It was a wonderful event on a wonderful fall day and we counted among our honored guests President Taylor Reveley, Chancellor Sandra Day O’Connor, Architect Robert A. M. Stern, Alan Miller, and Chip Mason.

It was for us the celebration of the end of one important chapter in the life of the Mason School of Business and the beginning of another, which sentiment I tried to capture in my closing remarks:

“Eleven years ago when we first began thinking about a new home for the Mason School of Business, many people thought we were nuts.

And yet, here we are today.  Miller Hall rises majestically around us as the home to the Mason Community for decades to come—and an enduring symbol that dreams still come true.  We are here because a few modern-day revolutionaries stood up and took up our cause, determined that through generosity and hard work they would overcome any obstacle.

On behalf of our students, faculty, and staff – past, present, and future – it is my personal honor to accept this remarkable facility as well as the responsibilities that come with it.  To whom much is given, much is expected.

To those who teach and mentor here, the responsibility is nothing less than this:  to revolutionize business education so that Mason graduates leave here with the skills, surely, but also with the judgment, courage, integrity, and purpose to reshape the way the world does business.

To our students, your responsibility is to put everything you are now on the line and become transformed.  To think and act ethically, responsibly, and boldly.  To go from here with the conviction that you can—and will—make a sustainable difference in the world.  To be a revolutionary in the cause of the common good.  And, like so many here today, to return to this place to share your experience and success with those who would follow.

At Mason, with all our diversity of interests and ideas and strengths, we are nonetheless like-minded and laser-focused when it comes to this:

We intend to do great things…to count…to make a difference.  That is our cause.

We follow in the footsteps of revolutionaries who came before and built a great nation.  They are no different from us.  Revolutionaries are still welcome here.”

Sustainability DOTS at W&M School of Business

On it, you will find literally hundreds of individual commitments to “Do One Thing” (DOT) to improve one’s personal sustainability practices. As I write this at 11:30 AM on September 25th , the page has 762 fans… students, faculty, staff, alumni, and even some people with no direct connection to the Mason School. Just folks who were inspired to step up and Do One Thing to make the world a little better.

The DOT initiative is the brainchild of Saatchi & Saatchi S, with the ultimate objective of reaching 1 billion people. Mason is the first Business School to personally embrace that within our own community, and Saatchi & Saatchi S CEO Adam Werbach came to Miller Hall last night to celebrate with us and share his insights. He is funny, thoughtful, and ultimately enlightening and inspiring (watch for excerpts on our website).

So what is “sustainable?” While many translate that as “green,” Adam’s definition is “thriving in perpetuity,” and that has 4 components. In Adam’s words:

• Social (acting as if other people matter)
• Economic (operating profitably)
• Environmental (protecting and restoring the ecosystem)
• Cultural (protecting and valuing cultural diversity)

This concept of sustainability works at the corporate level, but also for us as individuals. Our physical and psychological well-being are enhanced when we pay attention to all these dimensions, individually and collectively. And that’s where the DOTs come in.

Check out the Facebook page and you will find lots environmental DOTs. But you’ll also find ones that hit on different (or multiple) dimensions of ”sustainable practice:”

• “read more books and watch less television.”
• “spend more time with my children outside and teach them about nature”
• “maintain a letter writing relationship with a prison inmate.”
• “not eat processed food”

Here’s a revealing one:

• “ share the DOT concept with as many people as possible.”

It turns out that the DOT concept is infectious in two ways.  It’s clearly something that members of the Mason community take joy in sharing, but there’s something less obvious… and even insidious (in a good way).

I find that “doing one thing” makes me want to “do another thing.”

My DOT is to run my classes without distributing or collecting a single piece of paper (which scares the heck out of me: I’ll let you know how that works out in another blog). The funny thing is that ever since that commitment, I find myself being much more mindful of other behaviors I used to take for granted. Now I’m thinking really hard before I send something to the printer. I’m going through my trash can and pulling out recyclables before I leave work. It’s an interesting journey… we’ll see where it leads!

