Back to B-School

Over the weekend, I had a chance to check out the recent CNBC program Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great, which documented the pair’s recent appearance at Columbia Business School.

In a town-hall style meeting, Gates and Buffett fielded questions from Columbia MBA students. Not surprisingly, many of them asked two of planet’s most successful people for career advice. Among Gates and Buffett’s responses:

• Buffett advised students to put passion ahead of perceived financial gain when considering a career path.
• Gates told them to stay inquisitive and keep up with research on their topics of interest.
• Gates also helped students identify sectors in the U.S. economy that are continuing to grow, including information technology, health care and clean energy.

Buffett and Gates also shared their optimism about the future of the U.S. and our economic system. When moderator Becky Quick asked if there was ever a time that the pair had doubts about capitalism or America’s way of life, Buffett responded, “This country works, we’ve got 200 years of proof, and it’s going to continue to work.”

Gates added, “We have a complex financial system, and we’ve proven that we can make mistakes, but more fundamental than that is the innovation, the fact that you can create new companies, that people are willing to take risks and invest.”

Even in the fall of 2008 when the financial meltdown was at its peak, Gates said that there were “inventions that took place; even in our darkest hour, people were working on new drugs, new chips, new robots and things that will make life better for everyone in the decades ahead.”

Ahh, high school. The time in one’s life where buying the right sweater seemed just as important as having clean air to breathe. While most of us have at least some fond memories of high school, many are happy to leave those days of adolescent angst behind. So what happens when you find out that the business world is more like high school than you thought it would be?

New research from the Kellogg School of Management finds that in the world of VC firms, there are established cliques (the cool kids, if you will) and new kids, or new firms, trying to find their way into the cliques.

The research was conducted by Yael Hochberg, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management; Alexander Ljungqvist a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business; and Yang Lu, an assistant VP at Barclays Capital. Here are some of the effects of VC cliques they found, as reported by a Kellogg Insight article: (more…)

A response to the criticisms lobbed at MBA programs for producing flawed business leaders has been for programs to ramp up their ethics offerings. But according to Roger Martin, head of Canada’s Rotman School of Management, what future business leaders really need is an education in multiple fields, including design.

In Martin’s new book The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, he argues that MBA programs focused solely on analytical thinking have made business managers lose their creative and intuitive sides. A blend of “design thinking” and analysis, Martin argues, could help MBA grads emerge as more complete managers.

So how can you integrate design thinking if you’re already in the business world? Fast Company blogger Dev Patnaik recently participated in a lecture with Martin, and shared a few tips from their conversation:

• 1. Think of yourself as a designer when working out business strategies: Coming up with business strategies should emphasize possibilities over existing information and frameworks. Patnaik writes, “You can’t analyze your way to real strategy. You have to create it from data, guts, empathy, creativity and a little thin air.”
• 2. Make your leadership style a blend of analysis and intuition: Patnaik brings up the often-cited Steve Jobs to illustrate this point. While Jobs’ intuition has produced great innovations like the iPod, his lack of business analysis has led to flops like the Power Mac G4 Cube. Business leaders need to work on developing both skills.
• 3. Throw out your templates: True “design thinking” happens when managers try to solve a problem or create a product that hasn’t been seen in any form. However, Patnaik writes, “Most people, whatever their background, are more comfortable reapplying a formula that has worked in the past than at generating new possibilities. They just try to use a template from an existing success, which is the chief reason we see so many copycat products and copycat strategies.”

Eames chair image courtesy of Flickr user geraintandkim, CC 2.0.

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For the past two weeks, I’ve posted highlights from my recent conversation with Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth professor Ella Edmondson Bell, author of the forthcoming Career GPS: Strategies for Women Navigating the New Corporate Landscape, about the challenges that women face in today’s workplace and what women can do to better succeed in business. In this third and final installment, I gave Bell the chance to respond to a question raised by my fellow BNET Insight blogger Sean Silverthorne. 

BNET: A recent post citing Sylvia Ann Hewlitt’s research that 84 percent of executive women compared to only 40 percent of men have seriously considered leaving their jobs in the past year sparked a big discussion about why women are unhappy at work. I was curious if you agree that women are often more unhappy at work than men, or if you had any other comments on this.

