What a great evening!

Really enjoyed the night with my wife. Great cause, great entertainment, great networking, great organization!

The event was held at the House of Sweden, on the Potomac waterfront in Georgetown. There were celebratory speeches, acknowledgement of this year’s recipient of Distinguished Alumni Award, hors d’oeuvre, open bar (take a note, if you ever have to attend an event at this venue – no red wine is permitted, apparently for the sake of the floors),  and performances by current students and alumna.
I was really surprised and pleased by the quality of the band  that comprised GWSB MBA students. The guys were really amazing. My personal favorite was their rendition of the Beatles songs, though they had more in their repertoire, including American classics.

This reception reminded me about another event I attended with my wife in my first year of part-time program – MBA Gala. No contest here – Business Gives Back night was hands down a much more rewarding experience.

Other than enjoying the music and dancing, I was glad to catch up with a bunch of people I met before in my elective classes, as well as meet quite a few new faces – mostly the first-year full-time Global MBAs.

I even met the guy who almost dismantled me from the dubious position of being the oldest student in full-time and part-time MBA programs at GWSB . He is still a couple of years younger than me. But he nevertheless beat me in one regard – he started full-time program, not part-time, at the age just over 40. Kudos!

To learn more about the event, read this more official report on the evening, and my original post about it.

If there were one thing I personally could do differently – I should have skipped the after party at the nearby bar .

Written by Brian Fitzgerald, VP of Digital Strategy at O’Rourke Hospitality

In late 2007, early 2008 I started to prepare to go back to school and get my MBA in the Washington DC area. I researched the various schools, weighed my pros and cons and took the GMAT. When all was said and done I was deciding between the part-time program at Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and The George Washington University School of Business. I ultimately chose George Washington partly because, at the time, it was less credit hours (and therefore less expensive) but more importantly I felt that it was more flexible and less rigid than the cohort approach at Maryland. In September of 2008 I began my journey.

When I started at GWU I was working for a small Internet marketing agency in Chevy Chase, MD. The two owners of the company both had their MBAs and so I had some assumptions about the value they might place on an individual that also had an MBA, but prior to my beginning there was never any discussion or direct evidence that it would lead to more responsibilities, salary, etc. In February of 2010, about 18 months into the MBA program, I got a promotion at work to take on additional responsibilities. I’d like to say this promotion was related to my MBA studies, but it wasn’t, it was because I proactively asked for the additional responsibilities, hounded the owners about it and they somewhat begrudgingly gave it to me. Yes, it was a strange situation but I was happy to have more responsibilities.

Right around this same time our small company had been acquired by a much larger, publically traded company. Soon the two owners were out and a new President from the parent company was in charge of the day-to-day operations. For about a year I had the opportunity to work closely with the new President and he was very open to hearing about my work experiences and MBA studies. I could tell that he liked that I was taking the initiative to go to school part-time and I could tell that he saw value in an MBA.

After that first year with the new President he promoted me to be part of the 6 member executive team, taking on a larger department of people and responsible for helping creating the strategy for the company. This promotion happened right around May of 2011, right when I was finishing my MBA program. I have since left that company in DC and moved back to my hometown of Boston where I’m working for a small marketing agency called O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing. My job is working directly with the two owners to grow a new business unit from the ground up.

All in all I completed my part-time MBA in under three years, secured a 3.7 GPA, all while working 50+ hours a week. As I look back on it those were actually some pretty miserable years. I say that partially joking, but partially serious. I was very stressed, relatively unhealthy and didn’t have time for many of the things I would typically enjoy. However, I’m glad that I did it and think that I proved a lot to myself in the process.

For what it’s worth, because I know sometimes people ask about the ROI of investing in an MBA, between when I started the MBA in September of 2008 and now (January 2012) my base salary has increased 58%. I really couldn’t say if that is average or above/below average, but I’m very happy with it.

Going into my decision to get my MBA I never really had expectations for the short-term, it was always more of a long-term strategy for later on in my career. I knew that it was something that I would probably need later to progress but something that I needed to do before my wife and I started to have a family. However, in retrospect I think it did help me get promoted at my job in DC and I think it positioned me very well for the job and responsibilities that I have now.

