MBA Courses
Descending Order By Date Of Completion at Northern Kentucky University
MIS 600 – Intro to Info Systems in Organizations
Week 1 – Information System Strategy and Strategic Use of Information Resources
I’m thinking this course might not be too challenging for me given that this is what I do for a living, but I would like to know more about the strategy behind it, just not the day to day stuff. The course is going to be fast paced, with two chapter reads a month and two quizzes, with a discussion board post and one response. I expect to spend to 20 hours a week on the course. The book again is available on the YuZu app, so I can read it online and on the go. There is no lecture this week, which always chafes me. I like lectures to back up the reading and provide some additional insights. I do like that there is no final exam, I don’t see the point in a cumulative exam in a five week fast paced course, in a sixteen week course absolutely, but not in this type of format. There will also be a group presentation at some point, which is always interesting.
This week we reviewed the Information Strategy Systems Triangle which is the relationship between business, information, and organizational strategy. It is important to know how they link together and how they can be integrated to support each other. We also reviewed the difference between IT assets and IT capabilities. There is a lot of linking back to Porter’s competitive advantage models. So far the course is very book driven, and I notice the edition is several years old, so I am curious if this book will discuss technology and what type of technology because it has changed drastically in the last five years.
Week 2 – Information Technology and The Organization
We review organizational structures and how IT can support them. Of the four we review, matrix and networked are the newer ones to me, and hierarchical and flat I have experience in. I realize how important culture is and that on my next role I will want to understand the nature of it before I commit because there are certain cultures I thrive in and some others I do not. There is discussion on perspectives of IT in the organization and how IT can transform an organization as well. We talk about silo and business process perspectives and how IT cuts across both. We start getting into ERPs and what those should do and issues involved in their implementation. I am able to lean on my experiences here and shine on the message board. I am doing pretty well there for sure.
Week 3 – IT Architecture and Strategy
I meet my team for our project. The major difference between grad and undergrad is everyone here is a top student and engaged. The offset is we are all in this program because we are working adults with families and this fits. Getting everyone on the same page will be difficult but everyone seems committed. I am the senior of the group and they want to lean on my technical expertise. We submit an initial executive summary for grading and the part I wrote is specifically called out for being excellent, we get max points on the project. I am pretty proud of myself. As an adult student, any type of positive reinforcement we receive is well appreciated. Many of us are balancing a lot and working very hard to accomplish this goal. Sometimes we feel we are in over our head and feeling borderline overwhelmed, especially when family and career responsibilities come calling.
This week we dive into Information Technology and then some of the trends in it as it relates to the organization. I am realizing now this book is out of date. The most recent mention is of Social Networks, which I think we’ve moved on since then. There is no real talk about APIs and Microservices or Artificial Intelligence. Not that a business manager would need to understand how these things work but they are important enough to warrant discussion and updating of the course material. I will include that in my evaluation for the course. This was also the first week of our lecture, but the audio on it was terrible. I am also going to include that feedback as well.
Week 4 – Valuing, Monitoring and Managing IT Portfolio
I continue to excel on the message boards here with my experience and I am getting great feedback. So far this has been my favorite part of the class. There is also a lecture videos too and the quality is better. I continue to do well on the two weekly quizzes and I’m starting to believe I’ll get another A in this class. I meet with my group and we discuss how we’ll go forward. One member has not shown up, we are always trying to keep him in the loop. We decide (or at least the group decides) to shoot our individual presentations separately in PowerPoint and zip all of them up. I shoot my video several times and the shortest I can get it down is 11 minutes, but it’s the most important part of the presentation so I send it in.
Week 5 – Project Management and Business Intelligence
This is the most important and interesting part of the course because these are things I do and things I want to do. It’s a tough week because we do not have the weekend to finish up, the lectures, quizzes and readings all need to be done before the end of day Friday. We do mostly high view reviews of both subjects in our lecture and readings, enough so a manager would understand what they do. I have to take a half day Friday to stay on top of it all. I submit everything on time though and don’t cut any corners in the process. I feel that if I am paying for this I want value for every bit of my money, so I painstakingly sit through two hours of lectures that are just really rehashing of the reading. This was an OK course, I would give it a four out of ten.
Final Grade } A
Accounting 610 – Accounting in a Corporate Environment
Week 1 – Introduction
Excited for this course, but a little weary. It is a prerequisite for other MBA classes, and it is known as being difficult. I have an accounting background so I hope I can lean on that to work through these concepts easier. This week we talked about regulatory environment, accounting standard setting organizations, and really deep dove how management impacts the quality of financial reporting. This week we were introduced to real financial reports from publicly traded companies and were required to do analysis on them. This was difficult and took quite a bit of reading and analysis to do. I think I spent more time on the paper than reading the materials. On the management side we talked a lot about cost classifications.
