3 Professional Life Hacks from The ‘Master of Connections’, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
3 Professional Life Hacks from a Billionaire Introvert – MIT Sloan Newsroom
In a recent podcast with MIT Sloan School of Management Principal Research scientist Andrew McAfee, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman thoroughly explained how one person can maintain massive success despite their habits as an introvert.
Hoffman explains three simple professional life hacks that help his process, of which include:
- “Deliberately leave some room for serendipity.”
- “Find someone who knows you well enough to refer you to me and knows me well enough that I care about the reference.”
- “Embrace your skillset.”
On the latter, Hoffman says:
“What I learned was that private company boards are a very good use of my skillset because more or less … they go ‘here’s what we’re working on. That’s like sport, that I’m like ‘oh, I enjoy this.’ How do we solve a customer acquisition problem, how do we solve an executive hiring problem, how do we solve a competition problem, how do we solve a need to reinvent the product problem; all of these kinds of things. That’s what makes this game hard, and I enjoy that.”
You can read more from the Hoffman podcast here.
Work Your Magic: Erica Feldmann ’12MA Makes Witches Her Business – Simmons Blog
Erica Feldmann ‘12MA, Hauswitch Home + Healing’s Head Witch in Charge
The Simmons Blog recently profiled Hauswitch Home + Healing’s Head Witch in Charge Erica Feldmann, ‘12MA, who founded HausWitch to be a “hyper-feminist, hyper-local and hyper-inclusive” space for local, independent makers, crafters, and witches to meet, shop, and build community.
The Salem, MA-based Feldmann “focused her gender/cultural studies degree on the oppression of witches from a feminist perspective” so her use of the word—which one acronym could mean “Woman In Total Control of Herself”—and her choice of location are both very deliberate.
“I think the word ‘witch’ in its essence is female. I think it’s about power and challenging the dominant culture. Who better to do this than the witch? Not from a place of being a victim, but from a place of strength.”
Feldmann adds, “Being a woman in business, I literally surround myself with other women who are very invested in the project of lifting each other up.”
You can read more about Feldmann and HausWitch here.
Productive Slacking with Anirudh Dhebar – Babson Blog
Babson College F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business Professor of Marketing Anirudh Dhebar recently unpacked an FT article entitled “Managers can draw a line between slack and slacking” as part of a weekly informal student chat he engages in at the Olin Café on Mondays evenings and Tuesday afternoons “to address things that don’t get touched upon in class.”
Dhebar posits whether “it is better to slack or should we often be slacking—a time taken to unwind.” In other words, is it healthy for managers to incorporate slacking into everyone’s daily schedule or should employees practice self-care and slack off the clock?
“If you think it is the managers responsibility to inculcate a culture of slack, why should it not be the individual’s responsibility or the company’s as a whole?”
Dhebar describes their day as a series of different slacks. For instance, “Class is a form of slack where [I] push students to think beyond the case and [my] students’ perspectives make [me] think differently.”
You can read more about Dhebar’s perspective in the Babson Blog.
MIT’s Unique Team Building Tool, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Music Making as an Effective Teaming Tool – MIT Sloan Newsroom
The MIT Sloan School of Management recently hosted an Innovation Period workshop entitled “Music Making as Effective Teaming Tool,” which focused on leadership training through music. The workshop was developed in conjunction with New York nonprofit Found Sound Nation, which uses “collaborative sound-making as a tool to help enhance communities and build bonds.”
MIT Leadership Center Associate Director Abby Berenson explains, “Through music-making, they create a sense of community and a sense of teams, and through teams, this leadership practice. That’s really at the heart of what we try to bring for any of the SIP workshops we do.”
Sloan MBA student Faye Cheng added, “Being able to experience failure in a low-risk setting gave [me] new insight into how it can open up new avenues for creativity and innovation. It didn’t have to be a perfect sound, it was just ‘Let’s try things out and layer them on.’ In real life, it can be more daunting to fail in that way or make a decision and have to undo it later.”
You can read the full article here and listen to the students’ songs below.
How Companies Can Identify Racial and Gender Bias in Their Customer Service – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business Review recently published an article by HBS Organizational Behavior Ph.D. candidate Alexandra C. Feldberg and UVA Darden assistant professor of marketing Tami Kim in which they explore the prevalence of racial and gender bias within customer service.
