How to Prepare for MBA Orientation

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U.S. News & World Report has a helpful article for those of you who will soon start graduate school. Written by Don Martin (a former dean at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business), the article has useful tips for getting ready for orientation:

• Take care of business before arriving on campus
• Hit the ground running once you get there
• Actively engage during orientation

These tips are nice add-ons to the blog I posted earlier this week offering advice on getting acclimated to business school.

The article goes into greater depth on its advice. Go here to read the complete piece.

Top Quotes from 2013 Commencements

"With meaning ... any job can become a calling."

Ann Moore, former Time Inc. CEO, Harvard Business School, May 29

"Dive into the challenges of your community. Invest deeply in relationships," he said. "Find your calling with your values and your vision for society."

Robert F. Bruner, Dean, University of Virginia
Darden School of Business, May 19

"Work hard, follow your passion, live your values, give back and remember that integrity matters."

Janet Murquia, CEO/president, National Council of La Raza,

Wake Forest University Schools of Business, May 20

"Just because you don't qualify for sainthood doesn't mean you can't form deep human connections, or that your connections can't make a difference in the world."

Melinda Gates, co-founder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
Duke University Fuqua School of Business, May 12

"Don't settle. Follow your dreams. Be a risk taker. ... And don't back down when dealing with bullies"

Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Wharton, May 12

Lessons for New MBA Students

By Paul Davis

A few years ago, I was reflecting on my MBA experience. I thought about the sacrifices and trade-offs I had made to make it through the program. I jotted them down, realizing that some of the items might be second nature. Other lessons I learned the hard way.

I am sharing these six tips for success in hopes that others can benefit from my experience and use them to have a smooth transition back into academic life:

1.   Time management is critical to success. Full-time students have multiple classes to juggle, while evening MBA students have to balances assignment with those pesky jobs. There are also plenty of social and club activities that will complicate scheduling. I advise students to knock out individual tasks as early as possible and use early team meetings to map out the semester ahead using each course's syllabus as a blueprint for planning.

2.   Get to know the professors.I found from my experience that most professors are approachable – even likable – despite courses that are often difficult. I was able to develop relationships with several professors that continued after I left their classes, and many of them will prove instrumental to your development as you progress through the program and reenter to the work place.

3.   Get to know your classmates, particularly those on your team. Those individuals will be your lifeline as you adjust to business school. In many courses, the collaborative work your team performs will make up a hefty percentage of your overall grade. Early on, develop policies and procedures for conflict resolution. Even the most congenial group will have moments when the pressures of classes, assignments and personal stress converge to create friction. Find the appropriate valves to help get your team past those inevitable rough patches.

4.   Get involved! There are a multitude of clubs in business school. Consider registering for competitions – there are plenty of those. Don’t hesitate to step outside your comfort zone.

5.   Go outside from time to time.You will need time to escape from the books and get out and network with your fellow students. Have a beer at local brewery or go for a hike. Play trivia. Take in a movie. These are necessary to provide distractions and relieve stress.

6.   Take advantage of speaker events. When I was in business school, the program brought in people such as Reynolds American CEO Susan Ivey, Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke and author JohnGrisham. Speaker events are excellent for networking and past executives who have visited have proven to be amazingly approachable. Learn from them.

Looking at the Pepsi, Lil Wayne Split

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Corporations are continuously trying to push the envelope when it comes to marketing campaigns.

This is especially true when companies pursue celebrity endorsements. Still, I was shocked the first time that I heard Lil Wayne on a radio advertisement for Mountain Dew. For starters, the award-winning rapper always seems to attract controversy. And the endorsement deal came just a few years after he served time in jail for a weapons-related offense.

So it didn’t surprise me earlier this month when Pepsi dropped Lil Wayne after one of his raps included offensive lyrics about Emmett Till. Pepsi attributed the split to “creative differences.”

In reality, Pepsi overlooked a key factor in signed celebrity endorsements: reputational risk.

Potential risk is an area highlighted in an article by the World Intellectual Property Organization. “The positive attention generated by affiliating a celebrity with a campaign may turn sour if the celebrity becomes involved in a scandal,” the report notes.

WIPO has some solid recommendations. First, companies should diversify by having multiple people endorse a product. Pepsi has certainly followed this mantra over the years. Another option would involve using “spokescharacters.”

