In the Spotlight 1

Doug O'Bannon

Director of Webster’s MBA Program

NB: You left your cushy job as a Washington, D.C., consultant to go back to school and earn your Ph.D. Has the move to higher ed been a good one for you?

DO: Absolutely—for lots of reasons. You have a lot of autonomy in academia, which I love. You’re basically free to pursue whatever interests you on a daily basis. It’s also a natural fit for me since I grew up in this atmosphere—my father was the chairman of the Civil Engineering Department at Arizona State University. I used to go to his office and laboratory as a kid, and I was just wowed by it all.

NB: As a professor, what sort of opportunities does Webster offer you that other universities can’t?

DO: The travel opportunities are incredible because of our international campuses. I just got back from a trip to Asia—to China and Thailand. How many Westerners get to lecture to 150 Chinese students in their native country? It was a unique experience. In Spring II, I'll be teaching in Vienna for the third time. Webster also offers a lot of flexibility, which you just don’t have at a lot of other schools. I wanted to change the way that I taught my strategy class—the final required course in the MBA program—so I brought in a management simulation program and everybody was immediately supportive of it. Now it’s taking off, and we’re going to use it throughout the entire Webster system. Webster allows you to try out new things and see if they work—we're not wedded to one model.

NB: So how does the simulation work?

DO: My Business 6200 classes are divided into teams, and each team simulates running a $100 million company. The teams have to make several strategic business decisions every week, about what and how much to produce, how much to spend on R&D, how to finance operations, etc. The teams are in direct competition with each other for customers, market share, stock price, etc., so they have to bring all the information from their entire MBA program together to succeed. The students make their decisions and upload the information to a web site. I process it and report the outcomes back to the class. Of the 1,500 or so teams that take part at colleges and universities around the world, Webster teams consistently make the weekly top ten list.

NB: When did you debut the simulation component in the capstone course?

DO: We started it in Fall I 2001. Maybe 15 percent of business schools are using the capstone simulation, so we’re on the leading edge of this thing—we’re one of the early movers. The students love it. I have students who tell me that they’ve gotten up in the middle of the night to go to their computer because they’ve been thinking about the simulation and have to start putting some numbers in and playing with different scenarios. The course also fits perfectly with Webster’s mission, which is to provide applied, real-world business knowledge. Writing a 30-page case study—the format many business schools follow in teaching strategy—is just not that useful. The simulation program teaches judgment, which is the most difficult thing to teach in a business program.

NB: Speaking of teaching, you’ve been recognized for your teaching abilities on several occasions, both at Webster and your alma mater, University of Maryland. What’s the key to teaching excellence?

DO: My father was a great teacher—he won national educator awards—so, maybe I got the gene. Actually, I just enjoy it—it's not like working for me. I like talking to the students; I learn as much from them as hopefully they learn from me. I think that’s what it comes down to: If you like your work, it shows. At the same time, I’m demanding of my students and have high standards. I expect them to be pretty much MBAs when they walk in the door because they are 95 percent of the way there. It’s time to pull it all together and apply what they've learned. My job is to help them do this. It's a fun job.

NB: The theme for this issue of NotaBene is communication. As a former speechwriter for Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt, how important would you say it is for is for MBA students to be good writers?

DO: Communication is obviously an important skill in business. You’ve got to be able to get your ideas across to move forward. I personally enjoy writing. Right now, I’m writing a book on strategy. My gut feeling is that, although it's a commonly used word, people don’t know what strategy is, even people who should know what strategy is, like CEOs. If you ask them what strategy is, they’ll talk about their finance strategies, investment strategies or human resource strategies. All plural—strategies. Strategies—plural—is not the same thing as strategy—singular. There is a core concept called strategy, and I’m trying to figure out what it is, get it down in writing and communicate it to my students.

NB: So, given your expertise on strategy, are you a hard person to negotiate with? Does your wife have a tough time winning arguments?

DO: Yeah, she tells me I can be a bit of a demagogue.