Another week of classes -- passing by in a blur!

Last week I had a full week of classes, starting out with a bruising three-day seminar on Key Account Management, which dealt with how some firms retain particular, "key" clients by providing a higher level of service to them and finding out "entreprise solutions" that "create value." All of it seemed quite logical, but so much of it got theoretical (terms like KAMs and GAMS (Global Account Managers) were being thrown about) that by the end all of us were exhausted and (sad to say) not paying that much attention to the lecturer, a former salesman turned KAM advocate now living in Bordeaux.

After these three grueling days, a number of us (oh -- and by this, I mean, the half of the EM Lyon class that has remained here not going on exchanges, in addition to a large HEC-Montreal contingent of about six and six other students from Spanish MBA programs) endured another two days of "creativity in organizations." Some of the games we were introduced to were like IQ games or riddles; it was difficult to see how this would be implemented in an organization, and more than a couple students asked how the techniques we learned -- brainstorming, deBono's "Six Hats," or Concassage -- might work in a large, conservative organization. By the end of the presentation, our lecturer became extremely agitated and began challenging people instead of encouraging them to open up: the usually vocal Canadian contingent shut up and (despite some of my efforts to keep the discussion alive) the class ended thirty minutes early, the professor so nervous at the end that he kept taking a swig from his water bottle, fiddling with the cap, taking a gulp of water and then screwing it back. An ugly scene, if you know what I mean.

That evening we all got together for the first time in Lyon. Past midnight we headed over to the boat bars that I wrote about earlier, the barges docked in the Rhone river that serve as late-night dance clubs (think: since you're not in the middle of the city, you can make all the noise you want, until the wee hours).

This coming week of classes should be a little better. Finance-based courses taught by a EM-Lyon based professor: that always helps.