Teamwork Really is Key

I'm now in my fourth week of my internship. Hard to believe!

Since my last post, my corporate audit team has moved from the planning stage of our audit to actually executing the fieldwork. Now, we're meeting with the "clients" (Nike employees in various parts of the business) and gathering information about their processes. This stage is my favorite because I get to meet with people from all over the world and learn about the work they do for Nike.

Throughout both the planning and fieldwork stages of the audit, I have been amazed by the amount of teamwork that goes into everything I do. From brainstorming, to meeting with clients, to writing up workpapers- I have worked with my three other corporate audit teammates throughout every step of the audit process. In some work environments, an extremely-collaborative work system such as the one in Corporate Audit might prove challenging, but Nike (and, specifically, the Corporate Audit group) has done an extremely-good job of screening potential corporate auditors for not just their technical skills, but also for how they would fit in with the team. As a result, I feel like every day I go to work with people I would be friends with outside of Nike.

Lucky for me, I also have a lot of experience with teams after my first year at Georgetown's MBA program -where, over the course of the year, students work on class projects in a team of the same 5 people. Although I was spoiled with my Georgetown team (I had the best group ever- a guy from Korea, one from Mexico, one from Pennsylvania -who spoke Arabic!-, and another hilarious person from Texas), the experience taught me to work with people from unique work experiences, and to take advantage of hearing ideas and opinions that may be completely different from my own.

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend of mine about the reason I chose Georgetown's MBA program, and about the fact that I passed up an opportunity to attend a higher-ranked school. In our conversation, he asked if I ever regretted my decision.I said no, and gave him the example I just spoke of; I am certain that Georgetown's team-centric and internationally-focused program has been pivotal in the success I've had in this role at Nike. 

Comments

[Srinivas Rao]

Hey Alexis,

I'm not sure if you saw my earlier comment. I'm an intern at Intuit and really enjoy learning about what other people are working on. My blog is at http://mymbainternship08.blogspot.com