Participative Business Education

An Operations Rose by Any Other Name...

2011-05-16T07:39:00.000-07:00

We know of several academic institutions in which Operations Management has dwindled, died or been subsumed into other departments. The remains are typically adopted by either decision scientists focussed more on the "supply chain optimisation algorithm" side of things or by Organisational Behaviour/General Management departments. Such a range of approaches makes it hard to come up with a definition; something we tried to do for a recent week-long executive education session for graduate recruits to a global plc. My two favourite offerings were "managing people and processes" and "delivering strategy." I'd like to add "profitability" and "long-term" elements into the mix as well, but perhaps they should be de facto elements of strategy?

The "Who Says? So What?" test

2011-05-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

There is a great art to lecturing intelligent adults. Adept lecturers engage their audience, provoke discussions and debate, and monitor classroom learning and comprehension. An Audience Response System can help dramatically in all these regards. However, most response systems available have been developed with children's education in mind and with base level benefits such as monitoring attendance, easing marking and keeping students' attention. The questioning functionality is therefore often a variation on the multiple-choice mindset, where the answer is either right or wrong, but this tends to lead the student up an anti-climactic dead end! The true value of good lecturing in business education lies in the discussions, opinions, and the trail of decisions; do they hang together in a logical, justifiable way? Several trails might be equally justifiable without there being one "correct" answer. But how does the lecturer craft good questions and avoid falling into the enticing dead-end trap with questions such as "Should ACME adopt strategy A, B or C?" or "What is the net present value of the project?"
The challenge we apply to every prospective in-class voting question we devise is "Who says? So what?" The "who says" reminds us that one benefit of response systems is accountability; everybody is required to express an opinion and can be called upon to explain and defend it. By extension, we ask ourselves whether this would make for an interesting debate that addresses key learning objectives. The "so what?" focusses the mind on the provocative value of the question; where does the discussion go from there and what is the relevance? We continually try to link and cross-reference the answers to related questions to address this concern; a feature we typically use in ABT's "YourView" software as we have yet to find a response system with this depth and richness made accessible or graphically clear. Regardless of the platform you're using however, do please try the "Who says? So what?" acid test for interesting and engaging questions and let us know how many prospective questions get filtered out!

ABT now reselling Turning Technologies' Audience Response Systems

2011-05-16T06:29:00.000-07:00

ABT are now proud to be resellers for Turning Technologies response systems. Turning Technologies UK have proved to be very responsive and helpful, firstly in getting us some of the new, more advanced NXT keypads to trial and also in supplying us with a full set of the smaller LCD units for an executive education class we were running in London (of this, more in another blog item). Whilst sales of Audience Response Systems are not ABT's primary offering, we have acquired a lot of knowledge on systems, suppliers and techniques, during our quest to bring reality into the business education classroom.We have also found many lecturers keen to improve on their lecture theatre interactions but in need of help, support and advice on how to do so. Our own experience has shown the ease with which response systems can be adopted, the readiness of students to use them, but the difficulty of developing questions that bring depth to the thought and discussions. (see Who says? So what? blog item) Response system sales and implementation support therefore seems a natural extension to our offerings. Feel free to contact us if you have any business education response system queries.

MBA Graduates and the Gobal World

2011-02-28T05:29:00.000-08:00

A new report by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) suggests that Business schools are failing to prepare students for careers in an increasingly global world and need to become more strategic about how they weave cross-border content into their programs. I also think that in many schools there is a failure to teach students about the reality (as opposed to the theory) of business in their home countries. The closest many students get to real businesses in varied industries is the case study which is necessarily stylised, focussed on one or two business aspects and usually on a globally known brand. Project work or trips are often little more than spectator events. Access to the realities, pressures, dynamism and complexities of smaller businesses or the role of those at the lower end of the pay scales is rare but vital to understanding how organisations function and where value is created.

The Long-term View and Advocacy Skills

2011-02-28T04:49:00.000-08:00

In his HBR article "Capitalism for the Long Term," Dominic Barton suggests three changes for business leaders to consider to help reform, strengthen and increase trust in the capitalist system, reversing the short-termist tendencies that contributed so strongly to the recent recession: 1) jettisoning their organization’s short-term orientation and changing its structure and incentives to focus on the long term 2) infusing their organizations with the perspective that serving the interests of all major stakeholders is not at odds with the goal of maximizing corporate value 3) and bolstering boards’ ability to govern like owners.
As always, my primary interest lies in the role and effectiveness of Business and Executive education in this context. I find it hard to believe that business schools can do much either to improve on the moral compasses already developed in their students before their arrival, or to influence them to swim against the prevailing tidal power of shareholders, markets, and the awarders of salaries and bonuses. However, the aim of many business schools is to provide students with skills such as critical thinking and advocacy which will stand them in good stead promoting their beliefs and convictions to both internal and external audiences. The case study teaching method is an excellent pedagogical approach to giving students these skills, although an experienced lecturer we know at a top business school recently estimated that he had provoked every member of a large class to engage in debate and comment during his lecture. His teaching assistant who had been tasked with monitoring all contributions had a data-backed figure of nearer to 25% of the class contributing! The challenge to the lecturer is intense, requiring him/her to teach, engage in discussions, provoke all students to contribute and monitor/assess the quantity and quality of individual contributions. It is also always the most opinionated, confident and vocal students who tend to dominate class discussions, rather than necessarily those with good, interesting or engaging opinions. ABT has found Classroom Response Systems an excellent tool to assist lecturers, not only to monitor/assess student inputs, but more profoundly to provoke debate, opinions and advocacy skills amongst the students. Requiring all students to offer their opinions by keypad not only usually shows them that they are not alone in their opinion, but also lets the lecturer choose members of opposing positions to offer up support their positions in class. Asking students to re-vote to see who has been the more persuasive plays to the competitive nature of most MBA students. Allowing the response system to take some of the strain then allows the lecturer to focus on the class interactions and the quality of the understanding and skills gained.

