This fall I was in Nashville, Tennessee, with 25 of my Bentley MBA classmates, where we engaged with local businesses and examined Nashville’s rapidly growing economy. We visited and toured many businesses, such as Oakridge Laboratory and General Motors (GM), and we were given the opportunity to learn from the top executives at the companies.
The goal of this field-based collaboration was to take what we learned in the classroom (concepts, theories and case studies) from our innovation and value-themed courses and put it into practice to find connections and learnings from the Nashville businesses we visited. This includes both building on our classroom knowledge base and expanding our thinking to include how this could apply and connect to future course topics, and in our careers.
More Than Music City
Prior to our trip, my only familiarity with Nashville was that it was a town well known for its country music. This is true, but I also didn’t know that it’s a hub for health care, hospital management, and health care Information Technology. Because of the booming industry, Nashville ranks the 18th fastest growing city for employment in the U.S.
While there, we also met with representatives from the Chamber of Commerce, Launch Tennessee and the Nashville Technology Council to get a better understanding of Nashville’s economic development and how the city is supporting these businesses, including their effect on housing, transportation, incentives, culture, talent acquisition and creating an attractive place to live.
We learned about the great impact that these large-scale companies have on the local economy and how they can influence the environment and community around them. When a company decides to do business in a particular community, they need to think about how their company operates to ensure they meet their larger company goals, but also how the decisions they make affect the local community.
Learning How GM Does ‘Just in Time’
At these companies, we learned about their innovation, design thinking, operations, supply chain, successes and failures. My most impressionable experience was visiting GM because of their complex operations and their “just in time” manufacturing; it was fascinating to learn about their supply chain, logistics, procurement process, plant operations and management and corporate headquarter support, since they are a global operation.
I learned the different ways GM drives value and innovate, and we were even able to tour and learn from one of their suppliers, Tenneco, who is located very close by. For example, GM had times where they needed to scale manufacturing up or down, production flexibility, reduced risk and as such they need to set up their supply chain to support this (for example, they use “just in time” inventory management, outsourcing production to low cost locations or outsourcing to a supplier) since there is high competition.
It’s important to understand how the supply chain works because every decision affects another. If I run a marketing program, I would need to make sure our suppliers could support whatever demand estimates we have, so it was valuable to see firsthand what types of necessary actions and decisions GM takes to provide value and stay ahead of their competitors.
Seeing the Big Picture
This experience gave me the awareness to make sure to consider the context of the big picture and also pay attention to the micro-level details of a company. For example, I am now more aware of the importance of realizing how your individual role fits into the company you’re employed at, how the company you work for fits into their industry, how the industry and company fits in locally in its environment, and the role of you and your company on the national and global scale.
It’s really valuable to have this perspective of the whole picture of how it all fits together like a puzzle. Knowing this will make you better able to make decisions to innovate and drive value for your company and their stakeholders. This newfound awareness happened in Nashville, being able to see firsthand, the considerations for a newer, thriving local economy and the effects a company can have or needs to consider based on what environment they are in.
The overall experience made me start to see how I might make decisions as a future manager. As a decision maker, I will need to make some tough calls and work with others to benefit the company. For example, before going to Nashville and learning this unit, in the past perhaps I was trying to drive the marketing metrics funnel to get maximum sales and brand awareness and was making decisions in a vacuum, without looking at all the details or information as it relates to the specific, and evolving, company goals.
Now, I have a better understanding about the importance of collaboration among different departments to make sure the decisions you make as a manager are aligned with the goals of the whole company. You may need to sacrifice metrics that support the work you do in order to achieve the goal for the better of the company (for example cut the marketing budget in order to afford to keep manufacturing locally).
Top 5 Tips for Field-Based Learning
1) Prepare, digest, and take time to make connections. In order to gain true insights and maximize your knowledge, take the time to do the prep work, keep your focus during the meetings, ask questions and take time to digest and reflect upon what was learned. In reflecting on this trip, I realized the significance in proper preparation before, during and after each business meeting to maximize learning, key takeaways and knowledge.
2) Strike a balance with time management. There is always plenty to see, do and learn both in your professional and personal life. It is important to organize and plan so that you work smarter and more efficiently to maximize effectiveness and reduce stress. On this trip, we had some small gaps of free time, so I found it important to think about to best spend this time. I found myself striking a balance of exploring Nashville, getting to know my colleagues better, career preparation, reading for the next course, and spending time to digest learnings from this trip.
3) Get to know your peers and professors. Whether on this trip, or in your next role, there are benefits to learning more about your peers and forming deeper relationships. This trip confirmed that my cohort is more than just intelligent classmates; they are well-rounded people with big hearts, and intelligent students that want to change the world with their unique and diverse backgrounds. If you take the time to get to know them, I guarantee you will be more satisfied and learn and grow more than you thought possible. I’ll apply this in future roles as well.
4) Take time to explore. When given an opportunity to explore a new city or environment, be sure to take advantage of it. Each place is unique in its own right, with much to learn and enjoy. We had both scheduled time to see the famous sights, and I carved out some of my free time to explore Nashville, for both fun, and to be able to connect it to the economic development learnings by seeing it in person.
5) Who you know matters. Never underestimate the importance of finding time to network. You can always leverage it later.