The Human Side
Last month, I talked about the academic experience of business school so far. As a life long learner (nerd), I have enjoyed every minute of the academic part of my MBA so far. However, I (and, I assume, all other business students) did not pursue business because of its academic potential. Which brings me to the final project of year one at Ross: the Multidisciplinary Action Project, or MAP.
MAP provides all year one MBAs the opportunity to complete an internship-like project with faculty guidance. We work in teams of 4-6 students to solve a business problem for real clients, ranging from start-ups to international conglomerates to non-profits. We are about halfway through our project, and it has served as a welcome reminder of what drew me to business: passionate people and big ideas.
In the classroom, there is usually a right answer: run the numbers, look at the precedents. Business as calculations. But what I’ve seen in my previous jobs, including executing strategy workshops for F500 companies, is that the figuring out the best step forward is never as simple as calculations. There are always deeper, human factors that drive decision making- calculations come later. My MAP has been a valuable reminder of that.
One of the first things we heard from our MAP client was that maximizing revenue or profits was not the top priority for this project. We would not be able to simply run some calculations and deliver the most financially optimized solution. Instead, we had to start by identifying the qualitative priorities for the client- what motivated the people behind this venture? This turned out to be a challenging question to answer, as it is for many businesses- and it was an opportunity for me to draw on my strategy workshop experience. When the client came to meet with our team in person, we were able to delivery a collaborative strategy workshop that helped us define and align on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ for this project. After several weeks of talking past each other due to uncertainty about which direction to take, we were able use the workshop to define the project’s priorities and build a path forward. Now, we can begin to run the numbers and deliver meaningful solutions for the client.
It was rewarding to be able to draw directly from my previous work experience for this project. When I started the MBA, I thought of myself as ‘not a business person’ because there was so much about business that I didn’t know- I barely understood the organizational structure of my own company at the time. But MAP has reminded me that business is about people first, and we all have experiences that we can draw from to contribute to human side of it. Every job (and every team, club, or volunteer experience) provides insight about what works or doesn’t work when people have to collaborate. Don’t disregard your experiences based on where they came from- there is always something to learn and something to offer.
After the workshop, we spent some time learning more about the client’s industry by meeting a local venue owner and attending an industry conference at Ross. These experiences further highlighted the human passion that drives much of business- we heard people who worked in all areas of the industry express a common excitement for the work, the product, and the customers. They were driven to innovate, to support ideas that other people didn’t initially see the value in, and to improve the industry in all kinds of ways. It inspired me to think more deeply about what kind of work motivates me in that way. I don’t have a clear answer yet, but something I do know for certain is that I want to surround myself with people who are excited about their work and the impact they have on the world- that is the side of business that draws me in. The human side.
Thanks as always for reading. Talk to you again next month!