MBA Questions and Reflections

A lot of people ask me questions about my MBA. I'll try to catalog the questions and answers here. I will update this over time if I can.

Why did you do this?

I've been thinking about getting an MBA for about 15+ years. I have often felt like I have a language barrier with business-oriented stakeholders. We want to solve the same thing. We are trying to solve the same thing. We are talking about the same thing. But we still don't see eye to eye. It felt like I was speaking English and they were speaking French; languages that are technically related but not understandable by each other. And this tension kept happening, over and over, even as I got higher up the ladder.

In the last 5 years, I also felt like I was hit a career ceiling. The inability to cross this language barrier was also present when I applied for higher-level jobs, I always seemed to come up short somehow. I was having a real problem getting over the fact that I had only managed small teams, despite the fact that I had managed those teams to excellent performance.

When I explored MBA programs, I was frustrated by the commitment in time and money. For instance, pursuing a full-time MBA at our local UCSD would run over $100,000 for two years. The part-time option for professionals is closer to $120,000. BU developed their all-online program at a total two-year cost of $24,000. That's a lot of money, but stretched out over two years, it could become manageable.

Besides the curriculum, what did you get out of it?

I got a few different benefits from the program.

Intellectual stimulation: In the first few weeks, I told my wife that I could feel parts of my brain physically turning on that had been dormant for years.

Intellectual challenges: It's very good for your brain to be challenged with learning new things. In other words, it's good to be doing something you're bad at with the intention of getting better. Data analysis, learning Excel, role play in new management situations, risk identification and assessment, and all forms of strategy were incredibly challenging.

It made me a more rigorous thinker: It changed how I think about design and business. I went into the program thinking I had a decent handle on things and thought the program would give me a boost. I was eventually humbled learned that I didn’t actually have a decent handle on things (ha!!) and the learning curve got steeper but the lessons were that much more rewarding. One of the semesters is focused on understanding and addressing risk. That class gave me a mental framework that I have shaped to address the design process as a risk management strategy. That, more than anything else REALLY resonated in job interviews and in conversations with my clients over the last year. Business stakeholders that I’ve worked this year (COO, CPO, VPs, PMs) just want to be successful in turbulent times. When I framed design research, prototyping, and iteration as one tool in a broader toolbox of improving the odds of success while reducing the odds of failure, they got it. I spent the last 5 months helping a team develop a strategy for launching a new division--something I don’t think I would have EVER been able to do pre-MBA. But hey, you don’t have to take my word for it!

It feels good: Growing fluent in topics that were once challenging and intimidating feels amazing.

It seemed to help significantly with the job hunt: My job pursuit over 2022 was very challenging, but I can comfortably say that the ability to speak to business issues in design terms helped move me from screening call to interview. So far, I seem to get the added benefit of signaling to others that I'm not just making it up when I talk about business challenges, so that's nice.

What are you going to do with your MBA?

This is probably the most common question and it is the perfect artifact of the bullshit way we look at education in our society.

Look, a degree is not a wrench that you can use to turn a bolt. It's not a weapon that you point at an adversary. You don't get a degree and then 'do something with it.'

It's an artifact of your own past learning journey. The only thing you can do with any degree is apply yourself into the future in a new, better way.

What I'm going to do is this: do more of what I already do and do it better.

What program was it? How did it work?

Program Name: Boston University Questrom School of Business Online MBA (OMBA)

Tuition: Total program, $24,000, made in payments of $4,000 upon registration each semester, about every 4 months. Lots of students were having their tuition covered by their employers. I paid out of pocket. The cost of tuition is a tax deduction for the self-employed.

Does the program require a GMAT?: The program does not require a GMAT. Their site says it helps with your application, so I studied for it. I did Manhattan Prep and took the test in the first weird couple weeks of the pandemic when we didn't really know what was going on. I did terribly and ended up applying without my GMAT scores.

What are other students like?: a lot of other students were also 10-15+ years of experience and trying to break through to the next level of their careers, this was a common theme. Lots of parents. Lots of managers. I think the stereotypical MBA student--the hard-charging slicky boy--was the minority of students in this program.

What Software does the program use? The program uses Blackboard for course materials, Gsuite, Zoom. For the semester on data analysis you will have to specifically use Excel. There are one-off programs for things like

Were there other Materials: You will have to buy course packs from time to time containing articles and readings, usually ~$100 or less. Some people signed up for MBA Math in advance of starting the program, which is a really good way to dust off your math cobwebs.

