The Curriculum Conversation

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to spend some time visiting with Dr. Charles Isbell, Jr., the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. Isbell described the innovative way the College of Computing had restructured their curriculum in the face of the declining enrollments in computer science that followed the dot com bubble bust just after the turn of the new century.

After our visit, I gave some thought to how the conversation around curriculum can dictate what we consider. In a nutshell, Georgia Tech has been able to change the conversation about curriculum from “what do you want to be” to “what do you want to do?” In doing this, they have created a flexibility within their curriculum that will allow them to respond to the dynamic environment of computing.

Surprisingly, Dr. Isbell related to me that when they began to consider how they would implement this new curriculum approach, they did not need to create many new classes. (I believe he said they only created two new classes.) They found they only needed to “repackage” their existing curriculum in a new way.

Their new approach makes so much more sense than the old way of thinking! They find that they can now identify specific humanities electives that students should take, because they can relate the elective to what the student wants to do after graduation. Students can now explain to recruiters why they are taking the classes they take, because they understand how the classes prepare the student to do what they want to do. (The old answer to why a course was taken: “Because it’s required.”)

Now, colleges of computing are probably much more accustomed to change than colleges of business are, so translating the idea into a college of business would take some work. But I think in the long run, changing the conversation from, for example, being a finance major to managing the financial assets of an organization, or from being an MIS major to applying technology to solve business problems, could produce a better graduate. Many of my colleagues will argue that they do this already, but it really isn’t how the conversation usually progresses. We tend to talk about majors. We tend to talk in the context of our silos.

Even these changes pale, however, when we really start to think “outside the box.” Imagine envisioning the business curriculum in terms of the interfaces between commerce, government, business, and consumer, rather than majors. This perspective could get us out of the major silos completely. I hope to write more on this idea in subsequent posts.

It Hasn't Been a Vacation

It has been over a month since my last blog post. The reason for the delay has been that I have accepted new responsibilities and now oversee all of the academic programs in the college. I've been busy learning new things that I need to know for this new responsibility.

However, I plan to be back! I hope to have a new post (or two) in December and resume my posting on a more regular basis in the spring.

Thank you for your interest in my thoughts and have a wonderful holiday season.

10,000 Hours

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, makes the case for a person needing to spend 10,000 hours to become expert at the highest level in his or her field. He presents evidence related to athletics, music performance, and professional expertise (e.g., programming a computer), among other fields. (He emphasizes other significant factors that contribute to success, but I’m just focusing on the hours spent working on one’s expertise here.)

This raised the question in my mind of how the 10,000 hours compares to a college education.

Our undergraduate degrees are based on 120 credit hours of course work. A three hour class typically has about 45 hours of “contact time,” that is, the amount of time the student sits in class excluding examinations.

One hundred twenty hours of course work translates to 40 courses (40 courses X 3 credit hours = 120 credit hours for the degree). Realistically, though, only 20 of those courses will be business courses. The other 20 are courses to satisfy general education, humanities, liberal studies, science, and so forth requirements. So, to focus on the hours contributing to business expertise, we have

20 courses X 45 contact hours per course = 900 hours.

Educators like to assume that students spend at least as much time preparing for class as they spend in it, so we might optimistically double our estimate to 1800 hours. (Notably, a lot of class time is not necessarily “active learning,” so perhaps our estimate should be labeled very optimistic.)

Thus, the undergraduate business education results in 18% of the needed experience to achieve expertise at the highest level.

What happens if we add an MBA?

An MBA adds 12 to 20 more courses, depending on the program. At best, we can double our estimate again to get to a grand total of 3600 hours.

This may explain why internships and work experience are such a benefit for business students. Without these, a student has put in only a little more than one-third of the time needed to achieve true expertise in a business field.

Interestingly, if we add a Ph.D. we can get to the magic 10,000 hour number relatively easily. A Ph.D. program is typically like a full-time job for at least 4 years.

40 hours per week X 50 weeks per year X 4 years = 8000 hours. This amount added to the undergraduate and MBA experience easily exceeds 10,000 – and a strong Ph.D. student is truly an expert in his/her dissertation topic area.

In summary, it seems we should encourage our undergraduates to take internships, our MBA students to have work experience, and our doctoral students to approach their work as a full time job. Their prospects will be better – and our programs will benefit from the reputation of our graduates.

Solving the Right Problem

You have probably heard the statement “A question well put is half answered” or something similar to it. John Dewey wrote this in his book “How We Think” about one hundred years ago. In fact, Dewey’s entire sentence is: “A question well put is half answered; i.e., a difficulty clearly apprehended is likely to suggest its own solution, -- while a vague and miscellaneous perception of a problem leads to groping and fumbling.” (page 94)

I would like to focus on the latter part of the quote; a part that rarely, if ever, is considered. In this part, Dewey writes that a vague and miscellaneous perception of a problem leads to groping and fumbling.

We spend a lot of time in business schools teaching students how to solve problems. We don’t spend nearly as much time in undergraduate business programs focused on the nuances of problem formulation. Students in an MBA program are likely to spend time identifying a problem, especially in a case study course, but even there I would venture to say that we spend more time discussing the pros and cons of various potential solutions to a problem than we do examining how to define the problem we confront and what we can learn directly from the process of formulating the problem at hand.