It isn't fair to single out Lil Wayne; he is just an example of a troubling habit that Pepsi, and others, can't seem to shake. Many highly coveted celebrity endorsers have a fair share of scandal. Nowadays, notoriety is almost a direct function of controversy.

Pepsi has a history of making bad decisions when it comes to celebrity endorsements. Remember Madonna, circa 1989?

The Lil Wayne scandal could also have negative implications for rapper endorsements at a time when Corporate America had just started to warm up to the genre as a way to market beyond the traditional urban market. The strategy can still work, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see Pepsi (and other companies) play a waiting game before pushing the envelope like this again.

Anatomy of a Business Plan: Tough Mudder

The Boston Globe has an insightful article about the Tough Mudder challenge, which began as a business plan for Will Dean while he was at Harvard Business School. The business, projected by the publication to produce more than $115 million in revenue this year, didn't even get Dean to the finals of Harvard's business paper competition.

The article discusses the grueling dynamics of the challenge, but we'll highlight some of the noteworthy items in the story that distinguish the event from a business perspective:

• Tough Mudder brands itself as a "challenge" rather than a "race." That narrows the range of competitors tremendously, distinguishing it from the plethora of 5k races out there
• The 10- to 12-mile course includes obstacles designed by British Special Forces and participants must sign a four-page "waiver of death." This is partially to protect the event sponsor from liability, but also could be considered marketing
• Those who finish the event receive an orange Tough Mudder headband; roughly two-thirds of participants make it to the end
• Tough Mudder initially spent just $8,000 advertising on Facebook. It now has more than 3.3 million likes on the social media site
• People pay $180 to participate. Revenues were $2 million in 2010 and projected to top $115 million. Either attendance has skyrocketed or Tough Mudder has made tremendous strides with merchandising
• There is a sidebar detailing a legal battle between Dean and another firm that claims he stole their idea. 

The Boston Globe article can be found here. We also found a video detailing some of the event's challenges:

High Stakes Recruiting on Wall Street

www.agbeat.com

Anyone interested in working for a private equity firm should read this New York Times article. It looks at Wall Street's top young analysts, and their quest to secure a high-paying job at buyout firms after finishing business school.


The article gives a nice peak behind the curtain at how recruiters go about their business.

You can read the article here.

Introducing MBA Connections

Paul Davis

Welcome to MBA Connections, a project designed to bring together business school students from around the world. We also hope that this community will provide a forum for MBA recipients to discuss and share ideas about current events.

Topics here include, but are not limited to, finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, organizational behavior and technology. Ideally, perspective and current business school students can meet alumni and learn from their experiences.

Why create this forum? To understand where we are going, I must provide some background on my own social media and business school experience.

I largely self-taught in social media and HTML coding. For me, it was a necessity because I needed funding to go to business school. To help pay my tuition, I developed a comprehensive marketing strategy to improve the social media platform at the Wake Forest University Schools of Business and pitched it to Dean Steve Reinemund, a former chairman/CEO at PepsiCo. Talk about pressure!

Dean Reinemund hired me in 2009 to oversee a team of student bloggers to chronicle the MBA experience and develop a sense of community among the student body.

We were quite successful. By the time I transferred the platform over to Wake Forest earlier this year, the blog had accumulated more than 70,000 hits, the Twitter feed had collected nearly 2,000 followers and a Facebook group I created last year amassed 1,200 people in a matter of weeks. TopMBA even recommended that aspiring business school students follow us on Twitter.

Overall, it was a challenging and rewarding experience that went above and beyond what I learned in the classroom.

Since handing over the platform to Wake Forest, I have been eager to do more with social media. At first, I was unsure how to proceed. So I took a momentary step back to assess how I could apply the lessons I had learned from my work at Wake Forest to create something ... bigger.

MBA Connections is the realization that social media can go beyond connecting people at one school. We can also do more than just connect alumni. We should find a way to use technology to connect students across many different programs. We should connect incoming students with alumni. While we're at it, let's provide information and perspective about a range of programs and and current events.

It will take some time to build this network, and I would certainly appreciate your help. You can add classmates and fellow alums to our Facebook group. You can follow us on Twitter. I would also welcome any offers to contribute columns or perspectives. Over time, we can build a significant community that provides a superior experience ... learning from each other.

