MBA Advisor: Best Free MOOCs In Business In January

Ever notice how sales isn’t part of the MBA core curriculum? Just look at the foundational courses of any leading business school. You’ll find finance, leadership, operations, strategy, and economics among the required courses. That doesn’t count marketing, where you’ll absorb pricing, analytics, research methods, and product development – basically anything that’s far removed from a real live customer! While the experiential capstone or global immersion may hone teamwork and presentation skills, they don’t actually teach the foundational principle of business: You actually have to persuade someone to fork over their hard-won dollars so you can survive.

Why is sales relegated to an elective in most leading MBA programs? For all the student talk about pushing their boundaries, sales is all too scary because it is all too human says Craig Wortmann, the head of the Kellogg Sales Institute at Northwestern University in a 2014 column with Inc. “It is human nature to avoid uncomfortable situation,” he explains. “Unfortunately, the selling process is chock full of them: making an approach, starting a conversation, qualifying, proposing, asking for things. Throughout my course, students realize that they – like most people – are constantly, unconsciously, avoid asking directly for what they want.”

STORYTELLING CENTRAL TO SALES

It goes far beyond that. Fact is, sales exposes every one of your weaknesses eventually. Lack patience? Guess what, the sales process can run months and years; it often involves players with very different agendas who’ll scuttle deals at the last possible moment. Consider yourself a great orator? Well, pitching takes 10% of your time. The rest is listening and guiding, judiciously sprinkling in a smidgen of your knowledge to slowly guide your prospects to their epiphanies. A product may be a commodity, but sales is an art where the main goal is to sell your company’s biggest differentiator: You. Here, your self-awareness is your greatest virtue – and your ego is your biggest risk.

It’s a dirty job that everyone must eventually master because everything is sales. On January 1st, Wortmann can help with his MOOC, Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process. Think of it as a slightly different take on the traditional sales course. Sure, you’ll learn insightful qualifying questions and strategies for overcoming objections, and closing. In fact, Wortmann will be sharing an expansive sales toolkit exclusively to students who take this course. However, he will also introduce his class to several successful strategies that stray outside the traditional sales canon.

The first is storytelling. One of the biggest turnoffs, says Wortmann, is when sales reps just spew out facts and figures and features and benefits. It simply overwhelms prospects and muddies the value proposition. Instead, he encourages students to develop succinct and image-driven narratives that show products as integral parts of the action.

“Stories take this factual, disparate information and give it context, color and meaning,” Wortmann notes in a Huffington Post interview. “If you give me a story, I am able to see so much more than when you primarily give me the facts, the details. Don’t sell me a computer with only its features. Tell me that Joe bought this laptop because it is light-weight, faster and cheaper and hence, Joe could take it along on his African safari and use it to make movies of his kids. Help me feel what it’s like to use that product. Now, I can “see and feel” it and not just understand it from an intellectual level.”

WHO YOU SELL TO MATTERS AS MUCH AS WHAT YOU SELL

Another unique course wrinkle is the concept of entrepreneurial selling. According to Wortmann, traditional selling assumes an organization markets a standard solution to a specific niche. However, he says, a startup is a work-in-progress, where entrepreneurs are often tinkering with models and features with limited resources and little room for error. As a result, entrepreneurial selling places as much emphasis on who is being sold to as what is being sold.

“An entrepreneur needs to be incredibly disciplined around the first part of your sales cycle,” he says. “You have to know if a customer can be good business for you, otherwise you could put yourself out of business. IBM won’t suffer if a salesperson has 14 meetings with the wrong client, but you will!”

Indeed, strategy lies at the heart of Wortmann’s course. Behind the bells-and-whistles, sales is a means of maximizing time by quickly identifying real targets and devoting resources and relationship capital to the best opportunities. “Without revenue, all your problems will crush you,” he adds in a 2015 interview with Medium. “With revenue, you can afford to have many other problems, and be able to take the time to solve them correctly and intelligently. If you’re not making money, you don’t have a business, you have an expensive hobby.”

HOW TO STAND UP TO ETHICAL PRESSURES

Sales headlines the January docket, a month of impressive releases in marketing, finance, management and entrepreneurship. Want to make the world a better place? You don’t have to join the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Instead, you can apply your MBA skills to social investing, a topic examined in Wharton’s Business Strategies for Social Impact. Gearing up for a blowout new year in marketing? Start with Darden’s Marketing Analytics, to get a grasp of the effectiveness of your campaigns and the value of your brand. Similarly, Emory University returns with Forecasting Models for Marketing Decisions and IE Business School unleashes Channel Management and Retailing – both starting on January 1st.