As part of their ongoing research, Feldberg and Kim “audited 6,000 hotels in the U.S. by sending email inquiries from fictitious email accounts that signaled senders’ race and gender. By systematically examining replies to these inquiries, we observed that frontline employees were less responsive to nonwhite customers and objectively less helpful and friendly. In other words, compared to white customers, black and Asian customers received worse quality service.”
They offered four effective strategies that large companies can implement to combat racial and gender bias:
- “Develop anticipatory service protocols.” In other words: “standardize scripts and develop rules.”
- “Develop channels for employee feedback” to accommodate any new customer service issues.
- “Emphasize not just “best” service,” which the researchers argue can be “onerous and subject to interpretation,” but “equal” service.
- “Diversify employees’ experiences … through hiring and employee rotations.”
You can read the full article here.
Real World Statistics with Professor Ed Vieira – Simmons Blog
The Simmons School of Management blog recently re-published an interview with associate professor Edward T. Viera, Jr., whose 2017 textbook on applied statistics raised a number of interesting questions related to how big data and statistics can be utilized in the health care industry, for instance.
Professor Viera explains, “Statistics allows us to analyze complex problems and provide reliable results, which humans cannot as easily do. Statistics offers the tools to “objectively” analyze a situation so that we can make reliable, data-driven, informed decision … with unprecedented precision.”
He adds, “Through the use of health care analytics, which deploys advanced software and hardware technologies, we can monitor and adjust our research or treatment based on the collection of data in real time.”
Check out the complete interview with Professor Viera here.
Applications for Simmons New Online Programs Now Available
The Simmons School of Management has announced that applications for its newly designed online MBA and online Healthcare MBA programs are now available. Both of the programs have been developed in to 100 percent online delivery methods. The first intake of students will begin the programs in March 2016. The new online design for the programs will feature weekly live virtual classes and self-paced course content as well as occasional weekend immersion events at the Boston campus as well as various locations nationwide and abroad.
Although the programs are being transitioned in to an online format, Simmons assures prospective students that it will maintain its focus on women’s leadership. The Simmons website states that although the programs will now be offered online, the school will be increasing its focus on women’s leadership “through important educational initiatives that will help keep our expertise in women’s leadership and business education relevant and competitive in today’s marketplace.”
Simmons Students Visit Denmark and Sweden to Learn About Women in the Workforce
Professors from the Simmons School of Management took twenty students to Denmark and Sweden to explore how the countries support women in the workforce. The trip was planned after Associate Dean Patricia Deyton and Professor Cynthia Ingols took a group of students to Japan in Spring 2013. On the Japanese trip, students studied women’s involvement in the workforce and equity issues. Traditionally Japanese women leave the labor market when they get married; more recently Japanese women leave the labor market when they have their first child and they tend not to return.
In contrast to Japan, women in the Denmark and Sweden have a very high rate of participation in the labor market. The professors wanted to bring the students to these countries so that they could witness and learn firsthand what governmental and corporate policies encourage women to work.
Simmons Holds MBA Showcase
The next MBA Showcase for the Simmons School of Management will be held Feb. 23. The showcases scheduled for the end of Jan. were cancelled due to inclement weather. The MBA showcase will be held at the Simmons School of Management campus from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. During the event, prospective students will be able to learn more about the MBA programs offered at Simmons as well as all necessary information to start the program in 2015.
Attendants will have the opportunity to hear about the opportunity for women at Simmons as well as the expert faculty at the school. Prospective students will also be able to find out more information on the flexible scheduling option of the MBA program as well as career placement opportunities for Simmons graduates. Information on the application process and financing options will also be available.
Simmons Alum Shares Experience
Simmons School of Management Alumnus Amanda Wagner shared her story of why she chose to attend Simmons and how it has helped to further her career. Wagner’s story was published in the Simmons School of Management blog.
Wagner serves as the Senior Director of Product Planning & Program Management at Concert Pharmaceuticals and was selected out of 350 Boston professionals that were nominated for the honor of 40 under 40 due to her professional accomplishments and civil engagement.
Current MBA student, Audrey Markarian, interviewed Wagner. Read an excerpt from the interview below:
