CLIENT CASE STUDY (1)

Fostering the true global leadership potential and key management skills to enable my former business student in my strategy/finance classes and also my MBA admissions consulting client to gain the key skills/insight to succeed, not only at Harvard Business School but in building a big new Japanese business enterprise!

CLIENT PROFILE - Chutatsu Aono

Today: Entrepreneurial manager successfully leading an IPO as founder and CEO in the education sector (Gaba Corporation). Other experiences include several cases of Japan-US joint venture establishment and management. Managed 500 employees and 1,000 contractors from 64 countries. One main career goal is to make quality language education available and affordable to anyone who wants it in Japan and globally.

Japanese national educated at Harvard Business School (MBA), and Waseda University (Tokyo) and Wabash College (Indiana, USA)

His full profile: Linked in

His website (Japanese): Bluefield Corporation

CLIENT STARTING POINT

Before: I first got to work with Nigel Denscombe as his business school student (In Tokyo before I went to Harvard Business School), taking two terms of classes (12 weekly sessions each term) in English with him, Case Study and Finance. These classes were what I consider to be MBA-level, and quite challenging in terms of the level of content and participation required. After I finished my management classes with Nigel, he persuaded me to continue on to full-time MBA studies, and I became his MBA admissions consulting client as well. Even though I had substantial professional experience in Japan as an 8-year veteran/manager with American Express, I lacked the confidence that I could do well in a top global MBA program. Nigel gave me the confidence and vision to reverse that thinking, and I successfully enrolled/graduated from Harvard Business School with his invaluable ongoing support. It is fair to say that he had an unbelievably positive impact on both my career/business potential and my life direction in general.

NEW DIRECTIONS

Was the MBA admissions consulting with Nigel Denscombe very helpful?

Absolutely critical! Without Nigel’s wide-ranging support in many ways (not just in the MBA admissions consulting), I definitely would not be where I am today!  Nigel helped me with the GMAT business school admissions test as well as MBA admissions essay writing and interview training. He influenced me a lot making decision to apply for Harvard Business School.

Back then, other people all told me that I should not apply for Harvard. Their advice was basically the same, something like “you would not fit in to a very competitive environment like Harvard”, or “Harvard is a school where with professors, smart students would try to make mediocre students fail” (I thought that perhaps I was in the latter category then, and maybe that would have been true if I had not gotten Nigel’s all-round help in not just MBA admissions support but in essential management skill building in his classes). However, only Nigel advised me to go to Harvard.

All the opinions suggesting I should not have applied to Harvard were based on the non-first hand information or an “image”. They also said Harvard was difficult to get in. However, reading my MBA essays and providing admissions counseling, Nigel told me without hesitation that I should go to Harvard, and I should be able to get in. Perhaps because he was from Harvard, his words were convincing and I felt like I could get in, and indeed I did get in!

Was the business classroom experience before Harvard with Nigel useful?

Very much. I was used to management case studies because of Nigel’s case study management classes, which were mostly based on Harvard Business School case studies and taught in the same way as in the actual Harvard MBA classes (someone starts the class and a lot of participation is required - the opposite of most business educatIon in Japan actually). So, I could catch up with business school classes at Harvard where you have to read 3 or 4 cases a day. I am a “slow starter”, so I could easily be way behind my peers, but because I attended Nigel’s classes, I was able to anticipate what would happen next in the business school classes.

In the very first class at Harvard Business School, the professor told that that he would like somebody to summarize the case of the day. Everybody was silent, seeing what the peers would do, but since this was something I had always done in Nigel’s management classes before Harvard, I raised my hand without hesitation. I caught everybody's attention with surprise. If I saw my business school friends today, they would still talk about me raising my hands first at the very firs class. They had thought what a crazy guy! and it was quite understandable. They were nervous although they were all very smart , and they were mostly Americans who were used to express opinions openly.

LOOKING BACK - VALUE-ADDED

Although I am still young, I have already been fortunate to have had some amazing business and life experiences since I met Nigel Denscombe. If I had not had the support and guidance and management skill-based training from him, I would not have been able to reach the successes that I have achieved so far. Certainly his MBA admissions consulting and advice was invaluable by itself. However, he provided much more support than that, from actually teaching MBA-level classes to me himself to transferring much of the practical knowledge and understanding about leadership and change that he himself has built-up over his own amazing career and life story!

In short, the considerable value he can add crosses many areas, and I believe (from my own up close experiences with him) perhaps actually gives his clients an “unfair competitive advantage”, not just in MBA admissions and the MBA learning itself, but throughout his client’s subsequent management careers!

Chutatsu Aono

Nigel’s former MBA admissions consulting client/business school student