Being Married To An Accountant The following exchange is a typical example of how being in business school can cause... Read>> Posted September 13, 2008
Last Rose of Summer The last few days have been rainy and cool. The days are getting shorter. And... Read>> Posted September 11, 2008
CREATIVE WAYS TO STRETCH YOUR MIND Threading The Needle Between Hiking, Drawing, And Innovation It's been more than a few weeks so I thought I should give at least one more update while I'm still "technically" an MBA student. This is exam week and I still have a paper, a presentation, and a final exam before I am finished with the coursework for my MBA.
Crazy times have always seemed to follow me everywhere I've gone but these past two years... Wow. It's been crazy enough that I think I need a carriage return.
I started blogging about my MBA experiences as a way to force myself to reflect occasionally. Pulling myself up for air every know and then has done me some good but it's not really enough - long term. That's what this post is about.
In order to build a habit of reflection and innovation into one's career, life, or organization, one has to be willing to make a serious commitment to it. Time, money, energy and (more importantly) heart are needed to protect against boredom and predictability. This past week I led a group of students from Darden (and one from the philosophy PhD program) to a conference in Washington D.C. on the topic of "building innovation into the way we teach and train".
This conference was hosted by ISA and featured keynote speakers from IDEO, mediasauce, and MARS (yes, the candy company).
The conference was broken up into several small working sessions and we always had an artist with us - recording our conversations on buge pieces of paper. It was awesome, BTW. For a great perspective on the event CLICK HERE for pictures from the event. There is way too much to talk about for a blog post, but suffice it to say that we were challenged to look at our "normal" business world in new ways - as a way of life.
Another thing that happened last week was a fabulous hike Megan and I took to Crabtree Falls - here in Virginia. The image above is of Megan's glasses at the top of the Falls. We hiked up (1500 feet of vertical), had a spectacular picnic lunch with our feet in the cool stream at the top and changed our perspective.
For some reason that hike was the first time it began to dawn on me that my time here at Darden is drawing to a close. The metaphor "drawing to a close" is itself interesting because it implies that these last two years have occurred on a stage - and maybe that's the case.
I feel like I have been viewed from every possible angle, inspected for weaknesses, critiqued, challenged, beaten down, and then picked back up to "take it from the top"... As I sat at the top of that magnificent waterfall and looked out across Virginia I finally got a chance to remember things that don't have anything to do with Business.
* Like how much I love my wife.
* How important the outdoors are to me.
* The unique blessings of being in college during one of the worst economic crisis in our nation's history.
* Etc...
Whether it's by myself at the top of a waterfall, in a group setting in Washington, or alone in a sculpture studio (I remember those days too) I am more convinced than ever that Socrates was onto something when uttered those immortal words in Apology:
Here is an interesting quote from the very popular NY Times article - full article here
"For all of the emphasis on analytical rigor in business schools today, another major recommendation of the foundations’ reports from the 1950s — that business become a true profession, with a code of conduct and an ideology about its role in society — got far less traction, said Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands,” a historical analysis of business education.
Business schools, he said, never really taught their students that, like doctors and lawyers, they were part of a profession. And in the 1970s, he said, the idea took hold that a company’s stock price was the primary barometer of success, which changed the schools’ concept of proper management techniques."
The reason this article got me thinking is intertwined with a recent conversation I had with a fellow Darden Blogger - Bill Gray. We were arguing back and forth (in the pleasant sort of way that Academia is supposed to operate) about the strategy of MBA programs.
At one point in history MBA programs were concerned with the "big ideas" in life. Evidence of this can be found everywhere on the Darden campus. Quotes from Jefferson, Colgate Darden, and others emphasize the practical nature of this program, with the importance of having unimpeachable character and values, simultaneously. In other words, when Darden was founded Business School leaders were concerned with leadership. I think Darden is still concerned with leadership but, perhaps, this current crisis might still be a good moment to stand back and evaluate whether or not we have come too far towards "increasing average salary" and away from "increasing potential for making positive change".
Far too often I find myself thinking that the goal of B-School is to make me more money. Obviously this should be the case but we can't let this be our purpose, our end goal, without risking becoming another Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling. People that primarily seek money will probably find it (especially with a top-tier MBA) but B-Schools should fight this mindset through their curriculum.
In answer to the NY Times headline question, "Is it time to retrain Business Schools", I think the answer is yes. As an educational "industry" yes. Darden, luckily, is already well advanced in this area with the Olson Center for Applied Ethics and strong Ethics focus throughout our program. However, if this isn't a time for soul-searching (for everyone) I don't know what is.
