The Naked MBA

Business schools have long been thought of as training grounds for the next generation of corporate leaders. But do MBAs still want to be the corporate leaders of traditional companies? The Forbes Top 100 Employers that MBAs want to work suggests that this is changing. The top company on Forbes 100 list is, of course, Google. Google is a far cry from the blue-chip companies that ruled this list ten years ago. Google is the anti-company. Google is cool and cutting edge. Google provides all the comforts (salary, benefits, stock options) of working in corporate America without the “sell out” factor. Google is authentic and hip, and always at the forefront of the next great thing. Its rival, Apple, has a similar aura, and also makes the top 10 list.

Also in the top ten are three consulting companies: McKinsey, BCG and Bain. Many MBAs no longer want to be the one in the C-suite, shaping the company agenda while being pressured from all sides by shareholders, executives, regulators, the Board, and employees. Instead, MBAs want to be the consultants who face a fresh and challenging case every three months, taking on the role of advisor without the need to implement and lead a company.

Many MBAs are choosing to forgo the corporate ladder altogether and instead shooting right to the top. By starting their own businesses or joining start-ups, MBAs can employ immediately all the learning they’ve done in business school. This trend peaked during the internet boom of the 90s when launching a dot.com seemed to be the surefire path to instant-millionaire status—and it’s on the rise again. According to the Association of MBAs, 22% of graduates will start their own company. Students go into business for themselves because they don’t to hang out in a cubicle for years, waiting to be promoted up the corporate ladder. They want real responsibility right now. By starting a business they don’t have to sit through conference calls where higher-ups drone on about next quarter’s bottom line. Instead they live and die by their own bottom lines, depending on their own business-savvy and acting as real leaders. This is what the MBAs of today find exciting.

The question, then, is whether business schools are equipped to prepare today’s MBAs for the paths they choose. Students are taking on more real responsibility and having more impact earlier on in their post-business school careers. As a result, business schools can no longer get by with providing a one-dimensional education that serves as a check-box for recruiters from traditional companies. They now need to provide students with tools to innovate and think critically, and a deep understanding of how their role as a business leader fits into the larger economic context.

Business schools take pride in redefining their missions and curricula to meet the changing needs of students. To this end, the number of U.S. business-school faculty teaching entrepreneurship classes increased to 349 in 2006 from 12 in 1997, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. They are slowly offering more joint courses with law and engineering schools. So business schools are changing; the question is whether they are adapting fast enough to successfully prepare the next generation of MBAs for the careers they want.

Graduating from a top business school gives you an edge over the competition when job hunting, but it also serves to ratchet up the competition. You compete against the best and the brightest from your own school and other top schools, so standing out from the crowd is crucial. This intense sense of competition drives students to spend hours preparing for interviews, perfecting résumés, and keeping their grades up by any means necessary.

Some business schools adopt grade nondisclosure policies, but even at these schools the tacit understanding is that when asked by a recruiter, you disclose, regardless of your school’s policy. My school did not have any such policy, it was fair game. I was clearly going to be asked about my grades. I’ll be the first to tell you (since you’re not a recruiter) that they weren’t stellar. And thus it all boiled down to one question: to lie or not to lie?

We were all strongly cautioned against lying and threatened with the fact that companies can request your transcript to verify for themselves. But no one knows anyone this has ever happened to (urban legends don’t count) so a lot of people do lie. And the ironic thing about this is that all the players in this shell game know that business school grades are irrelevant, anyway.

There several reasons that grades on their own are irrelevant. First, never has there been such rampant grade inflation as exists in MBA programs. I am living proof of this: I failed my Statistics midterm my first semester and still got an A- in the class. Getting a B in Accounting is no longer something to be proud of. This leads me to the second reason grades are irrelevant: getting a B in Accounting shouldn’t be something to be proud of--if you’re a CPA. But if you’re like me and had never seen a balance sheet before business school, then I think it’s something you should shout from the rooftops. So if recruiters are going to ask about grades, they shouldn’t use the same scale to measure everyone—this information needs to be put into the context of the person’s background.

Grades on their own are also irrelevant because they don’t distinguish between the former investment banking analyst who only takes electives like “Sports Marketing”, and the former sitcom writer who takes all finance electives.

