Sunday, March 6, 2011

Productivity slump












from xkcd, a nerdy physics and computer programming based web comic that I absolutely adore  

I've been doing a fairly good job this quarter with keeping up with things, and so it was a little bit disappointing yesterday when I had my least productive day of the quarter by far.  There were quite a few contributing reasons:
  • went out drinking on Friday night
  • the weather was crappy, automatically reducing motivation
  • had coffee with the ex - never a good idea if you want to focus on work
  • I cooked all my meals yesterday, which takes a substantial amount of time

But I think there are 2 primary reasons I am frustrated by how yesterday went.
  1. I haven't scheduled any me-time.  Even on days where I do no schoolwork, I usually am trying to tackle things off my to do list (including yesterday, when I went to get my battery replaced at the Apple store and then grocery shopping).  Unsurprisingly, my brain just shut off yesterday and no matter how long I sat in front of the computer, I managed to find other ways to spend my time.  The Making of a Corporate Athlete, a great article introduced to me by Orlando, talks about how just like physically, muscles need rest cycles between workouts to be order to grow and stay healthy, mental and emotional energy requires rest cycles to have sustained high performance.  In the future, I am going to try to build in a full day of restoration every 2 or 3 weeks, devoted to something fun which I actually enjoy doing, which is preferable to spending a whole day unsuccessfully trying to work and constantly kicking myself for not being able to.  Luckily, I have a few weeks of break coming up where I plan to do nothing but sleep, eat, exercise, and read.  I can't think of the last time I curled up on the coach with a musty tome borrowed from the library, and that used to be one of my favorite activities in the world.  
  2. There are just too many frickin distractions.  I am sorely tempted to delete my Facebook account.  I was a late adopter to Facebook, only creating my account once I moved internationally so I could keep up with my US based friends.  I can see the value in maintaining weak ties, but I think it has gotten to the point where I miss the days when friends would call each other up to find out what's going on, rather than just following & commenting on Facebook.  It is far too easy to waste hours surfing through old friends pages and pictures, and similarly, as my Twitter stream velocity increases, clicking one link too often leads to me coming to my senses 45 minutes later, having meandered my way through an interesting online discussion on a current event or technological trend.  Even my friends, whom I love dearly and cherish the opportunity to stay in touch with, chat with me on messengers with the inevitable result of losing focus on work.  Now, the majority of the time I have been exercising self control by closing all extraneous applications, but when I am in a productivity funk like yesterday, it becomes a pathological impulse to let each distraction carry me away.  The author of xkcd, in the above comic, talks about how he created not only a 30 second delay between loading of web pages and chat clients, but also restricted his OS so that multiple programs could not be run at once.  This is a fairly hard line to take, but I can see the need and have yet to find my own methodology to truly take control of this issue.  

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Dean Blount & Kellogg's next 7 years

Just got back from a lunchtime presentation by Dean Sally Blount, on her plans and thoughts on what the future held in store for Kellogg.  I didn't take any notes, but from memory, here are my takeaways:

The new building is coming.  It will be an ambitious undertaking, planning to cost ~$300M, with a target opening in Fall of 2016.

Kellogg's administration is undergoing a marked restructuring.  As such, there are multiple senior management positions currently being recruited.  One will manage all MBA programs, one which manages all career services, and another will manage all executive education ... all roles will report directly to the Dean.  This is a marked change from now, where the full-time MBA program operates more or less separately from the part-time MBA program, and the career services are rather silo'ed as well.  Basically, how it seems to me is the matrix (as far as reporting structure goes) is being rotated on its side.

Explicitly added as a reason behind the restructuring is the Dean will be spending a lot of her time on fundraising.  A LOT.  Therefore, it is particularly important for her to have a strong team of senior management.

Kellogg is starting the process of undertaking a number of strategic initiatives.  For some reason, this always plays second fiddle to the building, but I feel this area is notably more important.  Unfortunately, the timeline for this will extend 5-7 years as well, but Dean Blount gave her perspective on several topics here.

  • Improving/expanding Kellogg's core competencies, which she sees as:
    • Providing the best education for students
    • Creating the best environment for top professors to conduct research
    • Improving [my add here: sorely needed] alumni engagement
    • Leveraging corporate partnerships
    • Kellogg's unique culture, and how it can be managed to continue to be and grow as a competitive advantage
    • Having a truly global presence; as it is unlikely in the next few decades Chicago will be a top 10 city globally (unfortunate but probably true), determining the best way for Kellogg to have a presence in those cities
    • Consistent, meaningful, and compelling Kellogg branding


    Here are my thoughts:

    I've been reserving judgement about the Dean so far, and this was a great opportunity to see her in action, up close and personal.  Here are my thoughts coming away from the session:

    • She is clearly passionate about her job, and this passion comes across when she speaks.  This also makes her seem very genuine.  This is a great plus. 
    • It is particularly difficult for a woman to be a good public speaker in what is still the man's world of business, academia, and particularly business academia.  She is undoubtedly smart, but as the face of Kellogg I hope her style improves to sound more cogent and confident.  I hope I will have the opportunity to take speech coaching in the future, as if even the Dean of a top business school can use improvement (things like vocal intonation, sentence structure & flow) then I have a long way to go.
    • She has a tendency to make bold pronouncements, which follows along her passionate style. There were several times during the talk she looked to, referenced and apologized to the PR manager who was standing by, for treading on dangerous ground in relation to what is public knowledge.
    • She is looking to place bold bets on the future of business research and education in order to ensure Kellogg remains a leader of business education.  I imagine this fact, along with her style, probably places her radically at odds with a large portion of what still remains a conservative (some might say stodgy) and risk-averse world of academia.  I would be willing to bet that between floors 2-7 of Jacobs, she is an extremely polarizing figure.
    • She referenced the glory days of Dean Don Jacobs, and clearly hungers for Kellogg to be back on the cutting edge, as it was when she attended Kellogg for her PhD.  This is likely the driving force for her need to shake things up.  Whether or not she will succeed, it is far too early to tell, but I certainly am rooting for her.