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Winners of the 2007 GSB Marketing Challenge tout that students can be the CEO of their own experience. Their mantra: Innovative leadership every day at every level. Not only can leadership be taught and “shaped,” they said, but they agreed that leadership opportunities are an integral part of Chicago GSB’s every day experience.
“No hand holding here,” said first-year student Jen Nocco. GSB is training future CEOs.
Hosted by the student-led Dean’s Marketing Advisory Committee (DMAC), the second annual GSB Marketing Challenge asked teams to develop marketing ideas to promote leadership at Chicago GSB. A total of 19 teams comprised of Full-Time MBA and Evening MBA and Weekend MBA students participated.
Leadership was a more difficult topic to convey than new media, which was last year’s topic, said judge Chris Iannuccilli, director of marketing at Chicago GSB. It’s easy to come up with ways to show off new media, but with leadership it was more “subtle,” he said.
Eight finalists presented to six judges, including Iannuccilli; Jeffrey Malehorn, president and CEO of GE Healthcare Financial Services; Julie Grzeda of GE Healthcare Financial Services; Rachel Albert of GE Healthcare Financial Services; Jeff Anderson, ’87, associate dean for leadership development; and Howard Haas, adjunct professor of strategic management.
Nocco said the entire curriculum is dictated to students at a lot of MBA programs. “But here it’s different. You have to strategically decide how you are going to make the program work for you,” she said.
Sponsored this year by GE Healthcare Financial Services, the competition was formed by DMAC to “increase brand loyalty to the Chicago GSB and promote brand awareness to recruiters and the entire business community,” said student group leader Tony Chen.
The team also agreed that GSB's Leadership Effectiveness and Development (LEAD) program, which will mark its 20th anniversary in 2009, is unique. Developed in 1989, the LEAD curriculum is designed by second-year students to teach first years how to team-build, negotiate, motivate others, and influence outcomes. “The experience is invaluable,” said first-year student John Goetter.
Iannuccilli called team H-BGYN “sound bite mavens” and said their presentation was part of what made them stand out, though team members Nocco, Goetter, Bethany Barefoot, Lynne Hitchner, and Jeff Yoo believe their edge was actually learning about Chicago GSB marketing standards and using current strategies to build on existing ideas.
“For career switchers like most of us, the competition really validated our marketing skills,” said Yoo.
The competition also gave the team members a way in which to apply the knowledge they gained in their classes, said Goetter. How to approach a problem, for example, he said. Or how to structure a problem, Nocco added, or the lens through which we look at the world,Yoo said.
One of the most influential aspects of this year’s competition was hearing Malehorn talk about GE’s leadership values, said Iannuccilli.
“Like us, they have analytical strengths that they’ve translated to leadership values, which is extremely hard to do,” he said. “It’s helping us change the way we talk about GSB leadership.”
- Amy Ramsden