I just bought two tickets for me and my wife to the 2-nd Annual Business Gives Back event that will take place this coming Saturday. If you are in the GWSB community and somehow missed multiple prompts and invitations to this event in the busyness of your days, you still have a chance to register and buy tickets online till tomorrow. Here are just a few highlights of this event from the invitation flyer and other promotional materials:

• In line with the George Washington School of Business pillars: “Act Responsibly, Lead Passionately, Think Globally,” Business Gives Back is a student-led initiative celebrating a commitment to responsible business and social change.
• Three student-led initiatives will be selected by a student panel to compete for the funds raised at the event. The initiatives showcased must be nascent nonprofits or community service groups founded or led by current GWSB students that, as a reflection of the GWSB pillars, make a positive impact within the D.C. and global communities.
• An evening of music and fellowship recognizing community initiatives led by George Washington University School of Business students and alumni.
• The evening will feature musical performances by current GWSB graduate students. Cocktails and refreshments will be served.
• Remarks by Dean Guthrie and Dean Riddle

I hope to take a few pictures and have a brief report on the event afterwards. For me, in addition to supporting a good cause, it will be another opportunity to network with my fellow MBA, and undergrad students, as I acknowledged before the lack of such opportunities for part-time MBA students due to busy schedules.

See you there!

This post is just a brief introduction to the article I am preparing for publishing tomorrow. I am planning to have stories from the GWSB MBA alumni published on this site. Basically, I am interested to hear from them about:

• why they decided to pursue MBA in the first place, why part-time, why GWSB
• their overall experience with the part-time MBA program at George Washington University School of Business
• what value they were able to extract from the program (if any)
• how/whether the program helped them in their post-MBA career, or other goals they had set for themselves
• whether the program met their expectations
• whether they got the expected ROI for their MBA degree
• any positive highlights
• any grievances they might have
• any advice they could give to current and prospective MBA students

These are just general guidelines I will request them to consider in order to help them formulate their posts, not a rigid format. So far I reached out to one of my classmates, Brian Fitzgerald, with whom I had one class together – Consultative Processes – in Fall 2010 term. We also worked with him on a group project in that class. Brian has graciously agreed to write about his experience and tomorrow you will have a chance to read the first guest post on this blog. Hopefully, I will be able to invite more of my classmates to participate in this new project at my blog, and Brian’s post will be the first in the series of alumni stories. I am actually also going to ask some of the students from the full-time MBA, called Global MBA at GWSB, and see if any of them would be interested to share their stories. I hope these stories will be interesting not only for me, but for all readers of my blog who are considering the MBA degree in general, and part-time MBA option in particular, whether it is in GWU School of Business or any other Business School.

Today was my first day of classes in the final term of part-time MBA program at George Washington University School of Business. I had two classes piggy-backed from 4.30 PM to 9.40 PM. I don’t have classes for the rest of the week in the first Spring Module, so it seems like a reasonable workload. But in the second module I will have two more classes added during the week. At that time it will be very much like taking  an equivalent of a full-time MBA student load for seven weeks. The only consolation is that by mid-May it will all be over – I will become one of about a hundred thousand freshly-minted MBAs graduating this year in the USA alone. Huge company!

The classes I had today are Organizational Processes and Change Management and Global Corporate Responsibility. Both are 3-credit classes full-term long. In my post Rate My Professors – Validated! I mentioned that all my electives for this final term I selected strictly on the ratings of professors at ratemyprofessor.com. Of course, I am interested in the subject matter itself. But if it was not for a good instructor I would choose different class of my interest. I also got additional endorsements from some of the classmates who had already taken these classes. My rationale was that for the final term, when I do have a choice, I wanted  to have the best professors I could get, so I could enjoy the classes and enjoy myself in those classes.

So far I am very happy about my choices. Though the classes will require quite a lot of work, I am OK with it, because both professors are very knowledgeable and well-qualified for their respective subjects. And what is even more important, they are very passionate about their subjects and seem to care a lot about students. Also, both classes were very engaging and interactive, inviting a lot of interactions between everyone in the classroom.