Looking to assume a leadership role in 2018? There are several courses that can boost your profile. On January 8th, Kellogg opens up another section of Scaling Operations: Linking Strategy and Execution, a big picture look at how to leverage the supply chain to cut costs and boost competitive advantage. If you’re looking to tap into your inner Jeff Bezos or Sheryl Sandberg, there is HEC’s Leading Organizations. If you want to make an impact on your company’s bottom line, Corporate Strategy starts on January 1st too. Two weeks later, the University of Virginia launches Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values, a four week exercise on effectively responding when employers or clients pressure you to act against your conscience.

To learn more about these courses — and many more — click on the links below.

MARKETING

Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process / January 1 / University of Chicago (Booth)

Marketing Analytics / January 1 / University of Virginia (Darden)

Channel Management and Retailing / January 1 / IE Business School

Forecasting Models for Marketing Decisions / January 1 / Emory University (Goizueta)

Anticipating Your Next Battle, in Business and Beyond / January 1 / HEC Paris

MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONS

Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values / January 15 / University of Virginia (Darden)

Scaling Operations: Linking Strategy and Execution / January 8 / Northwestern (Kellogg)

Leading Organizations / January 1 / HEC Paris

Critical Perspectives on Management / January 1 / IE Business School

Supply Chain Dynamics / January 2 / MIT

Corporate Strategy / January 1 / University of Illinois

Conversations That Inspire: Coaching Learning, Leadership and Change / January 1 / Case Western Reserve

FINANCE

Decision-Making and Scenarios / January 1 / Wharton School

Financial Analysis for Decision Making: Funding your Business / Self-Paced / Babson College

Understanding Financial Statements: Company Performance / January 1 / University of Illinois

Financial Accounting Made Fun: Eliminating Your Fears / Self-Paced / Babson College

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Business Strategies for Social Impact / January 1 / Wharton

Unleashing the Impact of Your Social Enterprise / January 1 / Copenhagen Business School

ADDITIONAL COURSES

Sales Strategies: Mastering the Selling Process

School: University of Chicago (Booth)

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018 (5 Weeks Long)

Workload: 3-5 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Craig Wortmann

Credentials: In 2017, Worthmann joined Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management as the founder and executive director of the Kellogg Sales Institute. Before that, he spent nine years with the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where he received its 2012 Faculty Excellence Award. Outside class, Wortmann authored What’s Your Story, which illustrates how sales professionals can use storytelling to build rapport, credibility, and urgency. His Booth course on “Entrepreneurial Selling” was once named one of the top ten college courses by Inc., where he is also a columnist. A Kellogg MBA, Wortmann was previously a successful entrepreneur and leading sales rep at IBM.

Graded: Students must complete all assignments to pass the course.

Description: Every interaction is a sale. When you meet strangers, do they leave with the impression that you’re engaging and honorable? If not, you’ve failed to close the sale. At home, can you convince your children to finish their homework or complete a chore…without threatening? If so, you’ve made a sale. In essence, sales comes down to persuading someone to take action that they would normally avoid. It isn’t manipulation, but persuasion that results in a win-win for both parties. It is an exercise in partnership over power and learning over lecturing.

Using lectures, readings, and exercises, Wortmann will show readers how to “acquire and delight customers, use selling skills in different contexts, tell powerful stories, manage the entrepreneurial selling process.” Covering both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets, the course is designed to teach students how to sell themselves as much as a solution. In addition, Wortmann will also share trademark tools including a prospecting script, a list of consultative questions, and sample introductory emails and proposals to help guide students through the sales process.

Review: “Craig is spot on the topic of grooming us into the sales process. He makes it look is obvious that these are very basic and crucial steps in making sales. After spending 25+ years in technology profession, I was never introduced to a structured way of sales, that I got here first hand. I am really thankful to Craig and Coursera to have this high quality and high impact material available to global students.” For additional reviews, click here.

Marketing Analytics

School: University of Virginia (Darden)

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018 (5 Weeks Long)

Workload: 3 Hours Per Week

Grades: To earn a passing mark, students must complete all graded assignments.

