Q: Starting off with your background, could you talk us through your pre-Hult career?
Whilst I was studying for my PhD, I was fairly convinced that I wanted to become a professor. My postdoctorate was in research engineering, so essentially inventing technologies. The business model of the lab I worked in was spinning off companies from those technologies. Unfortunately, those companies didn’ t do that well when they were taken to the open market. I came to realize that although everybody in the room had a PhD in technology, no one knew anything about business. It was at that point that I decided I would go and learn about the world of business with an aim to run a technology company at a later date. As postdoctoral positions don’ t tend to pay very well, I couldn’ t afford to do an MBA. Joining McKinsey therefore seemed like a sensible second option, as they could teach me all about business whilst I was earning money.
At McKinsey, I specialized in building companies for blue-chip clients. I started off with the. coms, but when the. com bust hit, I moved into building credit card companies around the world. I became a sort of‘ rent-a-CEO’; I went in, I got the business up and running, and then I handed it back over to the client. Standard Chartered became my biggest client, and after getting to know me, they offered me a job in Hong Kong running their credit card business.
Since my career ambition wasn’ t to be a consultant, and by that stage I felt as if McKinsey had taught me a lot about business, I decided to take the plunge and see what being a banker was all about.
McKinsey taught me how to communicate effectively and how to problem solve. At Standard Chartered, I learnt the art of leadership and basic service and marketing. Despite being a fantastic opportunity and a phenomenal learning curve, being a banker didn’ t quite suit my personality. Even though I was running the largest credit card business in Asia, the role lacked an element of excitement, so I started looking into technology-based startups. And then fate intervened in the form of a telephone call from Philip Hult( member of the Hult board), whom I knew socially. He explained that they had taken over a business school a few years previously and they were in the process of looking for someone to come on board and take it forward. That’ s how I joined Hult.
Q: Considering that many students come to Hult with the ambition of making a career change, how did you find the transition from a PhD researcher to consulting?
I definitely found the transition a daunting prospect. I think the biggest shock to my system was how hard I had to work. I had gone from having a pretty laid-back existence as a research engineer to suddenly working hundred-hour weeks at the bottom of McKinsey’ s corporate ladder.
The second biggest shock was that I had always been a subject-matter expert and was only ever expected to speak about my narrow area of expertise— in fact, that was regularly all I spoke about! But that changed overnight when I moved to McKinsey. I remember there was an expression in our evaluation forms, which, if I recall correctly, was something along the lines of“ being able to speak off your knowledge area confidently.” I was pretty skeptical at first, thinking I would have to bluff my way through endless meetings, but they assured me that it wasn’ t bluffing. I was told to simply apply my intellect to topics that I may not immediately know lots about; it was all about picking apart a problem and going back to the basic logic.
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