Jullien Gordon has taken on the herculean challenge of providing human capital resources that will revolutionize people’s careers, particularly those who are interested in entrepreneurship. The Career Change Challenge is his newest initiative, where he posts a number of helpful presentations and videos aimed at helping people to “identify the “right” purpose-aligned career path” and then take actionable steps down that path.  As a part of his services, Jullien sends out periodic emails with videos and online content that information that is useful to his readers.

Another leader in the movement is my good friend Marquis Parker, who recently wrote a post about Jullien as well (click here to see Marquis’ post about Career Change Challenge).  Marquis started the second or third “major” business school blog ever back in 2003, and as it turns out, I originally met Jullien through Marquis, who was  one of Jullien’s classmates at Stanford Business School.  And Marquis can attest, that ever since Jullien earned his MBA in 2007, he has been dedicated to the cause helping people triangulate their careers around their life purpose.

Personally, I’m excited about Jullien’s new website, and I hope you will be too. It’s clear that Jullien is not only passionately about his own entrepreneurial ideas but also about helping people find their purpose and find ideas to transform their careers.  And in my view, that’s especially important now given the current economic situation.

To obtain new resources to assess your own career, even if just out of curiosity, take a look at Jullien’s new website. And if you know someone else who might benefit, forward his site along to them as well.  Because one of the most important things that any great leader can do is not only ensure that they are on the right career path, but also that they’re proactive to get insights and perspective from others as well.

The title of the site is “Dean Blount’s First 100 Days,” and it’s purpose is to capture her weekly reflections on Kellogg and management education in the 21st century.  She’s already posted ten or so posts over the course of the past few weeks, and I suspect she’ll really start to pick up the pace a bit now that the new Kellogg class of 2012 - her first class as dean - is about to begin.

In my view, the dean’s decision to blog is a very good idea, though you might expect me to say that given I have a website of my own.  That’s because a leader’s ability to lead effectively in any organization, especially in today’s interconnected internet-driven world is directly correlated to his or her reputation.  A reputation as a thought leader and someone with vision for change.  Someone with a proven ability not only to come up with big ideas but also to persuade others and communicate the ideas to the masses.  And blogging provides a great venue to start building your reputation and delivering your message.

After reading through the dean’s blog, it looks like she’s hit the ground running and I look forward to seeing what the longer term message is.  For all those interested in Kellogg, affiliated with the university, or interested in the MBA community more generally, please join the dean’s ongoing conversation along with me.  I suspect that she’ll channel great insights about business and would love to hear what you think about her ideas.

And Dean Blount, thanks for your engagement in the univeristy and for sharing your insights about the MBA world as you take the helm of Kellogg.  We look forward to reading along and interacting with you throughout the year.

Click here for see the Dean’s new blog.

Like most endeavors at Kellogg, these activities are both more fun and more work than most of us expected. For the section showcase we’ve put in nearly a dozen hours so far planning our skit, orchestrating the music and the actors, and also figuring out how to bring everything together.  It’s definitely been a fun challenge.

Part of this is because our section is so big. Working together in a group of 100 people is new for most of us. On one hand it’s been fun because we get to know a lot of people, see a lot of different working styles, and incorporate a larger variety of ideas and perspectives. On the other hand, working in a larger group means that we also have an element of chaos, because diverse points of view always arise and we’re forced to come up with solutions quickly despite dozens of competing ideas.

Scholarly research has long suggested that smaller teams perform better than big ones.  In most cases, that’s because it’s easier to get everyone involved, smoother to incorporate everyone’s ideas, and everyone feels like they take part in the team’s mission. Similarly, with smaller teams it’s also easier for everyone to get more deeply involved and really provide a higher quality engagement. In fact research suggests that the ideal teams have less than ten people, and that the best leadership teams have five or less people.

Despite the research though, it is surprising how well our section of 100 people has worked together so far. From the outset we started orientation and competed section cheering competition. Despite having the biggest team, we won first place in the first event.  We’ve also worked efficiently together to take part in other events, and our section showcase seems to be coming along quite well too.

But despite our initial victory, it has become increasingly challenging as the week continues to move forward. People are starting to get tired. We’ve started getting reading and other assignments for our MORS class. Some people have other priorities outside of school they need to take care of. And as always, time is increasingly getting more limited, especially as we become busier with section activities throughout the week.

The experience in orientation so far has pushed our team beyond our comfort zone, at least for an orientation setting, but we’ve all worked well together and stepped up to each challenge.  Upon reflection, it’s clear that all of our success has been the result of keeping a focus on the element of teamwork and leveraging everyone to help out as much as possible. And that has not only allowed us to do well in some of the competitions but more importantly it has also allowed us to form bonds with our classmates and future colleagues. Over the next two years at kellogg, I look forward to taking part in more teamwork activities and meeting more of my classmates along the way.

Incoming Kellogg students have been waiting weeks for this moment. They’ve been meeting up all over Evanston, getting to know their classmates on KWEST trips, organizing get-togethers all over the city, and forming Facebook groups to get more organized. But just yesterday, we finally all came together on campus, in the building that Kellogg calls Jacobs. And the entire day was jam packed with fun and excitement, as we kicked out our Complete Immersion in Management (CIM) experience.

CIM is part of Kellogg’s Pre-Term and is an orientation program that was launched in 1969, and it’s since been a part of an effort to introduce first-year students to each other and to Kellogg’s collaborative culture. “CIM Week was a fun and critical part of my Kellogg experience” one of the CIM executive leaders said. So everyone was pretty excited when they arrived. And after an hour long “breakfast” which was really nothing more than a meet and greet, we all met in the auditorium to finally get the day started.

