This past weekend, I participated in the Sony Marketing Strategy Case Competition. Unlike past competitions, you show up as an individual and are placed on a team with people from schools all across the country. On my team, we had one of last year’s winners from University of Wisconsin, a girl from Drexel, a guy from UT-Dallas, and a guy from Arizona State who is actually living in Japan full time and taking classes online. It was an eclectic mix with a variety of skill sets. I was pretty excited to be on a team with someone with so much insight from last year’s competition.
We met our teams on Friday night at a fantastic reception (where I won a 32” Sony Internet TV!!) and tried to get a sense of my teammates’ skillsets. My Pepperdine coach recommended that I spend as much time listening and assessing as possible. To be honest, I’m more of a talker sometimes and I was trying desperately to follow her advice, especially after taking my mediation class where we spent a lot of time talking about the importance of active listening.
Saturday morning at 7:30am, we received our case and began the six-hour whirlwind of case preparation. Often times, it made sense to defer to the “expert” who had won last year, and I was interested to see how other schools taught marketing case analysis. It definitely wasn’t the way I would have done it but I was enjoying the process. I had a strong dynamic with the other girl on the team and we were both on the same page a lot of the time. One guy wasn’t feeling well and was plagued by jet lag (the guy from Japan) and his voice was quelled because of it.
Overall, throughout the day, at some point we started answering the wrong case question. We were only slightly off base, but it made a huge difference ultimately. When attempting to craft the “story,” during our run-through of the end presentation, our mistake became apparent and it was too late. I had been listening so closely to everyone’s opinions that the big picture was lost on me until too late. At some point, we had been on the right track, but I had neglected to establish trusting relationships where I could take a step back, assert my opinion, and try to drive the ship a bit more.
The team was great. I actually came out of the presentation feeling like we had wowed the judges, even with one of the strongest powerpoint presentations I had generated thus far in my case competition life. I felt that we had a strong Q&A session and we were high-fives and smiles the rest of the day. It was clear, in the end, that I had hidden my voice in fear of shaking up the group dynamic and also deferring to an expert.
The truth is, the case from last year and this year were very different and no one was the expert. This was an observational flaw on my part and, having never been part of a strongly tactical marketing case before, it was hard to feel confident in my opinions. I definitely learned a lot and felt that I walked away with some great new friends and contacts across the country. The value of listening was not lost on me, because I felt that I know these people much better than if I had come in and conducted the conversation like I sometimes tend to do. Fast group dynamics are no picnic, and more than anything, trust is the hardest to build so quickly. It was amazing how much that impacted performance.
Oh well..there’s always next year. And I can’t wait to meet new people!
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