My “Day in the Life” as an Automotive Executive

I was on the General Motors executive team today!

Ok, perhaps GM is not the best model.

Nonetheless…today was the beginning of a day and a half long business simulation event here at Darden. Every first year student participates. We are divided into teams (our learning teams) and we are tasked with defining and executing a comprehensive business strategy for an automotive company. It’s a real-time business simulation where we are competing against other teams of Darden students over the course of several “periods”. Throughout the simulation, we have to make adjustments to our strategy based on the results of our decisions and the decisions of other automobile manufacturers (other Darden teams) against whom we are competing. While this is an exercise for our Marketing class, it encompasses several disciplines to include Finance and Operations. It’s an amazing concept, a great way to provide practical application of all we’ve learned, and a useful way to experience the integration of the various subject matters. And yes, the competition aspect is fun (we are business people, after all).

Today, we had two sessions averaging about three hours each. Tomorrow we go from 9 am – 9:30 pm.

And I have to tell you, I was (am) a bit apprehensive about being locked in a learning team room with my learning team for twelve+ hours. Shoot, I love my momma and daddy but wouldn’t want to be in a 10×10 room with them for twelve hours! That said, today defied my expectations—it was pretty fun! The time goes by so quickly (too quickly!) that you don’t even notice. We are forced to make huge business decisions in a short window so there isn’t a lot of room for inefficiency. We had to make decisions on strategy, product development, financing, operations, marketing strategy—the whole nine! It was fast-paced, intense, and intellectually challenging—but it was energizing! I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning when we get the results of the decisions we made tonight (fingers crossed they are as good—if not better—than those of our first period; we rocked!).

Tune in for results…

(I think I’m going to actually go to bed before midnight! How’s that for a novel idea? Yeah…ummm…probably not.)