On Sunday, a group of insead MBAs (Australian/Malaysia/Italy + me) got together for a noble activity: we decided to visit the legendary Chateau de Fontainebleau. The Chateau was built throughout the years – some parts date from the Middle Ages, some parts are more recent (2nd Empire, or Napoleon III). The Chateau opens at 9.30. We got there at 9.45am after a nice Pain aux Raisins but all the audio tour guides were already sold out. Mmmm…Is this good demand management?

So we latched onto an English-speaking tour with a live guide and edwe were not listening. We sometimes put ourselves a little ahead of the group, sometimes a little behind and we went to great lengths to look totally disinterested and blase. In order to achieve such outstanding acting, we pictured ourselves in our OB2 class in P2 where we faced the reverse challenge: trying to look interested. We then reverse engineered the thought process. At times, it feels good to be parasitic. We learned a lot from the guide:

"Insead made its first steps in the world in this very chateau. It has benefited from great faculty and participants. Francois 1er was an excellent OB teacher and architect of change. Henri IV was the crapest Power and Politics professor, he got stabbed in his early years and was persuaded to trade his protestant roots for a Catholic mass in Paris to become the King of France and Navarre.. Louis XIV was a superb accountant and would never allow for a dime to go wasted, out of his pocket. He had a bit of battle between his financial accountant Fouque and his managerial accountant Colbert (?). This led to disastrous consequences in Macroeconomics with an average grade of -2.45 as the country fell into increased levels of poverty. He kind of introduced a new process too: the use of Cardinals as chairmen and ruler by proxy of the whole country. Good delegation. He quite evidently excelled at OB2 and other various HR issues too as he picked two star performers with Richelieu and Mazarin.. He was the Jack Welsh of the France Inc.

He identified different types of citizens
- Type A: pay their taxes and adhere to values, they stay in
- Type B: don’t pay their taxes and adhere to values: they are sent to forced labor, so that a minimal contribution can be ensured
- Type C: pay taxes and don’t adhere to values: goods are confiscated and people are poisoned or sent to Bastille as they could be at the base of some dangerous potential coalition animated by a strong desire to overthrow the current CEO
- Type D: don’t pay taxes and don’t adhere to values: exploit, no one cares

In fact, he overpowered the Chateau and went on to build his own in Versailles. He changed his name as Sun King, a direct allegiance to the sun-based campuses of Stanford GSB concept which he pioneered on the banks of the river Seine. Louis XV was an ok IT professor as he managed to employ and organize musketeers over the years to fight for the just, the widow and the orphan and to multiply intrigues and gossips. The musketeers couldn’t intervene in time to save a King’s head either across the border. Louis XVI failed his IPA exam: he created a revolution which fueled wars on all of the country’s border. He did worse: the Revolution created Napoleon, the evil Strategy Professor, who ultimately force the country to file for Chapter 11. The local SEC sent him to a couple of island, and after 100 days of fraudulent attempt to regain control of the operations he was exiled once for all from the program. A fresh statistics professor Louis Philippe and various successors, followed by Napoleon III came out of the ranks and led a study to prove that past successes are not good predictors of future outcomes. It took a second revolution in 1848 to offer new chances. Then, everything became a complete mess. The institution had become so big that curriculums (also called constitution) had to be changed 5 times, Deans (locally called Presidents) became elected every 7 years, CMS (known as EDF, La Poste, France Telecom and SNCF) was created, the MBA Director (Prime Minister) took over the responsibility for all non academic problems and had their own staff (Government) and students (tax payers) complained that they got very little for their money."

Note: IPA: International Political Analysis; POM: Process and Operations Management, Ob: Organizational Behavior