Areas where we still need to improve:
1. Explain the purpose of an MBA (don't just describe what it is - say what it is for)
2. Spend more time developing tools for determining what good and bad decisions are really all about.
3. Develop a set of common Business values - so that we can all rally around something to get us out of the mess we're in.
4. Find out how to avoid give evil people MBA's. Obviously this is tricky, but somebody has to own up to the fact that giving evil people an MBA certification -that they have "mastered" the profession of business- is a disgrace to the entire profession.
That's all I've got today, but I wanted to respond quickly to this article before tomorrow. Very soon I will be back with pictures from my Darden trip to the Czech Republic. Posted March 17, 2009 COMMENTS: (1)
Q7, WINTERS, AND A CZECH DBP Between school, home, and school - blogging takes a back seat As loathe as I am to admit my own faults - something needs to be said. I am not living up to the expectations I set out for myself. I'm taking 7 classes, helping lead Darden Christian Fellowship, helping lead our 2nd year gift campaign, helping plan a faculty-student fireside chat, trying to find a way to get some skiing in (above with Megan), planning for an upcoming Darden course in Brno-Czech Republic, chairing an innovative committee to promote Darden in Charlottesville, and hunting for a job. Something HAS to give...
It was blogging.
Yeah, I know. This is poor form for a guy who supposedly leads the Darden Blog Team, but you know what? It was the least painful thing to let slide. I say all of this as an elaborate way of apologizing for my lack of blogging focus.
It's not that I haven't been writing a lot -I have- but it just hasn't been online. It's been for school. And taking a page from a friends playbook, I think I will begin posting excerpts from papers that I'm handing in on this blog. What do you say?
I can see the danger in moving too far away from the usual "chronicle my life" style of blogging that I typically do but, on the other hand, I often feel like this blog could benefit from discussions about people like Thomas Jefferson, Chinua Achebe, and Kazuo Ishiguro - all of whom I have been writing quite a bit lately.
In any case, I'm rambling. Expect me back soon with excerpts from several random papers. I'm sure it will be riveting.*
* - tongue planted firmly in cheek Posted February 18, 2009 COMMENTS: (2)
WILL I GET USED TO IT? Trauma, Drama, and Emotions at the Gravity Lounge I guess I should go to more concerts. For the first time in something like three years I went to a live show on Tuesday night. For those keeping track, the band was the two-member Jon Foreman/Sean Watkins side-project band Fiction Family. The harmony of word and deed between these guys' music, their vibrant personalities, and poetic lyrics was so great that, after the concert was over, I had to just stand in place pondering the contrast between this experience and the past few weeks in my traumatic (but good) Business Ethics through Literature class. Both experiences featured love, life, death, murder, revenge, loss, triumph, happiness, etc. but the impact on me couldn’t be more different.
A quick comment on the two guys in the concert. First of all, Jon Foreman. His band Switchfoot has sold more than 5 million albums, gone on several world tours, and played for sold-out stadiums for over a decade. Secondly, Sean Watkins' band Nickel Creek has won a Grammy, had multiple Platinum albums, and just been equally successful as Switchfoot. These two guys, however, seemed like the most normal people I've ever met. After the concert I stood around and chatted with them about loss, love, faith, and the inevitable doubts that creep into my mind whenever I think about the stuff they write about. They seemed completely comfortable talking about things that I find difficult bringing up at Darden - in the company of friends... How do they get the courage/strength/sensitivity to discuss this stuff from a stage? All over the world? To audiences that are frequently much larger than the 120 people at this concert?
Apparently, they think that sensitivity and honesty are the key. Foreman reminded me that he doesn't say the same things with Switchfoot that he does when he’s touring with Sean, and that part of the reason for this is that Switchfoot’s happy/upbeat medium is not the ideal platform for the content Fiction Family is addressing. He believes his message (lyrics) and medium (music) have to BOTH be in harmony to expect to have the maximum impact on people in concert.
This is a stark contrast to the way many of the authors I’ve been reading lately try to impact the reader. I have been reading from this very different and difficult genre lately because I am taking an ethics class that uses literature as its textbook. I frequently enjoy the class, but one thing that has still been bothering me is the way that we are frequently subjected to extremely traumatic stories. This is seemingly justified by a belief that any potential emotional, sexual, or psychological damage caused by searing the purpose of the reading onto our minds is justified by the resulting good caused by walking away with a better understanding of literature, life, morality, or whatever.
