MBA

Profiles

Oliver Bladek, MBA 2010

Early in his career as a consultant with McKinsey, Oliver Bladek recognized the hard impact of so-called "soft" skills. "I was working on a major, $10 billion oil project that included everything from drilling thousands of wells to transporting refined oil to market," Oliver says. "But engineers in different functions don't like to talk to each other. So the drilling engineer specifies a four-inch hole, while the pipeline engineer plans for a six-inch hole. It took a lot of communication — plus rigorous data analysis — to put the project on an accelerated timeline."

After a few years at McKinsey, Oliver became restless. "Consulting is good for thinking, but I wanted to learn about doing," he says. Oliver moved to Bell Canada where he led teams tackling projects such as eliminating customer billing errors that cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars each month. "Fixing the issues proved much harder than I had imagined," Oliver says. "I realized I needed something else. I wanted to learn more about how to manage and truly own a business."

Taking flight

Specifically, Oliver became interested in airlines. "The airline industry is a fascinating place to work. There's no shortage of problems to solve. But when you do it right, I think you have something truly incredible," he says.

Oliver's ambition took two parallel paths. One led to a pilot's license. The other, to HBS. "I came to HBS because of its mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world," Oliver says. "How do you organize people to do something amazing? HBS' general management emphasis is exactly right for the airline industry where some of the biggest challenges come down to people. You need a strong eye for talent, and a real sense of the business' day-to-day operations to make a difference. That means being conversant in all business issues while being able to go deep into two or three."

"One of the things I've learned through our cases," Oliver says, "is that it's not always about what you do or say, but how you're perceived. One action can be seen in different ways that lead to different outcomes. For me, the lesson is to not get frustrated when I'm misunderstood, but to ask myself, 'Why did that person hear me that way?'"

Friends for life

"I've been surprised by how collegial it is here," says Oliver. "The only real competition I see is in our intramural sports leagues. We work together to prepare for case discussions, we do mock interviews to help each other with job searches. It's a community where we look out for each other, without any sense of cutthroat competition."

For the summer, Oliver is looking for an airline internship. "After graduation," Oliver says, "I'd like to consult for airlines to gain experience about how global airlines meet their customers' needs, and then make the transition to management where I can have direct oversight over part of the business."