Best Practice

International weekend boosted

by McKinsey & Company and
House of CEMS Masterplan

Category: Desired
University: University of Economics, Prague
Period of reference: Term 1 2018/2019
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Term 1 2018/2019

1. Date of the event: 1 November 2018 – 3 November 2018

2. Duration: 3 days (Thursday 14:00 – Saturday 14:00)

3. Number of participants: 46 total (15 VSE + 31 WU)

4. Name and contact details of person in charge: Hailey Yang

(haileyyang130@gmail.com) for international aspects, Vojtech Brix
(brix.vojtech@gmail.com) for corporate aspects, Kate Zhuzha
(kate.zhuzha@gmail.com) for CSR aspects Monika Petrasova for social
aspect (monikapetrasova24@gmail.com) and for Milan Polak & Lisa van
Vliet for the Philosophy of the House of CEMS Masterplan
(milanpolak@me.com, lisavanvliet96@hotmail.com)

5. Total cost: EUR 50 for WU Students (incl. accommodation) + EUR 2

for VSE students (scavenger hunt fees)

6. Sources and amount of funding: Students funds

7. Goals of the event: The goal was to take everything, what

characterizes CEMS, and create an amazing three-day manifestation of
our values. It was a backbone of our CEMS Club Strategy called “House
of CEMS” from our Masterplan, which you can find on youtube [CLICK
HERE]! We were aiming to strengthen international ties between CEMS
Club Prague and Vienna, to provide our Vienna guests with an amazing
set of activities ranging from exploring the beautiful architecture &
infamous night-life scene of Prague, through insightful & interactive
Panel discussion on Strategy with our CEMS Corporate partner McKinsey
& Company and challenging students of both universities during an
unforgettable Scavenger hunt! And yes, the joy of this event has
overcome all our expectations! Additionally, this was a launch of CEMS
Essentials, the innovation of corporate event talks. Our goal was to test
the format of this new innovative way how to bring corporate closer and
after this successful pilot with McKinsey it was replicated by two
episodes. It was a true marriage of international, corporate, social and
CSR aspect!

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8. Description of the event:

International weekend boosted by McKinsey & Company and House of

CEMS Masterplan comprised of the following parts:
On Thursday, we have welcomed CEMS Club Vienna’s arrival by our
delegation comprising of CEMS Club President and Student Board
Representative (Isabella Höllriegel) at the Central station,
accommodation of student at the Brix hostel, evening in a traditional
Prague restaurant U Medvídků and night out in one of the coolest clubs
called Vzorkovna in Prague with live music and the huge dog (see
Instagram page of that dog).
On Friday, early in the morning, our team of very well instructed CEMS
Club guides picked up our pleasant guests and showed them the
breathtaking beauties of the most beautiful city on Earth – Prague. The
lucky participants had a chance to see the Charles Bridge, Old Times
Square and even Prague Castle, the largest castle complex on Earth!
After a splendid visit that cured hangover of many of our visitors, we
have arrived at VSE to enjoy a panel discussion moderated by our
president, Milan Polák, and an Engagement manager from McKinsey &
Company and Academic director from VSE, Ladislav Tyll, on the topic
“Strategy creation and formulation”. This was at the same time the
official launch of our Essentials series – a new initiative bringing
corporate topics or certain industries closer to students – and it validated
that this innovative concept is successful and we could replicate it
further. We closed the exhausting day with a dinner at Restaurant
Kopyto, drinks at a fancy cocktail bar called Hoffa Bar and an afterparty
at a club called Nebe.
On Saturday, VSE and WU CEMSies ended this wonderful three daylong
celebration of CEMS Spirit by competing in an Scavenger Hunt, which was
enhanced by CSR elements. This was ensued by a departure of our
guests, but it was not too sad since we knew that we would see them in
10 days again – at the Career Forum in Budapest.

9. Promotion:

The event was promoted internationally through 4 different channels –

Facebook event, WhatsApp group chat, CEMS Club fortnightly
newsletter, and personal promotion among other students. Additionally,
since this was CCPs first cross-country operation, we needed to start our
marketing effort early to coordinate everything with CEMS Club Vienna
so that they can offer the tickets early enough for interested

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participants. By doing that, all CEMS students in Prague and in Vienna

were reached. The promotion focused on showcasing the business value
on promoting all the elements of the event and since there were plenty,
our unique selling proposition was strong enough to sell out the event
within 2 days!