I guess my concern is that this "searing" process is causing damage to my ability to empathize and feel pain when exposed to a similar situation in the future. For example, both professors in my class (it is team-taught) read certain passages without much difficulty – the very same passages that haunt my thoughts and keep me awake at night. Likewise, certain sexually graphic scenes strike me with a force that derails my thought process for pages afterwards... many classmates of mine, however, seem to be not bothered much at all by these very same scenes and remark that since they have read stuff like this in the past they are able to calmly read these passages simply for the message of the story and then walk away without any dramatic feeling of guilt or pain.
This reminds me of a story from my childhood. When I was a kid our home was frequently under construction as we built additions and remodeled rooms. Since I was the eldest boy in the house, I liked to “help out” dad and this frequently meant holding large pieces of plywood steady as he ran them through his table saw. We never used hearing protection because in the 80’s and early 90’s we just didn’t have the safety culture that currently exists. In my very early years, I would cover my ears and watch as my dad made those terrifying cuts that seemed so awesome to me at the time. While he was focused on the task at hand, he could still see me holding my ears and would kind of chuckle at my childish sensitivity. Later on, however, when I became a teenager, it became more important to keep the wood straight and he began to get annoyed with my ear-holding tendencies. Once, as a board was getting bound up in the saw-blade and I was holding a board with only one hand while valiantly trying to cover both ears with my other hand, my dad got annoyed. “Christopher, stop covering your ears!” he yelled over the sound of the sawblade, “it hurts at first, but you’ll get used to it in a few minutes, and I need your help”. I dutifully obeyed and, much to my amazement, in just a few minutes I was able to work without covering my ears and could focus exclusively on the task at hand. I was elated and, as a result, learned much about making good clean cuts without cutting off your fingers - knowledge I retain to this day. Unfortunately, I also retain something else to this day (as does my dad). Permanent hearing loss. The dulling of the pain we experienced is a direct result physical damage to the eardrum, which is, as far as my knowledge of modern science goes, irreparable.
Similarly, due to luck, laziness, and perhaps a bit of personal effort I have, apparently been “sheltered” from the level of pornographic/psychographic literature (both sexual and violent) that most people have been exposed to and still feel pain when reading literature of a traumatic nature. I suppose Fairchild and Freeman are now “getting me up to speed” with the rest of the world, but I wonder what the effect will be. Do I really need to be beaten up with graphic literature to learn that black people have a hard life? Or that people in a ménage á trois find it perfectly normal and/or fun? That women are often disadvantaged and shut out from the power structures available to them? Or that racism is still alive and well in these United States of America? I know these things are true, and I appreciate the value of hearing these stories told… Still, if I am now on the road toward being desensitized and I know that there is a finite amount of experiences that will ever impact my soul this deeply, shouldn’t I jealously guard my limited quantity of “ability to feel”?
To bring it around to what I’m thinking right now, I guess it just seems like I was equally impacted with the sadness of murder and/or loss after attending this concert (in which many of us were driven to tears by a particular song) as I was by the tales of death/loss in stories I’ve read so far. But one seems to scar my faculty of feeling while the other seems to leave me more likely to empathize and more able to feel, as opposed to the numbing state of shock I feel after reading (for example) Going to Meet the Man
That’s all I’ve got today. But I thought I’d share. For more information about Fiction Family, check out this article on them in a recent Wall Street Journal “Foreman and Watkins’ Dynamic Duo”.
Posted January 29, 2009 COMMENTS: (2)
SNOWED UNDER My search for beauty in this bleak B-School landscape Well school is certainly back in session. Yesterday marked my return to classes for the 7th quarter of my MBA education and, for better or worse, it felt like a cold splash of water to my face, emerging from the comfortable slumber of winter break.
I chose my classes this quarter on the merits of what they could teach me about the intellectual life of a manager. Maybe that's overstating my goals... In any case, I wanted to learn less technos type stuff (how to run a DCF analysis, how to construct a strategy map, how to conduct conjoint analysis, etc.) and learn more about managerial logos, that is, develop better instincts about how to make good managerial decisions.