The MBA Universe

2011-02-14T00:42:00.000-08:00

'Interesting article by Carly Chynoweth in the Sunday Times yesterday (13/02/11) about the struggle of MBA schools to maintain global reputations. The main thrust is on the appointment of big-hitters as Deans, as well as mentioning the need for "innovation in teaching, in course construction, in faculty mix and so on..........there is a real need for change." The listed goals for these leading institutions make for interesting reading;

Creative thinking, responding to a changing environment, collaboration with government and business to tackle big and complex problems, practical relevance of the teaching and research, offer a deep understanding of China and global breadth, to become an international brand associated with helping businesses create a better society as well as wealth for shareholders, innovation in education programmes, preparing students for leadership, educate leaders who will build strong organisations and use the power of the markets to make society better, targeting new markets including the Middle East and Africa.

These are all (arguably) appropriate goals for the institutions and some are laudable, but they are predominately externally focussed. What I would be most interested in is to know what knowledge, skills and experience they believe the students should acquire during their MBAs and how the curricula and teaching methods will change to deliver appropriate education.

The tendency to do before thinking.

2010-11-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

The following came my way this week. I won't attribute it until the author approves me to do so, but I find in it a lot of truth beautifully expressed.
"It seems to me, nowadays that people have a tendency towards doing stuff, or (sadly) being seen to do stuff, because that is what is expected, rather than perhaps taking a few extra moments to think about what is the right stuff to do, and then doing that. You can't see people thinking, it doesn't look like it's adding any value, the world is no different immediately after the thought than it was before.
In this action-oriented world we live in, give a man a spade, he'll start digging. The hole he digs won't look like the hole he wanted to dig, he may not even have thought he would dig a hole when he woke up that morning, but it will look like the hole he thinks the person who gave him the spade would want him to dig. So the hole is complete. What should he do? He's invested in a spade and all that time and effort into the hole, better use it - in he jumps! So there he is, he's got a spade, a hole and he's in it. What next? .....Keep digging. Rarely do people dig upwards!

Linking the Participative Learning to the Academic Theory

2010-11-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

I never cease to be impressed at the richness of business learning to be extracted from running "Discovery." We ran Discovery for Dr. Kate Blackmon on her Operations Management course for Oxford undergraduates. For those of you not familiar with Discovery, it is ABT's participative micro-business in the classroom. This time around 20 students ran the business, purchasing constituents, accepting or rejecting orders, creating four products and delivering them to the customer. The teaching session lasted 3 hours, during which the students engaged energetically with the activity, successfully running three ten-minute business "months." Problems were discussed and improvements made between runs, and a profit achieved in month 3.
Dr Blackmon will be holding a review of the learning encapsulated and I know that she regards Discovery as a great "capstone" to the operations course as it uses the principles of active learning to demonstrate so many of the subjects covered during the course. We used the generic configuration and some of the learning elements include: the difficulties of change managment, using data to confirm beliefs, organisational inertia, process integration, the values of and problems with forecasting, supply chain lag and IT, workforce initiative and inherent knowledge, vendor managed inventory, the implications of contracts and pricing, quality management, customer service, and the accessibility of the business operations via the management accounts.
What interests me is how best to formally connect the paricipative learning to the acadmemic frameworks; integrate it with the simulation? But this risks losing the momentum and enthusiasm generated. Alternatively, formally review the learning points after the simulation. If so, what time frame should this happen in -same day/week/month? What materials from the Discovery session are most useful to recall the participative elements most vividly to mind - graphs, financial data, video? Should these be provided in the intervening gap and what analysis or coursework should be required of the students?

Experimental Interactive Learning in Industrial Management

2010-11-18T07:13:00.000-08:00

Prof Alastair Nicholson of ABT presented at the above conference in Milan back in June this year. The title of the paper, co-written with Steve New and John Schirn, was "Experience-Based Learning: Conditions for Success from Ten Years of Trials." The paper is based on the use of the "Blueheath" multimedia interactive case study and of "Discovery" business simulation in various industries and at noted business schools such as London and Said. Both Discovery and Blueheath are founded on the principles of Experiential Active Learning and target improved business education through bringing reality into the classroom. A pdf of the conference papers is published by Politecnico di Milano.

Oligopoly at Saïd Business School

2010-11-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

Another great lecture from Mungo Wilson yesterday at Saïd on the Nash Equilibrium. He used ABT's "Oligopoly" as the participative simulation which drove home the realities of economic theory. I am always pleased to see the enthusiasm and attention generated amongst the participants and, given free reign over their pricing decisions, how at least some of the industries always tend towards the Nash equilibrium as theory suggests they should. It's also very informative to watch the successful and unsuccessful attempts at collaboration and collusion - some very demonstrable Organisational Behaviour theory in practice!

New Brand

2010-11-12T16:14:00.000-08:00

We are delighted with our new brand graphics delivered by BlueFlameDesign this week. Matt Bennett was extremely patient and diligent, helping us to arrive at a strong brand identity that is adaptable and readily applied to our presentations, printed materials and projected content. The bars also replicate some of the graphical depictions of data and opinions gathered via our keypads. All in all we are delighted. 'Really looking forward to the new website designs!