I have no doubt that the hundreds of DOTs happening at Mason will produce significant tangible social, economic, environmental, and cultural benefits. But you know what? It also just makes me feel good.

If you want to feel good, I invite you to join us. Visit the Facebook page. Become a fan. Post your DOT. Do One Thing.

Jim Olver

The shortsighted, greedy behavior of a number of members of Wall Street have had an effect on public perception, and some questioning of what is being turned out by business schools.  It seems inappropriate to blame an entire group for the inappropriate behavior of a few, but recent events have given all business schools reason to analyze what they are doing and what the resultant effects on the culture are.  

With this background in mind, I picked up a copy of Fareed Zakaria’s latest book, The Post American World.  Zakaria is an editor for Newsweek, a columnist for the Washington Post, and host of a weekly program focused on international relations.  I nearly always find him provocative, interesting, and thoughtful in his comments on world affairs.

In The Post American World,  Zakaria states that the US is undergoing a sea change, entering a new world which it can no longer dominate or overwhelm as it has in the past.  His message is not that the US is failing, but that other nations are rising – rapidly.  As a consequence, America will find it necessary to change its view of the world and its place in it. 

 He makes a number of suggestions about what the US cannot do and what it must do to continue to maintain its place among the leading nations of the world.  This is not the place to cover the myriad analyses and suggestions that Zakaria makes.  Rather, we can cut to the chase and say that Zakaria identifies one area where America can still dominate and where it can continue to have a huge impact.  That area is in the world of ideas.

If this is true, then William & Mary’s Mason School of Business is uniquely positioned to support American business in meeting the challenge of our times.  William & Mary requires all undergraduates to complete a liberal arts degree, even the Bachelor of Business Administration students.  Our individualized plan of study results in nearly half of our students completing a double major.

At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, there is virtually none of the ultra-large classes dominated by lectures where students are tested in ways that lend themselves to machine scoring of a mid-term and a final.  At William and Mary classes tend to be small, teaching tends to be interactive requiring students to work with the material they have read, and tests tend to be written and requiring analysis and defense of positions taken.

Furthermore, students are exposed to live business experiences, to the actual conduct of business research, and  to experienced business people who provide a useful and practical perspective on the use of what is learned in the classroom.

In short, our personalized, experience based model of education is not only revolutionary, but it is also uniquely appropriate for teaching students to think.  Our programs provide  an excellent preparation for entering a work world in which the US needs to lead with ideas and ways to implement them.

Reading Zakaria’s book not only confirms for me that we are on the right path, but makes me want to push even harder to fully exploit the potential of our personalized experience based model.

The reason is that we are social beings, and immersion in the enacted norms and values of any social group can ultimately have either an edifying or corrosive effect on what we do, and in what we consider OK to do. It happens at school.  It happens in the workplace.  And there’s a feedback loop: what we believe informs what we do, but there’s also overwhelming evidence that what we do also affects what we believe.

There are a couple of powerful psychological forces that shed light on this. Both are described in Influence: Science and Practice, a terrific book by social psychologist Robert Cialdini

The first force is the remarkable power of “social proof.” We often gauge the correctness or acceptability of a behavior by the degree to which we see others perform it. If “everyone is doing it,” it must be OK… right? The potency of social proof can be seen in all sorts of “herd” behaviors, ranging from teen “sexting” (circulating explicit photos or video of themselves via cell phone), to Enron traders bragging about ripping off “Grandma Millie,” to the orderly mass suicides of 910 souls in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978.

Relying on social proof is a natural, often automatic response that is abetted when the environment is ambiguous. In the realm of moral lapses, we’re particularly vulnerable in the gray areas. But how do you explain the folks at Enron who found themselves way beyond the gray areas?

That takes the one-two punch of another psychological force. Once we commit to a course of action, our innate desire to see ourselves as consistent leads us to look for further justification for our behavior. We’ve committed to a path – sometimes, a slippery one – and now we’re figuring out why it was OK.

