Karl Rodrigues is an adjunct lecturer at Macquarie Graduate School of Management and teaches the Entrepreneurial Finance elective unit of the MBA course. As part of his course, Karl offers a student internship project dealing with real problems in real organizations. In line with Entrepreneurial Finance, these projects were centered around structuring a business, growth and value, capital raise and through to exit. Stuart Anderson is the external industry supervisor.
Prior to this pilot, the internship offered by Karl and Stuart was an individual based project. After a number of successful projects, Karl and Stuart wanted to add still more value. This where they came up with the concept of a team-based internship.
Stuart approached Sean Irvine of Inside Motivation to support the rapid design and launch of the team.
It was agreed the purpose of the teaming pilot was twofold –
The 6 Conditions for Team Effectiveness was selected as the framework as it provides a clear and addressable set of conditions which create an effective team.
Just to add extra excitement to the project and the team, Covid-19 thrust the team into a virtual environment with Oluwaseun and Rob in lockdown in Australia and Santiago in lockdown in a completely different time zone in Uruguay.
We decided upon a simple and repeatable process –
To measure the outcomes, we need to reflect on the purpose of the pilot project –
· Can team design and coaching principles add value to the client and the students learning during the project?
· Will the students gain any value from the team learning to carry into their career post MBA?