B y: Harvard Business School Applicant

Subject: Business School Essay

Essay1. Describe your most significant leadership experience. Focus less on the specific situation and more on what caused you to be effective.

An effective leader creates a vision, maintains the commitment to work towards success, and inspires others to follow. This is my belief, and it has guided me through every leadership position I've ever held. The most compelling example of my leadership ability was my initiative to improve the trouble-tracking process for a large Japanese corporation.

NTT is Japan's largest telecommunications company. When trouble occurs, the customer calls the NTT call receipt center, where the operator creates a trouble ticket in SCARLET, a sixty-million-dollar information system developed by Lucent Technologies. I analyzed the system architecture and decided that the Internet could help NTT eliminate intermediate steps and reduce the workload of the call receipt center. So I developed a proposal for a new architecture in which customers could create trouble tickets and monitor trouble progress directly over the Internet.

NTT initially rejected my proposal. Refusing to be deterred, however, I modified the system design and focused on appealing to NTT's interests. I assembled a team of developers and worked with them to create a prototype. Meanwhile, I worked closely with our sales team in Japan and seized every opportunity to persuade our client with various presentations and demonstrations. While in Japan, I successfully convinced a senior NTT manager of the strategic importance of the proposed system and won his strong endorsement.

My endeavors paid off. NTT accepted the revised proposal and signed a two-million-dollar contract. The success of this proposal positioned Lucent as a technology leader in the growing Japanese Internet market and inspired several other Internet-related projects for NTT, in which I am also involved. In recognition of my success, Bell Labs invited me to present this experience at their annual Internet R&D conference.

Essay2. What are your career aspirations and why? How will you get there?

My ultimate career aspiration is to become an executive in a global company where I can play a leadership role in both technological innovation and organizational change. My goal is grounded on two realities that I have witnessed while working for the world's leading high-tech corporations. First, technological innovation plays a critical role in shaping today's business world--it blurs the boundaries of traditional industries and creates new markets for companies to embrace. Second, the global marketplace is so competitive (and the need for flexibility so great) that true innovation is the only means for a company to sustain its competitive advantage.

I have learned first-hand that technological innovation has little effect without a corresponding organizational change. For one project, I successfully convinced NTT, the Japanese telecommunications monopoly, to streamline its trouble-tracking process using the Internet, but only after the system was modified to suit the Japanese cultural and corporate environment. As a volunteer on another project, I helped convince the Chinese government to standardize its election process in order to implement a nationwide computer system to collect election results.

Through my success implementing organizational change as a technical developer, I have observed that such change requires strong leadership from upper management. For this reason, I want to be part of that leadership some day. My engineering training, however, has not prepared me to deal with the broad strategic issues faced by executives. I need outstanding general management education and leadership development to help me effect a transition from technical expert to visionary business leader. Harvard's rigorous MBA program will give me a thorough understanding of how to lead an organization while sharpening my ability to analyze technological innovations in the context of strategic planning, organizational design, and global competition.

With its strong alumni network and corporate recruiting program, the School will also provide me with incomparable career opportunities. After graduation, I hope to join a strategic consulting firm to gain more experience with a variety of industries. Ultimately I will seek a leadership position in a global corporation, where I can fulfill my career aspiration of becoming a true leader in technological change.

Essay3. Describe your most substantial accomplishment

My volunteer efforts to promote understanding between China and the U.S. are a source of great pride for me. In 1994,China's State Economic Commission sent an official delegation to study the U.S. economic policy-making process. I helped organize their activities in Los Angeles, Little Rock, AR., and Washington,

D.C. For three weeks, we met with government officials from cities, states, and the White House. We visited public and private enterprises and exchanged ideas with leaders from various industries. 　　　　　

In June 1994,Little Rock and Changchun City, China became sister cities. As a member of the Sister City Pact Signing Ceremony Committee, I helped prepare the official documents and the translation between English and Chinese, and I acted as interpreter for the Mayor of Little Rock.

On July 5,1994,in a televised town meeting, the Mayor of Little Rock awarded me a Certificate of Appreciation for my "unselfish and tireless contribution to the betterment of international relations." Not only did this experience give me an in-depth look into American political and business societies, but it also confirmed my belief that cultural and political barriers can be overcome only if nations play an active role in learning from each other.