Classes start next week and so begins the last twelve months of my MBA career. For those keeping track, I’m in the Fall `07 Cohort which is scheduled to finish in May `10 but I’m on track to finish a semester early.

How can this be? It’s because of Susan Cauble, otherwise known as the “best kept secret in the Kelley School”. Ms. Cauble is the Assistant Directory of Graduate Programs for Kelley Indianapolis and advises MBA students – at least those who take her up on it.

Registering for classes may have been one of most frustrating aspects in my time at Kelley. A few weeks ago at registration I had three browser windows open attempting to discern A.) what classes I wanted to take, B.) what classes are available this Spring, and C.) what classes I need to finish the program. I had planned on majoring in Entrepreneurship but that was secondary to actually scheduling classes.

I received a tip from a buddy in class to see Ms. Cauble. I placed a call and had an appointment the next day. Our appointment started with her asking a few questions: do you want to Major and if so in what? I told her “yes” and “Entrepreneurship”. I then asked her if I could finish in December `09 rather than May `10. She consulted some hard copy information and said “sure”. Next thing I know she was plotting out the requirements for Spring `09, both Summer sessions and Fall `09. A couple more questions here and there about if I’d prefer to take one class over another and I’m good to go for the rest of my Kelley Career (knock on wood), graduating when I want to and with my choice of major. Oh, and it all took about 15 minutes. It took longer to find parking.

Mark it down for Summer Session registration – see the Advisers.

Its hard to believe that we're already five weeks into the semester. I feel like things are still getting started but in consulting the syllabi for my two classes, Operations and Marketing, the mid-semester projects aren't very far away. We're now a month or so into Year Two of the three year Kelley program. There are times when it feels like its flying by – like when you think about the fact that it's been about thirteen months since we met for our welcome dinner at University Place. There are also times when it feels like this program may go on forever – like when I consult my handy Vista Sidebar gadget to see that there are still over 600 days until graduation. Regardless of your perspective on the speed of time, there's no getting around the notion that choices are imminent. We don't have that many “core” classes remaining so we'll soon need to choose our electives, and as part of that, if we're going to Major, and if so, what our Major will be. We have to choose if we're going to participate in an Enterprise, and if so which one. We have to decide if we're going to do the China experience early next summer or the Brazil experience over Spring Break. That may not seem like a lot of choices but the choices we make can certainly be impactful on the rest of our professional careers. Have you made your choices, yet?

I don’t think I’ve looked forward to summer break this much since grade school. My summer classes ended on Wednesday evening with the Business Law final and for the first time in more than ten months I’ve officially whittled my major daily commitments down to, um, work (at least until late next month).

I was a bit surprised to find that summer classes are considerably different than semester classes. First of all, they meet for fewer weeks than semester classes (which is a good thing). However the expectations aren’t any less than normal so the class hours are extended and the out of class work and reading is increased. On top of all that, it’s summer time and sitting in a classroom a couple of nights a week after a full day of work is not everyone’s first choice when the alternatives are grilling out, boating, cycling, etc.

Anyway even though grades aren’t posted, classes are complete and so is Year One of the Kelley MBA.  It’s a good feeling to be this far but we still have a considerable amount to go (676 days for those keeping track).

Though it sounds a bit juvenile for graduate school, I feel prompted to ask the question “what do you have planned for your summer vacation?”

Personally, I’m going to make the most of the break. In a little less than two weeks I’ll be taking to the highways of my home state (the ones still intact after the floods) on my road bike with 10,000 of my closest friends for the 36th Annual RAGBRAI, a 471 mile trek across Iowa.

See you in late August!

A couple months ago, I mentioned that the second semester of the evening MBA program was reputed to be one of the most difficult. With less than two weeks left, I can confirm that it has lived up to its reputation.

I think the biggest reason is the increased demands on our time. Finance and Econ have been challenging courses (especially for someone, like me, who doesn’t live for calculations and formulas) and the Enterprise Lecture Series has been time consuming in its own right.

I think the pinnacle was last week which started Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM for a breakfast meeting with my SophWiki group and was followed by Econ class that evening. On Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting on campus with a professor and had to leave that in time for a tour and site visit to CIK Enterprises. Thursday was Finance class. The week ended with a Friday afternoon tour and site visit to Brightpoint Americas.

When I add in the assignments due the last few weeks, my attempts to adequately prepare for finals, and, of course, “work” - there isn’t much extra time to go around.

It’s been a good experience but I’m glad that it’s over a week from Thursday. I’ll enjoy the time off until the summer session begins (four days later).

Since I was called out by a fellow student in class tonight for not posting for a few weeks I s’pose it’s time (it’s great to know that someone reads these, by the way):

I didn’t start the MBA program last Fall expecting to be surprised by anything. I mean, at its roots, business is somewhat common-sensical (a word sure to make Webster’s soon) and anyone who has spent a couple years in the corporate world is aware of the fundamentals of accounting, marketing, economics and whatnot. However, my expectation was wrong: there’s a lot more to supply chain than meets the eye.

