|
The Human Arts of Business
by Vivé Griffith
When four MBA students at the McCombs School took their first kickboxing class recently, they could honestly say they were sweating for the cause. The students were working with Power Kickbox, an Austin-based small business, to help the owner set up her financial systems and position her company in the market.
They'd learned that to really help a business, you need to understand the business from the inside out. In this case, it started with a punch.
This type of direct business experience is a key element of Plus, a new program at McCombs that is changing the face of graduate business education. Business schools are known for taking students out of the working world and putting them in the classroom to hone their analytical and problem-solving skills. Plus takes them out of the classroom and puts them back in the world. For two weeks every semester MBA students trade exams for brainstorming sessions, pinstripes for dancing shoes, Texas for Taiwan or Brazil or Mexico.
"Every business school has this challenge," says Dr. Steven Tomlinson, who directs Plus. "The traditional academic curriculum gives students excellent tools; but effective leadership requires skills, habits and attitudes that are fundamentally 'extra-academic.' How can we help our MBAs become more powerful communicators and more effective collaborators? How can we help them sharpen their ethical reasoning skills and gain global perspective?"
Those extra-academic skills aren't just things that students can pick up once on the job. And they may be the reason they find a job, especially in a tight economy. A Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey found that the most important attributes recruiters seek in business school graduates are "communication and interpersonal skills" and "the ability to work well within a team."
Since these and other so called "soft skills" can't be taught in a typical classroom situation, McCombs created Plus, which suspends classes for two weeks in the middle of each semester to offer students a comprehensive professional development program. With Plus, professional development does not stand outside the business school curriculum. It is central to it.
This spring Plus brought in nationally recognized communication expert Barbara Miller to show students how to identify their own communication styles and work with other styles. Using an improvisational theater group, Miller demonstrated what might happen if someone with an intuitive style sat down for an interview with someone with
a thinking style. Students roared with laughter watching the two falter, and they recognized themselves in the scenario.
"If we really want to accomplish things in the workplace," Miller told students, "we have to let go of the concept that 'my way' is the 'right way.'"
Miller said that there's great benefit to introducing students to these concepts early, before they develop other habits. "I want them to know that there are no such things as mistakes," she said. "If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning and you're not being innovative."
Innovation was in great supply when the improvisational theater group took the floor and made students play vampires, keep giant balls in the air and practice listening to each other all the way to the end of the sentence, something people rarely do.
Students also enroll in one of eight Academies of Interest each semester, more focused areas driven by what students are interested in learning. Academies include Real Estate, New Technology Assessment, Business Across Borders, Small Business Consulting and Design Innovation. Academies give students the opportunity to really focus on a particular aspect of business and then to partner with a business to get experience.
In the Business Across Borders Academy, students learn about managing commerce across cultures, and they learn how complex and critical culture itself is. Doing business in other countries involves crossing barriers far more complicated than language.
"Students realize that in a particular culture, business people will expect certain social skills of their business partners," Plus co-designer Dr. Leslie Jarmon says. "How great to demonstrate that one has already taken the time and energy to learn some of those skills in advance. You gain social capital and begin to create relationships and build respect."
Within their academies, students also work directly with businesses small and large, local and international, on real problems the businesses are facing. In exchange for receiving the skilled help of a team of MBA students, three hours of a manager's time to mentor students, and feedback on their final proposals.
Businesses responded enthusiastically, and students worked on everything from a marketing campaign for V8 in Mexico to the financing of an expansion of a local Austin restaurant.
"The classes give you these tools to work with," says Jane Kelley, who worked with Power Kickbox, "and Plus really helps you link
classes to reality."
This is exactly the point. Research consistently shows that adults learn by experiencing, and learning experiences like the ones Plus offers not only help plump up resumes, they create better educated, better prepared business people.
"I call them living case studies," says Dr. Tommy Darwin, who directs the Small Business Consulting academy and co-designs Plus curriculum. "We're working with real people who are interested in problems for which these students can actually provide answers."
As Plus develops, the goal is to make it even more student-driven. Students are applying for the position of project captain for the next year, which means they will design their own projects with a business partner, then recruit and hire students to work with them on it.
"Any school can do what McCombs is doing by becoming actively responsive to industry feedback, to a wish list or a complaint list," says Jarmon. "What Plus has done is taken that assignment and done it in such a way that it is being driven by student energy and student passion. That is an amazing thing."
For more information and to watch an informational video, visit http://mba.mccombs.utexas.edu/
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.
