Columbia MBA Essay #3: Please provide an example of a team failure of which you have been a part. If given a second chance, what would you do differently? (250 words)
The Columbia MBA 2019 Entering class has a new failure essay. Unlike the traditional failure question where your personal weaknesses should be shared, the school has added a twist to the tale. You have to narrate an event/project where the team failed to achieve their objectives.
Two Ways to approach the Columbia MBA Team Failure Essay
1) Personal Ownership
Peer to Peer learning and value from an MBA program is derived by candidates who are capable of recognizing their mistakes/weaknesses and work on it.
Even though the admission team has clearly mentioned that the context of the failure is a team environment, the narrative has to strike a balance between personal ownership and the influence of the team, technology and the market on the outcome.
It is a delicate balance.
If you spend too many phrases vilifying your character flaws, the reasons for the failure will become one-sided.
It is rare that one person alone is responsible for a team's failure. It is even rare that a team member takes the extra-effort to explore and find the goal of the project beyond the immediate responsibilities. If you are one of those curious candidates, who want to know the short-term and long-term impact of your work, the curiosity will pay off in the essays as we have noticed that not many applicants have the awareness to articulate the different moving parts in a project.
2) Leadership
If your role required leading a team (more than 2), the perspective about the failure would be different. Despite the aspiration to create a democratic organization, most high-functioning enterprises need leadership and functional teams to solve complex business and market problems.
What a team-lead shares in an essay would be different from how an individual contributor frames the problem. The reasoning and choice of words is a giveaway. In addition to taking the ownership of the team's outcome, a team lead/project manager would have additional information on the limitations of the team and the challenges of the project.
Reflection - the Second Chance Part of the Columbia MBA Failure Essay
The second part of the essay is framed in an interesting way. The admission team wants to know how you will act differently if given a second chance.
In a team environment, multiple factors influence the results.
Understanding the impact of team dynamics, technology, the strengths and weaknesses of the team, the dynamic nature of the problem and your role in the team would transform a traditional essay on team failure into an interesting narrative.
Here are some questions that you should address
1) What cues did the team miss?
2) What were the flaws in the communication strategy?
3) What were the assumptions the team leadership made? (defining the problem, communicating expectations, scheduling, and conflict resolution)
4) What were the personal opportunities you missed to solve the problems that contributed to the team's failure
The last question is equally important as applicants rarely take the burden of a team's failure on themselves.
Only candidates with courage can reflect unemotionally and find instances where they have missed out opportunities to take the lead.
If you were a functional expert, the failure might be in incorporating a solution, an idea or following the regulations that were part of creating a product.
If you were leading a team, missing out on the nuances of the problems shared by the functional expert or lack of prioritization are some valid reasons for delays and failures.
Compliance issues, not planning for the complexity of a solution or assuming beyond the data collected are some of the other reasons for project failures.
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