Aside from academics, I was glad to see and briefly chat with about five of my classmates from previous classes and other engagements, including a guy I met earlier through this blog. All in all, I am excited to be back on campus and am looking forward to a great Spring term ahead.

Last summer we had a family vacation in Riviera Maya, Mexico. We stayed at a resort some 50 miles south of Cancun proper. I even had a brief post Cancun Vacation with some pictures back in summer. During that vacation we had one day trip to Cancun and among other things we stopped by at La Isla shopping mall to walk around, get Starbucks (what else can you expect from self-absorbed Americans staying abroad ), and get a breath of urbanized civilization after a week in our remote resort.

While we were walking around the shopping area my family spotted a Zara store and went in to check out the local assortment of clothing. At that time I had never had paid attention and basically was unaware about the Zara fashion chain. This was the first time Zara got onto my radar and I still did not care much about it. I actually stayed outside while my family went in.

Then in my Fall 2011 term at GWU School of Business MBA program I had a group project in my Database and Web Analytics class, see a post inspired by that class here. My group mate suggested to pick up Zara for analysis and that’s how I really learned  a lot about the company. Turned out I had been passing by the Zara store many times in the nearby mall at home without ever paying attention to its existence.

There were a lot of interesting things I learned about Zara and its parent holding group – Inditex while doing research for the group project. One of the things was that Zara does not spend a lot of money on outright advertising, and at the same time meticulously work on their stores windows as a part of their marketing approach. Since I did not care about Zara back in summer I did not even remember what their windows looked like at that time.

Later, when I was working on the Zara group project and stumbled upon Zara in the mall close to my home I actually took a few pictures of their windows as they were indeed quite appealing, even if in a succinct way. Here are a few pictures of Zara’s windows I took:

Zara Store Entrance at Montgomery Mall

Zara Window - Women's Fashion

Zara Window - Men's Fashion

This time when I had a short getaway to Cancun with my wife during the winter break  our resort was right across from the La Isla Shopping Mall. When we went down to walk around the mall one day I made sure to go to Zara store and take a look at their windows. Now that I was aware and somewhat involved with Zara after the group project I naturally had interest in it.

So you can imagine my being surprized and a bit disappointed when I saw Zara’s windows: they were empty! I am not sure if it was a permanent look of that particular store or it was just a short intermission between the changes of the windows displays, but I did not get a chance to see Zara’s signature windows this time around. Here are the pictures:

La Isla Shopping Mall - Zara Window

La Isla Shopping Mall - Zara Window - Rebates

On a brighter note, my wife told me that Cancun Zara store has better clothing designs than the one around our home place: more fashionable and possibly a better quality craftsmanship. For that I will have to take her word.

This is the beginning of the final term in my quest for the MBA degree. And it is arguably going to be the most intense in terms of the study load. Up until now throughout my part-time MBA program at George Washington University School of Business I have had 7.5 credits in each of my full Spring/Fall terms.

This Spring term I am going to have a record of 9 credits. Taking 9 credits in Spring term will allow me to complete my graduation requirements. Theoretically I could take just my regular 7.5 credits in Spring, participate in graduation ceremony in May, and then take final 1.5 credits in Summer term. However, the choice of electives in Summer is relatively smaller, and I was concerned I would not be able to find appropriate elective class worth just 1.5 credits.

Another aspect of intensity is that I am going to have just two classes in my first module, and then four classes in the second module. So far, the most I had during one module was three classes. So it is going to be an interesting experience, I sure hope it is survivable .

The classes I have registered for my final MBA term are:

• Strategy Formulation and Implementation – MBA capstone course
• Global Corporate Responsibility – selective which will cover my two  elective requirements: for international business, and sustainability

Electives:

• Business Communications
• Organizational Factors/Process of Change

As I said, the term seems to be quite intense, but I am ready to make this final push and finally get my MBA degree. I hope I will still find the time to keep you posted on my progress. One thing I am quite sure I will keep uploading my write-ups for business cases analyses on a weekly basis. This way I will have all the cases I have accumulated so far published by the end of the school year. I am planning to have business cases published once a week on Sundays, so keep checking the Business School Cases section regularly for new additions.