This decision came to me late in vacation and concurrent to a short hike I took with my family in the hills near where I grew up. There was snow everywhere and so it was quite difficult to find the things that I would normally photograph. No flowers, rocks, animals, or moss were visible anywhere, so I was forced to pull back and focus, instead, on the big picture. It was only when I pulled back like this that I began to notice things (like the dead weed above in the picture) that were good-looking enough to photograph. These things had always been there (and were actually much larger than the small things I normally focus on) but were suddenly brought into sharp relief. As I began taking pictures of the weed above, a few old trees, and the snow everywhere, I started thinking about how I have been very focused on the little things in my MBA as well, and should probably consider taking some time to focus on the bigger picture this quarter.
Which brings me to where I am today. Q3 - 2009 on Tuesday, January 13th. I am currently enrolled in a Darden Business Project - doing strategy consulting with the Virginia Wine Industry and writing a case for Managerial Communications based on my time at Lehman Brothers. I am also taking classes on Innovation, Business to Business Marketing, and two classes on Ethics: Religion in the workplace, and Leadership ethics.
Next quarter, to wrap up my MBA, I have several "technos" oriented classes planned to round things off, but for now I am content to pull back a little bit and ask some of the more difficult questions that have been haunting me. This, it seems, is the thing to do when you feel snowed-under with technical facts, historical lessons, and best practices: pull back and try to find a way to apply all of this information to the real world.
After all... it strikes me that this is one of the few things that MBA students do too little of - find a way to use their skills and technical abilities to make the world a more beautiful place.
Even if that's too lofty a goal, maybe I could at least keep the world from becoming more ugly. I think few would dispute the fact that we need less Bernie Madoffs and more Warren Buffets in the world. The thing that makes them different? It's not their technical abilities. It's their ability to see the big picture and act in its long-term best interest.
I'm just trying to find the beauty in all these numbers, spreadsheets, and formulas. I'll let you know how it goes. Posted January 13, 2009 COMMENTS: (0)
EPIPHANY - EUREKA! Welcome 2009, you seem nicer than 2008 already I'm sitting in my own house in Charlottesville VA listening to Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan" album, drinking Columbian coffee, and wishing the sun would come out. I can't really imagine a better way to kick off blogging in 2009, so here we go...
Today is epiphany day, a day when many Christians all around the world celebrate the wisdom of several Eastern kings who brought gifts to the infant Christ. For everyone else though, today is simply a drab, gray day in the middle of winter with no hope of spring yet in sight.
To break the grip of this post-Christmas depression and, simultaneously, celebrate the last day of Christmas (the 12th day) and prepare for a holiday that I usually ignore, I decided to cook dinner last night for my wife. The only problem is that we got a little out of control in setting the menu. This frequently occurs to a lesser degree, but rarely to the extent that we encountered last night. Megan decided she really wanted to roast up a few acorn squash that we had lying around from the fall. This would have been sufficient in itself, but it continued to grow from there. Somehow Megan's zeal to make the "best acorn squash possible" led her to a recipe that included a new grain for us - quinoa (*pronunciation help: keen-wah). To make a long story short I ended up making roasted acorn squash stuffed with mushroom quinoa, parmesan cheese, and hazelnuts. This was accompanied by pork loin chops with a peppercorn demi-glace and green beans. I think I used up every plate, bowl, and pan in the house, but it was quite good and VERY different. In addition, Megan served pomegranate cocktails before dinner and the strong tanins from the fruit went very nicely with the creamy and earthy flavors in the rest of our meal.
In other news I woke up and needed a good jog to pull myself out of bed and shake my body out of a food-induced coma. Sometime as I was jogging in the country near my place I remembered it was 2009 now... Which is weird, but factual, so I figured I should cooperate with the new year by making a few predictions for future.
1. There is a 2000 point, single day rally in the DOW sometime during the year.
2. Christof Meyer gets a job
3. One of the Meyer siblings makes a major art sale (my brother and sister also make art)
4. Real estate speculation begins anew - with a vengeance.
5. I find myself embarrassed by my ridiculously poor golf game.
6. Another year of weird (but not hot) weather vexes meteorologists everywhere.
7. Megan and I buy our first new car.
Ok, that last one is a little bit "out there" but what fun are predictions if they aren't fairly crazy?! With regards to my current efforts on an MBA, I'd "predict" I graduate, but since it's a virtual certainty, I don't think it counts.
Yeah...
Well, Sufjan has been singing about something I can't understand for the last 25 minutes and so I really should get going. I hope everyone had a good holiday and enjoyed a slightly slower pace for a few days. I am back online now and should be back on my normal blog-writing schedule. I'll see many of you soon.
God bless the rest of you. Posted January 06, 2009 COMMENTS: (5)
