Online MBA Forum

Getting the balance of work, study, home and leisure right is very difficult if you are going to study online. A program such as an online MBA is a really big committment over a long period of time, and you need to be sure that you are going to be able to keep the program going over a couple of years at least.

Your online university or business school will help you with ideas about time management, and also with some good pastoral care. However, you need to be aware that you will need some self discipline to make all this work.

There are some real advantages to studying an online MBA as you will find that much of the content is useful in your everyday work. You will also be able to combine at least some of your work and your study in practical projects and exercises. But you will need to spend some time getting a realistic work and study plan together so that you can make sure that your life is sufficiently balanced to keep all of your activities going.

Oh great, the weekend. For me, the weekend is almost sacred, and I really try not to work or even study then. But if you are studying an online MBA, you're going to have to face the fact that you need to study at the weekend.

A colleague of mine is studying an online MBA at the moment, but he tells me that for him it has become more fun than he thought. A group of students have decided to study in tandem, and so they start the weekend off with a Saturday morning online chat, talking about what they've done during the week and any salient points that have arisen. Usually Saturday is the day to concentrate on any group work, and he tells me that it's usual for him to not only chat online, but also he'll make several phone calls and sometimes they meet to physically work together.

This social activity lifts the whole program for him, and as it's largely self-directed, it has grown and developed as the program has progressed. He now looks forward to Saturday morning. Apparently the group are now discussing how they will stay in touch when they've finished their MBA program.

Middle of the week, and everyone's getting fraught. After my last meeting, I just realised why companies want MBAs to teach people skills. A fellow manager and I need to start a project that spans both of our subject areas. We are both fairly new, but the other guy is not as new as me. He talks the talk, but will not have a one to one meeting to get the projects out. Instead we meet with our boss, and suddenly he's telling me what I need to tell my people.

Hmmm, usually I'm good at de-stressing situations, but this afternoon I simply had had enough, and didn't want to pander to this guy's ego any more. So I shut up, and very deliberately asked for 5 minutes of my boss's time after the meeting. She had also had a mauling by this person, so we didn't say much, just registered it had happened.

I left realising that this person had just effectively given himself a demotion - and guess what, by the time I get to my office I had an email from my boss giving me control of the project and relieving him of his responsibilities on the project. How silly, he really didn't need to do this to himself.

Big talks today in my department about the relevance of graduate level professional development. My personal thoughts are that professional development makes as much if not more sense when you are studying at graduate level as you have sufficient educational background to make really good use of development opportunities and the knowledge that you gain on these programs.

Of course, the biggest single factor is the selection procedure that the program administrator uses - but that is true for almost any educational or training program. One only has to look at the GMAT procedure for an MBA program to see that higher scores almost always equal higher MBA program success.

Indeed, the Ivy League institutions have been making use of this fact since they first opened their doors. Recruit people like yourself, and you can make sure they gain top marks - mostly for being people like yourself.

This discussion about knowledge workers is really in the center of my thoughts at the moment. In New Zealand, as in many other countries, there is much talk about the "knowledge economy", and how this idea affects how we work within organisations.

There is little doubt that we need to think carefully about how this shift affects the management function, and, as Failing Economist says, about the ownership of organisations. However, many Management Schools are still teaching the traditional models of organisation and management.

This discussion is beginning to be opened up in management schools, and no doubt it will affect some thinking which will be reflected in MBA programs. I think there is little doubt that what we see at the moment is just the beginning of a major change in the way we view organisations, and possibly in business thinking as a whole.