Subarctic Survival Booklet

The excercise essentially works as follows:

1. A video sets the scene: you and your team crash landed in the arctic.
2. You individually rank 15 items in accordance to their importance.
3. Then you meet as a group and attempt to reach a consensus on the ranking…
4. …while being watched by an observer and tape-recorded.
5. You then find out how your individual and group scores compare against the “correct” answers.

The idea being that you’re given a chance to analyze how you interact with a team.  I have mixed feelings on the excercise.  My individual score was the best of the group (off by ~10%), while our consensus team score was not-as-good (off by ~30%).  So, does this mean I should’ve been more assertive in the team meeting?  Or maybe just more convincing?

It’s hard to say.  It would be fascinating to conduct this group experiment with different incentives.  For our situation (and most), I’m not sure the pressure is strong enough.  On the other hand, if they had offered a $1,000 reward to the winning team, I bet that would’ve completely changed the dynamic of our group — and been a more realistic simulation of a work environment.  As it was, the incentives were skewed.  It was a great way of showing how you might interact in a group when… deciding on dinner location, possibly… but not very indicative of the way you might act when choosing an acquisition target.

Still, this was interesting, and I’m glad to see that HBS offers “experiential” type learnings every so often.  Something like this sticks with you far longer than an abstract lecture on group dynamics.

It’s an interesting idea, and basically implements across the entire student body the “informal study groups” that tend to form naturally.  It also gives HBS a chance to experiment with a bit of social engineering, which is always a plus.  The problem is: few of these groups continue to meet past a few months into the school year.  Why is this?

There will always be time pressure (they meet at 7:30am!), personality conflicts, and free-rider issues, but I think the fundamental problem here is deeper than that: Students form groups for radically different reasons. There seem to be a few dominant / traditional reasons:

1. Hedge the risk of an unprepared cold call by having other people “write-up” cases.
2. Ensure a solid understanding of the case fundamentals by working through difficult issues.
3. Polish ideas for public speaking by practicing in front of a group smaller than 90 people.

Unfortunately, these goals tend to lead to the 60 minutes every morning being spent reviewing what most people already know.  You covered it last night, you cover it again with your LT, and then AGAIN during class that day.  I find that I rarely use my LT’s write-up in class.  It’s easy to see why people get burned out once they’ve learned the fundamentals of how to prepare cases.  I think an LT should have more focused objectives:

1. Brainstorm “out there” ideas that might yield unique comments in class.
2. Brainstorm “unanswerable” questions that might yield unique comments in class.
3. Brainstorm “tying-it-all-together” concepts that might yield unique comments in class.

Notice the common theme?  This is the real opportunity here, but it seems like very few LTs pick up on it…

900 Candidates for 2010

The morning started with a fairly typical “Welcome to HBS” speech by the Dean.  We’re all unique handpicked snowflakes, etc… then some general thoughts on the program from a panel of administrative faculty.  Honestly, I can’t remember too much of what was said.  Too much glancing around and thinking about who was going to be in my section, who might be in my learning team, and what was in store over the coming weeks…!

Welcome to HBS!

So, HBS decided a few years ago that groups of 6-7 people were the ideal number to discuss cases.  As such, we spent the remainder of the first day (from 11am-6pm) doing team-building excercises with our newly formed “Learning Teams”.  HBS runs the entire class through some sort of algorithm designed to optimize the diversity and group dynamics of each team.  Although, I’m not sure if the algorithm was firing quite right for my team — two consultants, three investment bankers, and myself.  The famed HBS diversity.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all works out… We’re supposed to meet every morning one hour before classes start and discuss the cases we prepared the night before.  From what I’ve heard, only half of the learning teams make it past the first semester, with only a few remaining for the entire first year.  There seem to be a lot of benefits, but the extra hour of sleep proves to be too alluring a call, it appears…

Anyway, each learning team was assisted by a “team-building” consultant who guided us a through a day’s worth of “toss the ball”, “build lego towers”, “assemble a puzzle”, and more activities with post-analysis of our team’s dynamic and the best way to approach group problems.  I’m of the opinion that handing each group a few party games (scrabble, balderdash, etc) would have been just as effective and probably a lot less costly…  Some photos from across Baker Beach:

Team Building Exercises!

Perfect Day to Be Outside...

A nice, easy first day of Orientation…  Tomorrow’s the first practice case-day!