Even great brands can't rest on their laurels

You might think that after 350 years (and 100 for HBS) that reputation and years of top rankings would lead an organization to relax and potentially ride the wave of past successes.  Not the case. BusinessWeek does a nice job of showing how Harvard's recruiting office aggressively goes after the best in an effort to retain the ideals that the school was founded on.  

A great lesson for not only my WFU classmates, but the entire WFU administration as we seek to create greater value for students of the newly combined WFU business schools, as well as draw closer to the ideals that WFU was founded upon.  

People, Places and Panic

To this point, I haven't really talked about the program in detail. So let me cover a few basic questions that I get asked all the time.

What is the structure of the program?

The program is 17 months long, and the Class of 2009 runs from August 2008 until December 2009. The group meets every other weekend, Friday and Saturday, in Winston-Salem on the campus of WFU, in the Babcock Graduate Management building. We have two courses each day when we're on campus. Three times during the program, we meet for extended periods. The first is the Orientation Week in mid-August. The next is a two week international trip, with the options of visiting Japan, China, India or South America (Brazil/Argentina/Chile). The final week of the winter 2009 semester is a practicum project which ties together many aspects of the entire program. Because the program is condensed to 17 months, it is not only a huge time commitment from the students, but also for the sponsoring companies. The entire program requires students to be on campus ~45-50 days, so we're very appreciative of the support our companies provide us to participate in this outstanding program.

What type of people are in the program?

In a couple words..."an interesting mix". I don't have exact details about demographics or scores, but let me share some tidbits about the diversity and backgrounds of the group.

• There are 31 people in the class.
• The majority of the class are married, with about 50% having children.
• They come from as close as Winston-Salem, and as far away as Charlotte, Raleigh, Roanoke, Hickory, Asheville and Charleston, WV.
• About 20% of the class are Senior Executives, or run their own businesses.
• About 25% of the class have worked &/or lived abroad and speak at least 2 languages fluently (besides English)
• The following markets are represented in the class: (Green) Architecture, Automotive, Banking, Computer Engineering, Consulting, Education, Healthcare, IT, Telecommunications, and Textiles.
• Beyond traditional manager roles, the class includes existing or former Doctors, Police Officers, Fire Fighters, Science Teachers, MTV Producers, Kick-Boxing Instructors, Black Panther protestors, Race Car owners, Punk Rock Guitarists, Authors, Porn Mustache wearers, and Military Brats.

How do you manage work and school?

The keys to surviving an MBA program, and "survival" is the optimal description, are prioritization and sacrifice. If you're like most people in the class, you were already working 50-60hrs weeks (or more), and managing a certain amount of work travel. Now throw in the alternating weekends in the program, and roughly 20-25hrs a week doing reading, papers and preparing for the next weekend. So something has to give, and it usually falls into one of a couple of categories:

1. Hobbies - These are the easiest and hardest to give up. In my case, my golf clubs have literally been put in the attic. Matt Kirk and I have sworn that we'll get in a game in the Spring/Summer, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. But otherwise, they are collecting dust.
2. Exercise - Prior to the program, I was an avid runner, typically getting up at 5:30am and putting in 25-30 miles a week. I was down around 167lbs. When you're up studying almost every night until 12:30-1am, it gets much tougher to get up at 5:30am on a regular basis. So like many 18yr old undergrads, I've developed the dreaded "Freshman 15" (actually 13). Getting this back on track and consistent is moving to the top of my list for 2009. 11:30pm is now going to be my cutoff each night.
3. Family Time - This probably belongs at the top of the list, because an MBA program is very difficult on the family. Probably more so than the student. The irony is that for most people in the class, they are in the program because they want to provide better opportunities for their family. While the sacrifice here is difficult, it is short-term. I've found that the key here is communication (over-communication) and dedicated time. I never touch the books on off-weekends and Sundays. That's time for the family. And I try and find ways to stay connected to my beautiful little girls, through phone calls or video. We use Skype to talk live, and I try and create them a short video every weekend:
   
   
4. Work - This probably isn't a good thing to ignore or de-prioritize, especially in today's economy. If anything, the program's demands are an excellent opportunity to see how well you can better learn to delegate, as well as hone your communications to your teams.

What's the biggest challenge in the transition back to school?

Panic. There are many outstanding people in my class. People that have been successful in every aspect of their life. But the pace of this program, and the variety of new topics has exposed me to a number of people who are experiencing Panic for the first time in their lives. It's been really interesting to watch people struggle with new concepts, and potentially face failure. I suspect this is a huge learning experience for them....both good and bad. The good news is that our groups have really bonded together and people are very helpful in getting others through these times. Sometimes this is just a reassurance that they aren't the only one struggling to learn something. Sometimes it's taking extra time to help them work through homework problems. Sometimes it's being available on the other end of a phone call to listen to their challenges. And sometimes it's having to be blunt with them that they need to step up their work and raise the level of their game. I suspect that while people may worry about grades now, by next December they will just be glad to have the MBA title on their resume and will look back at the relationships as being much more important that a B+ or A- in Quant. I know I will.

