New Orleans MBA Teams Help Build Local Businesses

Loyola University paves the way for MBA students to team up with major companies to support local startups. This is just one of the ways business teams are building relationships in New Orleans and fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR) goals.

Google, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, TPG Capital, IBERIABANK, and Jones Walker are among the heavy-hitters providing expert advice to facilitate small business success. “When top tier companies help new companies get ahead, and involve business students in the process, CSR is reinforced on many levels,” says David Lengyel of Venture Up, who has been running corporate team training programs in New Orleans for more than three decades.

Teamwork is the name of the game for IDEAcorps, a partnership program with Loyola and The Idea Village that initiated the event. These business innovators match MBA student teams from across the nation with local startups for an intensive 4-day consulting competition during New Orleans Entrepreneur Week (NOEW). The program also involves leaders at the big firms.

Business experts, corporate executives, investors and nonprofit professionals work with NOEW leaders to give students an experiential learning program in business consulting. Students can see how their efforts can provide real-life results impacting new business growth in New Orleans.

The program welcomes local participation, with these requirements:

-- A team of six, including a passionate leader and five entrepreneurial friends or associates. Diversity, as in all teams, is an asset.

-- A shared passion and competitive spirit to assist new businesses and help them grow.

-- A commitment to deadlines, as in the program dates of March 10-13, 2016.

-- A faculty advisor from their locale, whose presence is recommended but not required.

The learning  begins when team members act as the startup’s founding team  to see how far they can strategically develop the company in four days. Teams compete for a cash price and the seasoned pros judge their work. The judges consider such factors as each team’s ability to provide solutions and produce results in a limited amount of time, similar to the model for Venture Up’s corporate team building programs in New Orleans and across the nation.

How a little survey made a big difference for a Raleigh team building event

When a healthcare facility in North Carolina hired Venture Up to facilitate a training program on conflict management, four managers had three months to plan the 2-day event. The managers met weekly before convening in Raleigh for the team building part of the program. But it wasn’t until the final days before the event that the managers gained focus on the core issues their teams face.

During a conference call a week before the training, managers gave input from three points of view -- their own. “When I asked what the core issues were, the leaders couldn’t agree,” said David Lengyel, of Venture Up, who led the program. “The only information they could provide was from their leadership perspective, not from within the team.

Venture Up provided a pre-program survey tailored to health care providers and designed to elicit honest feedback, free of consequences. Company leaders are always free to edit the survey, but Venture Up recommends that the survey be “anonymous, with plenty of space for written comments.” Venture Up also suggests an old fashioned method: Allow staff the option to submit their survey to a locked suggestion box vs. online. They need to provide input without fear of consequence, and some people are simply more comfortable with old-style methods of communication with sensitive information.

To the leaders’ surprise, nearly half of the respondents used the old-fashioned box. The hand-submitted surveys also had more extensive written comments, whereas the electronic submissions had fewer.

How often do any of us take a survey with cookie-cutter questions that appear irrelevant to what we, the survey-taker, want to convey? How many surveys even provide a “written comments” section? While many big data researchers say that multiple choice is the way to go, they generally are referring to the masses. We were dealing with 100 staff and the comments provided cut right to the needs of the team. On this small scale, comments are manageable and provide insights only the inner team can share.

The managers tallied the answers, typed up the written comments, and provided Venture Up with the results. “When we have such valuable feedback, we are able to optimize the learning experience,” says Lengyel. “It is important that our facilitators use the same language as did the respondents in the survey when covering the respective topic.” When the outsourced provider is involved in handling the survey results, it unifies the program elements and the team.

When managers care about the staff’s feedback, the staff notices. They became more engaged with each other as Venture Up facilitators guided them through each team building activity. The method of involving employee feedback in the program itself sends a clear message that management values and supports the team. Hence, the team feels empowered, and views managers less as authority figures and more a part of their team,” Lengyel says. It’s a good way to allay the “us and them” divide, he says.

This prepared approach also shows staff that the outsourced leaders for the team building session are in tune with them, and ready for staff development, not just to entertain or play games.

The managers originally planned to hold the entire training program inside, but Venture Up talked them into offering an outdoor option. Raleigh weather is often favorable, as it was on the day for team building activities. Grassy grounds and shady trees provide a farm more relaxing environment for teams than being in a closed box under fluorescent lights in the every day workplace.

When planning any event, many of us come up with the best ideas as we near the deadline. (Oh, the magic of the eleventh hour!) Sometimes when we have so much time to plan we find ourselves going in circles and losing focus.

The ideal team building event involves feedback either directly from the team or the team leader. The outside provider can henceforth incorporate this valuable knowledge into a program that tells the team what their leaders are saying: “We understand you. We need your input. We take you seriously. We need every one of you for our total success.”