Worse, there’s compelling evidence that we interpret who we are by what we see ourselves do.  In other words, our behavior can ultimately change our attitudes, beliefs and values. The more effortful that first step – and the more public – the greater the impact on our self-perception. We started by trying to boost revenues a little. Soon, abetted by others around us responding to the same psychological forces, we’re all joking about ripping off Grandma Millie.

To my mind, the challenge in the workplace is to consciously foster an environment that inspires us to pursue our noblest instincts. Social proof and commitment/consistency can have a positive as well as negative impact on behavior, and ultimately, attitudes, belief, and values.

As individuals, the challenge is to “rust-proof” ourselves against morally corrosive environments. The principles of social proof and commitment & consistency work precisely because they are so innate and automatic. One way to short-circuit these automatic responses is to sensitize ourselves to their impact, and this is a place where business schools can play a useful role. Case studies, role plays, and other exercises that force us to bring our largely automatic assumptions and behaviors to the surface — along with our often unvoiced beliefs and values — can help “rust-proof” our values against corrosive influences.

Jashmin’s question: “your thoughts?”   Here’s part 1.

When I started teaching at William and Mary in 1988, one of the then-“Big 8” accounting firms was so concerned about the ethical standards of new hires that they established a remarkably ambitious training program.  Their goal was to bring faculty from every accredited business school in the nation to their headquarters, at company expense, to have world-renowned ethicists teach us ways to better incorporate ethics into our curricula.  The firm?  Arthur Andersen… the one that went down for obstruction of justice in the Enron scandal in 2002.

How could such an organization be brought so low?  It’s easy to point to a few bad apples in a great firm, but I’ll bet the folks who ordered the shredding of Enron documents couldn’t have envisioned themselves as “justice obstructers” just a few years earlier.  I’d make the same bet on the principals in other major scandals, right up to today.  I doubt Bernie Madoff ever aspired to be what Bernie Madoff became.

Alex Gibney, Director of the film ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room, said this about his experience with the Enron project:

I became somewhat sympathetic about some aspects of some of the people from Enron—even some of the higher-ups.  I don’t think they started out running a scam; they fell into it, incrementally.

He also said this:

I am interested in self-deception: how human beings find ways to deceive themselves that they are, in the words of [former Enron CEO] Jeff Skilling, on the ‘side of the angels,’ when, in fact, they are working for the man with the pitchfork and the pointy tail.

How and why does this happen?  Big, dramatic changes in values are rare.  Folks don’t suddenly “go bad” (or good), but that doesn’t mean that values are locked in stone.  One’s cultural environment can ultimately have an edifying or corrosive effect on the values we arrive with.  With that in mind, one task for business schools and employers is to create edifying environments that nurture our noblest instincts.  The other task is to “rust-proof” ourselves against the corrosive environments that we will encounter. 

There’s a large body of work in social psychology that sheds light on all this, but we’ll get to that in the next blog.  For a great read on the social psych stuff, check out Influence: Science and Practice (5th Ed), Robert Cialdini. 

Jim Olver
Jim.Olver@mason.wm.edu

You can view videos of four of this year’s Batten Fund analysts — Stefan Martinovic, Meg Sherwood, Joanna Hayes and Matt Kusek — talking about their experiences on the Mason YouTube channel.

For all of you 150 or so Batten Fund Alumni, what do you think of the idea of having a Batten Fund reunion next year in our new building?

I know Dean Krapfl mentioned this topic in a recent posting, but gaining the recognition in the rankings that we believe we rightly deserve will likely be Job One for the Mason School next year.  You will be hearing more about this but let me simply share an excerpt from a letter I sent to my fellow deans last fall that I believe raises an important broader issue:

Most of us have recently revised our programs to emphasize leadership, experience-based learning, and greater interaction with companies and executives.  However, these important efforts to prepare workforce-ready MBA students are not directly measured by the traditional rankings.  The rankings take careful assessments of both ends of our production process but, ironically, make no effort to evaluate what takes place in the middle, which is what occupies most of our time and attention.