Week 2 – Balance Sheets and General Cost Accounting
We deep dived into the balance sheet and understanding the nature of assets, liabilities, and stockholders equity. We also went into Cost Volume Profit (CVP) analysis, which is an incredibly important concept. From this we talked more about revenue and its relation to variable costs to create contribution margin and calculating Break Even analysis by the unit and sales dollar amounts. We looked at this both from a ratio method or using an equation method (which I prefer). This week brought back memories of when I was doing analysis for a manufacturer many years ago. I ultimately decided to abandon that course of action simply because there wasn’t any financial reward to it as commensurate with the skill required to do the job or the value of the analysis.
Week 3 – Income Statements and Static Budgeting
On the flip side, we moved down the financial statement reporting package and focused on the income statement. We worked through the income statement and the many facets and portions of it, including any management interpretations of the results and biasness introduced by it. For the management side we dove into budgets, which is kicking off the most valuable part of this class. I remember attending a controllership training session at my first job. Everyone there wanted to know about how to budget. It’s not something that comes as innate with the job, and it is the most valuable add for the role. My past includes mostly sales budgeting experience, I always seemed to work well with the sales team. I also spent two years doing nothing but hard core operational budgeting and learned a lot about how a healthcare organization works. I wish that role would’ve led to something more interesting because of how much effort I put into learning that system, but I felt there were greener pastures than being a non-clinical employee for a not-for-profit hospital system. However, I digress, we continued this week working on budgets, more of an overview, because we will be deep diving this more in week 4 and week 5.
I will also add this is the week I spent most of camping, first with the Cub Scouts (3 days) and then the Boy Scouts (6 days). I did come home during the week for one day where I wrote a paper for 12 hours straight, then read the managerial accounting textbook when I could get time back at camp. This was one of the more stressful weeks of my life, mostly because of the heat and lack of quality sleep, as well as working on my small Chromebook and tablet device. I made it work though. I did very well on the paper though and got full credit on the managerial accounting assignment, which is encouraging given how uncomfortable camping is in hot, humid, and rainy weather.
Week 4 – Statement Of Cash Flow and Flexible Budgeting
Now we move into the Statement of Cash flows, probably the most difficult to analyze and prepare statement. It’s often an afterthought, but it’s the most useful statement and needs to be reviewed with the balance sheet and income statement. I always remember hearing about how Enron’s fraud was hidden in everything but the cash flow statement, and if more people paid attention to it, they maybe would have caught it earlier. We also went into flexible budgeting, which is adjusting the budget for changes in production, another important managerial topic. I should add here the papers are getting more and more difficult. I am doing well on them but they are taking more time to do the analysis. There is a specific ask in not only analyzing the paper but identifying any GAAP provisions of interest and how they can be manipulated. I am finding that my expertise in GAAP, which is nearly 20 years old, is mostly out of date. So many changes resulting from that 2008-2009 financial crisis that played out after I left that industry and started focusing more on technology and systems.
Week 5 – Financial Analysis and Standard Costing
We’ve come to the final week of this class and wow it’s been a doozy. This week we learned about ratio analysis on financial statements and had to make an informed investment analysis between two national home improvement brands. On the Managerial side we reviewed standard Costing, variance analysis, and finally did a final exam on it. I spent twenty five hours again that weekend studying and doing the work. I did end up with a quick grade, having received an A on this week’s work, which gives me a solid A for the course.
Overall what a great course. The professor sent me a nice note congratulating me on my accomplishment. I gave him a high course review also. It is hard to fully state how gratifying as an adult student to hear that level of encouragement. There is so much doubt on our side, trepidation, and anxiety about if we made the right choice taking this on when all of the other students are so much younger and used to being in school. I did learn a lot in this course, I would give it a right out of ten.
Final Grade } A
Management 605 – Managing in Organizations – Summer One, 2025
Week 1 – Leadership
A personal takeaway regarding the spectrum of contemporary leadership styles that order itself based upon the degree of shared decision making, I most likely fall under the facilitative style given that I like to lead teams towards a goal while letting them decide how to get there. This would be in contrast to an autocratic style (not sharing in decision making), a consultative (take subordinates opinion into consideration but maybe not act on it), and delegative (give all decision making to team). I never have a good answer for my “leadership style” but if I reference via this spectrum I think I can make it easier to introduce myself to others and realize my strengths.
I also learned an important observation – not all managers are leaders and not all leaders are managers and how to recognize the difference between the two. It is possible to not manage but lead effectively within teams, it is also possible to be an effective manager but not a leader.
