Leaving your comfort zone
Nottingham University Business School prides itself on developing graduates with a strong sense of self-awareness, entrepreneurial spirit and understanding of how organisations can make a positive impact on society. This ethos is never more evident than in its MBA programme.
Wendy Furness is an equine vet and partner at Scarsdale Vets, one of the largest providers of veterinary care in the Midlands. She wanted to develop her business skills and the Executive MBA at Nottingham provided just the challenge she was looking for.
MBA Director, Dr Amrit Judge explained: "The curriculum is very practical; it's about applied knowledge and learning. We tailor a lot of the materials and learning to individual needs. We have a personal, professional leadership development module that runs through the programme and underpinning everything is sustainability."
The whole course makes you look at how can you make things better, what can you do to push the business. It encourages you to take the time out for business development.
"One of the things I wanted to get out of it was the experiences of people working in environments far from my own", she said. "I wanted a scenario where we could get the business side of the vet practice as good as it could be."
Among Wendy's classmates were people who run airports in South America and copper mines in Zambia. She has taken the specific knowledge she gained to the surgery, including modules on venture capital and private equity, and change management strategy as well as staples such as economics, marketing, finance and accounting.
Wendy and her partners deliberately set aside time to reflect on how they could push their own business forwards – looking ahead years, rather than just weeks or months.
“At a practice level we have undergone massive amounts of change. I think more about if you are pushing things to change what the consequences of that are and how are you going to smooth the process?”
