International Residency Scouting Trip

EMBA Directors Travel To Consider Future Residencies, Share Ideas

One of the most costly but invaluable pieces of an EMBA program is the international residency, wherein students travel abroad for business immersion in the context of political, historical, and cultural differences. Planning these trips generally requires experience in the market (or a travel partner with that experience, or both) and a solid alumni base to create worthwhile company visits that help MBAs understand both the obvious complexities and subtleties of running global businesses.

To that end and specifically to consider the viability –amid recent bad press--of the UAE and India as international residency destinations, our travel partner Accent Travel/TravelMBA/Worldstrides put together an amazing scouting trip for directors from various US-based EMBA and PMBA programs. Pictured at the Taj Mahal clockwise—me from Vanderbilt (in the white sweater) and colleagues from Thunderbird, University of Arizona, Rice, Duke, Jake at Accent Travel, Uof L, UGA, UNC, Northwestern, Earl (the ring leader from Accent Travel—THANKS!!!), Auburn, UVA, Yale, George Mason, Wharton, and Lauren from Accent Travel.

This extraordinary experience took us on a tour in the United Arab Emirates and India. How can I explain differences between these two worlds?

In Dubai and Abu Dhabi,

• Everything is new since the 1970s—wealth creation via oil, aluminum, and tourism. History in the UAE is written anew almost daily, with a new “first, biggest, best.” Abundance is the word for everything. One sees the tallest building in the world (called Burj Dubai until opening day in January so the signs are already yesterday’s news!), the latest model cars almost exclusively, the most famous horses, the greenest golf course (yes, in a desert, requiring 2 million gallons of desalinized water daily!), the most unique resort properties like the Palm and the Burj Al Arab (pictured), the largest shopping mall with 1200 stores and an indoor snow skiing facility, and the list goes on.


• In Dubai 8O% of people are expats. Everyone speaks several languages flawlessly, and the people are all beautiful. If you want an international career—and speak several languages--this is the place to start. It is a unique global hub that is 40% business (with incredible infrastructure) and 60% tourism. It is known for tolerance. Looking a little closer, this place that defaulted on $6B still boasts zero unemployment; this is kept in check by the requirement for expats to find work within 30 days or leave. And still they come. Yes, there is still plenty going on for this to be a worthy business study.

Then we turned to India. My second trip to this incredible country was made more dramatic by its contrasts to the UAE.

• Few places can compete with the history and mystery of India.


• The faces of poverty are many—but often beautiful. Those that are not are faces of people struggling in the streets in such mass that most Westerners cannot fathom. Real problems associated with managing society and infrastructure provide the most challenging business opportunity for solving the most basic needs—clean water, access to medical care, roadways, housing, etc.


• But the desire to live honorably (in whatever conditions), and the desire to work hard are the rules of this society. No one is idle. Everyone is an entrepreneur on the scale of one's imagination, ability or as dictated by the need for survival. It’s no surprise that some of the best technical minds come out of this place including 400,000 engineering graduates a year.
  
• I had the pleasure of catching up with Alban Cambournac EMBA 07 and his wife, Elise (pictured right) who are French citizens recently moved from Nashville to Bangalore with Schneider and Cognizant, respectively. Their very globally minded children are immersed in a private Indian primary school.


• The Taj really should be on everyone’s bucket list. I will not even attempt to describe it but will say that you have to go; the pictures cannot do it justice. A Wonder of the World, indeed.

I want to publicly and enthusiastically thank all the contributors of time, money, and hospitality in making this trip a possibility for our 14 schools: Accent Travel/TravelMBA/WorldStrides and their on the ground partners Eastbound and Arabian Adventures, Jumeirah Group, Emirates Airlines, Emirates Towers, The Taj, The Oberoi Group, The Sheraton Dubai Creek, Infosys, and Wipro. I have now stayed in the finest hotels, eaten the most amazing food, had my most comfortable air travel experience ever imaginable, and even rode a camel. (He looked a lot more ambivalent than I felt about it.)

In fact, the camels provided the only lukewarm reception to our visit. Although this spring my EMBAs will be in Brazil, yes I will come back to the UAE and India with students.