How big is the class? You are part of a cohort of ~400-500 people who are entering the program at the same time. There is a new cohort every semester.

Do you do group work? Your cohort of 400-500 students is split into groups of 4-6 people. You will meet with this group weekly and do group projects together.

Weekly schedule: Each week you will have

• course materials that usually consists of of readings, videos, and quizzes
• a live session with the professor in Boston
• team meeting to discuss work or collaborate on group assignments (team meeting schedule is up to the team)

Live sessions are conducted once a week via zoom, with the professor in Boston and students logging in from around the world. There is one session in the morning (8am ET) and one session in the evening (8pm ET). The session material is the same in each am/pm session.

Was anyone else in UX? There was one other product designer that I talked to. She's great.

Curriculum: Other programs are structured more traditionally; a semester of accounting, a semester of finance, etc. BU's OMBA is broken into 6 total semester-long modules. Each module covers different topics on a theme. For instance, you have a semester on understanding risk and you learn a framework for identifying, assessing and managing risk, which you then apply in different practical areas; inventory and supply chain management, legal risks, product failures, financial risks, etc. Most semesters have a final capstone project that you work on as a group.

Stats on my end: I'll just acknowledge some demographic privilege here... a cis/het/married/White guy living in coastal US. I have over 20 years experience in the design field, about 15+ of that spent specifically in UX. I have managed designers and design processes with non-designers since 2011. I have worked independently as a consultant and on internal companies.

How is it similar or different from an Executive MBA?

The best way to answer this starts with considering in-person MBA programs... My understanding is that an Executive MBA has two factors distinguishing it from a 'regular' MBA;

1. a schedule of classes that allows for evening and weekend participation
2. a more generous reliance on electives that allows for some level of specialization that builds on your career experience and aspirations

This comparison of Wharton programs is a good explainer.

For Boston University, the Full-Time MBA would be the 'regular' program in-person program, while the Professional Evening MBA would fit that description of the Executive example. They even have bundles of electives for specialization in key areas of study, Health, Social Impact, and Corporate Analytics.

Now, add the online aspect to the conversation. The OMBA program is a nights-and-weekends schedule of an executive program, but it does not have the electives and specialization in its curriculum. Everyone takes the same courses.

Where did this program fall short?

There's a lot to be said about the value of an MBA. Considering in-person programs, it is often said that you build much deeper bonds and friendships with your cohort. Your professional network becomes shaped by your MBA experience.

In this program, that was not truly the case, at least for me. Meeting people only online is limiting in its emotional potential to build strong bonds. The age of the students in this program and their position in their careers brings with it the implication that your professional network is already in place. The university does not put much energy into strengthening the OMBA community as a professional network.

This is the biggest area where the program falls short, but it represents an opportunity for any student who is even barely capable of networking. Build out your professional network within your cohort on your own terms.

Another issue is that the program only barely touched on material that is specific to the internet age. On the one hand, you get well-grounded in business fundamentals that are still relevant today. On the other hand the case studies for learning those fundamentals are often from the pre-internet age. There was some material specific to online platforms, primarily from Professor Marshall Van Alstyne, that I found fascinating, to the point that I think the program would be enhanced greatly with a semester on just that topic. On the other other hand... many people in the program (and much of our economy) is not built online. We had people in industries like utilities, live performances, petrochemical industry, agriculture... in all cases technology and industrial digitization is a factor and was thoroughly discussed, which was great. But, as someone who spent their whole career in tech startups, I gained the knowledge into business fundamentals, but sometimes felt like contextualizing that work around internet-specific business would be more helpful.

100:1

After several months of searching I received, and accepted a job offer last week. Here is the story of how it went.

Starting the search

After being laid off in January 2022, I took some time off to recuperate from the ups and downs of my last job and two years of pandemic parenting, one year of which included studying for an MBA. I was still ramping back up to capacity after experiencing debilitating burnout. After the severance ran out and my initial leads went cold, I took on some freelance work, aiming for 20-30 hours a week for work, balanced against ~20 hours a week for school.

My last job search took almost exactly six months. With that in mind, and hearing that other design leaders were seeing the same window of time, I started to plan a new job search. My school work continues until December 10th and I wanted to maintain my reduced hours while still in school. My goal was to start a new job in January 2023, however my final semester covers design thinking and innovation which is an area where I have some experience and I assumed I could handle the workload more efficiently. If a job came earlier, I could make it work. With my MBA coming to a close, I wanted to test the idea that I could put the credential of the degree and the lessons learned in the curriculum to use; would I be a more attractive candidate? Could I interview more effectively?

