I love my jobs...
...Derby Management, Professor at Tufts and Chairman of Common Angels. A perfect imbalance of lots of complex work, high emotional and intellectual involvement and demanding assignments and projects. And, most of all, I really enjoy both the stimulation and the satisfaction from teaching marketing at Tufts. It's complex, rapidly changing, and most importantly, real world work with great students who are eager to prove themselves. All of which blends perfectly both into our Derby Management clients and even into the exciting, crazy and imperfect world of early stage investing.
It’s final exam time in my juniors and seniors Marketing course, where for the entire semester, my students are grouped into six teams which solve complex assignments given to them a month before the semester begins by the senior management of small and middle market businesses.
All of the 13 weeks then get boiled down to a 50 minute presentation at which the team members present their findings, recommendations and implementation tactics to the senior management of their companies. After which, each of the team members need to send me their takeaways from their specific project. Three company presentations last Wednesday, and three coming up this week. Now the tough job of grading, which is always the most difficult part of my job as a professor...ugh!
I thought that Matt Guiness’ comments to me this morning on his takeaways were particularly sound for all of us setting out this week to turn our attention away from the tragedy and celebration of last week and back to focus on our various work assignments and projects: