Hello everyone,
I am Ms. Hà, a mentor coach – Cohort 2 MBA at SSBM Switzerland – and I was guided by Dr. Nguyen Sinh My in the role of Industry Mentor (academic advisor) for 2 out of 10 courses in the SSBM MBA program – Strategic Marketing & Sales and Integrated Marketing.
Have you ever thought that studying also requires an academic advisor?
According to Hà, throughout our learning journey, when we pursue further education, we are also learning and developing ourselves through our academic advisors. To Hà, academic advisors are guides, people who have successfully reached the other side of a challenge and then returned to teach and guide others through their knowledge and experience, helping us establish an effective direction, vision, and plan, while inspiring us with the motivation to achieve our goals with high efficiency and enjoy a wonderful journey—with a foundation of support, a companion, and, in a way, like having a “protective umbrella” or an experienced elder in the family to guide us.
And at MBA SSBM, Hà and her classmates had the opportunity to meet wonderful Industry Mentors, and Dr. My was an especially wonderful Mentor when Hà was guided by him in two Marketing-related courses—which are directly connected to Hà’s current career. To share what makes Dr. My so wonderful, Hà would like to share three particularly impressive things:
(1) First, Hà would like to share that even if you are already very good at marketing, you can still find things in Dr. My’s guidance that will help you achieve a breakthrough by overcoming your own limitations!
As you know, Hà has nearly 20 years of experience working in Marketing and has approached and implemented a wide variety of Marketing strategies and tactics combined with business operations, achieving many accomplishments that Hà is very proud of. This means that Hà’s mind is quite closed and selective when it comes to knowledge, mentors, and programs in Marketing and Sales, especially strategic marketing.
And Hà truly felt wonderful and deeply grateful to herself and to the benefactors who helped her come to MBA SSBM and meet Dr. My as her mentor. His guidance helped Hà break through the “bottleneck” in her thinking and marketing practices throughout both her career and daily life. It opened up a broader horizon for Hà in marketing and in ways to bring inspiration to partners and colleagues. With Dr. My’s guidance, Hà gained a deeper understanding of the key strategic partners of Marketing, such as investors and senior leaders, and what they expect. She also learned what she needs to prepare in order to communicate, build alignment with them, and persuade them through Marketing at a strategic level. Hà also gained a deeper understanding of how knowledge foundations, theories, and successfully applied models from around the world play an important role in marketing strategy, corporate strategy, and the practical application of detailed implementation activities.
(2) The second particularly impressive thing is the way Dr. My mentors and advises. Mentoring requires empathetic listening and the art of inspiring through stories, but more importantly, mentoring is a guided journey toward a goal, in which the mentor shares accumulated successful knowledge and experience, packages it, and transforms it into a model, template, process… and hands it over. Dr. My has extensive knowledge and successful experience in marketing, strategy, working with investors, senior leaders of major corporations, and implementation teams. At the same time, he also has academic experience recognized by major universities around the world and in Vietnam. And he packaged all of these things into three mentoring sessions for each course. Hà was able to learn the required academic standards, understand the core knowledge taught by SSBM, and at the same time learn how to transform those concepts into a real-life situation and how to apply them to her work. That is why, when considering whether she should continue studying for a DBA, the first person Hà wanted to seek mentoring from regarding this decision was Dr. My. Hà deeply believes that, with Dr. My’s experience and success in conquering the global academic world and the Vietnamese investment and leadership community, she would be fortunate to have him guide her toward her dream of working as if on a journey of traveling and exploring the world.
(3) The third thing Hà would like to share is: don’t overlook the materials, models, or templates… that Dr. My shares! They are truly a small treasure that can bring you an unexpected experience, even in a field you already know very well. And if you truly absorb and master them, they can bring long-term benefits that, without them, you would have to spend many years and a great deal of money to achieve.
To be honest, while studying the two courses, both times Hà struggled with the templates Dr. My provided, because following them required her to almost completely change her previous habits in marketing thinking and restructure everything once again. And each time, it took a very long time to complete.
And in one course, immediately after completing it… Do you know what happened? I wanted to throw everything away and start over. Haha… Because only when doing it did I truly experience and internalize the theory. That was when I realized that the implementation part of my work was missing elements that would help my team apply it in practice more smoothly. For me, this was an important realization because Dr. My’s template helped me develop an overall understanding with depth in application, and I saw myself exactly like my employees before I had “awakened” to a sufficiently deep understanding of the overall work and situation to recognize and proactively carry out certain small but important tasks at the right time, thereby increasing efficiency many times over – anyone who has ever trained or mentored others will quickly and clearly recognize this. Thanks to this, Hà learned and immediately applied it to her work and team: first, Hà learned from Dr. My so that she could create templates that truly help others apply knowledge effectively, and second, she further developed the implementation component for the project she chose for her final course assignment.
In the other course guided by Dr. My, I achieved another small accomplishment that I am very proud of, and this also made me very impressed with him. I successfully applied the VRIO and PESTEL models to identify the USP – Unique Selling Point, and this USP was excellent. As you know, sometimes simply identifying the USP can determine 70%–80% of the success of a strategy. And the USP identified through this method had a high level of alignment with the strategy of the entire company. In this course, I successfully applied the knowledge from the first course I studied at MBA SSBM. After that, I applied it to my mentor coaching model, and my coachees achieved 3x and 5x revenue growth through a remarkable transformation in their business models, promising a significant increase in performance in 2024. The template Dr. My shared made learning, understanding, and applying the knowledge truly fast and effective, with valuable practical insights.
Hà recognizes, and also believes, that Dr. My has many other wonderful qualities. And if you want to meet a professional, knowledgeable, and dedicated mentor, Dr. My is an excellent recommendation.
Hà feels fortunate to have met Dr. My as a mentor in two important courses for her career, and even more wonderful is that he is also a professional mentor – Hà has learned more about mentoring itself for her own career. I am very grateful to have met him, and grateful for his dedication and for everything he has given me, which is truly a precious treasure that I have received.
I hope that many young people, as well as many people who are “young” like Hà, will receive the valuable treasure that Dr. My shares.
On the occasion of the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Dragon, I respectfully wish Dr. My peace, good health, happiness, and prosperity. May Dr. My’s educational career continue to create generations of outstanding talents who contribute many good things to businesses, our country, the world, and humanity.
Shared from Pleiku – February 9, 2024. The 30th day of the Lunar New Year, on the eve of the New Year!