By focusing on grades, schools and recruiters encourage students to focus on being evaluated instead of on learning. If they want to push students to challenge themselves and get the most out of business school then they should put the issue of grades to rest and allow student focus on the learning that they are doing, not the grades they will get.

The Forté Foundation recently published my article on how to prepare for what you won’t learn in business school. The Forté Foundation is a consortium of major corporations and top business schools that has become a powerful change agent in educating and directing talented women toward leadership roles in business. Their mission is to substantially increase the number of women business leaders by increasing the flow of women into key educational gateways and business networks. Their site is a great resource for women thinking of attending applying to business school. You can visit their site and read my article under the Getting Your MBA/Articles section.

If you attended college in the U.S., you probably look back on your freshman year as a blur of bad cafeteria food and binge drinking. To many college students, beer pong, keg stands and $1 shots are a rite of passage, as much a part of the college experience as midterms and all-nighters. And even though most students are pushing 30 when they arrive at business school, it turns out that binge drinking is also an integral part of most MBA programs.

Alcohol, the ultimate social lubricant, is present at nearly every event, starting at orientation. My orientation culminated with a open bar boat party where I witnessed the polished, professional woman I had talked to early in the day down several drinks and perform a pole dance routine in the middle of the crowded dance floor. More than one person vomited off the side of the boat. Welcome to the future business leaders of the world.

As classes started and everyone settled in to the breakneck pace of school, I expected the boozing to taper off. But the busier and more stressful things got, the more people partied. Every Thursday (no classes on Friday) the school sponsored four hours of free beer right there in the school café, and I’ve never seen the place more packed than it was right before midterms. The “work hard, play hard” mantra is alive and well at business schools.

As a disclaimer, I am not opposed to alcohol for any religious, philosophical or other reason. Before business school I went out 4-5 nights a week and admittedly drank enough during the week to qualify for “moderate drinking” (up to 3 drinks per day, no more than 12 drinks per week). I was surprised, then, when in business school I had to drink even more than this keep up with everyone around me.

Two of the primary reasons people drink are to feel more comfortable in social situations and to deal with stress. Business school is the lethal combination: it’s one long social situation where at first you don’t know anyone, and it’s also incredibly stressful. I had some great times at happy hours and parties, and the presence of alcohol did make it easier to get to know people. But I also watched friends get drunk and put themselves in dangerous situations—dangerous both physically and reputationally.

So why is alcohol such a big part of business school? In the past it mimicked the environments of the companies where a lot of MBA students were trying to land jobs. In some industries this is still the case--investment banking and consulting, in particular. A friend of mine who took a consulting job after business school told me she never noticed how large a role alcohol played in her company’s culture until she stopped drinking. Now she is unsure of how to relate to some of her colleagues—partying until 3 am while you’re on the road is a lot less fun when you’re sober. Investment bankers are notorious for dropping thousands of dollars on drinking binges.

Slowly, though, the work hard-play hard culture of many companies and industries is giving way to a more balanced lifestyle. This is partly due to the exit of Baby Boomers (traditionally workaholics) and the surge of Gen X and Gen Yers who have different priorities and demand more balance. If business schools really do want to prepare students for the workplace and mimic real-life professional experiences then they should be watching this trend carefully and adapting to it by downplaying the role of alcohol in networking situations and encouraging students to be cognizant of how much and why they are drinking.

With recruiting season in full swing your calendar is no doubt packed with corporate presentations. On top of that, you’re probably also squeezing in a whole bunch of other, company-sponsored events that pop up. There are “lunch-‘n’-learns”, happy hours and a series of informational interviews with different people. All of these events are designed as a forum for you to present yourself as a great hiring prospect and for the company to size you up. Unfortunately, none of them are designed as an opportunity for you to size up the company. Nowhere during the rehearsed Q&A of presentations and informational interviews do you get to ask your real questions.

It’s easy to feel like you are blindly charging forward through the recruitment process with your target companies, meeting all their expectations but not getting any closer to discovering if the company is really the right place for you. There aren’t any bschool-sanctioned venues for this--corporate presentations and informational interviews are not the appropriate venue to ask “So what do you really think of working at…?”

