DuheHeadshotI’ve been a long-time proponent of business education for public relations majors, and this year I took the ultimate dive and became an MBA student myself.  That’s right: In addition to chairing Communication Studies at SMU, I’m also an Executive MBA candidate in our Cox School of Business.  Why would I do such a thing?  For me, there was no better way to get a contemporary (and comprehensive) view of business education and bring it back to my students.  My husband calls me a collector of degrees.  He may have a point, as I really enjoy being a student.

Over the years, I’ve heard the call for business literacy from executives, practitioners, and academics who either successfully applied their business knowledge on the job or went scrambling to garner some business acumen when they realized a gap in their ability to advance in the workplace.  For many, it’s a story of finally getting a seat at the decision-making table only to find a foreign language spoken there.  I’m intrigued by the various ways these practitioners garnered the fluency they needed.  A common thread across these stories is that the practitioners pursued business literacy with a sense of urgency and did so under the radar, feeling as though they should have been better prepared for this transitional moment in their careers.

I’m on a mission to ensure my students are well prepared for their debut at the table, and I want to help practitioners do the same.  I’m encouraged by similar work being done by fellow business literacy proponents Pete Smudde, Matt Ragas, Ron Culp, and Dave Remund.  Here, I share three key takeaways from my first MBA semester to keep this conversation going.

Business is our business.  As I sit through classes and sift through the intricacies of journal entries, cash flow statements, change management philosophies, and beta coefficients, I am constantly reminded of the obvious: Business is our business.  Everything a business does affects how we communicate about that business.  The seemingly mundane, daily actions taken by accountants, human resources managers, and financial analysts eventually bubble up to the surface, reflect corporate character, and, well, impact the kind of day we’re going to have at the office.  So I was taken aback when a couple of respected academics cautioned me about getting too gung-ho about the business side for fear I may give the impression that communication isn’t adequate as a field of study.  That’s the last thing I want to do.  To the contrary, I rushed to study communication in graduate school years ago when I quickly realized my undergraduate business degree wasn’t sufficient preparation for my new job in corporate communication.  I do believe, however, that communication is a contextual practice, and that we need to be deeply steeped in knowledge of whatever setting we find ourselves.  Business just happens to be my bag.

Communication is king.  Yes, cash is mighty important, but I’m taking some liberty with the popular adage about cash flow.  I often chuckle with a fellow communicator in my organizational behavior class because communication problems just jump off the case study pages to us.  We see them coming, and, sure enough, just like an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the plot implodes at the end.  It helps, too, that our professor is a former public relations practitioner because he “gets” us.  I feel like we’re armed with the secret weapon to crack a number of cases, but I’m surprised when others don’t immediately see the same.  It’s been a while since I’ve been one of few communicators in a room, but it’s highly instructive.  I’m reminded that even though effective communication is obvious to those of us who work daily in this field, it’s not generally obvious to decision-making executives whose primary orientation is on other equally important aspects of the business.  This MBA lab environment affirms for me the importance of the work we do as communicators, but it also reminds me of the ongoing need to explain (and often defend) why communication is so critical to a firm’s success.

Excel is the tool of choice.  If we are to conduct research (or any kind of data analysis) that matters to the practice, we need to equip our students with Excel skills.  I readily admit to being a stats nerd, and I’m pleased to see the rigor of quantitative analysis advancing in our field.  But this MBA program has given me a wake-up call: It’s time to start teaching undergraduate communication research in Excel instead of SPSS (or similar programs) if we ever hope to see our graduates applying their research skills on the job.  Excel can be clunky, and calculation steps inconveniently differ in PC and Mac environments, but I’m impressed with Excel’s capabilities for statistical analysis.  As much as I preach about the importance of research, I’m starting to feel hypocritical if I don’t teach the skills and the software students can use at any stage in their careers, in for-profits or nonprofits, regardless of budget.  I’m going to work on that in my free time.

Dr. Sandy Duhé is associate professor, head of public relations, and chair of the Division of Communication Studies at Southern Methodist University.  She is a newly inducted member of the PRSA College of Fellows and the Arthur W. Page Society. Previous posts include Teaching Business as a Second Language and The Role of Public Relations in Conscious Capitalism.

Heidy Modarelli handles Growth & Marketing for IPR. She has previously written for Entrepreneur, TechCrunch, The Next Web, and VentureBeat.
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9 thoughts on “Observations of a First-Semester MBA Student

  1. Sandra — helpful, encouraging blog. Thanks for the extra effort — like you have nothing else to do, right?

    Re: communications courses/content within the MBA program. Thank heavens — The decades-long work of both IPR and the Page Society to infuse a communications perspective into MBA programs is beginning to bear plentiful fruit. And PRSA is now helping too, as Matt points out, above. The biggest single step, IMHO, was the Page Society’s decision to admit leading Business School profs — Jim O’Rourke at Notre Dame, Stephen Greyser at Harvard, Paul Argenti at Dartmouth and then James Rubin at Virginia, Paul Goodman, Jerry Giaquinta at USC, Irv Schenkler at NYU, Caes van Riel at Erasmus in Rotterdam — and I’m forgetting some, I’m sure. And Sandra Duhe, now a Page member too. This move gave comms-oriented biz school profs added stature within the biz school world — and they have become role models that other biz schools have followed. But we’re only part way home, that’s for sure.

    1. Thanks much, Ward. Always nice to be in touch with you. It’s exciting to be on the ground floor of a movement I expect to continue and believe is vitally important to our field. Jim O’Rourke has been a great help to me.

  2. Sandy, it is such an honor to serve on your Communications Studies Advisory Board and I have marveled at how you could handle getting an MBA while CHAIRING a department, having two young children, and a husband who must be very patient! I’m proud of you and envious at the same time. When I attended SMU 100 years ago, I double-majored in business (BBA) and journalism (BFA), and it served me well. But so much has changed now, you are right, we ALL must master tools like Excel and take brush-up courses in business if we can’t do full-on MBAs. I look forward to learning more in our next board meeting!!

  3. I echo Matt’s ‘good for you.’ I recently completed a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins in communication — a profession I’ve been in the business of practicing for 30 years. Academic rigor — whether in the form of an MBA or diving deeper into persuasion, risk communication, or digital communication via a comms program – is an excellent way to stretch your mind at any time in your career. However, like you, I really enjoy being a student so I recognize grad school is not for everyone. Great post!

  4. Good for you. After 25 years as the PR guy at the corporate leadership table I often felt like a foreigner. Of course, the reverse is true as well… MBA-types need some strat comm in their curricula as well. That’s why I’m so happy to see PRSA’s initiative to get communications courses added to MBA curriculum take hold across the country.

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