(Havana, Cuba) Will US go the way of Japan?

I am in Tianjin on a two week assignment assisting the World Economic Forum with their Global Growth Companies meet. It is nice to be on a holiday from schoolwork, graduate school applications and recruiting although the mood is somewhat dampened by the avalanche of work that will greet me when I touch down in Philadelphia.

Watching one of the biggest financial storms a 12-hour flight away in China, and the political posturing from both presidential candidates on TV, makes the collapse of America’s financial industry surreal. The moods in the Wharton campus are characterized by the worried faces that crowd into the Anneberg auditorium to listen to Wharton professors discuss the current crisis. Is it over? Will investment banking return? Have we wasted our four years in business school?

Every investment banker wannabe who used to mock consulting is now crowding into the remaining interview slots for consulting. But I suspect that the economic slowdown is going to hit that sector too. At a meeting with [BIG CONSULT], one of their analyst suggested that the consulting industry works on the following cycle:

Economic boom – strategy work for clients
Mild slowdown – cost-cutting work for clients
Severe recession – cost-cutting by cutting consultants

Recent events suggest that we are in the third category.

(Seoul, Korea) Once loved, the Korean president is now beleaguered.

With Lehman filing for bankruptcy, I am reminded of an incident that took place last year before I realized that investment banking was not something I should consider at this stage of life. I was attending information sessions to find out what investment banking was and after talking to a representative of an investment bank, I emailed him to thank him for the information he gave. However, I misspelled his bank’s name and he wrote a long reply of which a part had the following:

…but a huge part of success in investment banking comes from attention to detail (please understand this is coming from someone who misspelled Bear Stearns ‘Bear Sterns’ on a cover letter two years ago and was still offered a job, perhaps such lapses are correlated to their recent quandaries).

His bank recently went under. I appreciated his comments though as I believed that he wrote it with good intentions (the original email continues with some good advice and encouragement). I post this just to point to the vagaries of life and to remind myself that much of it is ephemeral. There are ups and downs and the key is to take all that in stride.

This will be a difficult semester as I decided to finish up another degree in the college. I will be taking 9 to 10 classes this semester - twice the courseload of most students. In addition, I will be applying to graduate school and will undergo recruiting for jobs. I will also miss two weeks of classes this month as I head to China to be involved in a World Economic Forum event. Hence, I will be posting infrequently here but I wanted to let my readers and friends know that I am not ignoring my website.

Another thing of note was that in class last week, I saw a student using her laptop to record the lecture. While technology is great, I am skeptical of using it for all situations. I find that other students in using such technology lose the ability to instantly synthesize the knowledge communicated on the spot at class.  Instead of comprehending, they tell themself that they can always return home and listen to it again.

(Seoul, South Korea)

I write this on the plane from Zurich to Philadelphia. My last semester in university approaches and with it comes the knowledge that I will soon have to plan for post-graduate life. Thankfully, my last two years have given me some ideas on how to think about my future.

In thinking of the next few years, I want to choose a job that will allow me to answer questions that interest me. The specific question I have in mind is what issues arise when developing and developed business cultures interact. When a multinational corporation chooses to pay bribes in a developing country, does it lend legitimacy to a culture of corruption? In training the workforce, does the corporation develop a managerial culture and professionalism that previously did not exist?  I know that my next career need not be my last career, and choosing to structure a career plan around such questions is one way to be more aware of the learning I hope to take away from a job.