10. Outcome/ impact on CEMS spirit:

This event comes for everything that we stand for. It has been derived
from the foundational elements of our House of CEMS Philosophy that is
represented by our Masterplan [read about our Philosophy HERE] [see us
presenting the Masterplan on Youtube]. We were pursuing a combination
of corporate, social, CSR element, and we wanted to bring it to the next
level. That’s where we engaged our Presidential Triarchy platform [page
10 of our Masterplan] and utilized our strong ties with CEMS Club Vienna
to unleash the international element.

From our strategy that had been developed in May 2018 (incl.
Presidential triarchy) through setting up a task force in August 2018
(International relations manager of the both CEMS Clubs), to the
execution in November 2018, we have lived the CEMS Spirit to the fullest.

CEMS Spirit helped us to connect with our peers from different schools
and our work has resulted in an event that was extremely expected by
all the participants and was executed flawlessly in the end of the day.

What is CEMS Spirit about? CEMS Spirit is all about working exceptionally
hard, partying harder and leveraging on corporate relationships while
being responsible global leaders!

Our teams on both sides of the borders have been working incredibly
hard to deliver this amazing event and they used the management
abilities that we got from CEMS to unleash the Spirit to the fullest. All of
this combined with an exorbitant amount of partying and enjoying life,
which is a backbone of our common philosophy. CEMS Spirit was
strengthened by intensivising the dose of corporate collaboration – we
have leveraged our relationship with the best consulting company in the
world, McKinsey & Company and in panel discussion with our academic
director, we witnessed the marriage of academia and business practice,
which is the exact thing that makes CEMS master’s Degree exceptional.
As you can see in our Masterplan, we have boosted our CSR department
to the new level and this influenced, how the Scavenger hunt, a final
event was done. And finally, in the world full of rising isolationism, we

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proved that international collaboration is better than separate actions!

11. Recipe (step-by-step instructions on how to recreate the event):

We believe that the event is of a highly replicable nature and should

become one of the “must-have” events held by CEMS Clubs worldwide.
Due to the enormous success of this events, we are already setting up a
task force with CEMS Club Vienna to replicate the event next term and
to enhance CEMS Spirit even further. Steps to re-create the event are
the following:

1. Start early. An organization of an event that involves multiple CEMS

Clubs requires a coordinated action accompanies with exact and
timely communication of dates, prices and program so that
corporate partners, students and all the involved stakeholders
have enough time to go through the offer, order it and have still a
free slot in the calendar. Start with initial communication on the
CEMS Club President level as early as possible and communicate
intention to collaborate.

2. Set up an initial online meeting, where you will brainstorm about

possible ways of collaboration, set up a timeline, distribute
competencies and develop a concept and how to get there.

3. Assign a project to your representative that will be key coordinator

between the two or more CEMS Club and managing the whole
preparatory efforts. Our CEMS Club has for this purpose set up a
brand new International Department, since this person will be in
charge of coordinating between local CCP marketing, social, CSR,
corporate and finance department and additionally with the
international department of the other club. Even though it might
be tempting to give this competency to Socializing department to
let it be organized as a “trip”, I would not recommend doing so
due to the large additional workload.

4. Check for any major schedule clashes of both CEMS Clubs and all
the events that might affect it. Once the both CEMS Clubs agree on
the date, they need to set it in stone. And better do it earlier than
later.

5. Develop all the essential components of the event and push to get
the features of the corporate event, social elements and

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organizational issues know as soon as possible to launch

communication to all the CEMSies including pricing, practicalities
and marketing material.

6. Collect the money from the students and specify all the financial
flows between the CEMS Clubs. Due to the fact that there might be
differences in currency between the countries, it is better agreed
among the CEMS Clubs to minimize the number of transfers in order
to save the money on banking and currency-transfer surcharges.

7. Shortly before the event, communicate the exact itinerary with all
the locations, times and contact persons to prevent any
complications, which can be especially in this case extremely
costly (in terms of time and missed opportunities).

8. Set up a common communication channel for all the students to

serve you as place for exchanging positive CEMS Spirit,
communication of urgent messages and sharing live location to
prevent to people get lost (they might get robbed in some cities
(luckily they did not in Prague)!)

