the art of the 90-person conversation
Yesterday in TOM (Technology and Operations Management) we were working on a case about a company that is changing the supply chain as it pertains to the sale of soybeans in India. Without rehashing the details of the case, I had to comment on the discussion that unfolded in our section.
For literally 80 minutes we had the most fascinating, unmoderated, heated conversation about the role of for-profit companies in the development of social enterprise/initiative and the state of economic and agricultural development in India. The best part about this was that it was completely unmoderated. For 80 minutes we ping-ponged around the room, people chiming in with insight or commentary when they felt compelled to do so. And it was, by far, the most interesting conversation (combining both the content and the method aspects) I’ve witnessed in the classroom yet.
It is in these situations, where the United Nations effect of the HBS section really shines. We had people from India setting the scene, giving us both economic and cultural context. We had someone from China commenting about the role (or requirement) of government (or not) in economic development. We had people from Central and South America drawing parallels to those economies. And we had people from various industries talking about the merits or lackthereof of the project at the focal point of the case.
And all of this without much faculty intervention. It was fascinating.
And this is in no way to marginalize what the faculty do here. They are fantastic. But it is nice to see that when the large train of section c goes barrelling down an interesting (and relevant) track, there is the opportunity for the conversation to go on, even if that wasn’t the prescribed lesson plan.
class visits and recruiting
The recruiting season officially kicked off this week. Today we began Company Information Days, where a ton of companies come through campus to give informational sessions and meet&greet students. Despite the bad market for jobs, the Career Services office tells us job postings for RCs (first years) are up 34% this year. Good news, I hope.
Every once and a while, the case method gets really interactive when the protagonist in the case comes to visit class and tell their side of the story after listening to us talk about what they did or should have done for 45 minutes. Today, in LEAD (Leadership and Organizational Behavior), the case was about Jack Welch and his 20 year reign as the CEO of GE. When I showed up in the classroom at 830 this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find Jack Welch himself in the room. He spoke for the last half of class, took questions, talked about the Obama win last night, and otherwise made for what was the most interesting class I’ve been in yet here. That, to me, is the power of the case method.
the feedback continues
We’ve been receiving feedback from our professors about our participation in class over the last few days. Most of mine has been as expected. It’s a bit of a ballet, trying to figure out how to best participate in the case method discussions. There are a whole bunch of things to factor:
- frequency
- quality of comment
- relevance of comment
- advancing the conversation
- contributing to the learning of sectionmates
And all of this while simultaneously actively listening to the conversation, and – oh yeah – learning something.
My feedback in FRC was not so stellar. The note said it had to do more with quantity than quality, but I’m not sure. I keep track of my participation, and I think I may be asking too many questions and not making enough insightful comments. Each professor evaluates participation differently, so I just consider this a good check on my understanding of what profs are looking at which criteria, and now that I know, I can adjust.
I’m a little less concerned with the participation points than I am with whether or not I’m actually learning the material, and I did really well on the midterm exam, so I’m not too worried about the accounting concepts, I just have to master this whole 90-person-conversation thing.
I had an absolutely hilarious lunch with about eight sectionmates today. Was good to get off campus and laugh hard – haven’t laughed that hard in a while.
One more day til the weekend. TOM midterm tomorrow. Flying to Chicago tomorrow night. The show never stops…
first impressions
So far I have been through eight cases and I am currently working on preparing two for tomorrow. And so far I can confidently say that I wish that my education up until this point had been entirely case method. (Except for film school, I’m not sure how that would have worked…)
Being in a classroom for 80 minutes where there is a perpetual ping-pong of conversation going on between prof and student, and also between student and student, has kept me so much more focused and alert than I ever have been during a class before.
So you can tell I’m liking it so far?
The class experience has been different from anything I’ve ever done. From what I can tell one of the other big differences from my past educational experiences is in the preparation for class. I spend lots of time preparing, with the same anxiousness I would have had in high school about making sure my homework was “right.” Except that now that doesn’t matter any more. I can bring in a balance sheet, and if it doesn’t balance, it doesn’t matter (insofar as I’m not going to lose points for it)… as long as I understand the concepts and can reason my way through an argument in class, I’m fine. This is a weird paradigm to get used to.
I finally made time to go to the gym today, and I felt really good afterwards. Think I need to get into the habit of doing that more often.
The people here are beyond amazing. Everyone in Analytics has a wild story about something (whether it’s work, their education, their personal interests…). I’ve had more fun just meeting people in the last few days than I’ve had in a while.
Someone said to me the other night that they’ve heard b-school described this way (and I’m starting to agree):
Where undergrad was a lot of people who looked similar on paper (impressive GPA or extracurriculars, etc.) but were vastly different in terms of personality and aspirations, the b-school crowd seems to be much more similar in terms of personality (no, everyone’s not the same, more on this later) and aspirations and wildly different on paper (in terms of work experience, home country, etc.).
I hope to be able to go into more detail about some of these things soon, but at the moment I wanted to squeeze in an update between case prep and my learning team meeting tonight.