Week 2 – Motivation
Understanding motivation is difficult, and this evidenced by the many theories of motivation out there. We talked about the baseline motivation model – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – and how most other motivation frameworks fall within that pyramid in some fashion. We then broke the theories down into three sectors which were Content (needs), Process (choice), and Reinforcement (consequences). There were many models we reviewed, and I believe Expectancy Theory – that the rewards are worth the effort – is an important one. I think a lot of people in organizations think that way. There is an important of setting clear expectations and being equitable with your team.
There were some interesting side videos we watched that showed how social incentives and progress monitoring are important motivations for the self. Another one dealt with extrinsic and intrinsic motivations play a role in motivating ourselves as well. I am finding a lot of management starts with managing yourself properly.
Week 3 – Teamwork
There was a lot here I wanted to unpack and understand. I’ve been a part of several high functioning teams and I wanted to know why. A team forms from a working group by using a common approach, holding each other accountable, and getting everyone to trust each other to accomplish the shared goals. As a team member I didn’t realize the art of role formation and role communication that makes teams so productive and how you need to chose, evaluate, and communicate those roles. I appreciate how teams solve problems but didn’t appreciate how a team can get there. I do recognize the five stages in team building from Tuckman of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Norming is probably the most important in my opinion, just getting everyone on the same page can be difficult, but a lot of that too gets ironed out during storming and breaking down any barriers.
Managing a team though seems like a whole new avenue of exploration. Groups can be less effective when there is role conflict on the team whether its through ambiguity or being overloaded. I do believe teams should be smaller, like four members max, in order to dissuade social loafers. Managing personality conflicts is difficult but remember to keep from dragging others into it and get help if it exceeds your abilities. I once managed a team that had deep personality conflicts and with some more experience I most likely could have managed it better, and although the team moved on, it was emotionally taxing on my part, especially as a young person dealing with adults. Finally, I do like Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team and would most likely use it when evaluating a team’s disfunctions if they were to arise.
Week 4 – Culture
Of all the organizational studies we’ve undertaken, I feel this was the most important subject we broached. Culture within an organization is a powerful tool that can help or hinder an organization and how it is deployed and maintained our vastly important. A culture that fits the environment it works in and helps norm their employee behavior can lead to competitive advantage. A culture that is not the right fit can be incredibly difficult to change and lead to employee turmoil. I believe that is a study worthy of deeper work. The way to change it does mean removing employees who don’t fit the culture and bringing in/onboarding new ones who better align with it, but you can also shift it through communication, modeling, and physical reminders called artifacts that act like totems. As an employee it is a good idea to be flexible in your approach and aware of the expectations so you can adapt when things do change.
I once did a culture change within a volunteer organization I was in by promoting one of positivity and connection and family. It was very successful and lead to that organization doubling in size. People wanted to be part of if and the catty/petty elements disappeared. Now that I’ve studied culture a little more in depth I realize it can be part organic but it also needs to be lived and displayed from leadership down through a good Mission Statement. I am seeing more to organization’s now than I did previously. One benefit of getting an MBA after working full time for twenty years is getting to know the why behind the what. I’ve been in stable cultures, detail oriented cultures, innovative cultures, and ones that were a mix of it all. I personally fit best into team based cultures where learning and collaboration are prized. I do OK in hierarchical cultures but feel stifled when I’m not part of the decision making apparatus in as much as a lack of autonomy over what I do.
Week 5 – Change Management
A more scientific approach to change and managing it in an organization is probably apropos given the consequences of mishandled change. Communication is an important component of it because it builds trust with those being affected. Stakeholders need to be identified and brought into the change plan. People fear change for various reasons and there are ways to mitigate that fear and possible obstruction. This can include fear of loss or loss of control. The change experience often starts with denial, then goes to resistance, exploration, and then commitment. Finding change agents can help usher in change and reduce resistance to it by making someone responsible for implementation. The goal of change is to make the change permanent and a sense of urgency can keep it moving along. A Force Field Analysis is a helpful tool for understanding resistance to change in your organization. Feedback should always be sought after.
I will admit, I do not like change for change’s sake. If something is working I want it to stay that way. I tend to put so much thought into what I do and be deliberate about how I handle things, so when there is change I get agitated, especially if I have no control over that change. I know to focus on what I can control, and it is a common saying amongst the Stoics, but it’s easier said than done. On the other hand, if something is not working, I am the first to rip everything out and start over again. I’ve seen how change can be mismanaged in the past in organizations so it was refreshing to see the tools available to handle them effectively. This was an interesting course, and my first one. I would give it a six out of ten.
Final Grade } A