Instructor: Rajkumar Venkatesan

Credentials: A member of Poets&Quants’ top “40 Under 40” professors, Venkatesan teaches the core marketing MBA course to first-year MBAs at Darden (along with and several executive education courses). His research focuses on customer relationship management, marketing metrics, and marketing analytics. A prolific researcher, his work has appeared in outlets like the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of Marketing Research.

Description: Decisions are driven by data. These days, the best models yield the best result. In this course, according to Venkatesan, students will gain “the tools to measure brand and customer assets, perform regression analysis, and design experiments as a way to evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns.” Over five weeks, the course will cover resource allocation, metrics for measuring brand assets, customer lifetime value, and regression basics. It will also feature marketing cases for companies like Snapple, IBM and Netflix to show how marketing analytics were used to develop campaigns and the results they produced.

Review: “This course is really very in depth and is a good mix of solid theory and real world application. I think it’s a must for anyone in advertising, sales or marketing.” For additional reviews, click here.

Channel Management and Retailing

School: IE Business School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: No Specified

Instructor: Maria Teresa Aranzabal

Credentials: A practitioner and an academic, Aranzabal joined IE Business School as an associate professor in 2015. Before moving to teaching, she held several roles in the retail sector, including a decade as a partner in a retail consulting firms, along with working in marketing, international development, franchising, and general management for several organizations. An MBA from the Wharton School, Aranzabal also has experience as a retail consultant at McKinsey and a senior association in M&A for Goldman Sachs.

Graded: Students can choose to explore course videos, discussions, and ungraded assignments for free, but they won’t be able to submit graded assignments, earn a certificate, or complete a specialization without paying a $79 fee.

Description: Distribution is a difference maker. It enables firms to cut costs, reach new markets, and better scale operations. Unlocking this advantage and maximizing distribution’s benefits requires strategy. In this course, Aranzabal will cover distribution from a variety of strategic vantage points, including “company profile, portfolio structure and price positioning, go-to-market policy, trade and retail marketing, [supply chains], e-commerce and global retail management.” In particular, the course will examine how information technology, such as CRM and merchandise and reallocation systems, can strengthen and streamline operations and drive long-term strategic planning.

Review: No reviews.

Additional Background: This course is the third part of a “Marketing Mix Implementation” specialization, a four course series that includes a capstone project. To learn more about these courses and register for them, click here.

Forecasting Models for Marketing Decisions

School: Emory University

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Available

Instructor: David Schweidel

Credentials: Schweidel is an associate professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, where he is also co-director of the Emory Marketing Analytics Center. His research focuses on both using social media to gather market intelligence and applying customer behavior models to better measure customer value.

Graded: To earn a passing mark, students must complete all graded assignments.

Description: It’s ironic: the more information we have, the harder it is to predict the future and make decisions. In this course, students will learn how to make more inclusive and accurate forecasting through Excel. Notably, students “will develop an understanding of the basic components of a forecasting model, how to build their own forecasting models, and how to evaluate the performance of forecasting models.”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Notes: This course is the third part of Emory’s “Foundations of Marketing Analytics” specialization, which covers areas like surveying and managing uncertainty. To learn more about these courses and register for them, click here.

Anticipating Your Next Battle, in Business and Beyond

School: HEC Paris

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018 (4 Weeks Long)

Workload: 3-5 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Jeremy Ghez

Credentials: Ghez is the academic director of the Center for Geopolitics at HEC Paris, where he also teaches managerial economics in the executive MBA program. His research focuses on European and Middle Eastern foreign policy and international economics.

Graded: To earn a passing mark, students must complete all graded assignments.

Description: There is a saying that those who fail to prepare are condemned to fight the last battle. Too often, professionals are consumed by their day-to-day tasks, focusing on their strengths and what worked in the past, unaware that expectations are changing. In other words, they’re stuck in the past, the last battle, and don’t anticipate what the market will soon require. This is a course about transformation, developing a “long-term consistent strategy and vision” to ensure students are consistently “reinventing” themselves as uncertainty and complexity increase and expectations evolve. This course doesn’t just cover how to make a personal change. In addition, it will place students in the role of CEO to establish a vision and build a strategy to achieve organizational change.

Review: “All in all this was a very good course. Jeremy Ghez is a bright and inspiring teacher. The content of the course was extremely interesting and well put together. I would have certainly enjoyed to have some sections of the course expanded, which was my only disappointment. I thought the assignments were very well handled.” For additional reviews, click here.

