04 August 2015
Executive MBA teaches people to teach themselves

Just what kind of course is it where you come out after several years of hard slog with more questions than answers? Possibly an Executive MBA course, and Dr John Colley, who directs the programme at Nottingham University Business School (NUBS), makes no apology.

"One of the key things the programme teaches you is how to become much more questioning of what goes on in business," he explains.

"Often, you accept so many things in businesses and organisation as being done the way they're done because that's what you know and that's what everybody seems to accept. When you come out of this programme, you can see that there are many different ways of doing things and you'll always question why."

Reputation

What you're unlikely to question is the calibre of the NUBS Executive MBA.

The course is ranked 21st in the world, second in the UK and, on a more measurable level, first overall for salary increase post-graduation according to The Economist magazine.

It is underpinned by people who blend academic expertise with solid business experience – not least Dr Colley, an ex-FTSE 100 managing director who once led British Gypsum.

Public sector expertise

Don't make the mistake, though, of assuming that this is a course aimed only at suited high-flyers who focus on climbing the international corporate ladder.

Many of those who study for the qualification work in the public sector, a useful chunk of them coming from an NHS which needs high-calibre management across the clinical and administrative spectrum to help it meet some exacting challenges.

Dr Colley says: "All public services are businesses to some degree, the NHS is trying to introduce more competition, and that changes the demand for skills."

Among them is Shelley-Louisa Colton, who is at the halfway mark in her Executive MBA. A senior procurement manager in the NHS, she wants to broaden both her expertise and her outlook: "What I do at the moment is very niche, and my network within the NHS is quite contained," she says. "I've done seven out of 12 modules so far, and it has given me a different perspective. I had some fairly proscribed assumptions, I've now set a number of them to one side and I can critically analyse business problems."

Shelley-Louisa's search for career progression is one of the typical motivations for embarking on an exec MBA. The NUBS programme is pitched at people with at least five years of management experience who want to combine intensive study with a demanding career.

Flexibility

While the demands it makes of students are out of necessity substantial, it is structured in a way that recognises they have a job to do - and even a life.

Dr Kristie Thomas, who lectures in business law, explains: "It comes in peaks and troughs and you can flex your modules when you're busy. You can even suspend study if you have to manage a lot of pressure – we recognise that stuff happens in people's lives, whether it is business or family.

"This is one of the key attractions of the programme, and our drop-out rate is minimal. We screen people, we make the work involved clear at the start. We don't want to lose people who start this journey."

Payback

Why would you set out on the journey? Parking the potential financial gain to one side, the NUBS programme represents a powerful personal development tool, encouraging the kind of creativity and leadership that enables organisational advancement.

Besides the NHS, its value has been recognised by blue chips such as Boots, Capital One, Rolls-Royce and British Airways.

It is recognised by family-owned businesses, too, which often face unique challenges in terms of developing expertise, gaining external experience and ensuring there is the right level of management capacity available when responsibility transfers from one generation to another.

"Most people do it to stretch themselves, to intellectually stimulate themselves," says Dr Colley. "They might be in a situation where they are looking for ideas at work and this is a programme that naturally generates a lot of ideas – that's one of the reasons I took it myself. I was in a senior position, I wanted new ideas and I wanted to get them from a broader network."

Shelley-Louisa adds: "I used to be apprehensive about creativity and entrepreneurship because it was outside my natural personality type. But the course has broken this down into manageable chunks, and I've loved that aspect of it.

"I currently work in a commissioning support unit and it's possible we may be transferred into the private sector at some stage. We need to strengthen our marketing competence, and this course has been really pertinent to where we are. So the module around marketing is something I've eaten up!"

Teaching focus

There are eight basic core modules in the programme – strategy, finance, economics, managing people, marketing, operations, creativity and entrepreneurship. There are practical – and challenging – elements, too, not least a sustainable decisions and organisations module during which "…misfortunes will befall them, and they have to face a press conference which will ask some awkward questions," Dr Colley explains wryly.

"Most of the teaching is centred on discussion aimed at bringing the experience of the people in the room out. That's the kind of approach we take rather than simply lecturing. We prescribe an agenda, we introduce theories, concepts, frameworks and perspectives for them. But these are people who are going to be pretty advanced in their careers already – the average age is 39 – and their experience means that they should have a lot to say and a lot to share."

If an Executive MBA sounds like some sort of management science, it is very much an applied science: you do your assignments in your business or organisation, you apply your learning, and the major project that accounts for a third of your mark has to be about your business or organisation.

Most of all, your business or organisation will get a value-added asset at the end of the programme: "I know that this is going to change me," says Shelley-Louisa. "My research, my critical thinking, even my approach to technology has changed. I've learned so much even at this stage, I've become much more analytical. In a way I was very functional before, but I've since been on a secondment which would not have happened without this programme."

Start of a journey

Dr Colley says the conclusion of the Executive MBA is often just the start of a journey, one sparked by a desire for knowledge: "Many of the people who come on to the programme may have been in fairly narrow, functional roles, and they are making the journey into more general management ranging across a number of different disciplines. They develop broader networks, broader perspectives on business. They also develop an enthusiasm for lifelong learning – we're really teaching people how to teach themselves."

This article originally appeared in the Nottingham Post  on July 28^th 2015