So how do you get behind a company's PR material and find out what it's really like to work there? How do you perform a cultural audit on the company to make sure it’s the right place to start your career?

First, although you often can’t ask the questions you want to ask, you can read between the lines and be alert to nonverbal signals. Good places to work are run by people who respect their employees. If you have an interview or other interaction with someone who treats you like an interchangeable part, or who acts like cogs in a wheel themself, think twice about working there. (Note: If you’re shooting for a job in investment banking you can disregard this tip and prepare yourself for years of cogdom.)

It’s uncomfortable to ask questions about how many hours you’ll be expected to work, but neutral questions such as, "What's a typical workday like?" can help uncover these expectations. You can also do some sleuthing in this area by asking about the department's proudest accomplishments. If people get choked up swapping war stories of all-nighters or working so hard they missed birthdays and anniversaries, take it as a sign. Do people talk about the jobs in terms of face time spent, or goals achieved?

I also like to ask what happens when people make mistakes. This gives a good window into the company’s culture and management style. The key is to pose the question without sounding like someone who is planning to make a lot of mistakes. Another of my favorite questions is about the attrition rate of new hires within one year, three years or 5 years, and why people leave.

Beyond the company representatives that you meet during recruiting event, use your network to find people who will tell you the truth about what it’s like to work there. Go through your contacts to find employees, former employees or their relatives or friends. You can also use established social networks to do this research. LinkedIn, for example, let’s you do blind, “reverse”, and company reference checks. You can do this by searching for the job title and company, (be sure to uncheck “Current titles only”). Getting in touch people who used to hold the position can give you the inside scoop on the job, manager and growth potential.

Business school gives you two years to find a job—a lot more time than you have for the average job hunt. Use this to your advantage to thoroughly do your research and make sure what you’re getting into is where you want to be.

There is a huge emphasis on socializing in business school. But as you pack your schedule with happy hours, karaoke nights and student club activities, it’s easy to network yourself into exhaustion without feeling like you’ve made any true friends. The social pressure to meet and befriend as many people as possible kicks off at orientation week. I consider myself to be an outgoing person and I have never had trouble making friends, but at times orientation felt like a do-or-die friend-making competition, and I was definitely losing. Conversations lost their normal rhythms and took on an artificially sped-up tone where everyone was talking at once, trying to impress with their wit and self-confidence. People moved on minutes after they started talking to you if you didn’t immediately seem like one of the cool kids. Even I was doing it. At the end of each day I would fall into bed exhausted from socializing all day. And yet I didn’t feel like I was making friends--I felt like I was networking.

Orientation was successful in that by the time I started classes I knew a lot of people. But none I would consider a friend. I also felt like everyone else had already formed friendships and was having the time of their life. Turns out nobody really had. Even in the hyper-social world of business school, building friendships takes time. And it wasn’t like I was sitting home on Friday night--at first everyone socializes in a herd. Literally. Someone would pick a bar and later that night 350 people would show up. And after a while the speed-dating-on-speed feel to conversations is replaced by more normal interaction and you can get to the bottom of people’s personalities, not just their personas.

People also self-select through the activities they choose. The first friendships I forged were with people who chose, as I did, to be officers in a specific club. The cohort/block system also does a good job of putting you in daily close contact with a group of people so you can get to know each other better--but you have to make it work for you. In my block most people always sat in the same place for class, a practice I’ve always distained. Then one week I plunked down every day in the same spot and found that by the end of the week I chatted more with the people around me (who, by the way, always sat together), and that they started including me in all their lunch and weekend plans.

I also started making more friends when I became more open-minded about the people I thought I could relate to. I started business school in a very different place than most people, and I had an admittedly narrow view of who was worth being friends with. Then someone surprised me and I had to get more open-minded about who my friends could be. I graduated with friends from different countries, religions, professional backgrounds, races, political ideologies, and sexual orientations than me. It took time, but social life at the end of business school was a far cry from the frenetic networking of orientation week. Some of my very best friends I didn’t get to know well until my second year. But they, as with all true friends, were worth waiting for.

