Unexpected Business Experience

I never really expected extracurricular activities to supply me with the real management experience that I was seeking by attending business school. And even if I had an inkling that it could, I never would have guessed that it would come from running a newspaper.

When I got to the Johnson School, the last thing I thought I'd do was anything related to journalism. I knew the school had a student-run paper, but it didn't really occur to me to get involved. Of course, after a few months of the core, withdrawal symptoms from several years writing stories on deadline for BusinessWeek started to set in. Almost in spite of myself, I inquired about getting involved.

A month later, I started running the Cornell Business Journal. Of course, I wasn't alone. A fellow first-year named Vivek Pai assumed the role of Co-Editor; we figured two heads would be better than one, particularly because we were inheriting an independently run and funded organization (we survive by selling ads and don't take a dime from the school, so that we may maintain our independent spirit and right to cast a critical eye on any and all elements of life at the Johnson School).

When we took over, we were in a tough spot. There was almost no cash on hand to cover printing costs, and the staff was largely uninspired and oversubscribed with other activities.

Of course, I was overconfident. I figured it would be a snap to turn this thing around, reinvigorate the staff, and establish journalistic excellence -- all at the same time. But it hasn't quite worked out that way. The process has felt more like pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. And, like just about everything I've been involved with at school, the process of finishing an issue sometimes finds itself temporarily demoted on my priority list. That's not to say I don't care about it; I think my role as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Cornell Business Journal is what I care most about here at Johnson -- and the thing about which I'm most proud. It's just that the paper is always competing with at least ten other things on my to-do list.

It's now been close to a year since we took over the reigns from last year's second-year class, and I thought it time to take an honest look at the gap between the turnaround I thought I could pull off and what has actually transpired. After all, it's almost time to turn it over to the class of 2010.

So, how have we done? On the undeniably positive side, we'll turn the CBJ over to this year's class of first-years with probably four times the cash on hand as we had last year. We've put together some pretty solid marketing collateral that we use to approach potential advertisers (some of it was adapted from the hard work of previous classes). And I think we've established a pretty solid record of quality stories and writing.

Okay, enough patting myself on the back. Where we could have done better is getting more of a real team environment going. I pulled a number of people in to help run the paper last year, and some of them have fallen off at one point or another; we've had underperforming staff members and also some solid contributors. But I think the number one management challenge I've faced is figuring out how to compete for peoples' time and attention in the face of so many activities and responsibilities that go along with being a business school student.

Would I have an easier time of it in the real working world? Perhaps. I'm convinced that pinning people down would be easier in the real world, but the other issues we've had -- with maintaining quality, designing our organization to motivate workers, and some sporadic trouble with suppliers -- are all things that are omnipresent in the working world. Even if I hadn't taken anything at all from my classes (but, of course, I have), the experience of running the Cornell Business Journal, encountering and overcoming the challenges that I've noted above, would have made my time here worth it. I'm going back into the business world with much more theoretical knowledge, but also more hands-on experience, than I had when I got here. And despite the occasional challenge, I'm proud and thankful for the experience.

On Classes

I realized I haven't even done a rundown of classes for this semester yet, which should be a requirement for any student blogger, I think. I'm taking all good classes -- there's not that achilles heel one that really bothers me, which is nice.

Here are the highlights:

Entrepreneurship and Private Equity is taught by Professor David BenDaniel, a veteran of many a start-up board of directors. We get to do a bunch of live cases surrounding VC and PE investments, with the investors coming in to tell us how the funding and financing scenario all played out in real life. Also, the big assignment is presenting a complete business plan with detailed financials at the end of the semester, which is really exciting and one of the big reasons I came back to business school.

Managing Technology is jointly taught by Professors Ganem and Huttenlocher, an organic chemist and a computer scientist. We've had a number of interesting speakers to talk about the three fields of technology we cover in the class -- bio, info, and nanotechnology.

Negotiations is a great class, taught by Christin Munsch, a sociologist by training. It's a full semester of learning the ins and outs of how to approach a number of different negotiation scenarios, from increases in salary to full labor dispute resolution.

Integrated Marketing Communication, taught by Professor Raj (his first name is real long and hard to spell), is also a good course. We're doing a live consulting project for Kodak and get to learn about trends in advertising and marketing, and how to develop an integrated marketing communications plan across multiple platforms.

The last and probably my favorite class is Macroeconomics and International Trade, with Ori Heffetz. Ori is a really great teacher -- funny and knowledgeable. This is probably a little known fact outside of the Johnson School (I certainly didn't expect it coming in, and it definitely wasn't one of the main reasons I came to Johnson), but studying economics here is awesome. I had New York Times columnist and well-known author Bob Frank last year, and Ori Heffetz is just as good in the classroom.

So, that's the rundown. I've selected the courses for the specific skills I wanted to acquire, and so far, they're working out well.

Down to Earth

This has been a tough week, for myself and for our increasingly poor friend, the world economy. But, looking on the bright side, out of the rubble always rises something new. It's the principle of creative destruction, and it makes a whole lot of sense as long as it remains a quiet, well-behaved theory or a housebroken intellectual idea. It starts barking or doing its business on your carpet and that's another matter entirely. Try telling someone who's lost their mortgage, or the lion's share of their pension, that it might be for the best, or that their fortune might still be right around the corner.

By the same token, if you'd tried telling me last Thursday that my shoulder hanging out of its socket during my first-ever sparring match in boxing class was just a door closed and that God would be opening another, it would've taken me a little while to process those admitted words of wisdom.

What's funny about my dislocated shoulder is that it was more a final symptom than the cause of my strange mood. All I know is that I was down in the dumps, and I started thinking it was about all the crazy life decisions I have to make in, like, the next few weeks -- where I want to live, what kind of job I want to have, etc.

What I want to be sure of is that this business school experience leads me somewhere better. Isn't that why we come? To get some kind of a transformative experience? In reality, a means to an end is what many more of us seek, and all too often we're shuffled right into the path of least resistance. I don't want to go right back to New York. I don't want to go right back to the morning subway commute, succumbing to later and later dinners cause work got hectic.

I yearn for the beauty of California, the lifestyle where casual dress is the norm, and the ability to take weekend trips to Lake Tahoe or Santa Cruz or Yosemite or the Napa Valley. But, above all, it's the professional opportunities in San Francisco Bay Area that appeal to me above all others.

Just a little aside: Writing this blog is a funny experience, because it's not like I'm holding a two-way conversation with you, the reader. In fact, chances are good that you're reading this blog all in one shot, so taking a half-hour bus tour of my indecision and confusion. That seems a bit crazy in a place like business school, where the prevailing wisdom is that you should have it all figured out by now. Luckily, I'm not trying to pose as someone with everything figured out. I've got a lot of interests and a couple of relative aptitudes, and I'm still not entirely sure how they'll be put to the best use, but I think I know where -- California!