What are you going to do with your MBA once the program is over?

That's the $64,000 question, isn't it? The knee-jerk answer is to file for a Federal Funds Bailout for my tuition bills, but that line may be fairly long:) The real answer is that I look at this program as part of the process, and not the answer. I went into this program knowing that I had a number of skills that I needed to improve, and several areas of knowledge that I needed to expand. I'm confident that I'll leave the program improved in both of those areas. But as far as a specific job or project I'm hoping to obtain, that's not on my list of goals. It may be for some of my classmates, but not me. One thing that I do plan to do as part of this program is to expand my international exposure. I'm planning to attend the two-week trip to China in May 2009, and will be working to learn at least a moderate amount of Chinese/Mandarin prior to the trip. I have a Chinese woman on my work team that has offered to tutor me, so maybe by May we'll be able to conduct our 1:1 meetings in Mandarin...at least a little bit.

Enough background...let's get to the program

The weeks leading up to an MBA program are a mix of excitement, anxiety, list making and change preparation.  It's a little bit like being a first time parent, when several of your friends have already had kids and you've only visited a few times.  You have some sense of what's coming, but until you actually live with it 24x7, for several months, you really don't know what you're getting into.  My brother had just recently completed the Evening MBA at UNC, so I thought I had some idea...nope...uh uh...don't kid yourself.  It's going to be a lot more work than I expected, and it's going to require a lot more emotional commitment that I planned for.

A few weeks before the program starts, a FedEx truck shows up at the house with a large box. A very large, heavy box of books and handouts for the semester.  At first you think they might have mistaken your house for an IRS Audit warehouse, but no such luck.  This is your reading for the next 4.5 months.  Somewhere in a dense forest, trees are crying:)  This is your first sign that the workload is going to be significant.   

The course list for the first semester is as follows:

• Business in the Global Economy (BGE) - Dr. Chuck Kennedy
• Quantitative Management (Quant) - Dr. Derrick Boone
• Leadership and Organizational Behavior (LOB) - Dr. Chet Miller
• Financial Accounting (F-Acct) - Dr. Bern Beatty
• Managerial Economics (M-Econ) - Dr. Rick Fritz

The first thing I did was look at the required reading for the first couple classes, and divide it by the number of days before the Orientation Week.  That turned out to be Mistake #1.  As if I hadn't learned my lesson 18yrs ago as an undergrad, I severely under-estimated the learning curve for new topics.  This wasn't going to be like ready work reports, where I had years of background to draw from, this was all going to be new.  And I needed to approach it in a different manner.  Needless to say, I was behind from Day 1 in class :(  Luckily for me, and I suspect many of my classmates, the first week in class was primarily focused on team building and self-assessment activities.

The team building activities were so good, in my opinion, that they really should be used as a blueprint for any leader that is starting a new team.  While it seems somewhat tedious at times, looking back on it now, it did really built the foundation for our team (Team 5) and lead to our success.  I'm going to devote an entire post to those activities, so I'll skip any more details for now.

Finding the right MBA program

As I began investigating MBA programs, I knew that my search wouldn't be easy because I had a number of challenges I would need to align between my lifestyle (personal & work) and the potential programs.  My list looked something like this:

• The program needed to have an excellent reputation.  Lucikly, living in Raleigh, NC, I'm close proximity to a number of world-class programs (Duke, UNC, WFU, UVA).
• The program needed to meet face-to-face on a regular basis, and attract a broad background of students.  I knew that making new contacts was as important as what I'd learn in the classroom.
• The program needed to have flexibility of schedule.  I travel quite a bit for business, so a full-time or weeknight program wasn't going to be possible.  I need a program that met weekends, in some variation.
• Duration and starting time of the program was important, because of the sacrifice my family was making for me.  I wanted to be done before my kids were in school or actively participating in sports.
• Cost is always a factor, especially when the cost of today's MBA programs could pay off your mortgage or put your kids through school (assuming you could put it in a 529 today). 

Beyond those four schools, I looked at the weekend/executive programs at Kellogg, Ross, Wharton, and Harvard.  These are all tremendous programs, but the travel requirements were too much for me at this time. 

As I narrowed it down to the four local programs, I really spent a lot of time weighing the pros and cons of each program.  What was the length of the program and when did they meet?  What classes were offered?  How were the classes taught and how much was individual vs. team-based? 