The new Dean Sally Blount kicked off the day with remarks. As part of her overall speech, she mentioned that Kellogg has been on the cutting edge the past few decades and the first business school to hire non traditional Deans. The former Dean (Dipak Jain) from a small town in India, and the current Dean – Sally herself – a woman. The entire crowd clapped at the last point.

Among other things she told us that to get the most out of business school, we needed to do three things. Her first piece of advice was to get to know our classmates.  This is a no-brainer in business school, right? Well, she acknowledged that, but she also put a lot of context around it. Not only did she tell us to meet our classmates but also to get to know people we might not otherwise meet and also engage in discussions with professions and administration. She also said to get to know them both in academic and personal settings.

Her second piece of advice was to be sure to engage academically. After all we were spending more than $100K to attend Kellogg over the next two years. She advised those with less quantitative backgrounds to be sure to hone their analytical skills. Similarly, she suggested that the quants and engineers take as many soft skills classes as possible.  And Dean Blount was speaking from experience. And although she was trained as an engineer before business school, she ended up  coming to Kellogg and eventually getting PhD in Organizational Behavior (i.e. called Management and Organizations at Kellogg).

Dean Blount’s final piece of advice was to make time for self-reflection. To think not only about school and jobs but also about who we are at the core and to think about what that means for our careers and our lives in the longer term. She also reminded us to engage in self discovery and eventually find a career that lets us be who we are. Because in the end, we’ll be happier and better off.  The Dean reiterated this message when she visited our section and gave a quick 15 minute talk and answered a few questions. It was good to have her out on the first day.

In addition to these formal sessions, we also met with our Kellogg sections, and prepared cheers for the annual section cheer competition. My section was the Poets, composed of 100 people, which is bigger than all the other sections at Kellogg, because we have half of the MBA-MMM students. We practiced for two or so hours, coming up with a unique cheers, and headed to the auditorium for the two hour cheering competition, which was a blast.

Describing it here won’t do the cheers much justice, but in sum each section came up with chants and cheers mainly to promote its own section, but also to support its sister section (i.e. our was the Big Dawgs) and to defeat its rival section (i.e. ours was the Highlanders). It’s funny how everyone engaged so quickly in the activity and also how creative everyone was right off the bad.  The two hour competition flew by, and my section, the Poets, somehow emerged from the organized chaos of the competition victorious, coming in first place across the eight sections. But there’s a lot of competitions left this week and I suspect the teams will shift around quite a bit when it’s all said and done.

But perhaps more interesting than the cheers and the outlandish competition itself is the way that blatantly silly and non-business oriented activities could bring everyone together so quickly and inspire more teamwork, energy, and collaboration than the idea of school itself.  And for a second we all forgot about the high paying jobs we left and future education and careers ahead of us and instead engaged in creative planning and relationship building. From working together in our sections to come up with songs and chants, to executing them in the auditorium, to teams waking up hours early today to practice for “the name game”, this unconventional teamwork was effective at helping form bonds and building connections with classmates.

Personally, I was also in awe at how we could have so many people really contribute and be leaders in the competition. Whether as the creative designer who came up with props, the artist or “poet” that came up with a chant for the group, the student with a good idea for organizing the format, or the energetic person who wanted to galvanize the crowd, there was room for all types of leaders, including unconventional ones. And it was a pleasure to watch that play out in a section of 100 people, and in the overall group of 600 people.

But this is just the first day, and I suspect that the week will even get better after this, especially as we continue getting to know more of our classmates and as we start engaging in more of these fun and interesting activities. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the week will play out, though unfortunately, I’ll have to skip one or two of the sessions today to go downtown and take my final accounting exam. It’ll be nice to finally wrap up my summer classes tonight and spend all my time engaging in the FT Kellogg program after it’s over.

Thanks Kellogg for a great first day. And stay tuned everyone, for more updates on orientation.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten to know Kellogg and a lot of the students pretty well, so I suspect that I’ll have a nice and easy transition. Similarly, as a JD-MBA I’ve already been in the school mode for the past year, so getting in the habit of doing work again shouldn’t be too difficult. Instead, it should be a nice change after being in the highly demanding academic environment of law school for the past year.

In fact, just yesterday I was thinking about my first day at law school last year, which was preceded by my first day of orientation. I remember them pretty distinctly, namely because the work ended up being pretty rigorous, the exams were difficult, and competition felt more fierce.  But despite that, I enjoyed the year quite a bit, and I enjoyed writing about the experience.

Like last year, I look forward to writing about my experience here at Kellogg, and in fact, I even plan to pick up the pace a little by posting more often.  At the same time, I also plan to keep answering questions from my readers. I also look forward to uncovering answers to some of my own questions here at Kellogg.

Some of the questions on my mind now are things like will the class of 2012 be diverse? Who will be Outliers and other interesting people in my section? How will the networking process at Kellogg compare to the law school? And will the students’ motivations at Kellogg will be similar to those in law school? I’m also wondering how some of the conferences I went to last year will go this year. (See my post on the 2009 NBMBAA conference) I look forward to uncovering many of the answers as I go through the year.

In the process, I plan to discuss this information in addition to sharing information about Kellogg and the JD-MBA program. As part of that I’ll also be discuss various career alternatives here at Kellogg,  discuss leadership experiences both professionally and personally, and then relate that back to the state of our workforce, which in my view is one of the most important issues of our time.

In the meantime, feel free to send me your comments and questions. I also strongly encourage you to post as many comments as you like here on the site.

Stay tuned!