No. 3, September 2021.
When planning a class session, what is your starting point if you don't have the teaching note or if there is no teaching note at all? If the class is tomorrow, the first impulse may be to panic. The last time this happened to me was with Appex, a very complex case in the Organizational Change subject written by Professor Nitin Nohria. To my surprise the note was not in my folder and I did not have the electronic version. In an act of desperation I wrote to Prof. Nohria, then Dean of Harvard Business School and whom I did not know personally at the time, with little hope of a reply. I should not have worried: I had the note that very afternoon.
But one cannot count on the luck of such an attentive and organized person as the then dean. So one has to ask two questions: what is the topic of this session and why was this case selected for the session? At HBS the case is usually selected by theteaching group; at INCAE each professor has a lot of freedom in case selection so there should be a reason, some connection between the topic of the session and the case.
The typical situation is that you have some idea of the case because a colleague recommended it or because you had skimmed it. Before you read it again and prepare your analysis, it is best to ask yourself what the students should take away from the class session in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. What should they know, know how to do, or understand that will make them better managers and better people? Since these questions are not easy to answer, we tend to avoid them.
Is the objective of the session to learn about the characteristics of an industry, understand a theory or apply an analytical framework? Will you learn how to give feedback to an employee or negotiate with a union leader? Unlike lectures, case discussions can change attitudes and even values, to reflect on questions such as what does authority mean, why is the night shift more productive than the day shift, and what are the factors that influence motivation?
Every class session, no matter the subject, can open up opportunities to expand knowledge, strengthen skills and even change attitudes. Sometimes it happens in the heat of the discussion by carom, as they used to say in the pool halls of Nicaragua. But it is better to anticipate it, with a good lesson plan, anchored in learning objectives.
How to develop this lesson plan? This will be the subject of another issue.
