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Stories
Innovative Course Brings Students and Alumni Together
In the fall of 1996, HBS professor David A. Garvin was searching for teaching materials for his elective course General Management: Processes and Action. He wanted to help his students understand the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany a career transition from senior functional manager to general manager. After failing to find appropriate materials through traditional sources, Garvin went directly to the front lines for relevant information: to HBS alumni who had recently made just such a transition themselves.
In a mass e-mailing to HBS alumni, Garvin asked for volunteers to engage in online dialogues with students via the Internet. Forty-three alumni - all with vivid and fresh insights into their own successes and failures - agreed to participate in the innovative pilot project, which proved to be an extraordinary learning experience for students and alumni participants alike. "The 1996 group was tremendously enthusiastic," notes Garvin, who decided to repeat the program this fall. This year's e-mail invitation netted three times as many volunteers, including several alumni participants who signed up a second time. "I think they enjoyed the ex-changes and helped spread the word," he observes.
Building on the previous year's experience, participants this fall had electronic access to course materials, including an overview of the general manager's job, a resource site with hundreds of contributions from last year's discussions organized by topics and themes, and video clips of alumni interviews. As a result, Garvin says, "The conversations began on a higher plane. Students asked more detailed and personal questions about how to determine if this career trajectory was right for them. Alumni were quite open about the kinds of hard choices students will have to make."
In addition to process improvements, other changes had an impact on this year's dialogue. For example, this time a greater number of entrepreneurs took part, and they introduced new variables into the discussions. "While recruiting may not be the first priority for a general manager who must implement change in an existing large organization," notes Garvin, "for the entrepreneur, staffing is everything. That insight surprised students and led to an interesting discussion."
The thirty alumni who were able to come to campus for the final day of the exercise participated in an enhanced program of activities that included lively classroom and small-group discussions and videotaped interviews with students. Alumni could mingle informally with students - over breakfast as well as lunch - and continue conversations begun on the Internet. "The power of this exercise really comes through in the combination of electronic and face-to-face dialogue," Garvin says. "In a sense, they already 'knew' each other, so they could concentrate on digging deeper into the issues."
Garvin has since received notes from several alumni participants, expressing variations on a common theme: the exercise gave them a rare chance to reflect on their daily work and to think about their managerial strengths and weaknesses. Says Garvin, "The project has given me many useful insights, as well, into the powerful role technology can play in helping to harness the intellectual resources in our extended HBS community."
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