Getting My MBA

I have one class left in my first course. We’ve handed in one assignment (!) and haven’t gotten it back, so it’s a little unclear on how grades are going to work. We have one more paper and the final take-home exam. I guess I better nail’em because there’s no do-over. It seems like our teacher is going to give a lot of A’s, though.

So, here’s a question. Our MBA program is selective, about 30 new students a year, and seems to want to teach us what we’re paying for. Is it grade inflation if we all get A’s and B’s? Or should it be on a curve and flunk out 60% of the already highly qualified students?

We had the same problem here at work. We’ve got an extremely talented and intelligent group. We went through several rounds of RIF (reduction in force, aka layoffs). How do you find a bottom 20-40% to cut when the whole workforce is already in the top 2-3% of the general public? On a side note, somehow I managed to make it through these RIF’s even though I’m far from the most talented person here. I guess I have potential

One week down, two classes complete, and I’m still doing okay. We haven’t had too much homework so far and I haven’t had to use my fancy new laptop (bummer!).

The class is called “Organizational Behavior” and it isn’t at all what I expected. Someone called it an experiential class. I guess that means we discuss in class and don’t do a ton of work outside. Hey, suits me for the first class. I’ve got almost two years left, a gentle introduction isn’t all bad.

We’ve been covering what seems to be very un-businesslike topics. We’ve talked about different states of mind: frantic, distracted, calm, and inspired. There have been discussions about love, spirituality, and family. We watched an excerpt from The Andy Griffith Show and the 1957 classic, “12 Angry Men”.

So what the heck does this have to do with business?

It took me a while, but I think I get it. To be successful in business, you need to be successful with people. At its root, business (as used in “Master of Business Administration”) is commerce or exchange. It’s deals and agreements and negotiation and management, all of which require a deep, fundamental understanding of people and how they work.

I stink at this. That’s why I’m in software engineering.

The class is concerned with the behavior of organizations. Organizations are made of people. People have needs and drives and desires and baggage. The states of mind above have an impact on productivity, among other things. Businesses and their managers care about productivity. I think the point of the exercise so far is two-fold: (1) an organization’s behavior is defined by the behavior of the people involved, and (2) the culture of the organization has a strong impact on the state of mind of the employees which feeds directly into the employee’s productivity and the organization’s behavior.

So, are these graduate-level thoughts? Am I learning anything? If anybody actually reads this, sign in and add your thoughts.

As an aside, human behavior is so fundamental, so global, so unchanging across cultures [1], that I wonder what will happen when we meet a different intelligence (”space aliens”)[2].