I started applying in July.

Searching and refining

Over time, I wanted to work through a few levels of uncertainty to determine fit with a new position.

Uncertainty 1: the job description isn't totally accurate. If it seemed like a 70% fit, it's worth applying.

Uncertainty 2: the recruiter/screener may not have accurate information. If I get to talk to a recruiter, they may have information that clarifies the job description, but they won't have information specific to the role and the inner workings of the team.

Uncertainty 3: the organization uses different vernacular. The design field still suffers from an inability to "define the damn thing" so if I get to talk to a hiring manager, I want to get clearer on what is expected in the position and try to clear through any jargon.

In order to narrow through these levels of uncertainty, I took a broad approach to applying, looking for 70% fit. I stayed open to any possible recruiter/screening call that came from an application or a cold connection through email or LinkedIn.

I kept track of everything

I created a google sheet and for every application, I added a row with the company, position, and status of the application, along with some notes and the date of the last event related to that job.

I interviewed for a Director of Research position and made it to the final round before getting declined. I updated the sheet.

I interviewed for a Design Manager position, and had great conversations with the hiring manager. The company sent me a gift certificate to a service that lets you pick a box of snacks which are sent to your house as a gesture of good faith going through the interview. We had a final round interview scheduled in 4 days. They declined me in 2 days, and the snacks arrived the following week. This felt incredibly strange.

I talked with recruiters about jobs that would be a $25K pay cut for me (not accounting for the effects of inflation over the course of this period of time) and we parted ways then the compensation gap became clear.

I never heard back from dozens of companies. I created another column in the sheet that calculated the days since the last action. If my applications were still stale after 20 days, I changed the status to "Ghosted" I kept track of whether I was ghosted without any contact or after each step in the process.

A lot of people moved on with other candidates.

Notes on the search

Taking a look at the search overall shows an interesting climate for design leaders.

Ghosting--never hearing yes or no from a company--remains the most common way that companies handle rejecting applicants.

Rejection emails tend to follow a template: thanks for applying, we appreciate your time, we're moving on with other candidates, we'll keep you on file.

I also realized, about six weeks into this endeavor, that I had structured the data in a way that was not the most effective. I tracked job applications by company and gave them a current status. As a result, I am only able to capture the overall state of the applications. If I had it to do over again, god forbid, I would focus on capturing events so I could get a better sense of the timing of the search. What's the average time to ghosting? or rejection? or getting a call from a job? Rejections typically come within 2-3 weeks.

The endgame

In line with my broad approach to applying for jobs, I applied for just about every company you can think of, expanding out of tech product firms to consultancies as well; BCG and McKinsey.

In August, I received an email from BCG inviting me to join their 'talent community' but gradually realized that this was their way of issuing a rejection.

A McKinsey recruiter contacted me and asked if I wanted to have a call. We talked in September and she expressed an interest in moving forward with my application, but at a higher level than the one I had applied. I had seven more interviews with McKinsey over the course of September and October as I moved from portfolio review, and exercises, along with extensive questions on personal experience.

Interviewing with McKinsey is, in and of itself, a rigorous and interesting experience. They interview differently for the design discipline than the consulting arm. There is a pretty active little industry dedicated to consultant interview coaching. I started picking apart their advice to determine what would be applicable to my interviews and where there were differences between the typical consultant interview sequence and the design leadership. I prepared with materials that McKinsey posts online. I reviewed my own work and revised my portfolio case studies with the perspectives I have honed through business school. I practiced stories from my experience where I demonstrated leadership, conflict resolution, flexibility in practice, and entrepreneurial execution. I told the folks at McKinsey that I had mixed feelings about the company as a whole, as it has had a front row seat to some significant bad behavior. They acknowledged and accepted this openly. They walked me through the policies operations of the company implemented to eliminate conflicts of interest and elevate ethical practices. I was struck by how candid they were on this topic.

In the meantime, I was keeping my search going and applying for jobs. While I was having good interviews, I was driven to continue applying in part out of perseverance, and in part out of superstition that if I took my foot off the gas, then the forces of the universe would conspire to create another dead end with McKinsey. By late October, two days before the final round with McKinsey, I reached 100 submitted applications. I told my wife, "I think I'm going to take a break in applying."