Ethical Leadership Through Giving Voice to Values

School: University of Virginia

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 15, 2018 (4 Weeks Long)

Workload: 3-4 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Mary Gentile

Credentials: Gentile teaches at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Over her career, she has been ranked among the top thought leaders by organizations like ComplianceWeek and Ethisphere. Gentile is also the author of Giving Voice To Values: How To Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right, an award-winning book that has been featured in the Financial Times and the Harvard Business Review. Before joining the faculty at Darden, she taught at Babson College and Harvard Business School.

Graded: Students must pass all required assignments to pass.

Description: Many people believe ethical lapses stem from a lack of character. For Gentile, the real issue is a lack of courage. For her, ethics aren’t a matter of knowing right-from-wrong, but knowing how to act under pressure when requests contradict their value systems. This focus on action is what distinguishes this course. Borrowing methods, exercises, and scripts from her book, Gentile focuses on how to manage ethical dilemmas that protects the company and employee without deepening divisions. Notably, the course provides frameworks for answering these questions: “What if I were going to act on my values? What would I say and do? How could I be most effective?” Even more, the course includes coaching so students can rehearse how they would respond in ways that would enable them to express their values without reprisal and re-focus discussions on building a consensus that better navigates ethical uncertainties.

Review: “I truly feel like this course expanded my capacity to think about ethical conflicts, big and small, that can arise in any workplace. I feel that I now possess the tools necessary to effectively and respectively handle each situation and bring light to my own values in the workplace.” For additional reviews, click here.

Scaling Operations: Linking Strategy and Execution

School: Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 8, 2018 (5 Weeks)

Workload: 2-4 Hours Per Week

Instructors: Gad Allon and Jan A. Van Mieghem

Credentials: A member of Poets&Quants’ Top 40 Professors Under the Age of 40, Allon is a professor managerial economics and decision science at Kellogg, where he teaches courses in operations management, operations strategy, scaling operations in the full-time program (and strategic decision-making and supply chain management in the executive MBA program). A decorated teacher, Allon was named the 2014 Alumni Professor of the Year at Kellogg (after earning the school’s Outstanding Professor of the Year in 2009). In addition, Allon is a recognized researcher and author, whose peer-reviewed work has been published in Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, and Operations Research. He holds a Ph.D. in management science from Columbia Business School.

At Kellogg, Van Mieghem teaches operations management in the full-time and part-time MBA program sand operations management, supply chain management, and new product innovation in the executive MBA program. A former senior associate dean and chair of the managerial economics and decision sciences department, he is currently the academic director for the executive MBA program. Like Allon, Van Mieghem is a distinguished researcher, with over 40 academic papers published, including one piece he co-wrote earning the best paper award from the Management and Service Operations Society. He holds a Ph.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Graded: Students can receive a verified certificate for successfully completing the course for $49.

Description: Operations is becoming the new marketing, with firms differentiating themselves through speed, cost containment, and partnerships. In this course, students will learn how to turn operations into a strategic advantage, helping them maximize their existing processes, capabilities, and investments to drive strategy, increase market share, and establish new markets. In addition, they’ll be exposed to new operational trends, financial models, and analytical tools and to expand their competencies, better leverage their suppliers, and better benchmark their progress. Each week, students will be exposed to a major case study, which will be supplemented by lectures and discussions. They will also receive real company data, so they can better understand how course tools can impact real operations – including their own. Students will be evaluated through quizzes, homework and a final project or exam.

Review: No reviews.

Additional Note: The authors have also co-authored a textbook on this topic called Operations Strategy: Principles and Practice.

Leading Organizations

School: HEC Paris

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Specified.

Instructor: Valerie Gauthier

Credentials: Gauthier is an associate professor at HEC Paris. A graduate of the Stanford Graduate Business School’s executive program who also holds a Ph.D, in comparative literature, Gauthier’s research focuses on leadership, business communication, cross-cultural management, and intuitive intelligence. She is the author of Leading With Sense: The Intuitive Power of Savoir-Relier, which was published in 2014 by Stanford University Press.

Description: Leadership – You know it when you see it, right? Is it charisma, vision, toughness, or know-how? Is it the ability to chart a direction and convince people to enthusiastically follow? In this course – the third in a series from HEC Paris – students will apply the self-awareness, communication, and problem-solving techniques learned in the previous two courses. In particular, according to Gauthier, they will “apply the 4 steps of The Savoir-Relier protocol to your group: 1. defining the group identity by working on the group self-awareness, 2. creating quality relationships within the group, 3. working on resilience for the group to then be able to overcome difficult situation and 4. Making the organization grow by creating sense and meaning.”