While the winter break in business schools around the world brought about a significant dip in traffic to my blog since mid-December, for me personally it was a very productive period in my MBA blogging. I mostly kept my promise to keep up with regular updates to this site and in the process I was able to publish all of my self-reflection journal from the Conflict Management and Negotiations class; I uploaded five new business cases analyses from my past MBA classes;. So if you have been away from reading the blog (and rightfully so) for the last month or so, you will find a lot of new reading material.

Apart from blogging I had wonderful holidays season with the family and friends, and even managed to squeeze in a short Caribbean getaway with my wife. Now is time to get ready for the upcoming Spring Term at George Washington University School of Business. Not only it is my final, but also most intense term in my whole MBA journey. With that said, it is possible that I won’t be able to update this blog as regularly as I managed to do in the past month. Still I hope to stick it out and give you some updates on my MBA classes and extracurricular activities. Stay tuned.

The subtitle for this post could probably be How to manage your risks if MBA bubble to burst?

There is no question in my mind that the MBA degree and MBA education have been going through the significant changes in the last decade or so. The question I actually have is, are those changes just normal incremental adjustments, or cyclical fluctuations, in response to changes in educational and business environment,  or are they indicators and precursors of some tectonic changes happening in the MBA market. Or, more specifically, is the MBA education approaching the bubble state with rising costs and flattening MBA salaries, when the return on investment is catastrophically  decreasing?

This also reminds me a little bit about the debate on the global warming: Are the temperature rises and glaciers melting just a manifestation of a regular global climate cycles, or are they effects of the human activity? And more importantly, are these changes going to be just incremental shifts to which the humankind will gradually adapt, or are they ultimately leading to a catastrophic and abrupt meltdown of the whole ecosystem on the scale of the Ice Age, if not worse? I will leave the global climate debate to the scientists, but I will ponder on the MBA state.

I do not have a definitive answer to the question posed at the beginning of this post and I have not done a comprehensive research on the topic. But I would like to share a few thoughts born from casual following and observations of the MBA news in the media. (By the way, almost exactly two years ago I had another post related to this topic – Is MBA Losing Its Appeal? Check it out for additional information.)

Here is just a short list of the most obvious changes that have been happening in the MBA marketplace lately:

• Rising cost of tuition that significantly outpaces inflation
• Rising cost of financing educational loans
• Decreasing employer sponsorship of MBA education
• Flattening starting salaries post-MBA
• Significant increase in number of MBA holders
• Inconsistent pattern in MBA hiring
• Questions about relevancy of the MBA altogether

Some of these changes have been historically correlated with the fluctuating business cycle, e. g. decreased MBA hiring in recession. But I am returning back to my original question: is it, in fact, the effect of business cycle or the first signs of the long-term trend?

All of these changes cumulatively carry with them certain risks – risk of decreasing ROI in the MBA, risk of not finding the appropriate job and staying underemployed, risk of decreasing life-long income potential, risk of higher competition for fewer jobs.

I think that these risks can be mitigated in the short- and mid-term, but it would require from both the business schools and MBA students to revise their approach to MBA degree, and make some adjustments respectively.

Let’s take a look at some of those changes and see what can be done to mitigate the associated risks. Even though we are just scratching the surface of the problem in this post, and the offered solutions are in no way the ultimate or the only ways to address those risks, they give some more obvious answers and may provide some pointers for further brainstorming.

The first three items on the list: Rising cost of tuition that significantly outpaces inflation, Rising cost of financing educational loans, Decreasing employer sponsorship of MBA education. They all affect the overall rising cost of MBA education to the MBA students. The possible solutions to these challenges could come from two sources: a) business schools could dip deeper into their endowments to provide more and bigger scholarships for more students; b) students could choose to go the part-time route for getting their MBA, which would allow them to keep otherwise forgone two years salary and partially pay for the MBA as they go. Another possibility is to pursue MBA at European business schools that traditionally have one year MBA programs.