After completing the final round with McKinsey, I was told I would receive the decision on Monday. It was delayed to Tuesday and again to Wednesday. Ultimately, they made an offer and after taking a day to read it over and discuss some logistics, I accepted.

The search is over

I take some comfort that MBA credential and the lessons learned in business school made a positive impact. I was able to speak more effectively on design topics and relate them back to business objectives more effectively than I possibly could have two years ago before the program. The MBA experience has sharpened my perspectives on the role of design and given me new rigor in my thought processes.

I read somewhere that McKinsey only extends offers to 1% of applicants. And my job search resulted in only 1% of applications yielding an offer. And on top of that, I am not McKinsey material on paper. I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I didn't graduate from a top ten business school. I have not worked at a Fortune 100 company. How did I get here?! Onward and Upward!

Career Values

The Knowdell Career Values Card Sort is a straightforward online card sort tool to help prioritize what aspects of your career you value or those you could pursue. I did an assessment as part of my MBA program, among many others. My report indicates the following variables that are key to my work satisfaction, in order of importance.

1. Advancement: Be able to get ahead rapidly, gaining opportunities for growth and seniority from work well-done.
2. Environment: Work on tasks that have a positive effect on the natural environment.
3. Challenging Problems: Engage continually with complex questions, demanding tasks, trouble-shooting and problem-solving as a core part of my job.
4. Influence People: Be in a position to change attitudes or opinions of others.
5. Time Freedom: Have responsibilities at which I can work according to my time schedule; no specific working hours required.
6. High Earnings Anticipated: Be able to purchase essentials and the luxuries of life that I wish.
7. Creativity: Create new ideas, programs, organized structures or anything else not following a format developed by others.
8. Help Others: Be involved in helping people directly, either individually or in small groups.

The test indicates a second tier of variables as well, including Independence, Authority, Work-Life Balance, Family, Fun & Humor, Work with others, Creative Expression, Intellectual status, and others.

I'm using these values to evaluate potential opportunities, grading each on a scale from 3, 2, 1, 0, -1.

What assessments reveal about me

Over the course of my MBA, I have taken a series of assessments to determine strengths, weaknesses, and skills. These are mostly provided by my program in an effort for every student to be come more attuned to their abilities and strategize ways to address their weaknesses, whether that means taking on new skills or developing ways to cope with shortcomings.

Summary

Highlighting strengths...

My peers recognize that I am a strong written and spoken communicator, in addition to being a dependable listener who is concerned for others. 

I resolve conflict that arises in our team or project work by modeling effective and supportive problem solving by prioritizing collaboration. I work with the team or individually to find effective solutions. 

I have fairly high emotional intelligence, with specific strengths in understanding others emotions, problem solving, managing conflict, and staying true to my values. 

I have a reliable ability to read people’s facial expressions and emotions, key for remote environments. 

I am an experiential learner, relying on my senses to interpret information and act quickly.  

I am motivated by external factors like results and rewards.

Building on opportunities...

I am augmenting my abilities and deepening mny learning with greater analytical skills gained through continuing  education.

I am committed to supporting my team’s development throgh collaboration, engaged feedback, in addition to engaging in more strategic development. 

I am personally less motivated by internal factors like mastery, purpose or meaning, however I seek to lead a team that maintains their own sense of intrinsic motivation.

360 Feedback

Rounds of anonymous feedback conducted in September 2021 using the SpiderGap360 platform. Participants included managers and peers.

Top 5 strengths

1. Communicating clearly
2. Self Development
3. Listening
4. Concern for others
5. Writing

Top 5 areas to improve

1. Collaboration
2. Developing strategy
3. Giving feedback
4. Prioritization
5. Support others Development

These results were troublesome for me, because I have a track record of being strong in areas where the feedback identified that I needed to improve.

This is somehow reflective of the times when this was given. The company was going through some turmoil. We had turnover at every level. My own assessment of the areas I feel I need to improve varied a bit from the feedback. For instance, I gave myself low marks on "support others development" because, as the company was in some turmoil and we had experienced significant turnover, I felt responsible for not providing the career path that would retain team members. I thought I was being a stronger collaborator, but that clearly wasn't the case and in hindsight, it's a theme in other areas where I volunteer to do work and get it done, but perhaps not in a collaborative fashion in the moment. Since then, I have become more pro-active in seeking and structuring collaboration activities.

Conflict Intelligence

Conflict Intelligence is a mechanism for gauging how people navigate different types of conflict across different power dynamics. It is conducted by The Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution ant the Teachers College, Columbia University. It's available for free.

