Curriculum & Fees.

This course offers a structured and integrated manner to understand, analyze and run a business. It brings together practical, hands-on tools of corporate finance, management and economics, so you can better understand what informs the formulation and implementation of business strategies and what makes them succeed or fail.

The objective is to give you effective and efficient hard skills that you can apply immediately and directly to the management of your business, in order to enhance your chances of making the right sales, investment and financial decisions. Course deliverables: identify the business drivers of your activity, know what to focus on and why, understand what and why goes right or wrong in the business, and draw a business strategy with more chances of success.

This course will focus on the subject of how human groups behave, how to understand such behaviour, and how the behaviour is shaped in organized environments. It deals with such issues as the human nature, personality, dealing with emotions, motivation, human groups, working in teams, and organizational culture as the ultimate expression of organized group behaviour.

This course will NOT deal with such personnel-related functions and activities, such as job definition, recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, career management etc. The purpose of this program is to study living organizations from structural, behavioural, human and other important perspectives, to understand how organizations work in practice, how they develop, and how they try to utilize their human resources, and the leaders’ roles in this process. Particular HR processes are a feature of their time and will change over time as practices evolve. The fundamentals of the human nature will not.

The course will cover people management in a systemic way, looking at the fundamental drivers of human interaction and to the role management can play in order to maximize productivity and effectiveness. Therefore the approach of this course will be strategic and somewhat philosophic. By philosophic I do not mean removed from real life, but, on the contrary, forming the foundation of real life practices. Acquiring disparate best-practices from different sources without a solid understanding of their fundamentals, their philosophy, is the source of many managerial errors and a lot of grief in organizations today. This course will teach you to challenge myths and assumptions, understand human systems, think strategically about organizations and derive principles of action out of such thinking. Once the ideas and principles in this course are understood in a systemic and managerial fashion, operational-level initiatives will be much easier to handle.

Taking a managerial point of view we examine human and behavioural issues, which co- exist on four levels in organizations:

1. Individual level: personality, personal values and attitudes, cognitive styles, motivation, perception, trust, managing oneself.
2. Interpersonal level: building relationships, communication, positive power, managing up and lateral.
3. Group level: group dynamics, group structure, conflicts, negotiations, leadership and decision-making.
4. Organizational level: organizational culture, organizational structure, impact of national culture, leadership, organizational development, organizational learning.

This course will give you practical management models, tools and methods for analyzing, designing, managing and changing organizations in harmony with situational factors, strategic and operative goals. The aim is not to teach an optimal way of designing and managing organizations: there is no one best way. Instead we provide a general and comprehensive understanding of modern organizations, the challenges they face in general and in the specific region and business where they operate, to highlight related managerial decision alternatives, the logic behind key structural solutions, with a special regard to human factors and human resource management.

Through lectures, cases, readings, discussions, teamwork, assignment papers and presentations you will have the opportunity to integrate conceptual material with your own experience and discuss your ideas with your course partners.

The specific objectives of the course are to:
1) Understand yourself and the way you respond to stimuli. Understand how your own personality and values play a role in the way you perform in organizations, at all levels. Become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses in relation to organizational objectives.

2)  Understand how humans interact with each others and behave. Understand what drives our actions, our motivations. Understand how group behaviour is formed and how it can be changed;

3)  Understand teams as the organized form of human groups and understand what makes them effective and how to maximize such effectiveness;

4)  Understand the drivers of human motivation and their particular applications in the workplace

5)  Understand the difference between management and leadership and the balance you need to keep in order to manage people effectively

6)  Learn from each other’s experience in organizations through participation in teamwork, joint problem solving, exercises, and discussions in class.

Arguments are very useful in debates. But building a successful career takes more than well-structured points of view. You need to establish a partnership with your client, your employee, your employer or any other person that can help you succeed. However, for that partnership to happen, you have to make him or her part of your story. Your partner must feel the importance of following your lead. In this course, you will acquire a better understanding of how to build and share a powerful story.

The “your story” part is sometimes referred as a personal brand discovery.  Not all of us may want to have a significant place in the public space, but having success in business most often requires that we mean something valuable for other people.

Leading with a story will help you understand how to create your personal story that is  a powerful story for others.

