16.12.2024Dr. Ronny Meglin, CAS in General Management

Dr. Ronny Meglin, 38, lives in Zurich and is completing a CAS in General Management while working. He is currently a Senior Consultant at pom+ Consulting for sustainable and circular construction. Born in Germany, he has lived in Switzerland for over 12 years and recently became a naturalized citizen. He holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a master's degree in building materials engineering from the Bauhaus University in Weimar. After graduating, he worked in a building materials testing laboratory and as a consultant in real estate and infrastructure management. He then carried out research and completed his doctorate at ETH Zurich and the University of Applied Sciences OST on the topic of a regional circular economy in the building materials industry. He finds it very rewarding to break new ground with management-related topics and constantly build up new knowledge.

In your professional life, you always come across business or personnel decisions that affect you directly or indirectly. I have always scrutinized these decisions and done my best to understand and comprehend them. In doing so, I realized that while my studies provide a valuable technical foundation, there is also room for further learning and growth in terms of business aspects.

When I decided to tackle further education, I carried out a traditional online search for management and business administration courses. I quickly came across the courses offered by the University of Zurich on the topics of Corporate Management and General Management. These courses appealed to me because they covered all the areas relevant to me, such as Finance, Marketing and Leadership.

It was important to me to attend a course with a broad scientific basis, which is why only a university institution came into question. It was also important to me that the course was taught in German.

The first face-to-face event I attended was the Business Simulation module. This module proved to be extremely exciting and intensive. Over three days, we simulated the entire value creation process of a company in the form of a board game, including marketing, research and development and HR issues. It was fascinating to experience how all aspects of the value chain can be realistically depicted and communicated in a playful environment. It was particularly interesting to see how the different groups pursued different strategies and the results they produced. At the end of the module, I was exhausted but very satisfied with my choice of study program and this course.

In the modules I have attended so far, I particularly liked the balanced mix of scientific principles, practical examples and case studies. Although there was only a short amount of time available per module and there was a lot of content to cover, the lecturers knew how to make the link to practice and explain suitable examples. This was particularly helpful in the Strategic Management module, in which we were allowed to work on an extensive case study on a company such as Uber, NIO or Roche as part of a group project. This enabled us to understand the company's past strategic decisions on the one hand, but also to develop and formulate our own strategy with regard to the company's future development.

In the modules so far, the collaboration has been extremely fruitful and lively. Due to the different professional backgrounds and experiences, all participants bring a variety of aspects to the discussions. This has given me the opportunity to reflect on my own experiences and level of knowledge and to gain new insights.

For me, the lack of prior knowledge was the biggest challenge. My engineering studies contained very little management-related and business administration content, so I am more or less breaking new ground with this CAS. I find this extremely challenging, but also extremely enriching. The modules are designed in such a way that even the basics are taught in an understandable and practical way. As a result, I was able to build up a good basic understanding of the topics in a relatively short space of time and implement them in my first applications.

I would recommend the CAS General Management without reservation. This course is the right choice for anyone who wants to deal with management issues in the future and would like to gain a good overview of the key aspects of this field and attach importance to the scientific foundations.

(Here you can find more information about the CAS General Management.)

Text: Linda Betschart