What if the criteria by which we are measured actually reflected what we are doing?  Novel thought.  The current rankings are, of course, useful tools for prospective students and others.  But there is virtually nothing in them that I can see that actually attempts to assess and measure the direct value-added of the educational experiences we provide through traditional teaching or more innovative means.

If they did, perhaps the rankings could do a better job of informing prospective students of the real choices that are available to them.  Think also of the potential benefits for recruiters.

Like so many of you, we at William and Mary’s Mason School of Business have worked hard to create an educational experience that we believe prepares our students in the skills and behaviors that really matter in business.  We now measure important aspects of what we do so others can verify our claims.  For example, we promise our students substantial one-on-one interaction with executives, which we assess through our Executive-to-Student ratio and Face-Time-with-Executives measure…

I will keep you apprised of this conversation as it moves forward.

“I get to see another Field Consultancy presentation next week. Another great project, great client, great Executive Partner support, and great team. And I’m anticipating another magical experience!”

I just got back from that presentation.  At the end of it, the CEO asked whether the team might be available to present their findings and recommendations to his Board of Directors.  Magical Indeed!

Sorry.  Couldn’t resist just a little more crowing about our students, EPs, and corporate friends.

Jim Olver

The project was part of our Field Consultancy program, in which teams of second-year students tackle strategic consulting assignments for paying clients (the current fee is $15,000, plus approved expenses). Each team is supported by a faculty member and two Executive Partners, but their role is strictly advisory. The students own the project.

Yesterday’s presentation and supporting written report were the culmination of nearly 6 months of hard work on a very real challenge that turned out to be far bigger than simply energy management. The team needed to develop a comprehensive roadmap for change in a complex, decentralized organization.   Their recommendations really challenged the client and generated a lot of discussion… and also a lot of agreement and praise.  I expect the proposal will end up on the CEO’s desk.

Projects like this can be the best experience of a student’s two years here, or one of the most miserable. What made this one so good? I think there are four factors, and if they all line up, the result can be magical:

1. A great problem: one that is integrative, strategic, and meaningful. This project required the students to draw on tools they’d developed from such diverse disciplines as managerial accounting, operations, finance, organizational behavior, marketing, and management communications. If their plan is adopted, it will impact the system for years to come. It will facilitate meaningful, substantive change in the way the organization manages energy… and works across the various facilities in the system.
2. An engaged client with real skin in the game. The greening project has CEO attention, and the principal contacts from the healthcare system really partnered with the students to ensure that they were able to get information and access.
3. Great Executive Partner support. Great advisors engage, listen, respond and challenge, but don’t mistake themselves for a team member, or worse, the team leader. 
4. A great team. One of the EPs commented after the presentation that he had never seen any egos emerge. Everyone seemed to embrace the project, and their own share of the heavy lifting.  The end result was a unified and impactful plan.

For me personally, yesterday was a real affirmation of the “product” we are putting out at the Mason School of Business. These folks are ready to go out and make real contributions to the organizations they work in. 

I get to see another Field Consultancy presentation next week.   Another great project, great client, great Executive Partner support, and great team.  And I’m anticipating another magical experience!

Jim Olver

I think we are all proud of these two signal features of our MBA, but I think we have another one, our teaching.  I am not afraid to claim that our teaching, overall, is better than the teaching one could get anywhere else.  I know that there are some great teachers in many other MBA programs, some more highly ranked than ours, and some not.  But I would lay the claim for us based on two factors.

First of all, good teaching is a requirement at William & Mary.  You cannot remain a professor here if you are not a good teacher.  At the same time, William & Mary is a research oriented institution.  That means that William & Mary seeks out those more highly paid academicians who are known for their contributions to the discipline, who work at the leading edge of the discipline, and who are paid a great deal more because of these things.

Many research-oriented institutions, including the very highly ranked institutions, pay lip service to, but are not nearly as focused on demanding good teaching as well.  Professors who are prolific publishers in these institutions often negotiate minimal instructional and classroom contact with students.