A hands on, case-driven course, Leading Organizations will show students “how the genuine, generous and generative characteristics apply to the development of successful organizations. For example, you will apply the Relational Circuit to recruit effectively, or the Self-Portrait and Conversation exercises to create team cohesion and resilience to overcome crises and interpersonal conflicts. You will be able to form trustworthy relationships in spite of diverging or different views, and you will grow respect in your environment where sense will be a driver for you and your surroundings.”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Note: This course is the last of a three part specialization called “Inspirational Leadership: Leading with Sense.” To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.

Critical Perspectives on Management

School: IE Business School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018 (6 Weeks Long)

Workload: 1-3 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Rolf Strom-Olsen

Credentials: Strom-Olsen is the director of studies at IE’s school of arts and humanities. A Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University, he also teaches in IE’s international relations and business schools. In fact, this course – which challenges students to question traditional management frameworks and organizational structures – is among the most popular courses at the IE Business School. In his spare time, Strom-Olsen is a musician who holds a master’s degree in advanced composition.

Graded: Students will earn a verified certificate for completing this course.

Description: Should incentives maximize short-term output or reinforce long-term goals? Why does culture unify teams in some cases and blind employees to opportunities and misconduct in others? Such questions have confounded management thinkers for decades. In this course, Strom-Olsen challenges students to continuously ask questions, all the way down to “what is an organization?” and “what is leadership?” Drawing on disciplines that include history, economics, psychology and theology, this course fosters discussions how managers should view their role, establish priorities, make and execute decisions, and measure success. Driven by case studies that range from the rise of Roman commerce to the fall of Nokia, Strom-Olsen confronts the aspirations, practices, pressures, structures, and fallacies that drive growth or stymie innovation. Student will learn through video lectures, online exercises, and PowerPoints, with content reinforced through homework assignments.

Review: “This course is very useful for anyone in management profession. The traditional concepts which are usually taught in the MBA Classrooms are looked upon in this course through a prism of criticality and an attempt is made to find out how rational a decision can be evaluated in practicality. Topics such as shareholder value, rise and fall of nokia, efficiencies in the roman markets even though there was no advanced technology to facilitate flow of information and dissection of housing bubble have been thought provoking and really a good learning experience.” For additional reviews, click here.

Supply Chain Dynamics

School: MIT

Platform: edX

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 2, 2018 (9 Weeks Long)

Workload: 8-12 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Chris Caplice and Yossi Sheffi

Credentials: Dr. Caplice teaches logistics and supply management at MIT, ranked #1 (graduate) and #2 (undergraduate) in this field. He oversees the MIT Freight Lab, which researches ways to improve the design and management of freight transportation. He also manages the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics and MIT’s Global SCALE Network. Caplice, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, also serves as the chief scientist for Chainalytics, a supply chain consulting firm.

Sheffi previously headed MIT’s engineering systems division and has founded five different companies. Goentzel is the founder and director of MIT’s Humanitarian Response Lab, which is part of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics. Rice is the deputy director of this center, along with teaching supply chain management and finance courses at the school.

Graded: After completing the course, students can receive an instructor-signed certificate for $150.

Description: This is the fourth in a five course series that builds on Supply Chain Design, which examined the connections and interactions between various points in the chain. In this course, students will look at variables that can disrupt internal chains, along with chains between producers, distributors, and consumers. Notably, it will look at points where supply chains risk disruption through case studies and simulations.

Review: No reviews.

Additional Background: This course is part of the MITx MicroMasters Credential in Supply Chain Management. To learn about this certification, click here.