It’s not that I don’t have a lot to learn in accounting, marketing and economics (and, of course, whatnot), I certainly do. However, I had a pretty good feeling ahead of time what it was that I was getting into.

My concept of supply chain management was completely limited. The words alone made me think of trucking. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t yet had a class in supply chain management (though I did register for Professor Tatikonda’s Operations class this Fall). However, the X522 Enterprise Lecture Series has provided a nice preview:

One of my favorite classes was the week before the Super Bowl when we had guest lecturers from Adidas-Reebok. Their presentation was entertaining and informative, and more importantly completely relatable. The logistics of printing and distributing that much fan gear the morning after a game that finishes late in the evening with so much revenue on the line is mindboggling. A class a few weeks ago featured the Conexus organization and executives from a few of their member companies. It’s amazing that a company like Brightpoint Americas will process and distribute 100 million mobile phones (50% of the US devices, 10% of the world’s supply) this year alone, most of which will come through suburban Indianapolis. Contrast that to Rolls-Royce, who produces 12.5 engines per week at their Indianapolis facility (and 0 cars, who knew?).

A week or so, I was able to attend the site visit to the Fedex hub at IND and marveled at their “matrix” of automated conveyor belts sorting and slinging 75,000 packages per hour between inbound planes from cities as far away Seattle just so they can put them back on planes to head to cities just as far away.

Four very different companies; each of which operates on a global scale and have a heavy investment in Central Indiana.

This semester has just opened my eyes to supply chain management and I look forward to learning more about it in the coming semesters. With a business enterprise, a new MBA major on the way and a recently announced Center of Excellence all part of Kelley Indianapolis, I’m in the right place.

A milestone event passed this week with little fanfare: 800 days until graduation.

I’m not sure how or why it happened but a couple of weeks ago I was pondering my future (and I suppose my past) and began to think about what life was like without school. Overall, I’m enjoying the program and I’m definitely learning a lot but it’s beginning to take a bit of a toll. I checked the Kelley website and figured out that graduation is in May 2010 and that is a long time from now.

It’s not like it was a secret. The curriculum is available online and the “2.6 year” length of the program was prominently mentioned during orientation. However, much like the amount of study time involved, there is a fine line between merely acknowledging such facts and recognizing their impact on your life.

Talking with several of my friends in the program I’ve heard the term “burn out” quite a bit lately. If we were freshman basketball players or NFL rookies, it would probably called “hitting the wall”. Whichever cliché works for you, I’m feeling it.

Earlier this evening, I took a midterm exam in Financial Management. Last week, I took a final exam in Microeconomics for Managers. Both tests were among the hardest that I’ve ever taken and I’m relieved I’m past them (though I’m not sure I want to see the Finance grade). That means it’s officially Spring Break and I’m glad to have slimmed my non-family commitments to just “work”, if only for a week or so.

While the skills are no doubt valuable, I’m the type of person that finds Econ and Finance very draining. Other than prepping for the GMAT, I’ve basically ignored long-hand math since high school. The only math class I took in undergrad tested via #2 pencil and bubble sheet. I’m not a numbers guy and when, like tonight’s exam, you take away my Excel I can downright struggle.

Thankfully, with the arrival of Spring Break we’re more than half way through the “hardest semester” of the program and that much closer to the classes I’m passionate about, like strategy, marketing, leadership, law, etc.

Here’s to the next 799 days!

Kelley’s tagline these days is “One School. Endless Possibilities”.  Among those possibilities is the ability to pursue your MBA in either the full time residential program in Bloomington, the part-time evening program in Indianapolis or online through Kelley Direct.

While it is “one school” each of the three will, at times, put their own spin on the educational experience. One value of pursuing a degree in such an integrated school is that even though I’m a student in the Indianapolis program, I typically get the chance to participate in special events and opportunities offered in the others.

I had the good fortune to take part in the “IU Entrepreneurial Connection” put on The Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and the Bloomington MBA’s a few weeks ago. This event was to bring together Kelley students, alumni, and entrepreneurs across the state in a unique learning and networking experience.

The keynote speaker was Mr. Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines and the Johnson Center’s current IU Distinguished Entrepreneur-In-Residence. Mr. Kelleher, who apparently goes by “Herb”, is certainly an impressive man who has done impressive work.

(Image courtesy of Indiana University)

He spoke of the keys to Southwest’s success, like the importance of their corporate culture (the company President is also the “Chief Cultural Officer”), their dedication first and foremost to their employees (if employees are happy, they’ll serve the customers well and shareholders will benefit), and the importance of hiring the right employee for the company (they hire people with the right attitude, skills can be taught).

