Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

The group made their short presentations yesterday. A lot of work had gone in to them, as is generally the case on these trips, and perhaps a few blind alleys explored, more than a few coffees consumed and opinions frankly but fairly exchanged. The result? Pretty good, I thought.

It’s tempting to fall into several traps on an elective study trip such as this. One of them is to react to the mix of nationalities present within the group on the level of national stereotypes, and this group investigated those rather than adopted them. Another is to get so much into the “view” of the organisation being visited that you never come back out and see the wider business environment – or that you never see it from any other than the mindset of the company you visit. What follows then is just a Strategic Direction analysis and this invariably falls short because in the time available no-one in the group can become expert in the internal environment of the company. What made the three presentations stronger was a conscious effort to ask the question “in what business environment does this organisation work?”, before asking “what is the strategy of this organisation?”.

As for Budapest and Hungary, I think everyone learned something new – even those who had visited here before. They’ll be reflecting on that for a few weeks before the assignments are due in.

I am now better informed on the macro-economic realities for Hungary, particularly the way that the National Bank is pretty much at the mercy of the FX market (interest rate setting only has impact insofar as it limits movement vis-a-vis the Euro) for managing inflation.  I also learned that a crazy number of Hungarians have loans in CHF and EUR, though it turns out that they’d be even crazier to have them in HUF.

On a personal note, it has been great to see family and friends and to catch up.  And, for those of you who have done the ‘tourist’ thing here and would like some tips on a different way to explore, check this out on YouTube.