Corporate Strategy

School: University of Illinois

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Specified

Instructor: Joe Mahoney

Credentials: Mahoney is a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University, along with serving as the Caterpillar Chair of Business at the school. He teaches students ranging from undergrads to Ph.D.s in classes that include Strategic Management and Economics of the Organization. Illinois students have given Mahoney an overall “Excellent” score for his teaching for 24 consecutive years beginning in 1992. He holds a Ph.D. in Business Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Description: Michael Porter points out that “Strategy is about making choices [and] trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” And ‘choices’ are the key. Strategy inherently involves focus and limits, with variables like market expectations, channel distribution, costs, revenue and margins, and customer acquisition and retention all vying for emphasis. A good strategy balances such factors, while providing clarity on what organizational objectives are – and how to achieve them. This course helps students understand how to not only create value, but present it to the marketplace. In particular, students will “understand how corporations create, capture, and sustain competitive advantage; analyze business situations and create a coherent corporate strategy; and understand the fit between corporate strategy and organization structure to improve economic performance.”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Background: This is the sixth of a seven course specialization from the University of Illinois called “Strategic Leadership and Management.” It includes courses on organizational design, business and corporate strategy, and applying leadership techniques. To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.

Conversations That Inspire: Coaching Learning, Leadership and Change

School: Case Western Reserve University

Registration: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: 2-3 Hours Per Week

Grades: Students will receive a signed Statement of Accomplishment for successfully completing the course.

Instructors: Richard Boyatzis, PhD; Melvin Smith, PhD; Ellen VanOosten, PhD

Credentials: Boyatzis teaches leadership, change management, emotional and social intelligence, and coaching at Case Western Reserve University. A highly-regarded author, Boyatzis was ranked as the ninth-most influential thinker in a survey by HR Magazine. A pioneer in Intentional Change Theory (ICT), Boyatzis also co-authored the international best-seller Primal Leadership with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee. He has taught at the university for 27 years and has earned the school’s Distinguished University Professor Award and the John Diekhoff Award for Graduate Student Teaching. He holds a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard.

Smith serves as the faculty director of executive of executive education at Case Western Reserve University, where he also teaches courses in the department of organizational behavior. His interests center on leadership and emotional intelligence. Before entering academia, he spent nearly two decades in Fortune 500 leadership, including sales and marketing leadership roles at HJ Heinz and the Pepsi Bottling Group. He holds a Ph.D. from the University’s Katz Graduate School of Business.

VanOosten is the Director of the Coaching Research Lab, along with being an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior there. Her research interests include executive development, experiential learning and emotional intelligence. Outside of the classroom, she is an executive coach whose clients include Fifth Third Bank and Sherwin Williams. She earned her Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve in 2012.

Description: Many times, coaching is treated as a pat on the back or a kick in the pants. In fact, “coaching for compliance” is a term for the latter, where coaches push their charges in a certain direction as a means of “fixing” their reports. It doesn’t work, argue the instructors in this course. Instead, they recommend “coaching with compassion,” where “the person is brought into the positive emotional attractor by initially discussing their dreams, values, and invoking hope, mindfulness, compassion and even playfulness.” So how do you do that? Drawing on decades of research, the instructors will share frameworks and techniques for tying their employees’ dreams with the larger mission. In particular, the course will examine the five points for fostering sustained change; how neuroscience shapes reaction and retention; and examples of Positive (PEA) and Negative Emotional Attractors (NEA).

During this five-week course, students will learn the content through videos and readings, along with writing their thoughts in a personal learning journal and participating in online discussions. Students will also be required conduct two personal coaching sessions, with write ups of the sessions reviewed and graded by peers.

Review: “This class has been one of the best courses I have taken so far online and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has an interest in psychology, self-discovery, and theories of change.. While the title of the course may come off as a bunch of buzz word ideas, the content of the course is highly focused on developing an understanding of self in relation to a particular leadership theory. After developing a sense of self, the student is encouraged to explore where they want to be going, how they can achieve that, how it looks within organization, and how to make sustained change on that level. Dr. Boyatzis provides very clear and concise lectures during the course with assignments that are invaluable to the course as a whole.” For additional review, click here.

Additional Note: This course is part of a five-part specialization called “Inspired Leadership.” To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.

Decision-Making and Scenarios

School: Wharton School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Available

Instructors: Richard Lambert and Robert W. Holthausen

Credentials: Lambert teaches Problems in Financial Accounting at Wharton, where he has earned the WEMBA Core Teaching Award five times since 2007. A long-time researcher whose interests include performance measurement and financial incentives, Lambert’s recent work has been pushed by Contemporary Accounting Research, Review of Finance, and the Journal of Accounting and Economics.

Holthausen chairs the accounting department at Wharton, along with serving as academic director for Wharton’s Mergers and Acquisitions program. He teaches courses in corporate valuation and empirical research in accounting. During his quarter century at Wharton, Holthausen has collected several undergraduate teaching awards and has authored the book, Corporate Valuation: Theory, Evidence and Practice. Before entering academia in 1973, Holthausen worked as an auditor and financial analyst for two Fortune 500 firms.

