Blonde MBADocumenting the life of a blonde MBA student in sunny California. Maybe some blondes DO have brains!

Yes, “I must be crazy,” “What was I thinking,” and “I’ll thank myself later” have all been going through my head this week. As you can see, I have/will have had three MBA project presentations in three weeks!  And it’s my own fault…

Two are with my winterterm class “Creativity & Innovation” which is hectic enough with 2 midterms and 2 projects in a short 4-week period. My group already did one last week on Apple vs. IBM, and this week our project is more creative…establishing a viral marketing campaign for Chapman University’s Leatherby Center for Corporate Entrepreneurship & Ethics. I can’t divulge any details (as we’re ‘competing’ against 2 other groups this week), but I hope know we’re going to KILL it!

Finally, next week I’m competing in the ACG (Association for Corporate Growth) Case Competition, where we will prepare a strategy & the corresponding valuations for a possible merger & acquistion. Have I taken finance yet? NO.  Have I ever done a valuation in my life? NO. Do I know anything about the M&A field? NO. Are we going to win? Well, I don’t know but thankfully it’s a team effort, so we’re all bringing in our respective strengths. Oh, & I’m teaching myself valuation and M&A this week…I just joined the group last week.

So wish me luck, as I don’t want to look like a dumb BlondeMBA.  At least I’ll get all those oral presentation/public speaking  jitters out of the way…one “um” and “uh” at a time…I’ll thank myself later, right?

With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, most of the semester’s MBA group projects are due either just before or just after the break. What this means? Hours of group meetings!

With a multitude of meetings & projects, many with the same people, how do you coordinate your efforts?

1. Come up with an action plan -
By deciding how to attack the project in advance, you can save yourself and your fellow group members huge amounts of time and limit your wasted effort. Sticking to the plan and figuring out what needs to be done to accomplish your goal will keep you on track, and any needed adjustments can more easily be made along the way.

2. Divide and conquer -
MBA group projects tend to be rather large in scope…the reason? The professors want us to cover as much material as possible, so just the sheer quantity of material to be covered requires a divide-and-conquer approach. Of course, each of the group members needs to pull their wait, or you’re going to have a gap in the material…so while giving up your complete control of the project, you do need to make sure that group expectations are clear up front!

3. Find a balance between agreement & conflict (in a good way)
A cohesive group (which most of mine are) is great…less emotional conflict and more agreement, which definitely speeds things up. On the flip side, we purposely try to promote more intellectual conflict, playing “devil’s advocate” where needed or presenting a different view of things. Without this conflict, we could all very well be stuck on the wrong idea, but none of us would say anything different! Make sure you are seeing all sides of the story, to see if there is anything you can do better, without disturbing the peace!

4. Employ your strengths
One of the struggles when it comes time to pull an MBA group project together is pulling together 3-4 different styles…one for each group member! Not everyone can write the paper, so figure out a good role for each person…either one that you know they’re good at (which you probably WON’T know in the beginning), one they want to try or practice on, or whatever each can do the quickest & best! You get the picture…while everyone is the “best writer,” not everyone can write. Judge your comparative advantages and employ them accordingly…

So, I am DEFINITELY not an expert on MBA group projects, and we’ll see how the finished projects come out (I’ll let you know how this week goes!), but these are definitely lessons I’ve learned so far this semester…

I’m sure I will have more insights as the semester and program progresses…what have been your group experiences, for better or worse? What have you learned from them?

Oops…with the start of school, it appears more time is elapsing between my blog posts, as I’m trying to fit in web time between hours spent on an extreme amount of assigned reading for the first 2 weeks of class…I’m still working on figuring out the best study schedule to stay on top of my regular stuff!

So…I am here in a MBA program that is turning out the decision makers of tomorrow’s business world, yet my first team for our group project could not decide on or even come up with a team name. Other teams in our class so far include “Team Cobra” (um, OK) and “Playdough Junkies”. One of our team members brought up a few…a) Happy Campers (b) The Mouseketeers (we have a Disney theme by the way) or (c) Blue Barracudas (some “Legends of the Hidden Temple” reference I don’t know about).

The rest of the team was not sure about these, but as the best the rest of us could come up with was “No Names” or “The Lamewads”, we figured we should take what we could get. “Blue Barracudas” it is then…we figured if we don’t know what it means, we should at least sound fierce!

~Blonde ‘Barracuda’ MBA

(P.S. OMG, I just found “Legends of the Hidden Temple” is some old Nickelodeon game show…I was in High School when it aired! I feel old…)

Blue Barracudas on game show...yikes!

Last Friday was my last day of work and I didn’t get a chance to say anything about it before we left for Arizona. While I am SO GLAD to be done with that job and will not miss ‘working’ per se (at least not 9-5), I WILL miss the people I worked with. Most jobs are probably 10-20% actual work, 80-90% dealing with people, (depending on your industry of course). It doesn’t matter how well you can perform in a job if you can’t ‘play well with others’ and be a strong part of the team. 

That said, I was able to work with a strong team of office support staff. Unfortunately undervalued by management and the institution we worked for, nothing would get done without this team. I hope each of them are able to find the job satisfaction and growth they deserve, and beyond that, I hope to keep in touch with them as friends!

Blonde MBA