By CATHY JETT
The Battle of Chancellorsville might have turned out differently if MBA students had been running things instead of generals.
"Stonewall" Jackson would have marched his men into battle early enough to avoid getting shot by his own men after dark. And "Fighting Joe" Hooker wouldn't have forgone his customary swigs of "courage."
Those were among the suggestions that competing teams in Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business Fast Track Executive MBA class came up with last week during a hands-on lesson in leadership at the Chancellorsville Battlefield Visitor Center.
"What better way to use our own backyard?" said Randy T. Barker, a management professor at the Richmond university.
The daylong class, which included a guided tour of the battlefield where Jackson was wounded, was designed to teach the 42 students such things as team building, time management and how to regroup quickly if their boss gets sick or leaves to take another position.
The class was divided into two groups, handed blue or gray baseball caps and T-shirts, and asked to use prior reading of books on Abraham Lincoln's and Robert E. Lee's leadership styles and their newly acquired information about Chancellorsville to come up with ways they could have improved the battle's outcome.
Chancellorsville was considered Lee's greatest victory, because he daringly split his forces in defiance of military convention and forced Hooker's men to retreat. But the price he paid was high: the death of 13,000 men, including Jackson.
That's one reason the Confederate team decided they'd have asked Jackson to move his troops into position earlier on May 2, 1863, so he wouldn't have to launch into battle against Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard just before dark. If that engagement had ended in daylight, his edgy pickets probably would have recognized him when he returned from reconnoitering the ground ahead.
"If Jackson had lived, it would have lead to less casualties and they might have won at Gettysburg," said Dudley Bowman, a quality assurance analyst with CarMax in Richmond.
Hooker, whose fondness for liquor may have made him an aggressive commander, had stopped drinking when he began the spring 1863 campaign against Lee. The Union team decided that they would have encouraged his former behavior, which might have had the added bonus of making him less dictatorial.
"We were trying to improve on what we had," said student Elizabeth Cifers.
Last Friday's class was the opening salvo in VCU's 20-month MBA program for professionals. The Richmond-based program is aimed at people with six or more years of workplace experience, and classes are held every other weekend. About half of their assignments are group projects that involve teaming up with people from different fields.
"Lots of times marketing people have to deal with engineers and IT," said William J. Miller, Fast Tracks' executive director. "It's a learning experience."
He and Barker came up with the idea of having students start with the Battle of Chancellorsville after hearing about a similar program at Gettysburg nearly a decade ago. Both programs are designed to teach a variety of skills by having students put them into practice.
"We wanted to focus primarily on leadership and effective communication," Miller said. "They also learn other things like time management and team building."
To help simulate the chaos of battle, class members with military backgrounds were asked to judge each team's progress and pull out the leaders to see how the groups would cope. And the teams were encouraged to do anything possible to gain an advantage over the competition.
This year, for example, the team representing the Confederates realized the Union team had left their maps of troop maneuvers unattended and swiped them. The Union team not only asked for them back, but retaliated by inviting tour guide Frank Walker over to their side for a short question and answer session.
"In the past they've snuck over to the bus where we keep extra hats and T-shirts and changed uniforms so they could infiltrate the other side," said Miller. "We had one student, a West Point graduate, who brought a pair of binoculars so he could read the other team's flip chart. They saw him and ousted him."
The program ended with each side giving a presentation of their recommendations and explaining how they fulfilled such criteria as refining their vision, gathering feedback and re-organizing after their leaders were pulled out. They tied with equal scores, a first for the program.
"It was fantastic," Andrea Nixon, a senior consultant-project manager for COMSYS Information Technology Services Inc. in Richmond, said afterward. "We learned things like Hooker had more troops and better supplies, but he still lost. If you don't have a good plan and execute it well, you're still going to fail."
To reach CATHY JETT:
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com