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Why focus on Practicing Management? 

After a year at MIT Sloan and a summer internship, you've learned and practiced analyzing problems, generating solutions, and making recommendations. Yet the most effective managers go further: they know how to actually get things done. In 15.990: Practicing Management you'll develop, apply, and refine the skills, tools, and approaches essential for doing just that. The centerpiece of the course is a real-world project that offers the ideal laboratory for you to become more effective as a manager.

What's the approach taken by this course?

This innovative course has three linked objectives:

  • to equip you to be the most effective manager you can be;
  • to develop skills for learning from every experience; and
  • to enable you to start making a difference while you're still here by designing and working on a project that goes beyond consulting to the manager's iterative cycle of strategy, implementation, evaluation, strategy, implementation.... a cycle that principled, innovative leaders use with their teams to improve the world.

We'll work on this cycle via team projects.

The course combines interactive in-class exercises, lively discussion, focused lectures, small-group meetings, consultations with experts and practitioners, novel web-based tools, and, of course, work within an organization, MIT group or lab on a real problem for which practical management solutions are urgently needed.

A flexible design accommodates a variety of projects, including scope for student-defined projects that meet the course criteria, as well as opportunities to take this class in conjuction with G-Lab.

What are the mechanics of the course itself?

The twelve-unit course spans this Fall H2, IAP, and Spring H1. To take this class you must be prepared to work on your project over IAP. Class size is limited to 30 this year, and enrollment by instructor's permission. You must take both half-semester courses (no grade is assigned until work is completed in the spring). Units will be distributed as follows: 3 for Fall H2, 6 for IAP, and 3 for Spring H1. The class meets Fall 06 H2, Monday, 2:30 - 5:30, with the Spring 07 schedule to be determined to best meet participants' needs.

All projects are local save those undertaken by students enrolled in both 15.990 and GLab, in which case the students will do their GLab projects (see below). 

How is 15.990 different from GLab?

Like GLab, 15.990 students work with teams of peers on a real-world project, dedicating three weeks of IAP to onsite work.  And like GLab, 15.990 is designed to complement and extend your classroom learning, providing you with opportunities to put into practice what you are learning and offering you experience integrating a variety of theories, perspectives, and tools , both from your past coursework and from the classroom portion of the course.

While GLab projects tend to focus the student-host interaction during the 3-week offsite engagement, 15.990 is planned around interactions with the host organizations that take place over a longer period of time. In keeping with the central idea behind "Practicing Management," 15.990 projects are designed to go "beyond consulting."

The reasoning behind this: 15.990 projects allow for multi-stage engagements where students develop and execute mini-experiments, to gather data and advance real learning at their host organization. So your 15.990 work over the fall allows you to design the IAP project as effectively as possible, using the forum of our classroom as a place to plan and design projects on an ongoing basis. And the work during IAP informs continued engagement with your host in spring H1. 

Although our 15.990 projects will be with companies and organizations in greater Boston, there's scope for some students to enroll in both GLab and 15.990.  For most 15.990 student projects with locally-based hosts, this will be realatively easy to arrange; with the special 15.990-GLab projects, we'll work together to ensure that students can collaborate and work with their host organizations both in the Fall and in the Spring.

GLab students conduct an analysis and make recommendations -- possibly developing a business plan, market analysis, or new-market-entry strategy for a foreign firm.  While interaction is clearly central to GLab projects, because of their nature, this is essentially a consultative approach whereby GLab projects are scoped such that all work for the host may be completed by the end of IAP.  In contrast, during Spring H1, all 15.990 students remain closely engaged with their host companies. They develop and execute additional mini-experiments, and make a strategic hand-off, so that hosts take ownership of student work, and take it to the next level.

Another point of contrast is that most of the classroom instruction for GLab addresses topics connected to entrepreneurship in a global setting, whereas in 15.990, the focus is on the topics relevant to getting things done -- being effective as a manager -- that are most closely connected to the project work you are carrying out.

Can you tell me what a 15.990 project might look like?

 
Here's a hypothetical example. An MIT Media Lab group has developed a new toy they believe has immense potential to help middle school students tackle algebra.  A 15.990 project team designs and implements pilot tests of the toy.  They collaborate with local non-profits providing after-school programming, such as Young People's Project and Citizen Schools.  During IAP, the 15.990 team conducts a pre-test with students, tests the toy with them, then gathers feedback and ideas.  They also conduct a post-test.  During Spring H1, the 15.990 team work with their host to incorporate student feedback/data into design modifications, to capture student impacts for future marketing and lay the groundwork for a second test.

So it's all about projects. What makes for a good project?

Projects for 15.990 should:

  •       Be substantial enough to support the collaborative work of a team of at least four students (please note that teams will be formed in the class);
  •       Involve interactions with multiple stakeholders within a host organization;
  •       Center on a problem that cannot be solved simply by research, analysis, or application of off-the-shelf frameworks;  
  •       Depend on the design and execution of "mini experiments" that test hypotheses and gather data to advance learning;
  •       Depend on innovation---your mini-experiments should represent a new, untested strategy for your host, helping them move beyond the limits of preexisting infrastructure.

Can I do my own project? Can I select my own team? 

15.990's design accomodates some projects proposed by students. If you have a project that meets the criteria listed above, you may submit a write-up to us.

Teams will be formed in the class; be prepared to work in a novel team.  

How do I sign up?

Please email Ashley Chiampo to apply for the course.  We are accepting students on a rolling basis, although there will be a deadline for GLab students. Please send the following:

  • 2 or 3 paragraphs explaining why you would like to take this class---specifically, what you would like to learn;

or,

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