I’m not talking about a course where a student learns to formulate a linear programming problem or a system of equations. I’m talking about having students study problem formulation. Complex problems have many stakeholders. These stakeholders often have competing and / or conflicting objectives. Resources are often limited. The business environment is dynamic and ambiguous. Often, the problems confronted by decision makers in business are not problems that can be solved in terms of a “correct” answer. More likely, the problem may be resolved with solutions that can be characterized as good, better, or best. In some cases, executing an extensive problem formulation process can dissolve a problem through the better understanding we gain as a result of carefully considering what the problem is.

I suspect we could build an entire class on the topic of problem formulation, and make it really interesting by integrating aspects of research techniques, creativity, and critical analysis, among other topics.

After all, solving the wrong problem rarely leads to any good outcomes.

Now More Then Ever

If the title of this post caught your eye as “incorrect” – congratulations!

One of our new challenges in the business school is to convince students that writing still matters. In a world where text messages and “tweeting” make the ability to communicate with new combinations of symbols an asset, we can understand how the ability to write properly could degenerate. I’m no English professor, but I do strive to write properly. By “properly” I mean I try to punctuate sentences correctly, to use the correct word, and to write clearly and concisely.

Lately, students often object when I do not give them full credit on assignments due to writing errors. Over the last few years, the most common error I see is the misuse of “then.” I don’t know why “then” is used so frequently where “than” is the correct word to use.

All professors have their favorite examples of mistakes and I would not be surprised to find a web site devoted to such errors. Such errors can provide great comic relief, but is that what you want your writing known for in a business setting?

A Newspaper Ad

I remind students that they may be known by their written work well before they are known “personally” in a large organization. The memoranda they write could be read by anyone. That usually does not get their attention until I remind them how easy it is to forward an email.

I ask them, “If someone only knew you by your written work, would they want you in front of an important client? Would they feel you will pay attention to detail and manage an important project well?”

I know some of my colleagues do not want to be in the position of grading grammar, but to the extent we can elevate our students’ written work, we will graduate a better business student. Writing skills are important – perhaps now more than ever!

Three Powerful Questions

A lot of business school education focuses on solutions. We teach our students many techniques for solving many types of problems. Outside of a case study course, we don’t get into the area of identifying what type of problem we are confronting very often. It is more often the case that the problem is “given” and we teach students how to solve the problem should they ever run into it (or one similar to it) in business.

I’d like to suggest that we consider integrating three questions more deeply into the business school curriculum.

The first question is, “What problem are you trying to solve?” I have found this to be a very powerful question to ask and to answer. Asking it usually causes a decision maker to stop cold and reflect on exactly what she confronts. Once considered, answering this question usually eliminates a lot of distractions and superfluous options. When we know what problem we are really trying to solve, we gain a focus that we did not have.

The second question is, “What will success look like?” In business education, I feel we should impress upon our students the idea of establishing a metric of some kind (and it need not be quantitative) so that we will know what success looks like. Another way of phrasing this question is, “How will you know you have solved the problem?” but I personally like the idea of framing the question in terms of success. The answer to this question provides criteria for assessing later how good the solution really is.

The third question is, “Who will hate your solution (and why)?” We naturally tend to think of the “good” aspects of a problem solution and all of the people who will be happy with our solution. We don’t spend too much time thinking about who is going to hate our solution and why they will hate it. I believe it is worthwhile to consider this perspective, because it leads us to being more critical of our work. Often, when we take a critical perspective of our work we can identify ways to improve it. We rarely seek to improve a solution that we think is good.

What problem are you trying to solve?

What will success look like?

Who will hate your solution (and why)?

Sweet Spot Decision Making

Perhaps all of us have experienced a situation where we felt that the service we were getting was too slow. Maybe we had some other place we needed to get to, but often it’s a case where we feel that the people who are supposed to be attentive to our needs are not doing their jobs.

On the other hand, sometimes people are too attentive. I arrived at my local coffee bar one recent morning to purchase a coffee for the trip to campus. There was a line, but it was not too long and it was moving at a satisfactory pace. At least, I thought it was. Along came a barista who felt the situation would be improved by soliciting drink orders and having them ready at the cashier for each customer. In short order, several coffee drinks were placed near the cash register and confusion reigned as the cashier tried to determine which drink belonged to which customer. 

What does this have to do with business education? In thinking about these events, it occurred to me that many decision makers in business have problems when they are unable to maintain the right “pace” in their thinking. If they are slow to react, they may miss an opportunity or allow a bad situation to get worse. On the other hand, when decision makers move too quickly, they often hear that they are guilty of short-cutting the normal “process,” or worse, that they have responded with an ill-considered “knee-jerk” reaction.

A key decision making characteristic is operating in the area between “rush to judgment” and “analysis paralysis.”  I call this area the “sweet spot” of decision making. In the sweet spot, decisions are informed and timely. Whether one naturally tends to slow or quick decisions may be attributable to the person’s cognitive style, the person’s risk aversion or comfort, the influence of peers, institutional norms, or possibly many other things. To the extent we can refine the idea of “timely” decision making in our curricula so that we educate students to seek the decision making sweet spot  – decision making that is not too slow and not too fast – I think we will graduate better business professionals.