By the end of the course you will be able to have a better understanding of yourself and improve your leadership skills through better communication capabilities.

Cosmin co-founded in 1992 one of the first market research companies in Romania. He grew it till 1996, when all shareholders agree to sell it to the GfK Group, one of the top five market research organizations in the world. He continued to run GfK Romania and successfully managed the cultural transition form an entrepreneurial entity to a multinational branch, transforming it into the largest company in this field in Romania, since the year 2000.

As a result of his contribution to the success of the company in the region, in 2002 Cosmin was selected in a team of 15 managing directors from around the world appointed to redesign the Corporate Values of the GfK Group.

The outcome of one year of team’s work is still in place today. Cosmin left GfK Romania in 2005, passing over to the next management team 45 employees and 1,7 million Euro yearly turnover. Today, GfK Romania still holds the number one position on the Romanian market with 200 employees and 9 million Euro turnover.

Also in 2005, Cosmin co-founded the Erudio Association, an organization that runs the Erisma – Creative Leadership, a three months development program for top managers and leaders of organizations. In this program he taught Public Speaking and Mentorship.

In 2011 together with three other partners, Cosmin started Wanted Transformation, a consultancy aimed to assist leaders engaged in transformational processes of their organizations. He sees Wanted as his main professional focus for the following years.

Cosmin graduated the faculty of General Economics within the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in 1994 and the ASEBUSS Program for Executive MBA conducted by the University of Washington Business School in cooperation with the Romanian-American Postgraduate School of Business, in 1999. 

For many years Cosmin is advising, as a board member, leading Romanian NGOs, providing them with feedback and guidance on strategy and sustainable development. He also publishes regularly in Revista 22 and occasionally in various business magazines as well as on his blog: www.cosminalexandru.ro.

The Boardroom Executive Simulation provides students with a safe but very realistic environment, where they can take on various management roles and apply the concepts studied in the previous classes.

The simulation is using an online platform, readily available 24/7 based on challenges from a number of industries: telecommunications, banking, energy, HORECA, small business, etc. The one used in this program is based in the telecommunications industry and places students in the role of newly appointed Board members of a multinational mobile handset manufacturer. There are several teams of students, each representing a manufacturer and all manufacturers competing against each other. The teams can make decisions on a large number of management functions (investment, production, pricing, marketing, finance &tax, logistics) and over several rounds of play they can experience how their decisions influence the performance of their companies in various markets and their competitors. The simulation evolves flexibly, based on the decisions taken by all the teams and not according to a preset gameplay, making each simulation and each round unique. The team generating the highest profit/share wins the simulation.

Learning outcomes:

• Exercise knowledge gained in planning, data analysis, decision-making and various functional areas – Manufacturing/ Operations, Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance
• Demonstrate leadership in motivating and interacting with other team-members in order to successfully achieve the team’s goals
• Present an opportunity to practice efficient and effective communication, critical thinking skills
• Collaboration: sharing previous experiences within teams and learning from the experiences of others

ISTVAN KOCSOLADE

Adjunct Lecturer Boardroom Executive Simulation

Istvan Kocsolade is a graduate of the Academy of Economic Studies and for the past 15 years has pursued a career in technology and management consulting. He has lead or been part of numerous consulting projects in energy, utilities and FMCG industries both in Romania and throughout Europe. He is currently leading the Energy and Utilities practice of Accenture Romania.

After graduating with distinction the Executive MBA program of the Central European University, in 2010, Istvan has developed a passion for business simulations and its application in various education programs. He has tested several strategy simulations and is continuously searching for innovative applications of simulations in graduate education.

Ever so often we see fabulous growth suddenly interrupted by a shocking insolvency. Other times we see sustainable high growth for years in a row. Is there a magic formula to growth? Is there good growth and bad growth? Is there an optimum growth that a company can employ? Is this growth game relying on strategy or execution? On innovation or on pragmatism?

As for many other topics, the classic consultant answer stands true: “It depends!”. But what does it depend upon? And how can the leader of a small team make most impact in developing the business and how to second guess these dependencies into creating sustainable stakeholder value? How to work in the management team to boost innovation and growth? These are definitely a lot of questions to be asked. But every right answer to the right question at the right time can make the difference.