Working long hours? Sort your teamwork out.

The MBA makes already hard workers work even harder. But teaching teamwork helps MBA graduates manage their workload better.

An estimated 22 per cent of the global workforce, or 614.2 million workers, are working more than 48 hours per week on average according to the International Labour Office (ILO). In the UK, 2008 statistics show, Brits work an average of 1.8 hours per day more than the European average. In Japanese culture, being in the office for 12 hours a day is common. In the USA, with a basic two-week annual holiday allowance, the daily average is not so long but the annual amount remains high.

For most MBAs candidates, according to the QS Top MBA Applicant Survey 2008, a 50-hour week seems a luxury; 55.4% of international MBA candidates expect to work over 50 hours a week and almost 9% think they will work over 70 (see table 1).

Table 1: How many hours do you expect to work each week post-MBA?

Gaining an MBA and working long hours go hand in hand. Most MBA candidates will already have a strong work ethic from their professional backgrounds and most are under no illusion that the work load required on an MBA will differ; it immediately sets a precedent for working long hours.

Richard Downs, the CEO and founder of the online travel company iglu.com, graduated with his MBA from the London Business School in 1998. He still works from 8.30am to 7.00pm (approximately a 50-hour week) unless something major comes up. However the MBA experience provided help in his time management and organizational skills. “The MBA is designed to stretch you and encourage you to prioritise and summarise. It is up to each individual to learn to manage their time and their workload. I found that preparation for the class was the most important thing and although it sounds cliched, the more you put in to this preparation, the more you got out of it.”

Work/life balance

London Business School has a very strong culture of playing hard according to Downs, which helps develop strategies of coping with the stress of working hard and maintaining a healthy work/life balance. “In reality it was more challenging than I imagined, mentally and physically. When you are on the ride you can’t think of anything else. It is all consuming.”

Michael Aldous, of IE Business School in Spain, has noticed the shift on work/life balance among the MBA population. “The importance of good work life balance is noticeable amongst current MBA students and graduates. It is manifested in the career choices they are taking and what value within the career paths and organizations they choose to work for. Of course the majority expect to work hard but they increasingly also expect time for friends/family, life in general.”

Interestingly, and deliberately, while providing students with too much work, business school provides a series of frameworks to look at issues and problems. “This helps you to get to the root of a problem or to find an opportunity very quickly,” says Downs. “You learn to prioritize so you can sort out the urgent from the important, which enables you to work more effectively. Basically the MBA gives you more tools in your toolkit.”

Rebecca Joffrey, associate director of career development at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, agrees: “Tuck definitely prepares students to manage heavy workloads. Professors purposefully give you too much to do which forces you to work in teams. It’s not possible to get everything done by working alone.”

Aldous says that learning teamwork is an essential aspect of business school. “MBA programs are designed to prepare participants for working in teams, in terms of delegating and leading varied cultural and functional groups. The case study methodology relies heavily on multi-functional groups working together to solve different elements of the case, so individuals who have a focus on marketing are equally reliant on someone with highly developed skills in finance to successful bring these elements together. This is excellent preparation for dealing efficiently with the problems and challenges faced in the work place, placing a premium on collaboration and seeking efficient, team-based solutions.”

Teamwork

Back in the business world, MBA graduates find their new-found skills and experience of teamwork of immense value in the workplace, including implementing efficient strategies to streamline operations. A side-product of this is a trimming down of the time projects take and, as a result, decreased working hours for the team and contributing positively to the work/life balance. This has a positive impact not only on profitability but on morale.

Yet teamwork is one of the most elusive topics in business, and theory divides opinion, ironically, more than any other. It seems obvious to those involved with sports or even amateur dramatics that successful teams will improve any number of different facets of the task in hand, such as creativity, efficiency and morale. In business terms this translates into increased commercial success, happier staff, happier clients or customers and, ultimately, increased profitability. Long working hours can be cut down considerably when several individuals are working towards the same goal.

Most MBAs spend a great deal of their time learning those skills and trying to increase efficiency. Steven Hall, a senior supply chain manager with a background in the US military, puts the responsibility for efficiency, teamwork and therefore a better work/life balance squarely on the manager or the leader: “It all boils down to executive vision and leadership. The boss who wants to hire people to run the show but doesn't allow them to make decisions, second guesses every decision when they do allow you to make them, doesn't really want to let go of the reins. The company will never grow beyond what it is today and it will never get more efficient. If you hire the right people, give them direction, the tools to do the job and let them go do it, you will be amazed at how far they will take you.”

For MBA graduates who spend so much of their courses in teams and learning to be leaders, to increase efficiency, to get the job done thoroughly but quickly, this advice is essential. The balance can be extremely delicate, and nobody is under any illusions that MBA graduates will have an easy ride; after all most MBAs are motivated by the considerable challenge of the upper echelons of the business world. Yet spending time and effort to increase efficiency, cutting down your own and your colleagues working hours could be one of the most positive things a business school graduate can learn.

Source: Ross Geraghty and Jamie Donald, QS Top MBA Career Guide

Updated: June 2009