Ask Your Accountant

While I am not your tax accountant, I do hope you will look into a possible tuition write-off. Recently the "Clarke Decision" ruled in favor of Lori Singleton Clarke, an MBA pursuing the degree to improve existing skills. She was allowed the work-related tuition write off as a qualifying "miscellaneous itemized deduction" within the years she paid for advancing her education. This may be good news for non-sponsored EMBA students, increasingly the rule rather than the exception as corporate sponsorship has taken a break.
Here's why:

Career Enhancing, Not Career Switching: EMBA programs were designed as general management degrees for professionals already deep into career specialties (10-20 years typically), where they need to enhance those skills to stay current and continue moving up their career path to senior leadership. To the extent that students are planning to stay in their field and thus pursue general management programs without concentrations of study in a different field of business, this bodes well for tax implications. (Conversely, many weekday MBA programs and some newer iterations of EMBA programs are designed -- through concentrations or internships or both -- to enable career switchers, typically at a lower experience level.) Improving skills is the key -- the CPA to controller or CAO path, the technical lead to CTO path, the sales director to EVP sales transition, etc. EMBA programs were designed for this upward path, to the extent they still encourage incoming students looking to escalate versus change career direction.

Employer Not Requiring/Sponsoring: The proactive nature of Ms. Clarke's case seems to have helped. She was not required to, but did pursue advanced education related to her job to be better at it. As a bridge against uncertainty in business and the job market, that's smart. I'd rather have an MBA than not in this job market. One of my recent EMBA graduates told me that a large number of her colleagues were laid off, but she was specifically told (in this medium sized company) that she was not, because her MBA would enable her to pinch hit across the organization when the number of employees is down. As she put it, "That's one sort of six-figure ROI that's pretty critical, even if it's not a promotion."

The education cannot lead to a new line of work altogether, from what I understand. In some cases, the marketing executive may be able to write-off the marketing portion of EMBA education and organization management courses if presumably in a leadership role, if not the whole degree. So now is a good time to talk to you accountant and Uncle Sam about continuing in your path and strengthening your position in your field through the EMBA program.

Could You Win the Strategy Jeopardy Challenge?

(See if You’re As Smart as EMBA 2010 Team 2)

Strategy—a two-course sequence that integrates all core MBA knowledge--has long been one of the keys to the Vanderbilt EMBA program. The EMBA Class of 2010 started year two of their MBA program by selecting their strategy client, then tackling Business Strategy. (Strategy Project swings into gear this semester.) But EMBA 2010 finished up a tough final exam weekend in December with a challenging, fun holiday treat: Strategy Jeopardy!

Alex Trebek holds nothing over Professor Brian McCann…with such categories as External Forces, Cite that Case, and Frameworks, he encouraged ten EMBA teams to fight hard to recall what they’d learned and find those elusive Daily Doubles. Mastering the game was Team 2 (pictured) including Craig Brooks, a QA Manager for Wackenhut in Knoxville, TN; Charlie Crowe, Design Engineer a.k.a. “rocket scientist “for KBM Enterprises in Huntsville, AL; Chandra Kumbar, Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology for the Heart Group in Evansville, IN; Brad Tidwell, Design Engineering Manager for ADTRAN in Huntsville, AL; and Aaron Withers, Controller of Batesville Casket in Manchester, TN. They won candy bars wrapped as $1,000,000 bills for their efforts. Tidwell enthusiastically concluded: “I would have been better off with extra credit points for my final Strategy grade.”

And the losing team? That would be Team 3, as explained by David Parks, an ER physician at Medical Center at Bowling Green: “When we realized we might risk all our points, come in dead last and also win a prize, we did the Rational Actor thing as learned in economics. Luke [Professor Froeb] would have been proud.”

---

So, challenge yourself to three questions posed to EMBA 2010 during their final day of Corporate Strategy…would you have bet all your money to win in Final Jeopardy?

1. The fact that around 50% of new business owners rate their probability of success at 100% (and the fact that 86% of EMBAs rate themselves as above average) is an indication of this decision-making bias.
   
   Answer: What is: ___________________


2. This governance form is an interim solution between market transactions and full integration in the firm; often has a learning-related goal.
   
   Answer: What is an: ___________________


3. Staged venture capital investments and joint ventures as a stepping stone to full acquisition both represent this approach that highlights the value of uncertainty and flexibility.
   
   Answer: What are: ___________________

---

If you have a topic of interest you’d like to see on my blog, send me your question or suggestion. I look forward to hearing from you. Happy New Year.

EMBAs Gain Confidence, Lose Cockiness

There’s something to be said for living and working long enough to have failed at something. EMBA students, who are typically in their 30s to 50s, bring their rich employment past and present to the classroom every day. They come to learn not just from faculty, but also from their peers in class, and they all have a lesson or two to teach as well.

