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A Touch of Class by Cody Morris. A bi-weekly look at the McCombs School experience. |
February 7, 2001
BA 101 & 102: The Tower of Power
Or how to build team-working skills with The Wall Street Journal
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“Profit from it”— that’s the slogan for The Wall Street Journal. Almost all business students read it, and those who don’t know that they should. UT business students read it, but sometimes they do other things with it — like build towers.
In today’s Leadership Development and Contemporary Issues (LDCI) class, students assigned to small teams have fifteen minutes to use masking tape and their copies of The Journal to build the tallest freestanding tower possible. Minutes quickly pass as students talk strategy, crumple newspaper and furiously cut pieces of masking tape.
One team has figured out the best strategy: creating a firm base of support and rolling the paper into cylindrical shapes that resemble rolls of wrapping paper, then taping these rolls together. Students on another team in the corner watch and determine that they must pursue the same strategy to have a chance at the first place finish. They immediately set to work on their own wrapping paper rolls of newspaper.
“Link it to life.” That’s the motto of LDCI, the shared name for the introductory business courses more commonly referred to as BA 101 and BA 102.
On this particular class day, students begin by discussing a Wall Street Journal article (not by building towers with it) concerning the fate of Converse, the largest U.S. footwear manufacturer. Having lost significant market share to Nike and Reebok in the 1990s and looking to cuts costs, Converse recently decided to transfer its manufacturing operations to Asia.
Students engage in a spirited debate about whether the company’s downhill slide is primarily the result of poor marketing practices, an unwillingness to keep up with the fast-changing nature of shoe styles or a strategic mistake to continue manufacturing its shoes in the U.S. while other major shoe companies moved operations to Asia decades ago.
“The class really helps me understand what business is like,” says Rob Harvey. “And it has helped me decide that I like business.”
Because today’s businesses increasingly require employees to work together in small groups, BA 101, the first course in the program, teaches students to participate effectively in team environments. “Most BA 101 students are used to being leaders,” says Cathie Alexander, Director of
LDCI. “LDCI teaches them how to work together.”
As one of their first projects, BA 101 students work in groups of six to develop a business plan to meet a campus need. “You have to do something to learn it,” says Alexander.
To this end, students have to formulize business plans complete with marketing strategies and financial statements, all of which they have little or no prior experience with. It’s also unlikely that these students have ever been called upon to build a newspaper tower, but that’s what LDCI is built on—a model of experiential learning.
The students in the group with the best strategy notice that the other team is copying their idea and begin to worry as they watch their competitor’s tower climbing higher and higher in almost a perfectly vertical structure. Their own tower seems to suffer some instability as it begins to lean to one side.
In BA 102, taken the second semester of the LDCI program, students begin concentrating on the career development process, and the enterprise is considered to be a single student (Me, Inc.). Instead of going to class during two weeks in February, students participate in “passion panels” hosted by business professionals engaged in a variety of careers. Many LDCI students remain undecided about which field of business to pursue, and passion panels give them an opportunity to explore a range of potential possibilities.
“I like LDCI,” says James Phung. “It’s really helping me decide what kind of business career I want.”
BA 101 and BA 102, taken respectively in the fall and spring semesters of a business student’s freshman year, are designed to introduce newly admitted UT students to the business school. In previous years, the university only allowed current UT students to apply for admission to the business school. When admission policy changed to grant admission to incoming freshmen, LDCI was created to familiarize first-year students with the business school.
Taught by graduate business students and peer counselors who have passed through the LDCI series themselves, LDCI classes meet once a week for 75 minutes.
Time’s up: two groups’ towers stretch to the ceiling and every hand is covered in black ink. As the two groups jeer one another (one student calls the leaning tower “the sorriest thing” he’s ever seen), the desperate piece of masking tape attaching one of the towers to the ceiling suddenly comes free. And the business students learn an age-old lesson. In the world of business, it’s not always the best idea that wins; it’s the best execution.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
