MBA TOP 6: CLASSES

By some stroke of luck (or maybe greenhouse gas emissions), we're having an unseasonably warm week in February. With temperatures dipping above 50 degrees, I'm starting to think of spring … and summer …

…and unfortunately, the end of my MBA! I can't believe we're about 7/8 of the way there. Everyone says that business school flies by, but to be honest, I didn't really believe them at first (especially with the intensity of the Core Curriculum first semester!) In fact, I recall telling my learning group, one night at 11:50pm when we were gathered around a study room table trying desperately to figure out in our Marketing Conjoint Project, "man, I feel like this will never end…" Now, I eat my words, as the real world waits just around the corner of Broadway and 116!

Academics were an key aspect of the MBA program. Unlike college, there was a much greater dispersion of approaches to academics in the master's program. Each of us came in with a different set of developed skills and a different set of areas we'd like to improve. I personally wanted to develop my technical skills (excel, running analyses, statistical testing, etc.) as well as become a better presenter. Others came into the program with a focus in completely changing careers. As a result, we all valued different aspects of the degree and had different attitudes toward classes. I came to learn - not to get grades - so I'm grateful to have taken such a variety of different classes in terms of both style and subject matter.

These are some of my favorites (in no particular order).

Economics of Strategic Behavior
Professor Angelucci
Type: Case-Based, Elective

This class explores the bases of a firm's profitability with an economics lens (with quite a bit of game theory thrown in). We went through several pivotal cases of firm strategies that blazed the trail for how American corporations operate - or aspire to operate - today. We started with the framework that economic profitability is not just about the ability to form and protect competitive advantages but also operate within an environment of low rivalry and cooperative peers. The former (competitive advantages) is something that I had always looked for when I worked in asset management before business school, but the latter (rivalry) was something that had never even been mentioned in my investment memos.
My mind was absolutely blown by some of the examples of how rivalry has destroyed profitable industries, as well as how some boring sectors thrived and collected huge margins due to the degree to which the firms play a good game: cereal, for example (who'da known, right?) Professor Angelucci was an incredible instructor, who made us think for the entire 90 minutes we were in class. He also has a great sense of humor that comes off as almost inadvertent. For example, one time, when he was teaching us about how companies in collusion were incentivized to "rat out" their peers by getting amnesty for their own price fixing in Europe, one student asked, "wouldn't it be obvious to the public once they read the financial statements, and one company of the peer set doesn't have a fine and the others do?" to which Prof. Angelucci said, "well, they have some way to protect the firm, like maybe they all depreciate the fine over 200 years." Somehow, maybe the way he said it, was so unbearably hilarious. We all cracked up. Now, that's the first (and probably last) time I think a joke about depreciation made me laugh!



Operations Management
Professor Hall
Type: Mixed Case/Lecture, Core

I came into this class with very little knowledge about how "real businesses" that make gadgets and widgets actually work. Having always been in the financial services industry, the only "Inventory" I'd ever seen were printer paper and pens. But I'd always been interested in how retail companies work. I learned so many different ways of thinking about business decisions, and how to think about competing risks (risks of overstocking and spending too much money vs. understocking and not meeting customer demand).

Operations Strategy
Professor Singh
Type: Case-Based, Elective

There is no better way to top off core Operations Management than by taking Professor Singh's sequel, Operations Strategy, which takes the frameworks we developed in Ops Management and applies them to how a business can be profitable (or improve and move toward profitability if it's not already there). Prof. Singh utilized examples from all industries (healthcare, technology manufacturing, etc.) but one of his favorites was the auto industry. Now, I'm the first to admit that I know almost nothing about automobiles and have never owned an automobile (#NYCliving). I still know almost nothing about the sedan-next-door, but I can tell you that I know a whole lot about not only HOW a car company operates efficiently but also WHY.

The 90 minutes of class just flies by because Professor Singh keeps us on the seat of our pants with a combination of cold calls, anecdotes, questions of substance, and of course, carefully timed jokes that have us clutching our sides.

