Appropriately, becoming a CPA now requires more knowledge than ever before. Aspiring accountants in almost all U.S. jurisdictions need to complete 150 credit hours before they can be licensed as a CPA.  Some undergraduates can accumulate 150 credit hours in four years but the majority of students will need a fifth year of education to reach the 150-hour threshold.  At William and Mary this reality has led us to construct an efficient undergraduate program that allows accounting students to plan an individual broad-based (even multi-disciplinary) business foundation.  Our fifth year, culminating in a Master’s degree in Accounting, leverages the undergraduate experience to build depth in an increasingly complex subject matter that has become global in its applications.

It is one of my great satisfactions as Assistant Dean of Accounting programs at the William and Mary School of Business, to know that we truly are preparing some of the best-qualified graduates on the market today.  Our accounting programs at both the undergraduate and master’s levels were recognized by a national poll of accounting educators (conducted by Public Accounting Report) as #1 in the small school category for 2009.  How did this happen?  A long-term history of graduating very successful accounting professionals is probably at the root of this outcome.  Also, our programs’ structures and curricula have been carefully planned to meet rapidly evolving industry conditions.

We also admit highly qualified, non-accounting undergraduates into our fifth year that begins with an intensive summer “bootcamp” immersion.  As this piece is written, we have just begun that process for more than 30 students who are members of the Class of 2011.  Historically, these students are equally successful in the classroom and beyond.

Next month we welcome our largest fifth year class ever—just over 90 students!  These students have likely already heard the slogan “The world needs CPAs!”

Now it’s our job to get them ready to meet that need.

We are not yet where we want to be.  We need to reach out to our alumni in new ways, find out how we can be of value to you in your personal and professional lives, and change the culture.  Our alumni are foundational to our ongoing efforts to bring business into the business school.  We need to create a similarly strong value statement for how we can matter to you. 

We have started reaching out to our alumni this summer and I have been literally overwhelmed by the response.

In late May, I met with 13 engaged alumni in New York City. These half-hour meetings transformed into passionate, hour-long conversations about providing Mason a greater network in the New York City area. 

On June 2nd at a breakfast at Tysons Corner, we launched our alumni initiative in Northern Virginia.  The twenty attendees are enthusiastic about helping us create a vibrant alumni eco-system in the Northern Virginia and Washington DC areas.

Closer to home, we are planning a similar kickoff breakfast for our alumni efforts in Richmond.  We also hope to launch an aggressive corporate engagement initiative combining the Hampton Roads and Richmond areas. 

We are not just focused on these four areas:  this summer, I am also traveling to Texas, California and other areas to engage alumni in the conversation.  We have a wonderful Mason School alumni—now some 12,000 strong!  We care about you and I am learning more and more about the depth of your fondness for your alma mater and of your desire to help us connect with you. 

We have begun a journey that will take us all to a better place, and I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the road this summer. Please join the conversation!

This is really something when you stop and think about it. We have an undergraduate program that is uniquely William and Mary and we are ranked with the top ten public universities in the country and perhaps the world. Why is it valuable to stop and think about this? My personal answer is based on my experiences as an active-duty dad. I was very lucky because during the years that my sons were growing up in Williamsburg I knew that I was living something very special and that consciousness awareness continues to enrich my life today. I believe the same can be said for being consciously aware of the amazing learning community we have in our program at the Mason School.

The contributions of those who came before provide a legacy that our current students carry forward. Our world class integrative curriculum resonates with all the major themes of a William and Mary education and this is what makes us an undergraduate business school without walls. Something very special has been created in the Mason School and it’s important that we know and experience this, and it is important that we pay it forward.  Happily, living in the moment and having ambitious aspirations for the future are not incompatible. We are the sum of many, many contributions of time and energy and support. Thanks to all. It’s good to know that your efforts have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

[We] ignore resumés. In my experience, they’re full of exaggerations, half-truths, embellishments — and even outright lies. They’re made of action verbs that don’t really mean anything. Even when people aren’t intentionally trying to trick you, they often stretch the truth. And what does “five years’ experience” mean, anyway? Resumés reduce people to bullet points, and most people look pretty good as bullet points.

What we do look at are cover letters. Cover letters say it all. They immediately tell you if someone wants this job or just any job. And cover letters make something else very clear: They tell you who can and who can’t write. Spell checkers can spell, but they can’t write. Wordsmiths rise to the top quickly. Another rule of thumb: When in doubt, always hire the better writer.

Not everyone agrees:  I’ve heard some argue that in the age of tweets and wall posts, cover letters are passé.  I doubt it.  We infer a lot about individuals based on their writing:

• Intelligence.  Are they smart enough to construct a good letter?
• Motivation.  Is the message personal enough to show that they are really interested in us, and not just in a job with someone?
• Attention to detail.  Have they done their homework?  Do they know who we are, and what we care about?
• Clarity of thinking.  Is the message cogent?  Do they get to the point, quickly and compellingly?

The construction of a cover letter says a lot about the writer — whether the writer meant to say it or not – and while a great cover letter isn’t going to compensate for a poor resume, a poor cover letter is a real red flag.

Procter & Gamble was once infamous for its one-page memos.  A Brand Assistant would draft a recommended course of action for his or her boss, the Associate Brand Manager:  one page or less, one inch margins all around.  The ABM would refine and return, covered with red ink.  When it passed muster with both of them, it moved up to the Brand Manager for more red ink and more refinement… and so on, until the final decision-maker signed off on that one page.

It was a time-consuming, bureaucratic process that has been supplanted with quicker collaborative technologies… but it was also a great discipline.   Being forced to distill your argument into a page or less makes you think differently.  Better.  More focused on your audience.  And the ability to construct a great single page is a rare skill.  A differentiator.

So let’s hear it for the lowly cover letter.  And for paying as much attention to the cover letter – whether yours or that of a job prospect – as to that resume!

It is our plan to have many of our alumni engaged in this initiative.

The first half of the summer will focus on gathering information; the second half will focus on analyzing information and coming up with detailed, implementable action plans for each project.

In our career services initiative, students will not only look at best practices—seeking golden nuggets from other schools, they will also research, talk about, and think about how we can align our career services program with the experience of our MBA, Master of Accounting and undergraduate students.

I am deeply involved in the alumni engagement initiative.  We are not only looking at best practices, we are bringing a blank piece of paper to the effort, incorporating your thoughts, and starting anew.

Another project focuses on our marketing efforts, including web and social networking site messaging and presence.  We have great stories to tell and we are looking for uniquely effective ways to tell them.

“Merchandising Mason” is a project suggested by our students.  It will focus on providing more than the standard clothing and accessory fodder you can find at bookstores and campus shops. We are aiming for something that is uniquely us and that captures our revolutionary approach to business education.

We are also looking at all of the databases and software we have available in the business school and examining how we can use them to help students gain access to both job opportunities and alumni.  I will be updating you over the course of the summer.  It suffices to say that I have high expectations for these efforts and am delighted with the enthusiastic engagement of the interns.

The interns are engaging team members across the Mason School and Tom Rideout will help with the day-to-day operations of the project.  Many of you will be hearing from these teams as they gather information over the first part of the summer.   We look forward to sharing the rollout of these plans and following up with you on our successful implementation activities over the coming academic year.

Please stay tuned or, better yet,  join the conversation!

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