March 30, 2004
Plus Participants Engage Via Projects, Workshops
By Erica Grieder
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On March 26, the spring 2004 session of the McCombs MBA’s Plus Program drew to a close. More than 800 MBAs participated in Plus this time around, taking part in a range of consulting projects, coaching sessions and opportunities for career exploration. An additional 241 students had embarked a week earlier on three-week-long global study tours as part of Plus’s international iteration, Plus Global.
Workshops ranged from practical issues like networking to philosophical concerns, such as the value of personal simplicity in a cluttered marketplace.
Scores of companies, both local and multinational, benefited from student consulting projects, including Dell, 3M and Ford, and in Austin By George clothing and the South by Southwest film, music and multimedia festival. Finally, a series of Plus academies were created around student interests, such as entrepreneurship, real estate finance, hedge funds and supply chain management.
From this diverse profusion of activities, a theme emerged: engagement.
That was certainly the case for Matthew Trumm, MBA 05, who led a team on a project for McMunn Associates, a national security company based in Virginia. He had worked with the company in the fall, and so was able to see the results of his work. “My favorite part of this project,” he said, “was seeing that they implemented about 80% of the things that we recommended last semester.”
A teammate, Brett Burkhead, also appreciated the engagement the project afforded. “For me, the best part was just the chance to meet with the CEO of the company,” he said “Just to sit down with him for an hour or so and talk about some real-world concerns he had with the firm as well as opportunities we might bring to the plate was a good experience."
For other students, the projects offered a way to get critical experience in a new industry, which is no small challenge. Helen Shen, MBA 05, worked in telecommunications prior to coming to McCombs, but now is looking to make a career switch to finance. While her project with Compass Bancshares was not exactly the kind of work she wanted to do post-graduation, she said, she chose it in order to facilitate her transition to working in finance.
Prior to picking her project, Shen had been in contact with two other companies. Although she ultimately decided to work with Compass Bancshares, the other company contacts remain viable and will most likely lead to future consulting projects during subsequent editions of the Plus Program.
Shen’s experience indicates another way in which this past Plus saw uncommon engagement from the MBAs. This semester was unique, said Steven Tomlinson, the director of the program, in that so many of the consulting projects were set up by students, rather than by the school. Students were also particularly vocal when it came to organizing workshops and breakout sessions, and several speakers were brought to campus specifically at their request.
Some topics considered are of perennial concern, such as cold calling, which students practiced in a breakout session. In a subsequent seminar on the “Missing Link” Job Search, guest lecturer Kathleen Connors underscored the importance of cold calling. She said that 90% of hiring managers hire based on personal connections, so a working network is of absolute importance.
However, as Connors noted, “The reason I call these contacts the missing link is that it seems to give people the most trouble in their job search.” One may not always have as thriving of a network as one would like. Therefore, Connors said, it is necessary to “hunt, find and contact” relevant industry executives. Ultimately, this might require some cold calls.
Bill Jensen, the author of “Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage in a World of New, Better, Faster,” spoke on that topic to MBAs, encouraging them to “compete on clarity” and purge clutter from their communications. Dr. Janine Sagert, an expert on optimal performance and stress management, taught MBAs how to use techniques from biofeedback to keep track of stress that might be affecting their work performance.
One workshop, “The Power of Full Engagement,” dealt, explicitly and obviously, with engagement. However, Dr. Jack Groppel interpreted that to mean something other than engagement with corporate executives or colleagues. Rather, he said that professionals should strive to achieve leadership endurance holistically, by recognizing personal relationships, spiritual thought and physical activity as integral parts of a high-performance lifestyle.
At the end of the spring 2004 Plus Program, the MBAs had indeed been engaged in a particularly high-performance lifestyle for two weeks.
“It’s an iterative process,” reflected Trumm on the day of his final project presentation. “Just that practice of how to act in a professional environment, how to relay your findings in a professional manner—I think I’m going to continue to build on that in the next two semesters.”
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.
