New Business School Building and Revised Curriculum

From Sunday’s Palm Beach Post, an article on the Lynn University College of Business new building, written by Emily Roach.

By Emily Roach

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

BOCA RATON —

As it revises its business curriculum, Lynn University is building a compatible home for the College of Business and Management, one with an open and bright design that reflects the school’s mission of collaboration and innovation.

The 34,000-square-foot, platinum-level LEED certified International Business Center is expected to open next spring. The new curriculum, which Dean Thomas Kruczek said incorporates writing, critical thinking, presentations and seeing the organization as a whole, kicks off with incoming freshmen this fall.

“I think those are some of the core pillars of our College of Business, so we tried to incorporate those into our classes,” Kruczek said. Practical preparation for employment and the core principles “get them ready to be able to get that job when they leave here.”

It’s quickly evident how excited Kruczek is about the $14.5 million building. A poster board of the design sits in the middle of his office, and his window overlooks the mostly empty space where ground work has started.

Accounting for 47 percent of the student body with its 1,000 students — 800 undergraduate and 200 graduate — the business school is an integral part of Lynn.

The new building has gained a lot of interest, and been fully funded by donations. A $3 million challenge grant was met at the groundbreaking last month.

Students will be able to see into, and out of, the new building with its open, multiple-window design. Inside space will be set aside for a Venture lab, where budding entrepreneurs will develop their own businesses with the help of faculty and community advisers, as well as team rooms and a technology classroom.

Again, it all complements the new curriculum.

In addition to the traditional classes like economics and accounting, students are required to take courses that will help them develop a career.

During their freshman year, business students will learn about being an entrepreneur and developing their own brand. Sophomore year features career preparation. Junior year advances to professional career development and juniors and seniors have a required internship.

“We want our students when they come here to have a sense of what the business world is like,” Kruczek said. “So when they get out of here, when they’re ready to leave, it’s not a surprise,”

Groundbreaking last month was a huge affair, with VIPs, beribboned shovels and a flight overhead by the school’s associated Burton D. Morgan School of Aeronautics airplanes.

Kruczek is used to the handshaking, as he works to build relationships with local businesses and business leaders.

“They wanted me to be an outward-facing dean,” Kruczek said.

Business school alum and advisory board member Jeremy Office recently engaged the MBA students in a project for his Delray Beach business, Maclendon Wealth Management. Office said he has worked with universities across the country and had dozens of interns. While he thought young business-minded students could help determine if his clients want him to use social media, he was “leery” of the time commitment and ultimate outcome.

“I was overwhelmed with the quality and thought they had put into the effort and assignment,” he said.

Successful projects between the school and local businesses expose Lynn to more people in the community. And they help the advisory board’s efforts as Office described: “to develop bridges within the community.”

In fact, the new business school will have space for businesses to work at the school.

Office credits Kruczek with pointing the school in this direction and said university President Kevin Ross also is steering the curriculum in an important direction.

“They are doing things in very small, measured steps that are opening up opportunities and paths that have not been available to students in the past,” he said.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Lynn has revamped its entire curriculum in recent years. And with the prestige of hosting the final presidential debate last year came the reality of spending hundreds of thousands to upgrade technology, specifically the wireless network. This fall incoming freshman will get an iPad-mini downloaded with course materials.

As a small, private college, Lynn can be responsive to changes in academia and the business climate.

Part of Kruczek’s mission meshes well with the undergraduate Dialogues of Learning, a recent curriculum emphasis that incorporates liberal arts ideals and writing and reading into most classes. Kruczek said employers have stressed that graduates need to be better writers, better presenters and better team members. They need to be able to view their organization as a whole, he said.

“Business schools across the country are going through a transition,” Kruczek said.

The president of the college’s accrediting body, Dennis Gash, agreed. The changes are aimed to supply graduates that have skills employers want.

“We have noticed that over the years that business schools and management schools have been transitioning from more theoretical curricula to more hands-on experiential curricula,” Gash said.

The 229-member International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education just re-accredited the business school last year.

Gash said employers want graduates who can “communicate effectively and work in team, especially cross-functional teams.”

In other words, employers want people who know enough about all functions of the business that they can function in a global business environment, working on teams with people around the world.