The other three items that could be grouped together are: Significant increase in number of MBA holders, Inconsistent pattern in MBA hiring, Questions about relevancy of the MBA altogether. These three are loosely related to the MBA jobs market.

One of the possible solutions to MBA market over-saturation could be in increased differentiation of MBA graduates. Differentiation could be achieved through higher specialization, i.e. instead of getting so-called general MBA students may choose getting concentration in one of the industries or business functions, such as real estate, supply chain management, financial management, MBA in healthcare management, MBA in IT, green MBA, etc.

Another way to confront the issue is through diversification of skill set by getting dual degree, such as MBA/JD, MD/MBA, MBA/Master in Project Management and others. This trend is indeed becoming more and more pronounced these days, as I noticed more business schools have been offering dual degrees to their MBA students in the last few years.

A cheaper alternative to dual degree could be obtaining some of the industry-recognized certifications, such as Project Management Professional (PMP), certificate in Business Analytics, CPA (Certified Public Accountant), probably to lesser degree – ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) certifications, and others. By themselves these professional certifications seem like a step down from a glorified MBA degree. But MBA in conjunction with these certifications becomes better differentiated and more valuable to the potential employers. Some of these certifications, such as PMP or CPA, have experience prerequisites, but these hurdles could be overcome with appropriate planning of pre- or post-MBA career path.

This approach to diversification of MBA skill set may also help fight the trend of flattened starting MBA salaries, as with broader qualifications an MBA could be a more valuable asset to the organization and command/negotiate higher compensation. And the issue of MBA relevancy could also be addressed by such MBA enhancers as discussed above.

Another way of fighting the issue of MBA over-saturation is to start looking beyond traditional MBA career paths and job markets. For example, entrepreneurship has not been a very popular post-MBA destination until just a few years ago. Now I can see more and more reports on MBA graduates who choose to start their own business and join the start ups instead of trying to break into traditional MBA fields of banking, investments, consulting and try to climb the corporate ladder.

Speaking of the traditional job markets, it is quite obvious that as the developed economies have reached their maturity their growth has flattened out. But the emerging economies, on the other hand, are still showing the signs of tremendous growth. This means that MBA students might start looking for employment opportunities in those emerging markets, such as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and beyond.

The post turned out quite long, so I will have to cut it short here. So is the MBA bubble going to burst? I don’t think the MBA degree is quite there just yet.  In my opinion, even though there are some troubling tendencies in the MBA market and growing risks associated with them, these risks are still manageable and could be effectively mitigated with appropriate adjustments in business schools and MBA students expectations. And if the MBA degree is becoming less of a sure-fire “jumping board” or a “golden ticket” it used to be in the past, it still could offer quite reasonable and attractive ROI compared to many other advanced degrees. Therefore, go MBA!

This class – Conflict Management and Negotiations, probably got the most of coverage of all my MBA classes in this blog. There were two reasons for this: first, it was a highly engaging and even entertaining class, which was of great interest to me personally; second, I kept a self-reflection journal which I had been able to adopt for posting on the blog.

In this (probably) final post on the class I would like just to cap it all with some more relevant information on the course, if someone is interested in further exploring the topic on their own.

First, here is the link to the sample syllabus for the course. It is not identical to my actual syllabus in the class, but is nevertheless quite representative and overlaps more than 80%, so it gives pretty accurate overall idea about the course structure and content. Also, here is the link to the professional blog of the professor who taught the course. Admittedly, it is not very regularly updated, but still you will find a few interesting posts on the topics of leadership, organizational change, management, etc.

Finally, here is the list of required and recommended reading for the course:

• Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases, Roy Lewicki – required textbook
• Negotiating Rationally, Max Bazerman
• The Manager as Negotiator, David Lax
• Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher
• Negotiation, Roy Lewicki
• The Art and Science of Negotiation, Howard Raiffa

So with this set of resources you are all set to master the MBA level course in Conflict Management and Negotiations all on your own , except that it does require to have at least one partner for negotiation simulations, and the live class experience was a lot of fun, which cannot be completely substituted with academic reading. To get a glimpse of that class experience, read the rest of my posts under category Conflict Management and Negotiations, if you have not done so yet.