It’s tough to find a more successful entrepreneur than Mr. Kelleher and not every business school gets the benefit of his time and attention. Luckily, for all of us in Bloomington that day, Kelley is that school.

When I first started the Kelley program last Fall a friend referred me to a blog over at Bnet, an online management resource from the folks at CNET Networks. The blogger was someone a year or two older than me who had also decided to go back to school part time and document her experiences and share them with humanity through the magic of the Internet.

It’s an interesting read and it always reminds me that every MBA program is not the same.

In a recent entry, she questions whether going back to school to get a law degree would be more valuable than getting an MBA.  She came to such a question when her program provided CEO’s from the “real world” to discuss leadership and she noticed that not a one of them held an MBA. I think the question is valid and I might come back to it in another blog entry. However, I was most interested in the speakers that her program had brought in: “one from the local government, one from a regional bank, and one with an entrepreneur background.”

Her leadership class sounds somewhat like our X522 Enterprise Lecture Series. However, the caliber of presenters is a bit different. The first two weeks of our program alone have featured two successful and well known entrepreneurs/angel investors, a senior manager with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a senior vice president of FinishMaster, and two senior vice presidents of Adidas-Reebok.

Of the six presenters, five had their MBA. Three of them had received a Kelley MBA and the other two earned their degrees at the University of Chicago and University of Michigan.

Anyone notice a difference?

I don’t know which school the Bnet blogger is attending but it seems to be quite unlike Kelley. People pursue advanced degrees for different reasons and you have to do your research. According to Find-MBA.com there are no less than nineteen institutions offering an MBA in this state alone, so it would be easy to choose one and be frustrated. Personally, I would be underwhelmed in her program.

I expect “real world” speakers of the stature of our presenters because I’m working to become an executive of that level. Anything less would be a disappointment.

Nearly five hours into a marathon economics study session this afternoon one of my cohort-mates noted something that has been on mind since the MBA program started last Fall: every problem is based on a manufacturing environment.

I should explain; I work primarily in the “services” world. As a consulting firm in the civil engineering industry, our firm bills our clients for each hour of each employee’s time that is spent working on a project. We don’t manufacture anything. I’m not alone, in my cohort there are at least two other students working in our industry along with several JD/MBA candidates (who will one day be quite excited to bill clients for each quarter-hour they can).

I struggle sometimes to truly understand the real-world application of concepts like “production functions” and “reaction functions” which hinge on manufacturing a certain quantity of units. In my business our units tend to be the aforementioned hours and they I’m not sure where to begin applying the quantity-based analytic tools to them.

I have a few thoughts as to why the program is structured this way. First of all, the basics of manufacturing are easy to understand. You have fixed costs that exist before any units are created, variable costs associated with creating units, revenue derived from the sale of units, and most importantly the difference between costs and revenues, profit. Though simplified, each of these fit smartly into spreadsheet columns, can easily be calculated, and make for understandable graphs. Cost, revenue and profit exists for services firms, too (even for those of us so intimately involved in the home building market at such a bad time) but the application is not quite as straightforward.

I also have it in my mind that I read somewhere that early MBA programs were specifically designed as training for manufacturing executives and thought the prevalence of such illustrations were just the lingering effects of tradition but a quick Google search couldn’t confirm any such idea.

Another reason may be the fact that Kelley is the premiere MBA program in central Indiana and central Indiana is the home of a vibrant manufacturing community. The program is littered with representatives of large, well known Hoosier manufacturers like Cummins, Lilly, Roche, and Rolls-Royce. As a state-funded institution, shouldn’t Kelley cater to the manufacturers that drive such a big part of the local economy? 

A couple weeks ago, I decided to ask Phil Powell. As the program’s faculty chair and the economics thought-leader for each of our three required economics classes, I figured he’d be the guy to ask. He explained that I was somewhat on track with my first thought. We’re learning to master the building block concepts of disciplines like economics and accounting, and manufacturing examples are a good way to illustrate said concepts. He also assured me that we would work with services-based illustrations yet this semester.

Most importantly, he reminded me that learning something new is the reason we all truck downtown two or three nights a week. Several folks are in this program to specifically be able to move from one industry to another and need to be exposed to concepts that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Even though I tend to get caught up in trying to apply what I’m learning to work the next day there is still a tangible benefit in a greater understanding of economic theory.

Now if he can only explain the need for marathon economics study sessions (I’d guess “that’s just the way it is, folks”).

The second semester of the Kelley evening MBA is reputed to be the most demanding and one week in I think that could be the case. This semester will frequently feature class three nights a week (instead of two last semester) which provides little cushion to actually study. To top that off, I had a meeting on campus on Friday which put me on campus four days in a row – something that I haven’t done since undergrad.