Lynn’s international student body makes that even easier, Kruczek said. Recently in class, he heard students talking about wages not just in terms of U.S. conditions, but in the various countries around the world that were represented by the students.

And the new business world is very entrepreneurial. So it helps that Kruczek has overseen entrepreneur centers at other universities as well as being an entrepreneur himself.

---

Features of the International Business Center

34,000 square feet

11 classrooms

12 collaborative rooms

2 conference room

1 entrepreneur center

2 recycling stations

Here is a link to the story at the newspaper’s website: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/business/lynns-business-school-rebuilds-curriculum-as-new-h/nXHJm/

Playing the Matchmaker for Our Business School Students

I wrote the following for the Huffington Post, which was published on March 18, 2013. Here is a link to the Huff Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-kruczek/smaller-bschools-can-play-matchmaker-too_b_2895673.html

 

There has been a lot written lately about how business schools can better match their graduates with prospective employers. The March 6 Wall Street Journal article “In Job Hunt, B-Schools Play Matchmaker,” by Melissa Korn is a recent example of this conversation. For me, seeing a major national publication give this issue some ink was like breath fresh air. Although the article focuses on large schools, it vindicates the thinking we have championed at Lynn University—a small, independent school in Boca Raton, Fla. 

Bringing business students out from behind their desks and into the real world is a key aspect we champion, and I’d like to continue the conversation on this topic by pointing out that you don’t have to be one of the elites to do this. Any size school, such a Lynn, can reorient their thinking to put “matchmaking” high on the priority list. Here are some thoughts on how it can be done. 

We’ve been working with regional and national businesses, meeting with leaders and introducing our B-School and our students. As part of this process, our understanding of the importance of introducing the right student to the right company has matured and become more subtle. As the article mentions, businesses are not hiring large numbers of students at once so they don’t want schools sending them 100 resumes. Schools need to work hard to understand what a business wants and find the right students for them. To help do this, we’ve moved one of our executives-in-residence who has years of experience in the HR field over from a teaching position to a staff position to lead these efforts. 

From our experience, preparation should also be a key part of the process. We’ve built a class, together with the business community, into our January Term (our mini semester) that has as its theme, Career Preparation and Internship. We tested that class this year and had overwhelming positive feedback not only from students who took the class (we thought we would have around 15 students in the class and ended up with 37 students) but also from our business partners who participated in the class. 

It’s also important not to wait until a student’s senior year. Our program also includes, in a class for freshman, Entrepreneurship and Innovation—a section where we get students to think of their own personal brand. They have to think about what that means to them in terms of the things that they need to do over the course of their college and how their brand can help them prepare for their career.

To ensure we make any needed adjustments to adapt to the ever-changing conditions in the business world, we are working with members of the business community through our College's Board of Advisors to further extend and enhance the program. 

We understand that the job market has changed, and we believe that part of our responsibility includes not just helping to prepare students for that first job, but also to help make some of those introductions. Ultimately, as the article argues, it’s up to the student to get the job, but we as educators have to do much more to help them get that first job out of school. 

And finally, prospective parents love this initiative, so it’s great for our marketing. Students entering B-school today have a higher expectation of assistance as they know the job market still lags the recovery and landing that first job may require a team effort.

 

 

5 Key Skills in Entrepreneurship Guest Post

Brad Zomick from SkilledUp.com – the leading source of reviews and ratings including online courses, is providing the following guest post. You can find them online at SkilledUp.com as well as on Facebook and Twitter.SkilledUp.com 

5 Key Skills in Entrepreneurship

He’s built many successful startups, is a prominent philanthropist and humanitarian, invests in and advises fledgling startups, and is a full time family man. We are all wondering how does Richard Branson do it? And Branson is not alone. He stands in an elite group of entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jack Dorsey, and the late and great Steve Jobs. All of these entrepreneur wunderkind, have their hands in many cookie jars, and somehow are able to turn each cookie jar into a full scale cookie factory, without breaking a sweat. While they are all smarter than your average bear, they all possess a combination of crucial skills that have helped them every step of the way. If you hope to follow in their footsteps, and become the latest Silicon Valley entrepreneur, you are going to want to develop your skills in one or more of the following areas:

