I recently got the chance to attend HBX ConneXt for the second year, meeting my fellow alumni and taking the opportunity to ask questions and learn from our professors. Here are my top takeaways from an incredible day of knowledge:

“Technology is only a tool, it’s not an end in itself. Online learning won’t magically improve learning.”

—Bharat Anand, HBX Faculty Chair

Bharat Anand kicked off the day by adding context around HBX and what it means to the world, not just to us as students. HBX pioneers a model of teaching that’s pushing the boundaries of what education can be.

Look at the age distribution of HBX students—from 17-60! With technology, we can provide access to anyone willing to learn. The boundary, then, is not privilege, but the motivation and commitment of students.  

“Finance is about information and incentives, not money.”

—Mihir Desai, Professor, Leading with Finance

As a past CORe participant, one of the best parts of HBX ConneXt is getting a taste of the many different courses available. Being a marketer, I rarely get the chance to talk to my CFO or know what they’re thinking about during the day. Participating in Professor Desai’s financial policy case discussion on Apple was eye-opening (not to mention outside of my comfort zone!).

Like any business, Apple’s industry plays a major role in financial policy, and talking through some of the unique challenges in tech—fear of missing the product lifecycle, a brand-intensive marketing play, and a mandate for innovation—introduced me to the concept of cash flow, and why it’s worth paying attention to, especially for big players like Apple and Google.

“In order to change the world, you have to be up against problems that no one has been able to crack before.”

—Megan Joyce, East Coast General Manager at Uber

No matter what our role or industry, we all seek to make an impact. At Uber, they’re not just trying to build a successful business—they’re trying to solve big, hairy problems like global climate change. 

Joyce also talked about a different way to make an impact: through others. As a manager, it’s your job to bring out the best in the people around you and helping them dream bigger. And though we’d like to think we always know what to do, when you’re trying to make an impact, you might not have the right answer. In fact, you might not have any answers. And that’s okay. It’s not always your job to have the answers—instead, pull great ideas out of your team to make an impact on the world.

“How do you deal with no’s? Move on. You don’t have time to dwell on it.”

—Mark Hardie, HBS Career and Professional Development

Mark Hardie’s incredible afternoon workshop for aspiring entrepreneurs talked through a complete case study of a business idea. But knowing the partners, activities, and personas you have to target to create a business plan is only half the battle.

The other half? Getting your voice heard. To be able to get funding (not to mention customers), you have to build a story. Articulating your idea quickly allows you to capitalize on whatever opportunities might come your way—and if someone says no, that’s okay. Learn from it and move on so you don’t miss the next opportunity.

“Business can save the world.”

—Rebecca Henderson, Harvard Professor

To finish out the day, we heard from the brilliant minds of Rebecca Henderson and Michael Sandel discussing the future of capitalism. Capitalism, Henderson argues, is a fabulous tool but a bad master, which has caused problems like environmental issues, increasing inequality, and firms fixing regulation to benefit themselves.

We’ve become a market society, where market values and market thinking dominates every aspect of life, not just goods and services.  At times of major crisis, business leaders have stepped up to solve these kinds of problems for the greater good—the question is, will they now?

If Rebecca Henderson is right, I know that HBX’ers are ready, willing, and able to tackle the world’s biggest problems head on.

The amount of knowledge packed into one day at ConneXt was overwhelming, but it was also inspiring. Whether it was debating Apple’s financial strategy or outlining a business plan, I got the chance to meet HBX’ers from all over the world, learn from them, and be inspired by their dreams and plans—because the only way we’ll save the world is together.

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When I think of a traditional residential college, I picture ivy-covered brick buildings, stately Greco-Roman facades, and checkered-floor libraries filled floor-to-ceiling with books. Essentially, I picture Harvard’s stately campus.

When I signed up for HBX CORe, Harvard Business School’s online-only cohort focused on business fundamentals, I didn’t think much about community. After all, it was “just something I was taking online.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hundreds of HBX past participants gathered at Harvard Business School this past Saturday for HBX ConneXt to celebrate exactly that. After engaging in spirited online debates, e-meeting people from Bangalore to Baltimore, and messaging directly with my fellow cohort, I was able to put faces to names, hear their stories, and make real, in-person connections with people I had interacted with for months.

Between student panels, a campus tour, and faculty sessions throughout the day, I felt inspired—and ready—to take on the mission of HBS: making a difference in the world.

Here are a few of the moments that inspired me the most from HBX ConneXt:

“With [online education], the constraint is only the motivation and talent of individuals looking to better themselves.”  

--Professor Bharat Anand

Professor Bharat Anand opened the day by discussing the transformational power of education. He explained that traditional education is a privilege because of scarcity, and that scarcity comes only from the literal, physical constraints of a college campus. With online, that’s completely changed.

If you’re motivated to make yourself better and to learn, you’re able to more than ever. He reminded us that it’s ok to never have done something before. HBX ConneXt was “the first time we’ve had a gathering of students we’ve taught…but never met.”

“Trying to understand the customer is the wrong unit of analysis. You need to understand the job that needs to be done.”