If I had to pick a theme for the first week, it would be “networking”. Throughout G511 Economics (Tuesday’s class), X522 Professional Development (Wednesday’s lecture series and more!) and the meeting on Friday (a BizBlogger get-together) it was a frequent topic.

Networking in today’s reality is done as much online as it is done in person and the most accepted business tool seems to be LinkedIn. However, the most popular tools are probably MySpace and Facebook. As a nearly 30 year old, I missed the initial social networking wave that came through high schools and colleges in the last five or so years. I like to consider myself somewhat tech-savvy and I’ve been in the loop enough to be aware of Facebook and MySpace but until the last six months or so, I always considered them to be something “the kids were using these days” and stayed away.

I jumped into all three networks in the last year and I’m fascinated by the potential. So far, I’m using LinkedIn as a tool to manage business relationships and Facebook as a tool to manage personal relationships but I think that Facebook has the momentum to become the premier corporate networking tool in the near future (as I type this, my Facebook friends include contacts like the executive I report to and my mortgage broker as well as my social friends). I’m registered with MySpace but generally stay away because the interface seems too juvenile and my account seems to be constantly spammed with fake requests.

I’m just starting to look into the possibilities of taking these tools to the next level, playing around with them enough to see how they can assist me in my career goals as well as help my firm to further our shared goals. So far, I use them to manage contacts I make in the real world, to vet job applicants and potential business partners, and to reconnect with old coworkers, classmates, and fraternity brothers but I think the possibilities are endless.

I’m curious if other MBA’s are using tools like LinkedIn and Facebook? Has anyone found good corporate uses for social networks?

Speaking of networking and old classmates, I had an interesting surprise in X522 on Wednesday night. The lecture combined my downtown cohort with the cohort meeting in Carmel and the one that started last Spring. There was an attendance sheet being passed around and I happened to glance at it as my friend sitting next to me signed his name. I read the name above his and recognized it as belonging to a friend I hadn’t seen since high school. I glanced around and spotted the girl sitting on the other side of the room. I caught up with her at the break and found out that she was in the Spring cohort. Much like the Disney ride in the news these days, it is a small world after all. We graduated eleven years ago in a city more than six hours and two states away; it’s not something that happens often.

Where is the oddest place you’ve ran into an old acquaintance?

Welcome to 2008!

I think it makes sense to start with introductions. My name is Geoff. I graduated early from high school, opting to seek my undergraduate education as a Cyclone at Iowa State University. At I-State, I was a fraternity president, executively directed the largest campus philanthropy and played winger on the rugby team for one season (poorly). I graduated in December 2000 with a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Community and Regional Planning, yet I’ve never planned a community or region.

I’ve spent a large part of my career consulting to local governments across the Midwest and Southeast and for the last 18 months or so I’ve managed a team of software developers and the IT operation for a national A/E/C firm.

My wife and I (and our two labrador retrievers) have lived in Indianapolis for just over three years. We hold a marriage license issued in the United Kingdom, play organized kickball on the weekends and have been the proud owners of season football tickets at Jack Trice Stadium for the last seven seasons.

Oh, and I’m also a student in the evening MBA Downtown Cohort at Kelley Indianapolis. I started the program last Fall and recently volunteered to write about my experiences over the next four semesters (and two summers).

In the spirit of staying on topic, I’ll wrap up this post with three observations on life while pursuing a Kelley MBA:

1. You should buy your text books online. This is probably obvious to some but I finished undergrad in 2000 and at that point almost everyone still went to the bookstore. There were a couple discount textbook-only websites that popped up at the time but most of them died with the DOT COM bust (you probably have to be at least my age to remember the DOT COM bust).  I bought all my Fall semester books at the bookstore (I figured that’s why they exist, right?) but learned on Day 1 of class that I over paid what you can get from established online exchanges like eBay and Amazon Marketplace.

2. Class takes up a lot of your time. I had it in my head that the MBA program was a commitment before I started but I was wrong – it’s a BIG commitment. Class is 5-6 hours a week and I easily spent just as much time studying on “easy” weeks and twice as much time preparing for tests. They told me this during orientation and open houses but until I actually started it didn’t register. I heard one student comparing the evening MBA to a half-time job (on top of your full time plus job) and I think that’s a valid comparison.

3. You can use what you learn at work the next day. The program chair, Phil Powell, made a promise (maybe not a promise but he repeated it several times) during one of last Spring’s open houses that one difference between Kelley and other MBA programs in the area is that you will be able to use what you learn immediately in the workplace. I have certainly found that to be true. In my position (I suppose most would call it “middle management”) I lead two teams of people with different missions, I have budgetary constraints, revenue goals, and get to both plan and execute strategy. Each of the first semester’s courses has been directly applicable and beneficial. Except for Food Corp – though I’m sure there’s a lesson about time management implied somewhere.