Leadership & Decision Making

It takes a special type of leader to be at the helm of a tech startup, and that person is one part manager, one part technician, and one part evangelist. That leader needs not only needs to monitor what is going on within the company and figure out how to do it better, but also prioritize and figure out what needs to be done now while keeping pace with competitors in the marketplace and maintaining the inspiration and drive of employees. It’s a delicate balancing act and there are many tough decisions to be made that will leave the most confident people second-guessing themselves. Many tech entrepreneurs are not natural born leaders but they learn quickly! Case in point, Mark Zuckerberg and Groupon’s Andrew Mason cut their teeth in leadership via public trial-by-fire, since their companies IPO’ed last year. Both made questionable leadership moves that were publicly lambasted by Wall Street and news media. Save yourself some public embarrassment and start looking for leadership opportunities ASAP.

Communication

Communication may have most of you saying, “No duh!” but more often than not the pace and tempo of a startup is so intense and quick, people forget to communicate and important ideas and messages get lost in the shuffle. So it’s best to over-communicate, communicating early and often ensuring all of the major stakeholders are on the same page. Messaging is equally as important, and good leaders communicate a positive vibe that keeps employees engaged and excited about their company and products. Howard Schultz, Starbucks chairman, knows this because his ability to share collective passion around a common purpose is what took Starbucks from a single coffee shop to the global chain it is today.

Sales & Persuasion

Being able to sell and persuade is not just about closing the deal. It’s also about being about to motivate and inspire employees, customers, partners, and investors. A lot of this boils down to people skills, which can be rehearsed and refined. One tech entrepreneur that has mastered this skill is Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com. He is not only the Chief Executive Officer but also the Chief Evangelical Officer, and has rallied a loyal army of Salesforce.com employees that share in his vision and help him evangelize the Salesforce product. Go to one of Salesforce’s free Dreamforce conferences and you witness them not only dishing out the Kool-Aid but drinking it too. Not everyone is a natural salesman, so get a leg up on and start putting yourself out in positions that require to you to promote yourself or a product or service.

Programming Skills

While this one seems like a no-brainer, we would be remiss if we did not mention it. All the rock star entrepreneurs listed above all had serious programming chops, and worked at it for years before achieving mastery. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, it takes 10,000 hours to get to a level of mastery in a subject. It’s no surprise that Bill Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, started coding in junior high at the age of 13. Similarly, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started tinkering with computer boards at age 14. Recently, the 10,000 Rule is being contested by serial entrepreneur and meta-learning guru, Tim Ferris, but until you master meta-learning, the art of mastering subjects in a short period of time, we suggest picking a programming language and start coding now!

Flexibility

As an entrepreneur, you can’t prepare for every emergency scenario but you can be ready to think and act quickly. Sometimes the pace of work is frenetic so when an issue pops up, a good entrepreneur can face it head on or duck, swivel, and move in another direction. Peter Thiel exemplified this with a classic business pivot. He founded Confinity in 1999 to process payments between Palm Pilots. We all know the Palm Pilot fizzled out, but Thiel changed directions and Confinity became what we know today as PayPal. Being able to flex does not just apply to tough situations, but also to being able to read the tea leaves of your industry, understand what consumers want, and evolve to meet those needs. In this sense, Steve Jobs was a true visionary. He realized that there was an opportunity in the MP3 player space and developed the iPod, which not only revitalized Apple’s brand but revolutionized the music industry as we know it.

Conclusion

Sadly, there is no go-to guide for becoming a successful entrepreneur. Each successful entrepreneur has his or her own unique story. However, they all have one or more common threads, and those are the core skills that it takes to successfully take a product or service from an idea to a market launch. All of the aforementioned entrepreneurs possessed at least one of the above skills, if not more. So if you fancy yourself to be the next Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates, don’t just sit there, get out and start trying to develop your entrepreneur skillset!

Want to Be Taken Seriously?

One topic that I think of often is the quality of writing in today’s students. At the College of Business at Lynn University this is a point of emphasis in our curriculum…but when I saw Dave Kerpen’s post… and besides sending it to my faculty, I knew that I had to include here in the Entrepreneur on Campus. So, from Dave Kerpen and his outstanding post, Want to Be Taken Seriously? Become a Better Writer :


The number of poorly written emails, resumes and blog posts I come across each month is both staggering and saddening. Grammar is off. There are tons of misspellings. Language is much wordier or more complex than necessary. Some things I read literally make no sense at all to me.

