MBA Essentials Program Overview

Because classes start at 6:00 and stretch to 9:00 in the evening, food is catered for each session, easing the time-crunch for participants.

The following sessions are taught by world-class and experienced faculty members from the KU School of Business.

Entrepreneurs in a Market Economy

You must cope with competition more intense than ever before. Since the notion of having "a job" is quickly vanishing, everyone must take personal responsibility to discover opportunities to advance the welfare of the company. The principles of effective management will help your company capture knowledge needed to increase value.
Session Overview

Implementing the Vision

Successful companies constantly experiment to discover customers’ changing needs, and cost-effective ways to satisfy those needs. We will illustrate practical approaches to improve profit margins by creating value for products instead of just reducing their costs, while spreading valuable knowledge across other units of your business.

Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage

Advantage For you to build strategic advantage in your business you must first learn how to assess your industry and competitive environments. This session teaches a specific process for analyzing your value chain and that of your competition, enabling you to identify best practices in the industry and leveraging your own capabilities.
Session Overview

Managing Human Capital

Capital Your company’s success largely depends on the people with whom you work. You will build expertise in “hiring right” through rigorous selection practices, retention and turnover management, and performance management and reward systems.
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Breakthrough Marketing Strategies

Participants will learn the keys to a successful marketing strategy: segmenting the market; positioning your product or service for maximum appeal; and pricing it appropriately. We will also see how to ensure you’re executing with excellence and maximizing your marketing plan’s impact.
Session Overview

Elating Customers

Today it’s not enough for you to just get customers; you have to keep them by developing their loyalty to your business. How can we exceed physical and emotional needs so that our customers are truly elated? And how do we adapt service practices to changing customer personalities and moods?
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Survival Accounting: Navigating through Financial Statements

In a highly interactive simulation, participants make and sell a product and watch the accounting outcomes of their decisions. The result is a common-sense understanding of the accounting processes that every manager encounters in the work place.
Session Overview

Financial Statements: Tales Told in Dollars and Sense

If accounting is the language of business, inancial statements tell the stories. We will study examples of success, failure, and redemption so you will know what you can (and can’t) learn about a company from studying its accounting reports.
Session Overview

Using the Owners’ Money Wisely

Managers of high yield organizations take responsibility for the financial success of their firms. They do so by acquiring capital on the most favorable terms possible. They use this money for investments that increase the value of the owners’ share of the company. We will use practical examples to unravel these issues.
Session Overview

Problem Solving

You and your business will prosper if you use fact-based information instead of habits and unproven rules of thumb. To do so effectively, you must identity the costs of errors and the difference between decisions and outcomes. After this session you will be able to solve problems more efficiently and effectively.
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Leading and Communicating with Integrity in High Yield Firms

The failures of Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco provide powerful lessons about leadership, relationships, and integrity. Misplaced trust on the one hand, and lack of trust on the other, were major factors in these failures. Through the use of video excerpts, cases, and group discussion we will see what you can do to lead your company with integrity.
Session Overview

Integrative Cases

The final session of the program uses a case so that everyone can practice implementing the concepts you have learned. Key elements include selecting and developing people who can behave proactively, allocating decision rights, measuring performance, assuring accountability, and distributing rewards to guide behavior.