A Business School Where MBA Students Are Really The Customers

‘TENURE IS THE WORST INVENTION,’ INSISTS WELCH

Teaching at the institute where there are 45 adjunct teachers and four full-time profs is nothing like traditional academia. Faculty are screened and then measured for their passion to engage, challenge and excite students. They may hold a PhD or terminal degree in their field of expertise and have, on average, 20 years of professional experience.

It’s telling, perhaps, that the school’s faculty drafted its own guiding principles and a list of values and behaviors. The No. 1 value is “Generosity: Believe in our students. Focus on student success. Coach and mentor. Engage with compassion and understanding. Offer candid feedback. Instill confidence.” A guiding principle notes that “great course content will not overcome poor instruction. Faculty relentlessly focus on superior instruction and continuous improvement.”

There is, of course, no tenure. “Tenure is the worst invention,” deadpans Welch, who deploys a GE-like performance culture that essentially weeds out the bottom 10% of the faculty who fail to get the best scores from students. “We celebrate the top 20%,” adds Zeliff. “We coach around the 70% and take a hard look at the bottom 10% and ask whether this is the right spot for them. We do that every quarter. and we send all that information to the professors. You are not going to be told too many times if your engagement level is low. Everyone knows what are expecations are.”

‘YOU GUYS ARE KINDA CRAZY’

When Zeliff hires in new faculty, he asks them to “ride along as a teaching assistant first and judge fit for them and us. They need to be up on the research, but what I really need them to be is engaged and engaging in the classroom and making the most of every interaction with the students. I have had at least a couple who say, ‘You guys are kinda crazy.’ But you have to have the practical experience to bring the teaching to life and the willingness to support students the way we expect. And if you don’t believe in Jack, you shouldn’t be here. That is just a given. We don’t have a problem finding folks.”

Welch is deeply engaged in the enterprise. He hosts quarterly videoconferences with students, pops up in videos about current business events, interacts with students via email, and is all over the program’s curriculum. Every work day, Welch receives two reportson leads, applicants, and enrollments as well as all the NPS survey results that he happily uses to coax still better performance out of the organization.

At one briefing with Welch, recalls Zeliff, the NPS numbers were going in the right direction and the team was overjoyed with the results. “We had only 18 detractors, and we were pretty excited by the result. Jack wanted to hear about those 18. I said, ‘That’s not really the story,’ and he said, ‘But everyone of those stories is an opportunity to get better. We didn’t fulfill their expectations.’ We having those conversations we were able to identify the isues and fix them in a way that I hadn’t seen before.”

‘THEY CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT’

Welch, meantime, cannot conceal his delight at the institute’s acceptance and growth. He notes that Clayton Dubilier & Rice, the private equity firm where he serves as a senior advisor, is now funding 20 students in his MBA program with a second cohort to start in January. The students are high potential middle managers from 15 companies in CDR’s portfolio.

“The test was whether a PE firm with a bunch of MBAs would love the result,” says Welch. “Well, they love our faculty, and they can’t get enough of it. It’s unbelievable.”

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