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Selected Comments from the Forbes article “Now It’s Time to Get Your Hands Dirty”

02.11.05 Forbes

A Real-World MBA…

Jeff Sandefer loves students like Alicia Goldberg…One afternoon last year Goldberg was leading a group in a contest to see who could sell more rug-cleaning contracts for an Austin, Tex. Service Master franchisee. She didn’t hesitate, stepping into every funeral parlor in town and walking away with a couple of contracts the franchisee still has.

Acton would be different from the ground up. Students get evaluated…their grades depend on how they do in exercises and
discussions of 250 case studies, mostly from the Harvard Business School. Some deal with the tumultuous first days of a new business: Do you charge ahead, even if it means misleading investors to survive? Admit failure?

There are no lectures; students must put themselves in the uncomfortable shoes of the business owner and wrestle with his dilemmas.

Some action courses are simulations. Students might run a call center…or help an elementary school plan ways to assist needy
students.

One required class is called “Life of Meaning.” Students write out personal and financial goals they’d like to achieve by age 30, 40 and so forth, estimating how much time they expect to spend with family and on charitable activities, as well as on their businesses. The result is something of a psychological balance sheet, an accounting of the pluses and minuses incurred en route to a life’s dream.

Making a Profound Difference

“I believe each of our students has a special gift that will make a profound difference- if we can help them find it- by immersing [them] in the struggles of real entrepreneurs,” says Sandefer, who names his school after Lord Acton (1834-1902), the British historian and champion of political and religious freedom.

That means 80 to 90 hours a week of classes and study groups taught not by academics but by business executives and entrepreneurs like Jeffrey Serra, former chief of Phibro Energy U.S.A., who teaches accounting; Robert Adams, founder of Tejas Ventures and incubator AV Labs (marketing); and Jack Long, founder of package-delivery system Lone Star Overnight (operations). Sandefer himself teaches cash management and finance.

Revolutionary Governance Model

The school’s ten full- and part-time faculty operate as if they were working in the private sector. There’s no tenure; teachers live by student evaluations that can determine whether an instructor keeps his job, and if he does, what kind of bonus he gets.

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