Taking the test, you are given a short case where a conflict is taking place, and provided with 5 options for how you would respond. My tendencies are, as follows. These appear in order of my tendency towards this response to conflict. I also included how I differentiated from common trends identified by the Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution's research.

1. Benevolence: An Active-Cooperative Orientation--This is an approach in which people take responsibility for problems and engage in constructive leadership behaviors (such as being a good role model and engaging in group problem solving). This is usually associated with feelings of genuine concern for the other party in the conflict. (This is my top score, meaning it is my most likely response to conflict. I am roughly just as likely as most people to respond this way)
2. Autonomy: An Orientation of Independence--This is an approach in which people are mainly focused on achieving their own goals, so they seek to disengage from the conflict and find ways to unilaterally achieve their goals outside the conflictual relationship. This strategy may be related to stronger feelings of indifference to the conflict. (This is my second highest score, meaning it is another common way that I respond to conflict. I am far more likely than most people surveyed to respond this way.)
3. Support: An Orientation of Willing Support and Dependence--This is an approach in which people value the support of the other disputant and engage in respectful followership behaviors, including seeking clarification from the other and attending carefully to those in positions of higher power. It is worth noting that situations of cooperative dependence can also induce a sense of anxiety and confusion in response to conflict. (This is my third highest score, meaning it is another way I tend to respond. This is roughly in line with most people surveyed)

I found the results of this somewhat conflicting. In another assessment that I have performed in the past during a class at Georgetown, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, I also tested very, very high--highest in the class if I recall--in demonstrating 'collaborating' behaviors in response to conflict. This means my response is "both assertive and cooperative—the complete opposite of avoiding. Collaborating involves an attempt to work with others to find some solution that fully satisfies their concerns. It means digging into an issue to pinpoint the underlying needs and wants of the two individuals. Collaborating between two persons might take the form of exploring a disagreement to learn from each other’s insights or trying to find a creative solution to an interpersonal problem." I want us to see eye to eye, and find a way to resolve conflict by making 1+1=3.

It was interesting to me that I showed an Autonomy tendency in the more recent Conflict Intelligence assessment, especially as it was so far out of band from other test respondents. In reflecting on these results, I feel they almost form a narrative for the nature of collaboration in the face of conflict: I can help you, I also have my own needs, I support your needs, too.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is defined as:

...an ability to recognize the meanings of emotions and their relationships, and to reason and problem-solve on the basis of them. Emotional intelligence is involved in the capacity to perceive emotions, assimilate emotion-related feelings, understand the information of those emotions, and manage them.

Mayer et al, 1999

This test is commercially available through Psychology Today. It is considered critical for leaders, as it is necessary to manage conflict and establish working environments where it is safe to share perspectives and foster growth.

The assessment ranked as "fairly good"

This was an interesting one for me. Overall this is a pretty good score, including high ranking in:

• Emotional Understanding (89/100)
• Awareness of Strengths and Limitations (92/100)
• Problem-Solving (100/100)
• Emotional Integration (94/100)
• Conflict Management Knowledge (95/100)
• Conflict Resolution Behavior (95/100)
• Values Integrity (92/100)

These and others indicate that my overall Emotional IQ is good, and that I can recognize others' emotions effectively and perform well in other areas where emotions must be detected and managed.

Naturally, there are areas for improvement, cited in the "Limitations" portion of the report:

• You seem to struggle to act independently
• You are somewhat flexible
• Your impulse control is satisfactory
• You do not ruminate excessively, which is good, but you also may not give things sufficient thought
• You show some self-control (this one might be my favorite)

This is an interesting one to me: as it is a connundrum of leadership: the tension between moving with consensus and moving independently.

Another interesting component for me: my results on this test changed significantly since the last time I took it, including having lost my job two weeks ago. I took this test in September of 2021. I remember experiencing significant burnout at the time, even depressive symptoms, and wondering at the time if this would have a negative effect on my outcome. I feel like I have my answer: now, in the process of recovering from burnout, I'm befoming better attuned to my emotions, which I feel will provide a better foundation for my next step, whatever that will be.

The Kolb Experiential Learning Profile

The Kolb Experiential Learning Profile, or as it is swimmingly known, the KELP, helps reflect back to you a comprehensive way to understand how you learn. It creates a "kite" (which I would call a 4-point spider diagram) that illustrates the degree to which you engage a certain portion of the learning cycle. It's tempting to say that it "tells you how you learn" but what it really tells you is your go-to strategy for learning, while still recognizing engagement in the overall cycle of learning.

