Managing People, Projects and Presentations

By Gabriella de la Torre, MBA in Hospitality Management, Mexico & USA, 2012-2014 2nd Year

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” - Ken Blanchard

The second year and one-year track students have spent the last 6 weeks preparing for the final presentation for the Managing People course.

Task: Develop a Human Resources Strategy for a Sofitel hotel in various countries.

Each team was required to imagine the establishment of a Sofitel in a different country –Japan, South Africa, Oman, Angola, Mexico or Turkey– while providing recommendations regarding human resource management. These countries have yet to see a Sofitel property within their borders, allowing for a truly challenging endeavor for the different teams. Finding relevant research in unknown markets, many of which are relatively underdeveloped, and managing group meetings amidst work for other classes and extra-curricular activities were just some of the challenges we experienced during the past couple of weeks.

PowerPoints, presentation notes, suits, heels and ties inundated the amphitheater as the moment of truth arrived for each team. Team after team presented their respective HR strategy to the evaluation committee, composed of Professor Stefan Gröschl; Nicolas Graf, Academic Director of the MBA in Hospitality Management, and François Febraud, Vice President of Training & Development for Sofitel Worldwide.

Presenting our recommendations to someone so close to the subject of our project was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and François made the most of it as well by providing us with pertinent and real-world feedback on our presentations. This feedback, much of it do with strategic analysis and presentation skills, will be useful in going forward with our next presentation in another five weeks and is likely to shape our thinking and presentation techniques going forward into the “real world.”