My final decision came down to several criteria:

1. The case method taught at Harvard was constantly emulated or used by other programs, so I was very interested in a program that used this method.  This included both UVA and WFU.
2. The program needed to have an international component, but this couldn't be the primary focus of the program.  This ruled out the Duke OneMBA program.
3. The program needed to have a broad variety of classes, as I was looking to add breadth and depth to my skill set.  All of the programs had excellent curriculums, so this was somewhat of a wash.
   
4. Travel to the program should be reasonable.  This ruled out the UNC Executive Program, which met in WashDC.  UVA also was going to be difficult as it was about a 4-5hr drive from Raleigh.
5. The costs should be reasonably.  UNC and WFU were both below $80k, and then there was a huge jump above $100k for both UVA and Duke.  I know that we're talking about an ROI that extends over a lifetime, but $30-50k is a good chunk of change when you're raising two kids and still paying a mortgage.

So at the end of the day, when I weighed all the pros and cons, I narrowed my choice to WFU Weekend Exec and UNC Weekend Exec.  UNC was ranked higher, but WFU was 6 months shorter and started in August, 2008 rather than January, 2009.  Throw in the case-study method, the excellent curriculum and the previous WFU experience/bias and I decided that another tour at WFU was the right decision for me.   

Maybe it's finally time to get my MBA..?..?

At age 36, with two young kids (3yrs and 2yrs) already consuming all my free time, I finally decided to go back and get my MBA.  Seems like a strange point in life for someone to make that decision, but there is some rhyme and reason to it, and a lot of history.  First, let me explain some of the history.

I can remember all the way back in 5th grade thinking that I was going to get good grades in school, go to University of Michigan, and then get my MBA.  It was a perfect fit for a Type-A, focused young kid.  And growing up outside of Detroit, surrounded by neighborhoods full of white-collar automotive managers, that was the mindset I had all around me.  Somewhere along the way, that path didn't exactly work out as smoothly as I had envisioned.

• Instead of U of Mich, I headed south to Wake Forest for warmer weather, a great school and a chance to play college baseball.  After four years, I was pretty sick of being in school, but just before graduation I took the GMAT just in case I decided to go back in a couple years.  
• A couple years into the real world, after some college friends went back for their MBAs, I looked into several programs.  But after looking at the "graduate salaries and jobs" listings, I convinced myself that I was already there in most cases and couldn't afford to stop working for 2 years.  
• After the Internet Bubble burst in 2001, I looked at several programs again.  After seven years, maybe it was time to look at something other than technology, and an MBA might just help me find that new path.  But once again, the timing just didn't work out to make the sacrifice of time and money.

In the fall of 2007, I was invited to be part of an Executive Leadership program at Cisco Systems (my employer at the time).  The program was designed to identify 50-60 high potential Directors/Sr.Directors within the company, and give them a 3-4 month project targeting a $1B/yr new market opportunity.  I was invited to assist one of the project teams as a technology Subject Matter Expert (SME), but was allowed to be part of every aspect of the program and have direct access to Senior Leadership.  Not only was it a tremendous opportunity to impact the company, but it gave me a completely different perspective on the breadth and depth of thinking that occurs at that level.  When the program ended, I knew that I needed to make the sacrifices needed to get myself into an MBA program as soon as possible if I ever wanted to have the skills to succeed at that level.  

Now the biggest challenge was going to be convincing my wife that we could make this sacrifice together, because it was going to take a complete commitment from my family to make this work.  Not only would it require huge commitment and sacrifice from me, but it was going to mean a difficult two years for her and our girls.   

An Introduction

Hi.  My name is Brian Gracely and I'm now a 2nd year MBA student at Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC).  I'm starting this blog about six months late, so you're going to have to excuse my flashback and flash-forward style for a while as I recap some of my thoughts and experiences from early 2008 to today. 

I'm writing this blog for a number of reasons, and potentially for a number of audiences.  First and foremost, I'm writing it as an outlet for myself.  What I've experience over the last 8 months, and what I expect to experience over the next twelve months have been truly life changing for myself, my family and a lot of good friends (new and existing).  I'm also writing it because I like to write, and I need a place to work on using the blogosphere as a communication medium.  I currently blog on work-related topics, The Virtualization Effect, but blogging on personal topics requires a different approach.  Just like my MBA learnings, I'm hoping to better find my voice with this blog.

My goals for this blog are fairly simple:

1. (As I stated above) Provide an outlet to write about this experience, on various levels.
2. Provide a history that I can share with my children someday, as they are a huge part of the reason why I'm involved in this program.  I hope to give them great opportunities in the future.
3. Provide a medium to discuss the program and experiences with other people at WFU, both inside and outside our program.
4. Potentially provide some insight for other potential WFU MBA candidates (note:  this will not be a recruiting tool)

I'll do my best to keep this updated frequently, and hopefully keep the content interesting.  If the next twelve months are anything like the first six, this should be a worthwhile read.  I welcome your comments and feedback.