Bell: I’m not sure if women are unhappy or if they feel they’re not being given the same opportunity. If they feel that they aren’t being appreciated and aren’t being heard, and if they feel that their contributions aren’t considered important, I don’t call that unhappy. I don’t like that particular framing. I think unhappy needs to be really, really unpacked. It’s the fact that [women are asking], “Am I being appreciated for what I bring to the table? Am I being heard? Am I being solicited? Am I being challenged?” That’s a lot deeper than being happy. Happy is far too simple for me. (more…)

When is the last time you gave serious thought to keeping your top performers engaged and happy? If you answered “before the recession,” you’re not alone. Many managers have faced more immediate concerns about keeping their companies afloat, and this paired with the fact that there aren’t a lot of jobs out there right now means that employee job satisfaction might have slid down the list of priorities.

A recent article from the MIT Sloan Management Review warns managers that once conditions improve, the number of executives leaving their companies for new opportunities historically spike.

Elizabeth Craig, John R. Kimberly and Peter Cheese write in “How to Keep Your Best Executives” that now is the time to get serious about employee retention strategies. They list three keys to keeping employees satisfied and happy within your company: (more…)

A question for all of you MBAs reading this: remember how great it felt when you finished the GMAT test? After you got into an MBA program, you probably never thought about the test again.

So how would you feel if you had to re-take the GMAT… after receiving your MBA acceptance letter?

That is exactly the situation some new MBA students are finding themselves in as their schools advise them to retake the GMAT to better position themselves with job recruiters.

As BusinessWeek recently reported, “For a select group of companies, mostly top consulting, finance and banking firms, employers routinely look to MBA graduates’ GMAT scores as a reliable standard measurement of academic prowess.” (more…)

Last week, I posted excerpts from my recent conversation with Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth professor Ella Edmondson Bell, author of the forthcoming book Career GPS: Strategies for Women Navigating the New Corporate Landscape, about some of the challenges women face in today’s workplace, such as continued exclusion from business networks and new pressures brought on by factors such as technology and globalization.

However, Bell says that despite these issues, now is a great time for women in the workforce: (more…)

In a recent interview with Ross School of Business professor Jeff DeGraff posted on the University of Michigan’s web site, DeGraff urges companies to consider downtimes the best for pursuing innovation, even if that means spending more money than on the surface seems wise during a recession.

He shares three key reasons why this is the case:

• Investing in innovation when costs are low will pay off in the future: “At some point, U.S.-based firms are going to come out of the recession. And there will be a shakeout of those who have invested in the last development cycle and those who have cut back,” says DeGraff. (more…)

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In her forthcoming book Career GPS: Strategies for Women Navigating the New Corporate Landscape (available Feb. 9, 2010), Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth professor Ella Edmondson Bell discusses the challenges of today’s workplace and advises women how to succeed in the new corporate playing field. I recently spoke with her about some of these issues.

The challenges of today’s workplace…

For men and women alike, technology has changed the way we work, and not always for the better. “There is an expectation on everyone now that work is a 24/7 reality,” says Bell. “Everybody is supposed to work extraordinarily long hours, and even if you’re away from work, you still feel like you’re on call because people can get you, particularly in the world of MBAs.”

Also, Bell cites the turbulent environment in many companies, in which employees are getting blindsided by layoffs. “When people are fearful of losing their jobs, that makes the workplace a little more vicious, more competitive,” says Bell. Additionally, she names globalization as a force that has made the world smaller and, therefore, more competitive.

…And why it can be harder on women

These conditions have posed unique trials for women, says Bell:

Men and women have duties at home, but for women, the second shift notion is becoming increasingly more complicated and harder to manage. As Maria Shriver has been talking about on NBC, many men have lost their jobs in this economy, so women are the breadwinners, but they’re still expected to also carry on the major household duties and raise the family.

It’s harder for women to see themselves actually rising up in a company and succeeding because of the amount of time and effort and because they have other responsibilities. I think it’s harder for women because they feel more alienated. They’re left out of valuable networks and social outlets. So it’s easier, particularly for women of color, to feel more isolated, more vulnerable.

Despite these challenges, Bell says it’s a great time for women in the corporate world. Next week, I’ll share her ideas why, as well as some tips for women to take full advantage of these favorable conditions.

Photo courtesy of Mark Washburn.

When you are considered an expert in your field, does it undermine your authority when you admit uncertainty in your opinion?

Absolutely not, according to new research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In fact, this might be a good strategy for increasing your persuasive abilities. Surprisingly, the study found that the opposite was true for non-experts: they can better persuade an audience by expressing a higher degree of certainty.

“We find that when the regular, everyday person is extremely certain, that’s surprising to readers,” said Zakary L. Tormala, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford who conducted the research. “Conversely, when the expert is not so certain, that’s surprising.”

So how does the element of surprise lead to the ability to better persuade your audience? (more…)