Writing is a lost art, and many professionals don’t realize how essential a job skill it is. Even if you’re not a writer by trade, every time you click "Publish" on a blog, "Post" on a LinkedIn update, or "Send" on an email, you are putting your writing out into the world.

Your writing is a reflection of your thinking. Clear, succinct, convincing writing will differentiate you as a great thinker and a valuable asset to your team.

If you want to be thought of as a smart thinker, you must become a better writer. If you want to be taken seriously by your manager, colleagues, potential employers, clients and prospects, you must become a better writer.

It's not just you who must become a better writer- it’s all of us. I'll be the first to admit, I too have had to learn to become a better writer. So here are five ways that I've become a better writer over the last several years:

1) Practice, practice, practice. The old joke comes to mind: A tourist in New York asked a woman on the street, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and she replied, “Practice, practice, practice.” The truth is, the best way to get better at anything is to do it repeatedly. Write a personal blog or begin that novel you’ve always wanted to write. Offer to write some content for your company’s marketing team. Write a short, interesting LinkedIn update each day. The more you write, the better you’ll become at writing. That's why I write here on LinkedIn every Monday and Thursday, no matter what.

2) Say it out loud. I read all of my articles and books out loud before I publish them, and many of my emails out loud as well. It’s great to hear my writing the way others will “hear” it as they read. Especially since tone in emails is difficult to convey, it’s valuable to say what you’re writing aloud, and then consider a quick edit, before you put it out there.

3) Make it more concise. Less is often more, so during my editing process, I’ll often ask, “How can I say the same thing in fewer words?” People don’t have time to read a long email, or memo, or article, so out of respect for your intended audience, practice making your writing short and sweet. I’d even argue that tweeting has helped me a lot with this, as it obviously limits you to 140 characters. If you’re not on Twitter yet, this is another reason to get tweeting.

4) Work on your headlines. A mentor once told me that 50% of your writing is the headline. So, spend equal time and energy working on your headline as you do the piece itself. Whether it’s the headline of a blog post or an inter-office memo, or a subject line for an email to a sales prospect, your headlines will either grab your reader’s attention, and get them interested in what you have to say, or not. Lists and questions work very well as headlines and subject lines. Practice them.

5) Read. Besides practicing writing, the number one way to improve your writing skills is to read great work. I read at least one book per month, at least 20 articles per week, and countless tweets, Facebook posts and emails per day. I know we all have limited time, but truly the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader.

These are my methods for becoming a better writer. Now, I’d love to hear from you! Do you agree or disagree with me that all business professionals can work to become better writers? How important is good writing to you? And how have you become a better writer over your career? Let me know in the comments below!

Tip for College Freshman…and No, It Isn’t Follow Your Passion

Here’s my blog that appeared last week in the Huffington Post:


Telling a college freshman to "follow your passion, do what you love and a rewarding career will follow," is usually as futile as encouraging them to begin saving for a retirement account. It may be good advice, but it's premature. Most of them have yet to discover just what it is they are passionate about, since up to this point their "passion" has simply been to graduate from high school and be admitted to their top pick college or university.

Yes, there are those lucky few who enter college knowing exactly where they want to go in life and are driven to get there. They certainly don't need to be told to follow their passion... they are already doing just that. In fact, it's dragging them relentlessly forward.

Other students had a consuming hobby or interest in high school but find that their passion is not going to translate directly into a lucrative career. Realistically, only a minute number will get a chance to enter the world of professional sports, or become A-list movie stars, or win multi-million dollar recording contracts. In the wider world of the college campus they find that their talent is not as great as their passion, and their goals must change.

Telling most students to 'follow their passion' won't work because they don't know themselves well enough to know what that passion is. My tip for students? Learn about yourself to discover your passions -- and that will be your path to success.

A good first step is to start with the basics. For example, this fall, all of our incoming freshman in the College of Business will be taking a talent assessment. They'll create a personal SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that will be a huge help in their self-awareness, and will be an invaluable tool in career planning. The fact is, not every student is right for every career. What they learn about themselves in this assessment can also give them another clue into finding a passionate direction for a career.

The goal is to try to expand their thinking and take them outside the box to find career options. Sometimes it's not about what they like, but why they like it. They may discover that the field they enter is less important than the type of job they do: a passion for "teamwork," or "a desire to work alone" can find fulfillment in many fields.

