Presenting and Teaching

Presentation Learnings from a Dave Ramsey Event

22 Sep 2023  

I am a huge fan of great presentations. Unfortunately, in the business world many (most?) presentations are weak; they are plodding, cluttered and dull. People like to blame PowerPoint, but the issue isn’t the software platform. I think the issue is that people haven’t studied and just don’t know how to present well. My book […]

Presenting and Teaching

Making Sense of Course Feedback

30 Jun 2023  

One of the most unpleasant parts of teaching is reviewing the course feedback. Most instructors try to create a great class; I certainly do. So, reviewing the student evaluations is a stressful moment. Even when most of the comments are positive, the feedback from disappointed students can be painful. The Importance of Feedback Teaching is […]

Presenting and Teaching

It Is Time to Drop the Zoom Events

19 Jan 2023  

The Super Bowl is coming up, and the Kellogg Super Bowl Advertising Review along with it. For me, it is a particularly busy and fun time of year. There are campaigns to study and brands to analyze. I speak at a lot of seminars and programs before and after the Super Bowl, discussing advertising trends, the […]

Presenting and Teaching

Don’t Use Virtual Backgrounds!

3 Nov 2021  

The business world is slowly emerging from the COVID lock-down. Front-line workers have been on the job throughout the pandemic, delivering packages, cooking meals and repairing engines. Managers and executives are just now going to meetings, traveling to visit customers and attending in-person discussions. Still, it is quite clear that virtual communication will remain a […]

Presenting and Teaching

Seven Things We Should Learn From Zoom Teaching

21 Jun 2021  

This week I’m celebrating the end of a most unusual academic year – I just wrapped up my spring quarter courses. It was a busy twelve months: I taught a total of 10 courses in the Kellogg MBA program, including classes in Beijing, Miami, and Koblenz, Germany. Of the ten, four were in-person, five were […]

Presenting and Teaching

Learnings from Teaching a Hybrid Course

30 Mar 2021  

I recently wrapped up the winter quarter and this week I’ve been reflecting on what I learned. It was a new experience because I was teaching my Marketing Strategy course in a hybrid format, with some students in the room and some elsewhere. Back in the fall I had a mix of in-person and Zoom […]

Presenting and Teaching

A Case Competition Adapts to a Zoom World

26 Jan 2021  

COVID19 has turned the world of education upside down. The classroom experience has changed in profound ways; some instructors are teaching completely on Zoom, others are wearing masks and speaking to small, distanced classes, others are working to figure out a hybrid system. Still others are experimenting with asynchronous content to complement synchronous classes. Of […]

Presenting and Teaching

Learnings from the Kellogg Classroom – Fall 2020

29 Dec 2020  

This is an off week for teachers all around the world, and a great time to reflect. The few remaining Christmas festivities are largely behind us and classes have not yet started up. So I sat down with all the student feedback I received from the fall quarter to reflect on what I learned. The […]

Presenting and Teaching

Kicking Off the Fall Quarter: Four Teaching Observations

23 Sep 2020  

This week I kicked off my fall quarter – three courses and over two hundred students. I have two classes that are largely in-person, socially distanced and masked, and one class that is on Zoom. Here are four learning points from the first classes. In-Person Still Works I wondered if an in-person class would work […]

Presenting and Teaching

How COVID is Sparking Innovation in Kellogg’s Branding Program

8 Jul 2020  

COVID 19 is causing disruption for brands all over the world. It is also sparking innovation. Recently I’ve seen this happen with the executive education branding program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Disruption and Innovation Perhaps my favorite topic to teach is defensive strategy. When competitors attack, brands have to defend aggressively. Failing […]

Presenting and Teaching

Spring Teaching and Zoom: The Student Feedback

30 Jun 2020  

Last weekend I sat down and read through the student feedback from my spring quarter Biomedical Marketing courses. Reviewing student feedback is always a strange experience. There are the positive comments, and these are delightful. It is a pleasure to hear from students that they learned something and valued all the effort that went into […]

Presenting and Teaching

Figuring Out the Fall Quarter

6 May 2020  

How do universities reopen in the fall? That is the urgent question at hand. This is a difficult issue. Most schools seem to be still figuring it out and not saying too much. Cristina Paxson, president of Brown, wrote a powerful editorial for the New York Times. Robert Robbins, president of University of Arizona this […]