Thank you for your interest.
Paul Davis, MBA '11

Identifying What Companies Look For in CEOs

www.alleywatch.com

I just read an interesting research paper from Steven Kaplan from the Booth School of Business, along with Mark Klebanov and Morten Sorensen, that looks at the desired traits of future CEOs.

In their report, "Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?" they evaluated 316 CEO candidates for posts at companies funded by leveraged buyout firms and venture capitalists. The paper found that companies funded and supported by buyout firms and venture capital have different preferences and screening processes for potential leaders.

For candidates assess by buyout firms, general talent and ability is important. The study found that success was largely a function of efficiency, organization and high standards, among other things. "These characteristics appear to reflect execution and resoluteness," the study determined. "The magnitude of the performance differences are large."

Venture capital tends to gravitate toward younger companies, which have "greater needs for specific knowledge" instead of general management talent, the study found. Proactive management takes precedence over teamwork, and coordination- and communication-related skills are less relevant. "The interpersonal-team factor is generally negatively related to performance," the study found.

The entire study, including voluminous data to back the findings, can be found here.

Learning About Cockroach Technology, Shadow IT

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I was reading a recent Wall Street Journal blog from the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium that caught my attention. Participants were apparently expressing their frustration with cloud computing software vendors who sell directly to business users.

CIOs at the conference said they would prefer that vendors use traditional IT channels, which would reduce duplicate purchases and make data collection easier. It was the first time that I was exposed to the terms "cockroach technology" and "shadow IT," though it seems reasonable to believe that such lingo will become more commonplace in the workforce at cloud computing becomes increasingly pervasive.

The blog, by WSJ editor Michael Hickens, can be found here.

Kellogg Launches Chief Marketing Officer Program

Photo: www.bizjournals.com

The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has launched a new executive development program designed to specifically train students to become chief marketing officers.

Eric Leininger, a clinical associate professor of marketing, is the program's executive director, according to a report from the Chicago Business Journal. Gregory Carpenter, professor of marketing strategy, is the academic director, and Phil Kotler will be part of the faculty.

Read the entire article here.

J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler to Speak at Harvard Club

Photo: www.bu.com

Millard "Mickey" Drexler, chairman and CEO of J. Crew Group, will be speaking at the Harvard Club on June 6.

Drexler is largely credited for guiding his former employer, Gap Inc., along a transformation where it went from a relatively small chain store to a clothing giant with more than 2,000 locations.

J. Crew was in poor shape when it hired Drexler in 2003. It was mired in debt but was profitable just two years after Drexler arrived. J. Crew went public in 2006, but was bought out five years later by Leonard Green & Partners and TPG Capital in a $3 billion deal.

The event is set to run from 7:30 am to 9 am at the Harvard Club (27 W. 44th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) Non-members and guests must pay $50 to attend.

You can order tickets by clicking here.

Splitting Chairman, CEO Roles Fails to Tilt Performance

Photo: dealbreaker.com

Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, survived a movement yesterday to strip him of his chairman's title. The effort was backed by two prominent proxy advisory firms, but rejected by shareholders at the New York company's annual meeting.

A recent report by David Larcker and Brian Tayan at the Center for Leadership Development and Research at the Stanford School of Business makes an intriguing observation: separating a company's chairman and CEO roles has a nominal influence on stock price and financial performance.

“Instead of debating features of corporate governance features of corporate governance, more attention should be paid to contextual issues – a company’s leadership, culture, and specific situation," Larcker and Tayan write.

A summery of their research, which does not specifically address Dimon's roles and influence at JPMorgan Chase, is available here.

The Small Cost for Safety in Bangladesh

Photo: NBC News

I just read an short article on Bloomberg by two professors from Harvard Business School. The piece looks at ways to improve safety in Bangledeshi factories in light of the 800 deaths that took place at Rana Plaza.

What got my attention was a section of the article that evaluated the cost of improving conditions. Notably, the amount is small, especially if it is spread out and assessed on consumers.

It notes that, by some estimates, it would cost roughly $600 million each year to bring all Bangledeshi factories up to "Western standards." Factoring in Bangladesh's $18 billion of annual clothing exports, the authors determined that improvements would lead to a meager 3.3% cost increase for garments.

Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine simplify it even more, noting that the cost of making a T-shirt would increase by a dime, to $3.10 per garment. "This is a very small price to pay for the ability to claim that no workers producing your clothing were in any danger of dying," they write.

