10 Productivity Tips from MBA Students at Washington University

One of the great opportunities in my role as an Executive in Residence of the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis is that I can sit in on nearly any academic class. Took advantage of that yesterday by joining in with about 75 first year MBA students for an hour and a half. The guest presenter to the class was from Bank of America’s US Trust. 

He was there to discuss his leadership role heading a team to serve wealth management clients at US Trust. He emphasized to the graduate students three major success factors in the kind of work he does……being smart (always helps!), hard work and networking. He knew that everyone in this particular class was obviously very smart. Otherwise they wouldn't be here in the first place. But he then asked the class what they did to enhance their ability to work hard and network.

Here are what various students threw out as answers:

Be open minded. They run across many great opportunities. Give each some consideration.

Leverage experiences. One thing tends to lead to another.

Multi task. Make sure you accomplish much in a day.

Keep a to do list. Check it every morning.

Maintain a calendar. No better way to keep yourself organized.

Engage in daily exercise. It makes you feel better and even gives you more energy to work hard.

Learn from others. You’re smart, but you certainly don’t have a monopoly on good ideas.

Join groups of interest. There are so many opportunities to network!

Work on soft skills. Be able to carry on a good conversation and listening skills open many doors.

Participate. Listening is one thing. Joining in is another.

Those were ten wonderful answers coming from very intelligent young people probably in less than 15 minutes. Was very impressive! One other that I think they could add to their list is to build a database of their contacts. All those people they meet and network with should be included as well as notes from their interactions. Otherwise they will likely lose much valuable information over time. No matter how smart they are, they won’t be able to remember everyone and everything discussed.

We could probably all learn much by going back for a class or two!