We also encourage our freshman to immediately take a course in a major they are considering. Many schools don't allow it until junior year, but we want them to know right away if it sparks an interest or not. Too often students will choose a college major not because of their interests, but because their best friend did, or because that's what their mother wants, or because they think they will make a lot of money. By letting them "test drive" a major early, they find out quickly if they have a genuine interest in it or not.

College is all about discovery. New facts, new knowledge, new skills. But to truly help our students find the path to success, we must go beyond academics, we need to also give them the tools and opportunities to discover the passion inside themselves.

Here’s the link to the piece in the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-kruczek/college-freshmen_b_2481987.html  

How Curious Are You?

I’ve been spending time with our students who just completed a Career Preparation class in the January Term, and talking with them about interviewing particularly for that first internship or job. So naturally, I’m looking in the press for things related to that topic that I can pass along to them as well as to our more experienced alumni. On that topic, take a look at yesterday’s New York Times, The Corner Office by Adam Bryant and his interview with Kon Leong, the co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an email and file archiving company located in San Jose, California. From the article:


Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?

A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”

Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”

A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.

Q. What other questions?

A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.

I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”

Q. What else do you look for when hiring?

A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.

Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?

A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?

Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?

A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.

For the rest of the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/business/kon-leong-of-zl-technologies-on-encouraging-creativity.html

Red Flags and the Hiring Process

One of the great things about being at a University is that you get to consider issues and then discuss them with business leaders, faculty and students. One of the topics that I’ve been considering lately is the hiring process. Companies know that it is important to emphasize the hiring process; they understand the costs involved with hiring the wrong person, but often times, other than the screening of the resumes, it’s an entirely unorganized process. Often times, when you evaluate the hiring process, you find out that everyone in the organization gets to ask whatever questions they want to ask of the prospective hire, and there is little effort to make sure that they’re hiring the right person, versus the person we simply like the best. On that topic, below is an excerpt from Sunday’s New York Times the Corner Office column by Adam Bryant, in an interview with Dinesh C. Paliwal, the Chairman, president and chief executive of Harman International Industries. From the interview:


Q. What qualities are you looking for when you hire?

A. I want to know how hungry they are. Are you hungry to get to the next level? Every day you come in the office or wherever you’re traveling, you make progress. And the next day it starts from ground zero. That’s the No. 1 thing I’m looking for. Next, I’m looking for whether they will bring the best out of the teams — and not just the peer groups, but people below them and above them.

And I’m looking for people with courage. The higher up you go, courage becomes the No. 1 thing. If I don’t have courage to listen to my instincts and my colleagues’ critiques, I’m not going to make the right choices because generally the right choices are a little tough to execute.

Q. So what questions do you ask?

A. Everybody in their life has gone through the good, bad, the ugly. How did you manage the worst part? What did you learn? Then I’ll say: “If I were sitting with your boss over a beer, and I were to say, ‘I’m interviewing John for this great job and he’s fantastic. He seems to be great at this and this, but. ....’ ” Then I will ask, “What would that but be?” Some people don’t want to answer that, but some of them actually go on to tell me five “buts.” I’m looking for honesty. I’m looking for self-confidence and people who are secure in their own skin. Another thing I generally ask is, “What would your subordinates say about you?”

Once I have decided that I want to hire somebody, there’s a final step, where I’ll invite the person and their spouse to join my wife and me for dinner. It’s a social dinner. It is an interview but it’s a not interview. And I learn things that I couldn’t learn any other way. Let’s say I’m interviewing a man. I’ll watch how he interacts with his wife. I’ll ask some of the same questions in front of his wife that I asked him before. Is he afraid to say again what he said to me? It’s amazing what you learn.

Here’s another question I’ll ask: “Tell me about a time when you had to give an assignment to your team and it didn’t go well. What was the process? What did you learn from that?” They might say they didn’t give a clear explanation of the challenge, the problem, the difficult situation. Or maybe they didn’t have the right team in place, and didn’t get enough support. But I’m listening to whether they see the big picture. If they start talking about two or three fall guys, that’s a red flag.

Here’s a link to the rest of the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/business/harmans-chief-on-how-to-reduce-office-politics.html?_r=0