MBA Alumni: Naveen Kumar Kuppu Swamy

I choose UEA as it is one of the best-ranked institutions offering a full-time MBA programme accredited by the Association of MBA’s (AMBA) with a January admission fitting precisely in my plan.

Working with cohort from diverse cultural background remained one of my requirements, as the skill is key to success in a global atmosphere, I received assurance of it during the interview with the UEA MBA Director. Also, I had a fear running in my mind that too late to study an MBA, however, I realised an MBA is never too late after meeting my cohorts’ mix with 3 to 20 years’ experience.

The MBA programme at UEA is all about blending the course with the practicality of the global business environment. One such method is through the consultancy project that requires us to use our learning from the modules from the MBA programme to solve real-world business requirements. We had our Consultancy project team development residential programme right before the consultancy project, a two-day programme in the Norfolk countryside designed to understand the personality and behaviours of each team member in our group as this would be helpful to us during our project.

The two days trip was a learning curve for all of us and clearly, it will benefit all our cohort in future. Furthermore, we applied the takeaways from our residential programme into our consultancy projects. We encountered a few minor conflicts during our project, yet thanks to team rules with our hopes and fears which served as a guideline to avoid the conflicts. We also faced personal level conflicts, but we chose to mitigate politics in our team by forgiving the mistakes. Though we had a leader for our team, the leadership was passed on to each team member based on the knowledge and expertise in the area, this enabled autonomy within the team.