Description: For many, accounting is a means to measure credits and debits or a set of processes for producing the annual financial statement. As markets become increasingly competitive and operations grow more complex, organizations rely on quantitative analysis to predict behavior and identify cost savings and opportunities. In this course, Wharton will introduce students to common mathematical and statistical models, such as regression analysis and cost-volume profit analysis. Along with learning step-by-step processes for building these models, students will understand how to measure risk, calculate probabilities, and weigh alternatives.

Review: No reviews.

Additional Background: This is the final course in Wharton’s brand new “Business and Financial Modeling” specialization. Other courses in the series will cover spreadsheets, modeling risk and realities, and decision-making. To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here

Financial Analysis for Decision Making: Funding Your Business

School: Babson College

Platform: edX

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: Self-Paced (4 Weeks Long)

Workload: 4-6 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Mark Potter

Credentials: Dr. Potter is both an Associate Dean and the Faculty Director of Blending Learning for the MBA program at Babson College. With a background in finance, he teaches courses in entrepreneurial finance, corporate strategy, and financial management. In 2016, Dr. Potter was awarded the Thomas Kennedy Award for Excellence at Babson College. The year before, he was named the school’s Faculty Director of the Year. His most recent research has been published in the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Index Investing.

Graded: Students who complete all requirements can purchase a verified certificate for $49.

Description: The idea was the easy part. Now come the hard questions. Who do you target? How should you scale? Most important: how do you pay for it? You have plenty of options. You can take out a small business loan, tap family and friends, crowdfund, add a partner, or pitch to a VC. That doesn’t even count bootstrapping or dipping into your assets or savings. Of course, the biggest question is how much money do you need to fulfill your ambitions…and how much cash reserves should you hold for worse case scenarios? In this course, students will answer these questions. In particular, students will learn the best sources for securing funding based on their particular situations, along with loan terms and costs that can hamper them on.

According to Potter, the course is designed to “take the mystery out of financial analysis,” along with providing tools to help students “value and evaluate ideas to determine the appropriate benefits and costs in order to screen them correctly,” and learn how to value a business and the securities [they] can use to potentially fund your organization.”

Review: No reviews.

Understanding Financial Statements: Company Performance

School: University of Illinois

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not available.

Instructor: Kevin Jackson

Credentials: Since 2004, Jackson has taught accounting courses at the University of Illinois to graduate and undergraduate students. Holding a Ph.D. in accounting psychology from the University of Texas, Jackson is renowned as a top teacher, with students ranking him “Excellent” on average from 2005-2014. Before entering academia, Jackson held senior and leadership positions at Ernst & Young, Baker Hughes, and KPMG Peat Marwick. His most recent work has been published by The Accounting Reviewand Contemporary Accounting Research.

Description: Revenues and expenses. Profit and loss. These are the yin and yang of business. To truly understand your organization’s health, you need to be fluent in how to read a profit-and-loss statement. Building off the previous “Company Position” course – which focused on the fundamentals of interpreting balance sheets – “Company Performance” examines income statements. In particular, it covers how it drives decision-making. During the course, students will be exposed to the basic components of an income statement – including how the data is derived and what each component means (and how they interrelate with each other). As part of the course, students will also review and evaluate statements from real companies.

Review: “I would have hated this course but the mentor Mr. Jackson just did the course so well, he should be the one making all the courses that you have under this module. I learned a lot from him and I am able to directly relate his reasoning, his real life considerations to the business I am handling right now, and more than understanding the concepts, I am now inspired to learn more!” For additional reviews, click here.

Additional Background: This course is the second part of a “Fundamentals of Accounting” specialization, a five course series that covers strategy assessment and control, decision making and measurement, and company positioning in financial statements. To learn more about these courses and register for them, click here.

Financial Accounting Made Fun: Eliminating Your Fears

School: Babson College

Platform: edX

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: Self-Paced (4 Weeks Long)

Workload: 4-6 Hours Per Week

Instructor: Peter Wilson

Credentials: At Babson, Wilson teaches courses in advanced accounting, financial reporting, and measuring financial performance. In addition, he serves as the executive director of Babson’s blended learning MBA program, which has locations in San Francisco and Wellesley. Before joining Babson in 2010, he spent nearly two decades at Duke University, where he also served as the executive director of executive programs at the Fuqua School of Business.

