My first week in the trenches of altMBA

So, now I am allowed to post about I am doing over the remaining 3 weeks.  About a month ago, I sent in an application to a program that I had never heard of called altMBA, extremely intrigued by what it is while having no idea what I was getting into.  I was accepted.

And this past week I got my first glimpse of what it was all about.

It goes a little like this – here is your group (cohort), here are your week’s assignments, here’s some deadlines to have your work done by, here’s a little guidance – show us what you can do.

The rest is up to you, if you can’t handle the ambiguity and gray areas of it all, probably not your thing.  On top of doing your own work, there is a ton of supplemental reading, and not “Read Chapters 1 – 6” but rather “OMG I want to read all this, how come there are only 24 hours in a day” and “look at what these people wrote for their assignments, this is incredible stuff”.  Really, really inspiring and for lack of a better word – make you think – type of writing.

In a number of my posts one of the constant themes in my comments were knowing who my audience was – Who was I writing to?  Who do I want to read this?

Well in a program like this, there really is only one person that I’m speaking to – it’s me – “G to the T”, no one else.  There are no grades (or maybe they are and I don’t know), we have coaches and other cohorts that give us guidance and feedback and the method of delivery and implementation of the assignment, is entirely based on the individual.  This blog is a perfect example, I don’t write about trends or products or rules or methodologies, I write about what I need to get off my chest and if it resonates with people, that is fantastic (perhaps I’m not the only one) but if it doesn’t and you think I’m a yahoo that’s okay too.  When I write, it’s to get better with each and every word and when I review it’s to write something better then what I did before.  If I can, every time I try to write things differently, not because I’m trying out new styles, but rather because that is my style.

For instance, last week we had to do an exercise on goal setting following Zig Ziglar’s goal setting methodology – which if you have never heard of Zig or watched anything by him – watch the below video.  You’ll want to watch the next 2 in the series.  I’ve even taken to listening to his podcast now which goes through some of his older presentations.  His work his incredibly informative and funny.  And the exercise was fantastic – you should see what people in this program are coming up with – brilliant, brilliant work.

For those of you in the program that are reading this, Today is Day 4 of working on my goal and I’m having a blast.

And oh yeah, and to top it all off, every week we cycle groups with a slew of new projects to build on – just finished my first call with my new cohort and I’m looking forward to the discussions and assignments we are going to work through this week.