Corporate Finance
Professor Hertzberg
Type: Mixed Case/Lecture, Core

Corp Fin is such a foundational class. I had taken a version of this class in undergrad, but this is very different (and I'm glad that I did not try to take the exemption test to avoid taking this course). Each class builds on concepts learned in previous classes, so there was a high amount of reps behind bond math, calculating the cost of capital of an organization or investor, making decisions on how to allocate money toward projects, etc.

This class really challenged me to think about the drivers behind corporate decisions and question the assumptions behind them rather than accept them as gospel truth.



Strategy Formulation
Professor Meier
Type: Case-Based, Core

I think this is the type of "standard" class that people think of when they think of a general management MBA program. I knew going into it that I would learn a lot, but I was surprised by the sheer number of considerations that firm managers must think of to compete effectively. Professor Meier was an amazing facilitator of discussions, bringing our class forward by asking the exact questions to get us to think on the right track. Then, he pulled it all together to create several large themes of competition - creating and capturing value, intelligent design of corporate scope, anticipating your competitors' next moves to inform your own. These all enabled me to think of business as a dynamic flow rather than stagnant stock.



LEAD: People, Team Organizations
Professor Akinola
Type: Mixed Discussion/Lecture, Core

This class has a really long title (and I'm pretty sure LEAD itself is an acronym) especially for a week-long class, but I think it's completely apropos, because this class covered such a breadth of topics designed to help make us better managers of people, products and processes as well as greater leaders of new thinking. We were all required to take this class as a cluster our first week of the MBA and I learned so much about my classmates - what makes them tick, what they perceive as weaknesses and strengths in organizational leaders.

Professor Akinola also really inspired me from a career perspective. She has a mix of academia and professional backgrounds so she could speak from both hats. She's also been such an amazingly successful as female leader, and I feel lucky to have found a role model at business school, whose successes serve as a guidepost for my own pursuits.

Now that I'm a seasoned MBA class-taker, I've gained a some insights on course selection. If I could go back in time and give myself some advice, it would be this:

• Savor the core curriculum. From a time input perspective, the Core is no joke, and I would be kidding myself if I tried to claim that I got enough sleep that semester. But looking back, the end was truly worth the effort. Four of my six favorite classes, as you can see, are from the core. It was the first time that I had been exposed to so many disciplines all at once. My professors were excellent, and had a mix of academic knowledge and practical prowess. 
• Pick professors, not "course titles." I think there is always a temptation during class bidding time, to choose classes that sound sexy. Something about VC's or startups. Or buzzy buzzwords like "blockchain" or "disrupt." I definitely thought with that frame of mind in my first elective semester, but quickly realized that the classes I found myself diving into most deeply, being most engaged in, and learning the most from, are simply classes that had great professors who can read the class audience and pull the best insights from all the students. Thus, to my own surprise, two of my favorite classes are in Operations, a business area that prior to my MBA, I had written off as "boring." Operations might be the backbone value of businesses at large and often not looked at with the same shining eyes as technology or other growth opportunities, but I happened to have two really tremendous professors - Joe Hall and Medini Singh - who brought the field to life. They showed me the critical importance of managing inventory well and how truly riveting it can be to think about plant set-up as a driver of business success. Well, lesson learned on judging a book by its cover! 
• Case is king. Haha, get it? (Those of you who took Accounting will … it's a spin of "Cash is king.") I didn't realize the value of the case-based class before starting my MBA. I thought, "how could I possibly learn from other folks who are just as inexperienced as me? I'd rather hear the professor talk - he or she is a learned expert in this field." Wrong! The classes that I've enjoyed the most have had some element of case to them. It's not possible for all classes to be solely case-based (e.g., Corporate Finance by default needs some form of basic bond pricing math lecturing), but by and large most classes have found some way to incorporate historical business examples. The value of the case-based class is two-fold: 1) you're hearing perspectives from individuals with varied past backgrounds, 2) you're synthesizing while you're discussing - and you'll remember it forever.