“I don’t really have the bandwidth to concentrate on this right now so I think we should circle back next week—don’t focus an anything that’s not mission-critical; instead let’s leverage historical knowledge and aim for the low-hanging fruit. I’ll ping you later to touch base and scope the project at 30,000 feet.”

Ever catch yourself talking like this? If you say yes, you’ve probably gone to business school. Business school scores the worst on the jargon scale. (Medical school and law school have an advantage because Latin phrases actually mean something.)

Columbia Business School goes so far as to offer an English Language Skills and Cultural Interaction Boot Camp to incoming students. Students analyze jargon they’re likely to hear and practice how to respond. The hope is that the phrases they learn will be useful as they interview on campus for summer internships and later, when they enter the workforce. It’s geared towards international students but I could have used a similar course before entering business school straight from my French major and my job at a non-profit.

I had one kind friend who offered to tutor me on business-speak. We met up one afternoon to practice. “Ok,” she said, “walk me through the responsibilities you had in your last position.” I told her I made sure we weren’t going bankrupt by calling our accountant a lot to see if clients had paid us. She told me I “managed short-term liquidity needs”. Huh? I told her I kept track of which employees were selling lots of our programs and tried to figure out why others weren’t. She told me I was “tracking sales on a monthly basis to design incentive programs and maximize revenue”. She was really good at jargon. I, on the other hand, still felt like I trying to speak a foreign language. Then I realized that I was good at learning foreign languages. French came easily to me. Spanish wasn’t so hard. Business jargon couldn’t be such a stretch.

I practiced a little everyday--I read Business Week, the McKinsey Quarterly and kept my ears open among my classmates. You start to pick it up quickly, and then suddenly you can only talk in beautifully cryptic sentences that have no real meaning. Take the phrase “results-based management”. Isn’t all management supposed to be based on results? Jargon keeps us from being specific and from truly communicating important ideas.

So why do we use jargon? Why can’t we just straight-talk, call it like it is, and clearly communicate an idea in language that the average person understands? Because jargon is like a secret handshake—it means you’re part of the club. People only want you in their club if you sound like them, not like the average person. The trouble is, jargon leads to a lot of talk that doesn’t mean anything.

You can change this. Just say no to jargon. When someone says something like “The goal is to deliver granular connectivity on a scalable platform”, ask them what exactly they mean. Ask them for an example. Make them back up their jargon and they may think twice about using it again.

Last May business schools were rocked by the cheating scandal at Duke. Nearly 10% of the 2008 class was found to have shared answers on an open-book take-home exam. Nine students were expelled, 15 were suspended, and 10 failed the course.

"I hope this saddening situation serves as a strong reminder of how much honor means to each and every one of us," wrote Mr. Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke, and Chairman of the Judicial Committee.

A recent survey showed that fifty-six percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating, while only 47 percent of their non-business counterparts confessed to it. Do MBA students believe that cheating is an acceptable business practice? Do we have second round of Enron and WorldCom debacles to look forward to as a new generation moves up the corporate ladder? The survey results could just mean that business school students are more naturally enterprising than engineers or chemists. One thing is certain, though: business is changing. And business schools, which have always prided themselves on redefining their strategies and adjusting to changes the market, need to change too. It’s time to rewrite the definition of cheating.

So Duke students share answers on take home tests--that’s probably not all they share. I would bet they also share photos via Facebook and MySpace, video journals via YouTube, résumés via Jobster and LinkedIn, advice on taking the GMAT and writing bschool applications via blogs and chatrooms, what they’re looking for in a relationship via Match.com, and their most personal moments via reality TV shows.

We are the open source generation. And while sharing photos and GMAT tips doesn’t cross any ethical lines, being part of the sharing generation means we often find ourselves constantly redrawing those lines. We spend all day with a constant flow of shared information from Wikipedia, RSS feeds and emails. We even use instant messenger at work to constantly solicit the feedback and knowledge of our coworkers. Sure, your performance review is on your performance, but when was the last time you completed a project at work without the help of a team? So why haven’t business schools picked up on this?

Some say the Duke students cheated. I say they were enterprising and worked more efficiently together as a team then alone. To me that sounds smart, not scandalous. To me it sounds like the kind of behavior I’d want in someone I was hiring; the kind of behavior business schools school be encouraging.