In this F1GMAT's Harvard MBA Essay review, I show how a generic and incomplete narrative in the middle can lead to a mediocre Harvard MBA Leadership essay.
Leadership-Focused Essay: What experiences have shaped how you invest in others and how you lead? (250 words)
MBA Resume Entry: “Led a three-person team through a three-month cost-transformation engagement covering $1.2B in annual operating spend, diagnosing $180M of addressable cost, which was formalized for the new CFO”
Our client's CFO resigned six weeks into our cost-transformation engagement. The new CFO froze all our recommendations until further review.
We had worked hard to persuade and implement the finer details that the CFO's predecessor had envisioned. Overnight, three months of analysis had no sponsor.
My first instinct was not to transmit my worry about the disruption to the team.
The two analysts were watching me closely and asked for updates on our recommendations. I carried on our daily morning stand-up meetings and shared the changes happening with the client. I assigned a new task – research about the new CFO and understand the direction in which the leadership is heading.
Instead of defending our recommendations, we were preparing for absorbing more change.
I requested thirty minutes with the new CFO. She didn't want to hear out the previous pitch on cost cuts, but was keen on releasing the cash trapped in inefficient businesses Our diagnostic remained the same, but we widened the choices from two cost releases to four to five. For a consultant, it was less satisfying to hand over a set of choices than a set of concrete answers, but it matched how she expected consultants to deliver.
She approved the redirected work plan.
The lesson I learned from the change is that when a workflow is disrupted, the composure a leader keeps determines the outcome of the team.
The focus on the change expected from the disruption gave our team a favorable outcome
Why this Harvard MBA Leadership Essay is weak in the Middle)
The middle is the weakest part of the essay for two reasons
The Harvard MBA Leadership Essay asks about how you invest in others, which is underdeveloped in the essay
The transition to the conclusion is too soon. Ideally, create the tension before the new CFO accepted the recommendations. Expand on the pushback from the earlier suggestion
The two analysts were watching me closely and asked for updates on our recommendations. I carried on our daily morning stand-up meetings and shared the changes happening with the client. I assigned a new task – research about the new CFO and understand the direction in which the leadership is heading. Instead of defending our recommendations, we were preparing for absorbing more change.
Note: A good MBA Essay consultant would strategically add roadblocks to mimic the W-pattern storytelling before the above line is presented
Corrected Essay - Harvard MBA Leadership Essay (The Middle)
I asked each analyst to bring one concrete thing they had learned about the new CFO - a past interview, a decision from her prior company, a public comment on how she read a P&L. The two analysts worked together, and I oversaw the intelligence building to create a profile of the new CFO. By the end of the week, we had conclusive evidence that she trusted a presentation with enough hints, which she could explore herself over a set of conclusive recommendations. I mentored my team to adapt and we rebuilt the deliverable before we ever sat down with her.