Graded: Students who successfully complete the course can purchase a signed verified certificate for $49.

Description: Ask any business student which class they dread and accounting is certain to top the list. Let’s face it: The content is pretty dry. Even more, it is like learning a new language, with a mind-numbing array of terms and applications — all accompanied by a whole set of complicated, if not contradictory, rules. Alas, accounting and finance are the dialects spoken in the board room. If you don’t learn it, you won’t get far in your career.

That’s why Wilson takes a practical approach to teaching accounting, making the content alive and relevant through stories and applications, all brought together in the context of launching a business. According to Wilson, students will cover the following:

“This course introduces you to the form, content and definitions included in the primary financial statements: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. You will learn how to use this information to make key operating decisions, such as how to balance growth with cash constraints. You will learn how to use ratios to diagnose a company’s financial health and apply these concepts and tools to evaluate a company of your own choosing.”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Note: This is the first in a six course specialization from Babson College called “Business Principles and Entrepreneurial Thought,” which includes courses on data analytics, marketing fundamentals, and financial analysis. To learn more about these courses and register for them, click here.

Business Strategies for Social Impact

School: Wharton School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Specified

Instructors: Katherine Klein and Christopher Geczy

Credentials: Klein is the Vice Dean of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. A teacher at the program since 2004, she has taught MBA courses in knowledge management, performance management, and institutional transformation. Her research interests include social networking, teamwork, innovation implementation, and leadership.

Geczy has taught at Wharton for over 20 years and currently serves as the Academic Director for both the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research and the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative. He currently teaches graduate courses in impact investing and investment management at the school.

Graded: Students must successfully complete all assignments to get through the course.

Description: Not every investment is designed to maximize return. In impact investing, the goal is to promote initiatives that further social and environmental causes. Such investments are often made in emerging markets and cover life-and-death areas like agriculture, energy, healthcare, housing, and education. As a result, enterprise success is often measured differently in such ventures. So how can investors push social good and evaluate performance beyond beating market rate?

In this course, students will learn far more than financial fundamentals and strategic planning. It is also a leadership course, with cases and exercises designed to help students “cultivate purpose and inspires change, measure societal impact through evidence-based models, and invest in ventures effectively and meaningfully.”

Review: No reviews.

Additional Notes: This course is the fourth part of Wharton’s “Strategies for a Better World” specialization, which covers areas like corruption and social entrepreneurship. To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.

Unleashing the Impact of Your Social Enterprise

School: Copenhagen Business School

Platform: Coursera

Registration Link: REGISTER HERE

Start Date: January 1, 2018

Workload: Not Specified.

Instructor: Kai Hokerts

Credentials: A faculty member since 2005, Hockerts focuses his research on sustainability and environmental entrepreneurship. His work has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics and the International Review of Entrepreneurship among other outlets.

Graded: To earn a passing mark, students must complete all graded assignments.

Description: In business, you measure your performance through a profit-and-loss statement. How do you measure when your mission involves serving a community? Is success based on the attainment of certain benchmarks? What about the impact on intangibles like confidence and level of engagement? In this course, learners will develop a top-to-bottom business plan that enables them to assess the return on their investment in their mission. As part of writing this business plan, students will also develop a value proposition along with a methodology for scaling their operation and a strategy for financing it.

Review: No reviews.

Additional Notes: This is the third of three courses in the school’s “Social Entrepreneurship” specialization. To learn more about this specialization and register for it, click here.

Here are some additional courses starting in January that may interest you (To learn more about the courses or register for them, click on the links below):

Introduction to Social Media Analytics / January 1 / Emory University

Becoming a Changemaker: Introduction to Social Innovation / January 8 / University of Cape Town

Supply Chain Principles / January 1 / Georgia Tech

Six Sigma Tools for Define and Measure / January 1 / University of Georgia

Construction Finance / January 1 / Columbia University

Academic and Business Writing / Self-Paced / U.C.-Berkeley

Economics: Consumer Demand / Self-Paced / Babson College

Leadership and Management for PM Practitioners in IT / Self-Paced / University of Washingto

Digital Strategy and Action / Self-Paced / Babson College

Business Foundations / Self-Paced / University of British Columbia

Digital Transformation Strategy / January 9 / Boston University

Applying Investment Decision Rules / January 1 / Yonsei University