This video explains the cycle: you experience the environment, you reflect on what you observe, you think through conclusions, and you act on the decision. In reality, real life is a little messier, and we each have preferences and tendencies based on many factors in our lives that affect hour preference for leaning.

It's clear in my results that I am experiential learner: I learn from being there, taking it in, feeling and observing with my senses. This also means that I would benefit from improving the opposite tendency, the thinking side of the cycle.

These results make sense to me. In a narrative sense, I would experience a situation, reflect on it a bit, and take action on my reflections. To balance this learning cycle, I would need to engage the "thinking" phase of the cycle more. The test identifies this approach as a "flex" strategy and highlights activities and opportunities that would help improve my learning cycle. In particular...

Learning strengths

• Building deep personal relationships
• Strong intuition focused by reflection and action
• Open to new experiences

Learning challenges

• Understanding theory
• Systematic planning
• Critical evaluation

I'm optimistic here, because I have been doing just that, thanks to the methodologies I have learned recently that give me a greater analytical approach to problem solving and learning. I have since found that I am enjoying the challenge.

Motivation

This one isn't publicly available, but was made possible through a professor in one of my grad school classes.

Through a series of questions, this tool identified the extend to which you are motivated by intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors. This was only scored in relation to other people taking the survey in the same class, rather than on a defined scale.

Intrinsic motivation: 5 (mean: 5.66, SD: 0.93). This means that my intrinsic motivation was slightly less than other people in the class.

Intrinsic motivation factors include:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose
• Control
• Growth
• Meaning

Extrinsic motivation: 5.42 (mean: 4.82, SD: 0.86). This means that my extrinsic motivation was significantly higher (.69 SD) than the others in the class.

Extrinsic motivation factors include:

• External benefits
• Compensation
• Rewards
• Avoiding punishment
• Results

This is an interesting one to thing about as a designers. I think a lot of designers land in intrinsic motivation, from a professional sense, in that they are driven by craft.

DANVA

This was an interesting one. The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy measures your ability to read facial expressions. Over the course of the test, you look at pictures of people's faces and select from a list of emotions which best matches the emotion depicted in the photo.

I came out average with an 18. Looking for more information on the scale of results, I couldn't find any additional details, and it looks like the psychology researchers that run the test at Emory University may have moved on.

Burnout Recovery

Last week, I was let go in a re-organization. It was a pretty great ride, and the people I have met during my tenure there have been remarkable partners and coworkers. No hard feelings.

The reality is that I've been dealing with pretty significant burnout for about... 9 months, maybe longer. Eventually, I would read articles like this one, identifying the 5 stages of burnout and I couldn't deny seeing myself in the later stages, 4, teetering on 5.

While I have grappled with the realities of significant burnout for a while, I have struggled with the idea of addressing it. That's the funny thing about burnout, it is inherently slow-moving, creeping, cunning. And all the while, while parenting in a pandemic, you're also telling yourself "this is just a 1-time problem" or "it will change" or "I should be able to deal with this."

The most significant hurdle is that I have a family to support and that comes with responsibilities that I can't ignore. In other words, I always knew that a departure from work would be necessary for healing, but I couldn't just quit and figure it out later. That's part of the reason I'm actually so grateful that I was laid off, as though fate made a choice that I couldn't bring myself to make. The most important thing now is to make the most of it, both in recovery and in the next opportunity.

I'm still putting the pieces together, but a plan is starting to take shape, based on a framework in this article. I'm still refining it with more insight. For instance, this is framed for someone who is working, and they need to recover from burnout while still working and then figure out how to make a change and leave their job. Lucky break for your boy here, that part took care of itself. So here's where I am at the moment

Stage 1: Admitting there's a problem

Gotcha. Next.

Stage 2: Distancing from work

Hey, guess what? Next.

Stage 3: Restoring health

OK, here's where I'm already in motion. At time of writing, I'm 25 days into a plan to drop weight, get stronger, and meditate often.

Here's a screenshot of the Google sheet I use to keep myself honest.

Meditation has been the hardest to start and maintain. Meditation is also proven as a burnout remedy, so I'll be working to dial this up. I'm also pro-actively trying to sleep better + more. This one may take a while.

Stage 4: Questioning values

Up next, digging back into assessments from business school that outline what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you value in your professional life. Time to get dialed in to all of these things.