You can read the entire article here.

Darden's Dean Bruner: Job Hopping is a Bad Idea

Photo: University of Virginia

Robert F. Bruner, the dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, recently shared some interesting advice with this year's graduating class: plan for a minimum four-year commitment to your first post-graduate job.

Bruner made this thought-provoking comment during his commencement remarks, and reiterated them  recently on his blog. Four years is "barely enough time to learn the nuances of a complicated position, such as a leader or general manager," he wrote.

To read Bruner's complete blog, click here.

It Takes More Than Luck to Lift a TV Station

Photo: WFMY News 2

If you live around Greensboro, N.C., you are getting really familiar with Julie Luck, the new evening anchor for WFMY, a local CBS affiliate. That's because the station decided to lease a number of highway billboards to tout its new addition.

By playing off catchy sayings – "As Luck Would Have It" for instance – and displaying super-sized images of the anchor's smiling face, the station is hoping to build awareness of the overhaul of its evening lineup. Last fall, Luck left Fox 8 WGHP after more than seven years, leaving a station where she had anchored several afternoon and evening newscasts.

By my estimates, WFMY must have invested a handsome sum on the Julie Luck promotion.

I have counted roughly 10 billboards, both traditional and digital, on major thoroughfares across Greensboro. Based on an estimated price of $2,500 per month for traditional signage and $3,500 for a digital bulletin, the station may have spent $25,000 or more to promote Luck.

(If anyone has a better estimate, please feel free to post in the comments section below.)

"Julie Luck has received no small amount of promotion," Larry Audas, WFMY's president and general manager stated in a recent Facebook post. That may actually be an understatement.

This is evolving into a fascinating intersection between marketing and organizational behavior, where you have to balance a desire to build a brand around a new addition with maintaining a healthy workplace built around a news team.

It makes me wonder if WFMY will be able to get a solid and sustainable return on its investment. Having worked in the radio industry, I generally understand how the system works. The billboards draw attention to Luck and/or stories she is working on. That awareness prompts people switch from Fox 8 to WFMY. Those viewers help the station in the periodic Nielsen sweeps, which are then used by sales teams to encourage businesses to advertise.

But, as the title of this post states, it takes more than Luck to lift a TV station. This strategy would have been a no brainer a decade ago, but the rise of cable news and Internet programming is changing the math. Ad spending on broadcast networks is projected to drop 2% this year compared to a year earlier, according to Bloomberg. Total TV advertising, including cable, is on a pace to increase nearly 3% compared to 2012.

Technology such as tablets and smartphones make it easier to access online news, possibly deemphasizing the relevance of traditional local newscasts. Still, as my significant other Vaishali Shah puts it, having a marketing campaign built around a single personality could help WFMY differentiate from other TV stations, newspapers and other groups putting video online. It could help with Internet searches; typing "Julie Luck" into Google points people to WFMY much better than a generic search for "local Greensboro news."

WFMY is also taking a risk putting so much marketing behind Luck. Most, but not all, of the billboards around Greensboro feature her exclusively. That could upset other members of the team. It could give Luck undue influence in negotiating future contracts, salaries, etc.

An overreliance on one individual could also create a ratings vacuum for the station should she leave, another point that Vaishali made as we passed several billboards this afternoon. If people are willing to switch to WFMY to watch Julie Luck, they are equally apt to switch off if she exits. Brand loyalty in television isn't the same as it was back in the 1960's to 1980's when people were accustomed to Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw and the local anchors who were on a half hour before the national broadcasts.

What about the OB perspective? This campaign can also influence WFMY's ability to building a strong team. They must make sure that the ads do not upset the delicate balance of such a team. In the sports world, GMs must be mindful about hiring free agents who fit into the system rather than those that clash and cause distractions. I'm not saying that Julie Luck will purposefully cause a distraction, though there is a serious risk that a highly leveraged billboard campaign could chip away at an intended level of cohesiveness.

To his credit, I think Audas seems mindful of that. Luck "asked for none of" the promotion, Audas writes in his Facebook post.

"That's our doing," Audas adds. "What she has asked for, over and again, is a collective station commitment to see that Frank (Mickens), Tanya (Rivera) and the whole WFMY News 2 team win by serving. She has it. They have it."

Still, I will be curious to see how the team chemistry holds up over time. I believe this will serve as an interesting case study in the months to come.