learn many useful concepts and most importantly I to apply them in my work and personal life.

I am still closely associated with our college as Vice President – Education of our college’s Toastmasters club. Recently during my meeting with our college dean, he shared his viewpoint on the importance of developing our public speaking & leadership skills. I feel in so many ways this course and the college’s Toastmaster club helped me to improve my skills significantly and excel in my professional career.