EMBA candidates, in their rise to middle management and executive ranks, have had their fair share of life lessons including: things they tried that failed, mistakes they made in delegating to people and managing up the chain of command, learning and knowing which levers to pull and which investments to make that lead to results, reading customers and their reactions. The list goes on. It’s all the soft skills that are the hardest part of any job…execution involving people.

A humble mind is a great foundation for getting more out of your learning environment. Thinking through the different trials of their management and executive jobs, EMBA students bring a refreshing perspective to the classroom and to their peers. They beat one another up in class on Saturdays and explore a wide range of classroom topics sprinkled with current challenges from their work. Then everyone is ready to face their executive team, their investors, their board, their employees and their customers back at work on Monday.

If you are considering the EMBA program, we look to you to articulate what you would be able to teach your peers in class. If you join us, you may show up for Week-in-Residence a little cocky, but it will not last long. The average person in the classroom—a manager/executive with 10-20 years of experience, a strong intellect, and perhaps another graduate degree—will help you realize that everyone in the class is a high achiever who is successful, and a little wiser, because of past successes and mistakes in business.

Because of those mistakes, the MBA has become imperative for each student in their own time. An EMBA program is not about gaining a piece of paper as a credential for a trophy shelf, although the credential is a must in certain fields. It’s about gaining confidence in your ability to see all the angles of a problem. It’s about influencing others, backed by data and a new language for presenting “gut” instincts in a quantifiable way. It’s about sharing best practices with faculty and student peers from different companies and industries that share common problems. It’s the journey toward earning the piece of paper, marked by shared experiences, that’s worth having.

Time Management and the MBA

What does it mean to do an EMBA program and hold down a demanding management job? Each of our 1400 EMBA graduates started their own journey with the question, “Do I really have the time and resources to go back for an MBA now, amid my work and family commitments?”

What they found was a different philosophical question with rewarding answers: What does the EMBA experience do to make you a better time manager? Moreover, how will it affect your work and family ongoing, and how will the world view your accomplishment as a master juggler of multiple priorities? I think of these aspects when I get the occasional question about whether EMBA programs are MBA Lite. Here it’s quite the opposite.

Vanderbilt EMBA students are masters of hard work and earn every one of their 60-credits for the MBA degree without falling down on the job. Vanderbilt EMBAs experience the following:

• A longer week than the typical MBA. Our EMBAs spend 20-25 hours a week on school work after putting in a full work week and class every other Saturday. They test their stamina for this juggle by preparing for the GMAT, experimenting with where 20 hours can be found to get ready for that first of many tests.
• A vacation from volunteer activities. Incoming EMBA students unvolunteer themselves for the next two years from nonprofits, boards, committee chairs, coaching and other activities to clear their schedules for school.
• The ability to avoid time wasters at work. EMBAs practice the economic principle of moving their resources (time) to higher order uses. They manage their time more critically and eliminate nonproductive activities from their day.
• Decisiveness, overcoming the inclination to revisit issues. The ability to analyze thoroughly, make sound conclusions, and move on are hallmarks of the EMBA program’s effect on personal management style. In short, you can’t thrive here if you are the sort of person who gets caught up in analysis paralysis.
• Good practices outside of work and school. EMBA ’05 David Adams talks about how his “family night” consisted, pre-MBA, of his wife and 4 kids all scattered in different rooms. During the EMBA program, this changed to planned events, where the family agreed on a game or movie or activity they could all do together. That lesson alone made the family stronger, and helped him not only get through school but become a more involved parent. That habit continues.
• Respect by employers of MBAs from rigorous executive programs. As EMBA ’87 Corbette Doyle put it: “With so much high potential talent pushing for promotions and so many baby boomers not yet ready to retire, it is important to differentiate. The EMBA program showcases a significant career commitment and critical ability to multitask.” Vanderbilt’s EMBA format and MBA weekday format have the same academic credits and admission requirements leading to the MBA degree so that they are comparable in learning transformation and reputation.

The EMBA experience is time well spent. It’s a juggling act that says a lot about you as the MBA student to manage your time successfully and excel at it all. Picking the right time--for you, your career and your family-- is the next step.

Welcome to my blog

Frequently a number of my current EMBA students, alumni and prospective students—even colleagues—share a concern, a challenge, a situation in common. Often the answer would benefit a larger group. Thus, I will post observations about the EMBA experience, learning moments, executive development tips, suggested readings and links, and other newsworthy information to help you elevate your business to a higher degree.