WGU MBA-HM first impressions and ongoing comments

[dmjacobsen]

Another month goes by, and another update on my progress. I've completed the Leadership course and have completed 2 of the 3 tasks for the capstone. Our capsim team actually did remarkably well after an essentially miserable performance in the practice rounds. We finished round 8 of the capsim in the 97th percentile. Not a 97% score -- 97th percentile out of 1,308 teams from programs around the world. Not too shabby! I can't give many details on how to beat the capsim due to academic honesty requirements, but I will say this -- be VERY aggressive in expanding your company early on in the game. Spend a TON of money, and it will pay off exponentially in the end.

Leadership was pretty much a cakewalk. The first task was a description of your own leadership style and a comparison to other leadership styles. If you've never been in any leadership position, you might not really have a good idea of your own leadership style. But, chances are, if you think back, you've probably been in a lot of leadership positions, even if you didn't know it at the time. Even if you've never been in a leadership position, the text has some decent tools for identifying where your style fits in. I won't say much else about this -- it's very easy.

The second component to Leadership was the creation of a leadership handbook for future managers. Again, not hard at all. You have to write two sections of the book, 3-6 pages for each section (single-spaced). I chose "Leaders as Motivators" and "Leadership versus Management". These were pretty easy for me to write about. The only hard part was that you need 3 citations for each section, but it's not that hard to find information about these topics. At the end, you're required to critique the handbook itself in very simple terms, and talk about your team's performance and how you fit into the picture. Once again, not exactly rocket science.

Now, I'm working on my final project for the capstone. It's a growth project for the ER that I work in. I'm identifying barriers to the growth of our hospital, as we've actually had negative growth over the past two years while a nearby hospital has consistently more ER volume than it can handle. Considering that the ER is the primary source of admissions for the hospital, and since admitted patients are the biggest source of revenue for the hospital, it only makes sense to improve this for the long-term future of the hospital. I'm excited to apply what I've learned in the program to a project that might actually make a positive impact.

I'm hoping to be done with this project in 2 to 4 weeks. And, after that, walking across the stage at commencement in July. It's almost over!