The "E" in EMBA does not stand for Entrepreneur

I really enjoy the WFU MBA program. The level of learning and discussion is excellent, and the quality of the people (classmates & faculty) is outstanding. But the conservativeness of the majority of the group is one aspect that frustrates me every time I drive back to Raleigh on Saturday evenings.

I understand the root of it - a bunch of successful people that have gotten to a decent level in their companies, have families and mortgages, and are happy with where they are today. So they bring their conservative mindset into the classroom, and it shows in many of the discussions we have about company strategies or business models. From talking to friends in other programs, I don't believe these characteristics are unique to the WFU MBA program.

The white elephant in the room is that almost all of my classmates have another 20-30 years of work left in their careers. And on top of that, most of their companies and industries will either not exist or be radically changed in the next 5 years.

I can't tell anybody else how to think or act. But it seems to me that the classroom would be the perfect place to experiment with thinking about innovation, business disruption, new business models, and new forms of risk. Maybe the downturn in the economy will push some people to consider looking at ways in which they can adapt to the changes that will confront us over the next 20-30 years.

Still trying to figure out Audience Targeting

These are some pictures of user maps from this blog, (Top-Bottom) oldest-to-newest over the past 6 months. In terms of density or quantity of visitors, the site has made some progress. It gets anywhere from 5-25 visitors a day. This makes sense to me as I've learned a few tricks about cross-promoting it on Twitter or LinkedIn. But the slight demographic shift from Europe to Asia still has me somewhat confused. Obviously I get a little more traffic because I've been writing so much about our trip to China over the past month, but I'm not sure where all the European visitors came from previously. Other than "WFU MBA" or "bgracely", almost none of my topics or keywords would trend high enough to make the first couple pages on Google.

This is still in experimental mode. It's nice to be able to experiment and learn while doing something you love to do (writing), which is maybe the best lesson I should be learning from this. Find something you love to do, and then figure out if you can earn any money from it. I make nothing from this now, but hopefully I'll be able to translate some of the learnings from this digital identity experiment into something more sustaining over time.

What an MBA program should be like!

We're about 8 months into the program, and we finally had a weekend that was what I had expected the program to be like. Don't get me wrong, the program so far has been very fun, and we've learned quite a bit from both professors and classmates. But this weekend was just a little more rich, a little more complete in terms of the entire experience.

Here's a few of the highlights:

Every class spend much of the time working through cases. I've stated my preference for case method learning before, and this weekend was an excellent example of the types of learning and discussion that can occur when it's focused around multi-facted cases. OpsMgm't focused on capacity planning (for manufacturing & service industries); ITMgm't focused on runaway projects and outsourcing; MgmtAcct focused on companies that are looking at techniques like Open Book Management and Beyond Budgeting; and FinMgm't focused on capital budgeting for multinational companies. Great discussions of the issues within the cases, intermixed with healthy arguments of opinions and personal experiences from classmates. The prep work and actual discussion can be exhausting, but I feel like we learn so much more from this method.

In our MgmtAcc't class, Dr.Beatty has been talking about Open Book Management (OBM) throughout the semester as a topic that student may want to consider evaluating for their work environments. In fact, our final exam is being dropped in favor of a OBM project to create a plan to introduce OBM into one of the companies without our group. Our project (Team 5) will be for General Parts International (Raleigh, NC), a $3-4Byr privately-held company, where teammate Matt Johnson is a Sr.VP. After sending us a recent WSJ article on OBM, Dr.Beatty realized that Kindermusik (referenced in the article) was a local company and arranged to have their EVP/GM (Brian Healy) visit class and give us an overview of how they implement OBM within their organization. Mr.Healy did a tremendous job of sharing experiences and taking Q&A about how OBM helped shape the culture of Kindermusik, and focus each individual in the company on the "critical number" necessary to make that portion of their business successful.

The evening before our FinMgm't class, the amount of discussion between teams in trying to pull together all the information and analysis of the Whirlpool case was excellent. We were literally walking back and forth between rooms in the hotel comparing notes, debating analysis, struggling with how to handle missing data or assumptions, and generally putting in a ton of time for a piece of homework that effects a very small portion of our overall grade. By 2am we were completely blurry eyed and exhausted. But the journey was well worth it. Not only did we each learn quite about about the concept (capital budgeting), but I think we broke down a couple of mental barriers between the teams.

A few weeks ago a few of us where out late, signing Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" with the local cover-band, and started talking about some ways that we could have a little fun and bring the class together a little better. Sometimes we get too focused on school work. The first attempt fell short (sorry Matt Kirk!!), but this weekend's Pajama Saturday turned out to be a big success. I'll get into that more later.

The 1st annual EXFT Ping-Pong Singles tournament reached the finals. This is our unofficial break-time activity. Congrats to Gregg Lewis and Brian Turner for reaching the finals. We're looking forward to the match next weekend.

So all-in-all a really great weekend. Lots of variety, lots of interaction within the class and outside of class, and I think the group is continuing to come together quite a bit more. It's a great bunch of people and a program that I'm proud to be a part of.

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.  

What are the "Rights" of an MBA student?

Dr. Beatty forwarded this to us today.  More than anyone else I've met in the program, Dr.Beatty is focused on trying to get across the point that regardless of any concepts that come up in class (theory, rules, etc.), none of it is useful unless you can truly understand it and apply it to the real world.   He was definitely trying to send a message to the students with this, I believe for all the right reasons.

To be completely honest, after reading a few of the posts on that page, it made me consider no longer telling friends and colleagues that I was pursuing my MBA.  Were those people serious? Just because they have an expensive piece of paper hanging on their wall, they somehow think all the things they learned about competitiveness, strategy, differentiation, etc.. are not relevant to them? Just because they did something yesterday means they are entitled to something today, or tomorrow?  Considering all the MBAs working on Wall Street, maybe that explains some of the reasons we're in the economic mess we're in..??

I'm afraid that this MBA culture is pervasive at many schools, and with many students.  And its not just graduates, but unfortunately it's also prospective MBAs.    

One of the things I really like about an executive MBA program is that most of the students are at an age where they have been through a few bumps, and they have learned the value of doing, and taking actions.  For the most part, they are in this program because they realize they have some deficiencies and are hoping to find new areas to grow and learn.  I've spoken about it before, but this just seems like another example of setting goals needs to be about something bigger than yourself and needs to look farther ahead than your next trip to Starbucks.

Discussion of the Week (casual) - Where does the Value of the MBA come from?

Sitting a lunch with some classmates this weekend, the conversation revolved to job-hunting, resumes, networking and other things that become top of mind when you read about the economy and layoffs on a daily basis.  The conversation then turned to what value you get from an MBA, especially in terms of it's brand, it's rankings, it's connections, etc...

There were a number of opinions about Wake Forest vs. Wake Forest MBA vs. Wake Forest Executive MBA, and if there should be a distinction between those programs and brands.  There was discussion about how to create opportunities between the Winston-Salem programs and the Charlotte programs (Charlotte is a peer campus for MBA programs).  And there was discussion about how we needed to look for more ways to network and explore with the students within our program.  

My personal opinion is that it's a 30/70 split between the knowledge you learn, and the people/experiences you encounter.  Don't get me wrong, what we read in the books/cases/articles are all very interesting  and valuable, but when you compare that to the 400+ years of experience across 12-15 industries that exists in our classmates, I think that 30/70 breakdown is about right.  

With more focus on case-method learning this semester, I think we're all able to learn more from each other's experience.  I've made it one of my 2009 goals to really focus on learning from my classmates, and I hope that more people make that a priority for themselves too. In December, I think we'll all look back and find ourselves better for taking that approach.