Last night I had the opportunity to join the one year MBAs, as they delivered their final presentations of the Delta project. After three (long…in a good way) semesters working with professors Noonan and Smith It was fascinating to sit on the other side of the table, and put a critical eye on the work of others. Let me start by saying that all five of the teams that I had the opportunity to watch did a great job, and clearly put time and energy into this project.

While I watched these presentations, what fascinated me most, was how far I feel that we, 2016 EvMBA’s have come since our first semester of MP. I went back and looked at slides from our Carlos Museum project and compared them to slides I saw in both our Delta and our personal reflection projects. I think it is fair to say that we all have come a long way in our story craft, our slide building capabilities, and our delivery techniques.

As I sat in room 234 writing notes and thinking of tough questions that could poke holes in the teams logic, I had to remind myself that they have not had the same opportunity to practice and refine these skills with previous semesters. This highlighted to me that practice really does help to improve these skills, and that I am a far better problem solver today than I was a year ago. I took this thinking one step further and wanted to equate this to my biggest take away from MP.

My key take away from the past three semesters was actually summed up best by Fawad in his final presentation last Thursday evening. As most of you recall, Fawad told a story about his home renovation; a project that revolved heavily around knocking down walls. His key theme, however, was not about the actual act of demolition, or the renovation project itself, but rather around a problem solving technique. As his exact quote escapes me, I will paraphrase a point that Fawad was able to articulate so well. “If you break down large complex problems into identifiable and manageable tasks, you can begin to see how a seemingly daunting task is actually rather simple if approached it the correct way.”

Since last Thursday, I can already recount three instances where I used this piece of advice not only in daily thinking, but also in a presentation to my company. I now view problems and structure solutions in a way that I had never thought about one short year ago.