At William & Mary, on the other hand, prospective faculty know that both research and teaching are part of the institutional demand.  In a sense, then, the faculty is self selected.  A person who is primarily interested in research and sees teaching as an interfering nuisance would not want to be a faculty member at William & Mary.  Neither would people who just want to teach, because William & Mary pays the higher salaries and demands research productivity of their tenure line faculty.

I do know that several of our new faculty this year were advised by professors at their doctoral institutions not to interview here because of the teaching demand which, they were told, would interfere with the development of their research careers.  I don’t know if we are unique in this regard, but I do know that we are very rare.

And the byproduct of all of this is that we move students so far.  We have small classes.  We pay a lot of attention  to the individual students.  Virtually every student at William & Mary’s Mason School of Business will tell you that the professors were wonderful teachers, that they cared, and that thy would work with them individually to help them succeed in mastering the subject matter.

And, after their first year, going up against the best that the very top ranked schools have to offer in internships, our students routinely come back and tell us that they believe that they were at least as well prepared, an usually better prepared, than the other interns whom they worked with.

But all of this gets to be a differentiator only if it is so known and apprediated.  I’ve got to believe that it would be appreciated.  How do we get it to be known?

Though in his 50s, Guy looks and sounds like a 20-something – a really smart 20-something – with the kind of optimism, tongue-in-cheek humor and irreverence you generally associate with youth. His talk was kind of off-the-cuff, and I was frantically scrawling notes on a 4×6 notepad with a dull pencil, so this blog entry won’t do it justice… but I’ll try.

The audience was a bunch of MBA program deans and directors at the GMAC Leadership Conference. His topic: “What I wish every new employee knew.” Here’s his list:

1. How to talk to your boss. Your boss is not a professor who has to worry about teaching evaluations and rankings. Your boss wants your solutions, not your problems. Come with answers, not questions.
2. How to be a boss. Most people look at the softer skills and say, “I’m a natural at that.” They’re not. Guy thinks that bosses don’t need as much of the “hard skills,” but they really need OB and leadership. He put it this way: “the tech guys are hired guns.”
3. How to survive a meeting that is poorly run.  Guy: “most are.”  His advice: “once you get what you need done, relax and turn off your brain.”
4. How to run a good meeting.  Guy’s rules:
   a. Always start on time
   b. Invite as few people as possible
   c. Set an agenda
   d. End on time
   e. Send an email confirming what everyone will do
5. How to figure out everything on your own. This is a corollary to #1, I think. “There are no TAs in the real world.”
6. How to negotiate. It’s all about figuring out ways to find “win/wins.”
7. How to have a conversation. Guy is a self-professed student of “schmoozing.”  His observation: useful conversation starts with the attitude, what can I do for you?  Guy: “more useful than ‘sucking up’ is ‘sucking down’ or ‘sucking across.’”  In other words, figure out what you can do to develop your own people and to help those who don’t have a reporting relationship to you.  That’s how you develop a useful network.
8. How to explain what you need in 30 seconds or less. Work on your elevator pitch. Be able to explain your product in 3 words. Guy’s analogy: eHarmony has you fill out pages of information to register with their matching service. Venture Capital is more like the website “Hot or Not?” (http://www.hotornot.com/).
9. How to write a 1-page report about anything. This was a requirement at Apple. Guy thinks this is a skill that is being taught inadvertently through text messaging and Twitter.
10. How to write an email in less than 5 sentences. “All email should be haiku.”
11. How to get along with peers. “People who look out for #1 are the losers.”
12. How to leave a good voicemail. We’re seeing a theme here…
13. PowerPoint. Specifically
    a. No more than 10 slides, and no more than 20 minutes
    b. Font size = age of oldest person in audience ÷ 2.
            Rule of thumb: 30 point.
    c. Be prepared for equipment failure.

That’s the list, but if you look at it closely, it all boils down to something more fundamental. Everything Guy hit on has to do with how you treat people… and most of it, to respecting their time and availability. Some good lessons for all of us!

Jim Olver

Jim.Olver@mason.wm.edu