Hope everyone is having a fantastic time finishing off their internships! I simply cant believe 6 weeks have passed so fast and we only have two left! I'll make it a double post for my lack of posting last week, my apologies! Oh, and a word of warning....its a long long long post!

This week was predominantly spent working on a few key tasks for the Working Capital Initiative. I've been working on a knowledge sharing wiki for all of Bayer to use for the past couple of weeks amongst other tasks. The idea is to have all of Bayer's employees to have working capital management on their lips and share best practice across the 107,000 strong firm. From plant level to managerial level everyone should be using this. I simply can't wait till it finally goes live! I would have a section on social life, but this week has been all work so far!

It's the weekend now though, but even now its time to work on graduate applications! This week however it hit me again about how great the experience is for our future careers and for ourselves. We had the chance to meet the head of Bayer Business Consulting this week, Dr Alexander Moscho. He told his path towards leading BC which involved Mckinsey (an external management consultancy), setting up two companies and having one sold to a NASDAQ listed firm and then university in Stanford. The one thing he said about us (Rob and I) was that having international experience is a great factor on our cvs and will make consultancy companies have a second look at us. We've adapted to a new environment, a new language and a new business which is what consultants have to do everytime they change projects, so in theory we should be well suited. Only the next few months will tell, but once again thank you to the Saltire team for making this possible!

I've also been in the footbal mood this week, what with my beloved Arsenal winning this week as well as the premier league and bundesliga starting again after the summer break. I've also been reading about business leaders and thinking about really what makes a good leader. So after reading a fellow's blog post from a while back and thinking about the above i've thought about who I really admire and why. As such I present my fantasy business team and why i've picked them for the position:

Why would I have these people on my team?

• Goalkeeper: Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren is known as the "oracle of Omaha" with his investing strategy. He always sticks to his investment plan which is looking at the company's management. Whilst some of you may think, isn't that an obvious point, this isnt always the case with many traders using tools such as technical analysis. He's been vindicated over the last few decades with some solid returns. He also claims to have never looked at a stock chart in his life! I choose him as a goalkeeper since its traditionally a player who has to stay back in his box but also be as solid as a rock, which is very much like his investment philosophy and management style.
• Wing Backs: I've chosen both these two for being people who are solid leaders but have also put an innovative spin onto a new concept. One thing you'll find as you move up the pitch is that there seems to be a heavier emphasis on innovation, so just to let you know.
  
  • Howard Schultz: The CEO of Starbucks for the starting phase (and now been reappointed). Whilst in Italy Howard noticed that coffeehouses were on every street corner and were effectively a "third place" away from home or work. Howard was one of the people who brought this concept of the third place being a coffeehouse back to America, and now the world! He took a simple product and built it into a success. Much like a creative winger does...
  • Indra Nooyi: Indra was renowned for her great leadership as the CFO, and now CEO of Pepsico, especially during its acquisition of Quacker. She ensured that costs were kept low, but Pepsi still continued to produce a high quality product. She is also renowned as treating people development as a key priority in the organisation such as an interesting new line of snacks launched towads the woman's market. Definately one with a solid base, but one that likes to take risks. A real Roberto Carlos if I ever saw one. :p
• Defenders
  • Shigeru Miyamoto: Now I know a lot of you are thinking, sorry who?? This man is the genius behind Nintendo's top games mascots, such as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. Whilst this is a little bit of a luxury on my part he is renowned as a bit of a celebrity in Japan. He does make the perfect defender though because his managerial style is one of perfect quality and sticking to the plan. Even if he has had 150 staff on a project for 3 years if he isn't happy with a project he will scrap it and start again. Its this nature of wanting perfect quality which makes me admire him.
  • Sam Walton: Most of you will know this fantastic CEO. For those of you that don't know, he founded Wal-Mart and built its philosophy of constantly getting cheaper prices to the consumer. Again another key defender who can stick to the plan and is reliable. Another thing I admire about him is his curiosity. A group of South American billionaires wanted to learn about US retailing so they contacted 25 CEOS. 20 never replied, 4 sent apologies, Sam said yes. He picked them up from the station in a pickup truck and instead of them asking questions he consistently asked them question about South America. He then visited them again in South America to see their supermarkets. One day the businessmen got a call from the police to come and bail out Sam. Why? because he had been arrested for getting down on his knees in a South American supermarket to measure their aisle width!
• Defensive Midfielder: A defensive midfielder is known as someone who can feed the ball to safety up the pitch and also be a strong pillar for people to trust and Roberto Goizueta. Debatably he is known as one of the greatest CEOs that lived for the fact that he grew coke to a much higher market capitalisation. Money aside though he had a great belief in people, which is reflected in Coca-Cola's strategy today. They rely on local bottlers to know the best distribution for their area and sell the cola concentrate to these bottlers. Coke makes a large amount of money, but so do the bottlers thanks to this model, in which they are trusted to know their local market instead of the headquarters sending people to investigate this.
• Wingers: These two are known for taking an old product/company and really invigorating them.
  • Ratan Tata: The indian leader of the Tata group in India really came on the map when they took over Corus steel. He represents many of the old indian companies that are rising up to become serious challengers to western multinationals. Will they succeed? Only time will tell!
  • David Axelrod: Another one which you may be thinking, who? David Axelrod is the Obama administrations chief political strategist and was also Obama's key adviser during the election period and helped define the effective strategy of brining young people into politics. Its this innovation that makes him a great winger looking forward!
• Attacking Midfield Centre: Steve Jobs: The typical playmaker and strong leader of a team is the central midfielder and Steve Jobs is the epitome of that at Apple. Apple lovers listen into his half year address, Apple stock moves whenever there are claims about his bad health, and his leadership style of innovation at Apple has transformed the company over the last few years.
• Strikers, i'm defining these as true innovators in their field.
  
  • Sergey Brin and Larry Page, again we don't need to say too much about these two. Google keeps moving forward and always seems one step ahead of its competitors. One interesting point is their creation of "Google Time". They ensure that whilst engineers work 4 days a week on whatever, the fifth day is spent working on a personal project. If its good they can present it and work on it full time with the support of a team. Google news, maps and earth have all come about this way.
  • Jeffrey Katzenberg: Dreamworks wasn't the first to go into CGI animated films and certainly won't be the last, but its success to date has been fantastic. They are also continually looking at different alternatives such as creating new films in partnership with Reliance (a big indian conglomerate).
• Bench
  • Sheikh of Dubai: Again a true innovator in deciding what to do with Dubai instead of rely on oil!
  • Rupert Murdoch: Personal views and content aside he is certainly looking forward in a time of print newspapers supposedly dying out, especially with acquisitions such as myspace.
  • Alan Lafley: The CEO of P and G, another candidate for Defensive midfielder, he is a strong pillar at P and G and ensures that it keeps it strong culture of having a certain type of P and G person.
  • Duncan Bannatyne: This man just had to be in my team, you have to admire someone who went from an ice cream van, to a series of health and tennis clubs and now has various acquisitions thanks to Dragon's Den.

So now it's your turn, comment away, who would you have in your team?