On Making Decisions

Decisions - crucial or minor - are a facet of business that every employee faces. My decision making method is probably different than my colleague. Maybe I intuit the decision with sparse information. I might run vigorous analysis of available data instead. The point is that there is little uniformity in most business offices when it comes to decision making.

The operations course I am taking now is common across all MBA programs: Decision Modeling. The course posits that decision making can be augmented toward greater success with the educated employment of models. The three primary models available to business men and women are as follows:

• Decision Trees
• Linear Programming
• Integer Programming

I'm enjoying the projects we have in this course. It's fun drawing decision nodes and evaluating what is in and out of my control in the decision process. The fun I'm having, however, is not translating to practicality for many of my peers. The recurring grievance orbits the theory versus reality argument: this is fun to do in a lab setting, but do you have the time or patience to use it outside of this vacuum?

This leads to an underlying issue with MBA programs: I am being exposed to a number of great practices, but will I ever use them again? The problem is that processes like decision making modeling require practice - in spades. Once you get past this class, your focus moves either to the next core requisite or to your concentration courses. Not all concentrations employ decision trees equally. So for many, this class is the last time they will see decision modeling and that seems like a waste of time and money.

I need to point out something about this course that is more of a subtext than the headline. Whether you incorporate the models learned into your decision making repertoire or not, this class exposes you to a methodical, tested means to evaluating decisions. It does not substitute intuition with modeling. It incorporates the two. This course exposes the student to thinking about decision from an unnatural perspective: do not make the decision that "feels" right immediately.

If anything, this is the big takeaway from the course.

Career Managment Course

A new semester is in bloom. Monday marked the first day of the summer semester. I'm taking three courses during Module A: Intermediate Accounting, Decision Analysis and Managing Your Career. I'm going to discuss the career management course during this post and its implications.

Career management courses are offered with every MBA program; however, many programs are relegating the course to a Pass/Fail elective as they attempt to make the program time competitive. SMU has followed suit. This course was required two years ago when SMU was a 56 credit program and it was dropped at the 48 credit program introduction.

There are a myriad of reasons why a candidate takes this course: to evaluate his current career fit; to determine what he wants to be when he "grows up;" and/or to better understand his strengths and weaknesses, among others. I fall into the first two options.

My first tasks were to complete the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a Work-Life Values Assessment and the CareerLeader(TM) Assessment. Our first lecture was devoted to the MBTI.


For those of you unfamiliar with the MBTI, it is an assessment that measures your preferences according to four opposing parameters: Extraversion to Introversion, Sensing to Intuition, Thinking to Feeling and Judging to Perceiving. I must emphasize that these are preferences: just because you prefer to be a thinker does not mean you do not feel and vice versa.

The instrument gives you the ability to evaluate what you prefer to do rather than what you can do. And if you are throwing down a substantial amount of money on an MBA, it behooves you to figure this out.

Furthermore, you will find that you have a number of prejudices against personalities contrary to your own. If you are energized by introverted activities, you tend to give greater credence to others who are similarly energized and denigrate the extravert activities. This awareness can help you increase your emotional intelligence and be a better manager and leader in spite of your known biases.

The strength of this tool lies in identifying what elements you want in your career. I have a number of potential career paths on which I can continue. There are a number of positions that sound exciting and fulfilling. As I continue to evaluate my next career step, the tools with which I will be equipped in this course will play a role in weeding out paths that contain elements I do not prefer.

Be sure you take advantage of a course like this during your MBA career. The dividends are well worth the investment.