9. Execute like never before!

10. Use this event as a foundation for the further relationship

building over the course of the semester. In our case, we launched
the event shortly before the CEMS Career Forum in order to make
the people know each other before and increase a probability that
those students will interact more during the global events.

11. Shortly before the end of your semester, start to work on the
replication of the event in the next semester. In our case we were
testing a hypothesis whether the event would be good to replicate,
and we were amazed! Since we have seen with CEMS Club President
of Vienna the great success, we will do the next semester a visit of
Prague CEMSies in Vienna and we hope this tradition will be alive
forever!

12. What could have been improved:

After the assessment of this pilot, there are three things that our
team of analysts see as issues with a space of improvements.
First, we should have taken currency differences more into

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consideration, because once the Vienna students arrived to our

country, they did not possess any Czech Crowns (EURCZK =
25.57), so we have encountered few difficulties when at the
small shops where we couldn’t pay with EUR (especially public
transport tickets).
Second, we have fixed the main events in stone in advance, but
on the other hand, the pubs for the evenings were booked closer
to the departure date of Vienna CEMSies and I would highly
recommend doing it as soon as possible.
And third, we were thinking about possibility to have Vienna
CEMSies hosted by Prague CEMSies at their apartments, but then
we went for easier option for the sake of ease of coordination. On
the one hand, it could have been cheaper and enhance the CEMS
Spirit to some extent, but the price of a 500 ml of draught beer
at Brix Hostel has spoken for itself (CZK 28 = EUR 1.095 speaks for
itself)!

13. Pictures of the event and promotional material:

Let me lead you through this transformational journey from philosophy,

through strategy to planning, execution and replication!
We have approached documentation of this event with enormous care
to provide the further generation with the recipe how to enhance the
CEMS Spirit in the best possible way

I. Start early: Philosophy of House of CEMS Masterplan: Setting up the

ties – May 2018

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II. Strategy meeting on the presidential level between CEMS Club

President and CEMS Club Vienna – July 2018

III. Assign International relations manager to coordinate the event –

Hailey Yang and Stevan Nikolic in August

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iv. Check for clashes and set the date in stone – August (3 months before the event)

v. Develop the initial components – First draft that you can see below created on
August 10

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vi. Collect the money from the students and specify all the financial flows – see
pricing calculation and signup form with final pricing for Vienna students [link to
sign up form]

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vii. Communication of exact itinerary*)

• Please note that initially we were communicating Deloitte as panelist as

well, but due to the sickness of a manager in the strategy department,
Deloitte representatives didn’t attend

viii. Set up a common communication platform shortly before the event – see the
excitement of people uploading photos during the event

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ix. Execute like never before! – and believe us, we did it!

Ixa. Delegation is waiting for Vienna guests

IXb. They have arrived!

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IXc. Night out - Traditional Czech Pub u Medvidku with its own brewery and the
strongest beer in the world – it has 33 Degrees!! + the managing the orientation to
Vzorkovna + Vzorkovna club

IXd. Sightseeing tour on Saturday and lunch – some SBRs just cannot understand Czech
names of dishes

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IXe. Panel Discussion with McKinsey Vit Javurek & Company and Academic director
Mr. Tyll and CEMS Club President Milan Polak – it was truly successful launch of our
Essentials series that were followed by Transformation of a Company with E.ON
CEO and Panel Discussion on Finance with L'Oréal, P&G and Hilti

- See pictures from the panel discussion, organizational post about how to get
there?, the list of topics of panel discussion that we have developed for
McKinsey & Company

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IXf. Night out on Saturday

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IXf. Scavenger Hunt – Rules that were enhanced to match the Corporate
Sustainability Standards Responsible Global Leader

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IXg. Scavenger hunt – scoretable

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IXh. Scavenger hunt – teams posted on a common WhatsApp group

IXi. Scavenger hunt – real time pictures posting by competing teams increase
enthusiasm – we recommend this to keep everyone updated and capture great
memories! – in total approximately 70 photos and videos submitted

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X. We have already started planning the replication of the event for next semester!
And in the end, we would like to enclose amazing reviews from the involved
visiting students from Vienna as well as appreciation from our academic director,
marking our Panel discussion with McKinsey & Company as a successful launch of
ESSENTIALS!

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