One assessment, Knowdell Career Values report, outlined the values I look for in work to be, in order of importance:

• Advancement: Be able to get ahead rapidly, gaining opportunities for growth and seniority from work well-done.
• Environment: Work on tasks that have a positive effect on the natural environment.
• Challenging problems: Engage continually with complex questions, demanding tasks, trouble-shooting and problem-solving as a core part of my job.
• Influence people: Be in a position to change attitudes or opinions of others.
• Time Freedom: Have responsibilities at which I can work according to my time schedule; no specific working hours required.

... along with a few others. Interesting!

I'm digging into other assessments like the Kolb Experiential Learning Profile, Emotional Intelligence test, 360 feedback, and Conflict Intelligence tests.

Also interesting: my perspective on the role of Design in an organization has been evolving due in large part to my experience in school, studying organizational development, operational performance, and risk management. and I'm probably going to write about that soon. This may be an important value to pursue.

Stage 5: Exploring work possibilities

At this point, this one comes with a mixed bag.

On the up side, I was flooded with well-wishes and interest when I announced that I was laid off. Additionally, the job market is white hot right now.

On the down side, no matter how hot the job market, design leadership positions are rare and competitive. Now, with top-tier companies offering strong salaries to combat inflation and stave off competition from other companies, the positions are less rare but seemingly more competitive. So the environment is objectively better than it was a few years ago because there are more positions, but qualitatively, this might be a tough ride.

Either way, I still have to ramp up a more recent portfolio, reframe it around my more current experience and perspective. I have a lot to say about design and business these days, thanks to ongoing lessons through my MBA.

I think this article from HBR also makes a good point, that in a work context you have to make an assessment what you can change and what is fixed. In a life context, nearly everything can be changed on a long enough time horizon, so the considerations may vary.

I'm also giving a lot of thought to some points later in the same HBR article regarding relationships, and how important they are to dodging burnout. I'm actually flashing back to my old agency days, where we worked insane hours under unpredictable conditions, but we were thrilled to do it because a group of us were so tightly knit that we would do it together. It kept the burnout at bay. My life overall was very different back then, though, so the pieces may not fit together the way they once did.

Stage 6: Making a break, making a change

Already broke from the old company. The next step will be the next thing to figure out, is what direction matches the values above.

There is much to do to make this a legitimate plan, so I'm working through that, in between sessions working on my portfolio and homework for my integrated risk management class. But plans, for me, are good. I'm a a planner. Even if they change--it helps me put a frame around the unknown in ways that make them real.

Now to decide what's real...

One of the laws of stress

I think about stress a lot.

I learned yesterday about an interesting study conducted in 1908 related to the application of stress and the affect on productivity, a study that is still impacting how organizations view worker productivity today.

Robert M. Yerkes and John Dodson conducted an experiment with a box. The box had set of smaller boxes inside. One of the smaller boxes was black, one was white. They would put a mouse in the box. If the mouse walks into the black box, it gets a shock.

Yerkes and Dodson wanted to know if varying the intensity of the shock affected how quickly the mice learned that the white box was the safe option.

Then they wanted to know if the same rules applied when the boxes were obscured with a screen, making it harder to tell them apart.

They found some interesting results.

For the simple task--black box or white box--the mice learned faster as the shocks got higher.

For the harder task--when the screen made it harder to distinguish the boxes boxes--the mice learned faster when the shocks were lower, but performed worse as the shocks got higher.

This led to this general principle: environmental stresses help performance, but only up to a point. This relationship became known as the Yerkes-Dodson law.

The Yerkes-Dodson law, via Wikipedia

Human biochemistry generally aligns with these findings.The body responds to both internal and external stressors with the release of stress hormones which negatively impact memory, attention, and problem solving.

Consider stresses that can affect performance. The last year has been an onslaught of external factors here in the US. The pandemic and its economic fallout. Incidence of police brutality and the subsequent racial unrest that gripped the country. An insurrection on the US Capitol.

Everyone is bearing witness to these incredible and stressful events, and experiencing the emotional impact of all of the factors above.

In the workplace, consider individuation of those factors; the pandemic has affected different people differently across broad factors like racial lines, economic lines. Personal and vicarious connections to racial and civic unrest weigh heavy on many. The frustrations of a virtual school society for small children, and on and on.

