So I’m in the final week of regular school at MIT. The semester is almost over. I will soon go into the history books as the 257th Norwegian MIT alumni in MIT history. So what have I learned from the USNews #2 ranked US business school, MIT Sloan?

  1. There is no problem that cannot be solved within two hours: Whether the case is about Microsofts next strategic step, how Rupert Murdochs News Corporation should align its IT system, or revitalizing IBM’s ways of innovation, it can always be solved within a class.
  2. Fire somebody! This is a trick that seems to work in most cases. “Fire the CIO, she didn’t do her job!” “Fire the CFO, he’s only being disruptive”, “Fire the CEO, he’s not stepping up to the plate!”, “Fire the engineers…”, “Fire the board…”, “Fire the customers!!!”
  3. Generalize: To make sure you get a picture of people in a company, generalize. In fact, if you don’t do that you cannot fix the culture of the compnay: “These guys are mechanics, they have no interest in finance!” “Software engineers don’t understand customers”, “This guy is a lone wolf, people like him don’t work well in teams”
  4. Put some weight behind your words: Everybody fights for the word in the class. To make sure people listen to you you need to add some credential. Usually this happens when a 26 year old 1st year MBA student says: “I’ve done a couple of start-ups, and we’ve…”
  5. IT for dummies: If you ever get into a senior executive position, book a trip for your boss to a “IT for dummies” course. According to a visiting CIO, that did the trick. Not sure how the CEO took it though…
  6. If it can’t be explained in a two by two, it’s too complex: In business school, the most advanced theories should be explained in a 2 x 2 matrix. Something like “high to low, cheap to expensive” matrix. Of course, you can use something easier like a triangle (three factors that influence each other) or the S-curve (an evolution of the straight line that considers that nothing is like a straight line but most patterns can over time be explained in a line that somewhat resembles the letter S). If you cannot use any of these models, your theory is far too complex.

So much for now. More will follow. MIT is an amazing place to learn from :-)