--Professor Clay Christensen

As a marketer, I constantly focus on customer demographics: who are they, what they care about, and their daily habits. Professor Christensen flipped this on its head during his faculty session and spoke of instead the job that needs to be done. What problem does your product solve?

Rather than focusing on differentiating by product, differentiate by solution. Ultimately, our characteristics don’t cause us to buy something—the flow of daily life does.

“As much as I love math and analysis, the hard stuff is what we traditionally call the ‘soft stuff’: managing people.”

--Professor Jan Hammond

HBX CORe provides a common language of business: how to understand your finances, analyze trends and performance, and bring your product to market. But the next step for all of us is the soft skills.

Professor Hammond emphasized learning how to lead an organization in skills like analytics, but also in mindset. She also encouraged us to push ourselves and each other to be the bestwe can be, and to gather people around us who will always ask why.

“Be substantive, not superficial. It’s real results that matter.”

--Larry Culp, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at HBS and former CEO of Danaher Corporation

As a former CEO, Larry’s advice gave great insight into what real business leaders care about day-to-day. He focused on education as an important self-investment and the sense that people are more important than numbers. Encouraging us to take the long view on issues and on our careers, he talked about maintaining a “continuous improvement” mindset.

We can no longer pretend that doing things as we’ve always done them will be successful. By building a culture where you can say, “I don’t know—but I’ll go find out,” and positioning problems as opportunities, not failures, makes a difference in the success of your company, but also of your career.

“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.”

--Anne Dwane, Partner & Co-Founder, GSV Acceleration

For the closing panel, Anne emphasized the opportunity education provides us to become more knowledgeable, but also to become better people. She encouraged us to “create more value than you take,” and to continually give back to our communities. 

Today’s workforce is changing, and traditional ways to select for talent aren’t working. We all need to remember that it’s not just about doing everything correctly, but about seeking a path forward—particularly as we start to co-work more frequently with machines.

The real value of HBX was the ability to learn and meet new people completely different from me. I met a fellow from Singapore raving about his first-ever lobster roll, a native New Yorker visiting Boston for the first time, and an intelligence officer from D.C who couldn’t really talk about what he did every day.

Alumni traveled from as far as Australia and as close as Allston, from all walks of life, work experiences, and backgrounds. Together in one room, you could really see how much we had to learn from one another.

As Professor Anand told us in closing, “The story of HBX is still being written—and you will shape that narrative.”

The success of any training program isn’t what happens during it; it’s what happens after. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the completion of the program—and the start of my “after.”

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Kayla Lewkowicz participated in the January 2016 cohort of HBX CORe. This is the final installment of a series of reflections inspired by her experiences. The original post appeared on her blog here, and the whole series is available here.

As my time with my cohort comes to a close, I wanted to pause and reflect on what I learned, and what I'll take with me moving forward in my career. HBX was incredibly time-consuming but ultimately, very rewarding and insightful.

To make a decision, look at all the factors

When you make a decision, you have to know everything that's at stake. Building a team of people that can help you see beyond what you want to see--your inherent bias--is essential to make an informed decision. Economic and market forces, cultural shifts, the political landscape, and how your product is received all impact the financial statements and the data. You can't look at one aspect of your business to know whether or not you're successful, but you do have to know what's most important.

Related: Know What's Most Important

This means that judgment can be more important than data collection or quantitative analysis. Though the numbers may tell one side of the story, they can be just as subjective as survey comments or customer sentiment. As a manager and decision-maker, taking a holistic view of all of the possible data points--qualitative and quantitative--and then looking beyond what the data says to get to the "why," will make you more successful.

Be an experimenter

Rather than going with "what feels right," use data to make a decision.

Most people know this is the right way to do it, but have trouble in practice not because they're data illiterate but because failure is psychologically painful. An experimental mindset--where you're tinkering and tweaking--encourages understanding your customer, your audience, and your performance in a well-rounded way.

Related: When In Doubt, Test & Learning to Experiment

To do this right, we need to ask questions. Experiment. Get curious. Test. Otherwise you'll never learn anything, and never ship products that really innovate.

Relationships matter

Where your business fits in the market matters, because its relationship to other companies matters. As consumers, it's how we figure out what we want; as managers, it's how we know how we're performing. In business, everything is tangled up in so many factors that it's often not clear what's what. After all, you can't find the solution if you don't know the problem.

Related: Kickstart Your Business With Networks & It's All Related

Making decisions isn't always so easy as "because of this, we should do that." Whether that's price, logo, or investing decisions, the world isn't so linear. With such high stakes, we need to separate what's important from what's not, and what's related with what's not. We can do that by experimenting, asking questions, or collecting data. Knowing that relationships matter, and seeking them, helps us make more holistic business decisions (see above) and maybe even predict the future.

Would I recommend HBX?

In short, definitely.

As a liberal arts student with very little in the way of business background, I feel more comfortable and familiar with the language of business. In our quarterly earnings presentation, I understood the CFO for the first time. I've been able to take a new look at social media data and performance for the Twitter handle I manage. And ultimately, I have a better understanding of the principles that make up business decisions.

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Interested to know more?

 

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