In an unfortunate turn, the Yerkes-Dodson law could easily be weaponized. It's a simple interpretation: break down each given job in your organization into the simplest tasks possible, apply stress to the workforce, reap the benefits of productivity. My immediate consideration is logistics. Whether it's Amazon fulfillment or UPS, the tasks at hand are monitored and optimized to be as simple as possible while ramping up quotas, targets, or other stressors.

But in the tech sector, so many job roles are living in an in-between space between the expectations of high performance and the perks and policies that are specifically targeted to reduce stressors.

As a manager, learning about the Yerkes-Dodson law shaped how I'd like to manage a team. Many of our design challenges are complex and under stress, these are exceptionally challenging. The pressures of the pandemic are putting people in to a high-stress state, even before they begin. If this most recent performance review season has seemed extra tough, then that's why--complicated, cerebral tasks like the self reflection and long-term thinking associated with career development can seem especially arduous for someone under today's conditions. As a result, I'll be working with my team to consider way to break down the tasks, and peel back the stressors, as best we can.

I'm going for an MBA

My educational history on Linkedin. Life is weird!

Well, here we go.

Why would a designer get an MBA?

Early in my design career, I was the only interaction designer at a burgeoning ecommerce startup. I found myself pushing pixels around my computer screen after hours in the latest of a string of late nights. I was in the process of transforming our company’s aging, buggy, and quirky checkout flow into a more stable and usable version that could allow the company to scale with confidence. The checkout flow of any ecommerce site is the linchpin of the business; any problem can have significant downstream effects on revenue, service level commitments, and customer satisfaction. It made sense that the VP of marketing would stop by to look in on my progress and ask a few questions. 

“How do you think this will affect conversion,” he asked. He pressed further, “how do you know it’s worth the risk?” His questions were straightforward, but I struggled. “This will drastically improve the conversion rate for a wide swath of our customers,” I said, based solely on my opinion that the design looked better than the old version. I had no concept of how to measure that improvement and, most importantly, I lacked the vocabulary to describe the downstream outcome for the business. 

In the thirteen years since that late night, my competency with business metrics has deepened significantly. My design process now goes much further to align business and customer outcomes. I have taken an active role in facilitating design projects with numerous business stakeholders, both as an in-house designer and as an independent consultant. I have guided teams through the Design Sprint process, leading customer research efforts, and designing new product experiences. 

In spite of my best improvements, challenges remain in connecting business strategy with the design process. Business leaders typically only experience the impact they have on customers through a narrow set of quantitative metrics. Design leaders, while working directly on the products that affect customers, sometimes lack the vocabulary to articulate the impact of design decisions on business outcomes. This tension is where my career lives, every day. 

While I have a design background, I have regularly taken steps to learn the language of business with greater fluency. It’s not hard to imagine the steady stream of business books and Medium articles, the webinars, the various workshops. Over time, this served me well, but now  that I am assuming greater responsibility through leadership, I’m ready for a greater investment. The MBA is the next step.

Why this MBA?

I will be attending the Online MBA through Boston University Questrom School of Business. I landed on it for a combination of reasons.

Online format: I was looking at this option before the pandemic, but with social distancing rules in effect for everyone's safety, an online option has made a tremendous amount of sense. Day to day logistics of transitioning from work to class will be far easier (or at least faster) through an online program.

Diverse cohort: I'll be joining the second semester of incoming students for this program. So far, the program has accepted students from all over the world and in a wide range of backgrounds. The incoming class averages ~12 years of work experience, as well.

Generalist curriculum: I have some confidence in my specialization as a designer and design leader and I'm seeking greater foundation in business fundamentals, data, risk, and strategy. This program is targeted for people who people like me who are not trying to change career paths.

Cost: as I began researching MBA and Executive MBA options locally, they all ranged from $70-$125K all in, and those prices could change per-semester. This program's $24K cost, paid $4K at a time, is an amount I can live with.

The greater BU community: This is a lesser, but interesting factor as far as selecting this particular program. I don't have any connection to BU (yet), but I have been encouraged by what I have seen thus far. I am pleased that BUQSB has committed to the online MBA program with the hiring of a dean for online programs, Dr. Monica Moody Moore. Perhaps the most resonant development I found is BU’s commitment to racial equity, demonstrated in the selection of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi to lead the formation of the Center for Antiracist Research. Dr. Kendi’s work on antiracism has been an inspiration and I am thrilled to know that his work will find a vibrant new home at BU.

And so it goes. I'm looking forward to starting in January and following this path wherever it may lead.