|
|
Needless to say, this has been a very strange period for higher education. How has your pivot to online classes gone so far? |
We started planning even before the last day of physical classes in early March, just because the writing was already on the wall. We actually had to finish up the winter quarter online, with two days’ notice. As I wrote to students, our goal was to redesign classes to be “intellectually and emotionally satisfying given the constraints of teaching a class online with short notice to people who are facing trying and uncertain times.” |
I have taught an intro to organizational behavior since 1981, so the coursework is familiar. But to respond to remote learning, we’ve mixed and matched a ton of material, between live video lectures, some recorded talks, case studies, and guest speakers. I was able to plot out the lessons with my course assistants, who have been amazing. The final will be to design the ideal organization, using concepts we discussed in class. |
I’m really excited about my guest speakers. For instance, we had Bonny Simi, the president of JetBlue Technology Ventures, speak to my class. The students first saw a short film about her—she is an Olympian and national champion in the luge and bobsled, as well as an active pilot—then they watched a talk she gave at Stanford as an “engineering thought leader.” After that, she had a live video conversation with students, including her thoughts on the impact of COVID-19. |
We also had Carl Liebert, who seems like he was involved in every management crisis of the past 20 years. He was at Circuit City during 9/11, Home Depot during Katrina, and 24 Hour Fitness during the 2008 economic meltdown. He spoke with the class about leading through a crisis, and how leaders have to avoid being overcome by fear. |
It sounds like this crisis is providing students with a real-time example of how to improvise a response. |
What is clear is how people and organizations that seemed too rigid just a few weeks earlier changed so much in reaction to the pandemic. My teaching reflects that, it has changed dramatically, and there’s so much more flexibility in the system—and in people—than I ever imagined. |
For one of my classes, a small one on leading organizational change, with 19 undergrads doing project-based work, all the students pivoted to COVID-inspired topics with a couple weeks’ notice. One team is studying “pop-up virtual organizations,” and why a virtual org like US Digital Response has been successful while others have failed. |
Another team is looking into how parents are dealing with the challenge of working while having to teach young kids at home at the same time, and a third is focused on the processes by which Stanford and other universities moved undergrads off campus. |
How do you think your students are doing emotionally? |
A key point is no matter what I’m doing, I always put the students’ emotional well-being first. For my organizational-behavior course, I have 55 students scattered all over the country and the world. One is from Honduras, and she can’t go back there. I also worry about income-equality effects—it’s clear some students are sitting in huge houses in California, while others are obviously less fortunate. Then there’s the hope that job offers don’t fall through for those who are graduating. |
Some students are really rising to this challenge, others are doing fine, and others are definitely struggling. It makes you realize that the informal interactions of college life—clubs, sports, dorm life, office hours, running into folks on campus—are so crucial. We are all anxious—and also curious and optimistic—about working our way back to the new normal. The skills and resilience of my wonderful students gives me much hope, despite the challenges ahead. |
|
|
BACKTALK |
Have feedback or other ideas? We’d love to hear from you. |
|
![](https://www.mckinsey.com/assets/dotcom/newsletters/images/vi/spacer.gif) |
|
|
Copyright © 2020 | McKinsey & Company, 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10007
|
|
|
|