Less is more?

Over the past few years, I have coached a number of undergraduate teams for international case competitions. We would have regular trainings over a few weeks, I would accompany them to the competitions, etc. None of these teams proceeded to the finals despite performing well.

Earlier this semester, I advised two of my MBA students who were participating in separate case competitions. This week, they informed me that their teams did quite well in their respective competitions. One team won the International Business Ethics Case Competition and the other came in Second Place for the Wake Forest Case Competition. All in all, I spent at most 3 hours on one of these teams and not more than 1 hour with the other. So, maybe less is indeed more — less involvement from me = more success for my students 🙂