Joe Morgan

Masters in Business (MBS) in Innovation & Leadership

Donegal – Letterkenny

Can you talk us through why you choose to do this course? 

I just thought it would be beneficial to try and get an appreciation of how industry best practice had moved on from an academic perspective. 

That was my interest, there was a lot of fanfare and buzz about the particular course up in Premerica where I worked. I thought it was very, very powerful in terms of my own professionalism within the industry for a couple of reasons. 

What do you think you gained by taking the course? 

The content that we went through in one particular section of the course, which was around organisational change was very much relevant to what I was doing in Premerica at the time, due to an assignment that I had with one of our divisions in the United States. Whilst learning about organisational change management, I was able to apply some of that learning to what I was doing, for a new group in in the US. 

I remember John Cotter’s eight step framework of change, which we went through. It’s a very practical, very simple framework, in terms of how you go about changing how an organisation works today to how you want it to look tomorrow. I believe that if I hadn’t had the insight of that particular framework, I would have failed. We were successful in transforming a particular process within that organisation to work differently than how it was working. 

As I’ve spent most of my career in large corporates companies, getting exposure to what it was like to work in a start-up type scenario rather than a large corporate company. It was eye opening and of interest to an extent that within three years, I’d actually left Premerica and joined a start-up, on campus here at ATU. 

There was a lot of clarity in terms of the difference between large enterprise and start-up, and start-ups are very chaotic, but they’re also very exciting. I’m not sure I’d have made that step if I didn’t have some appreciation of the journey that other people have been through at the time. 

Any advice for anyone considering applying for a part-time online course at ATU? 

I thought it fitted very well with people that already are in full-time employment. Because you can’t be studying full-time, that mix in terms of two full days on-site, additional time after that to reflect on what you’ve learned, and then put together some effort and time in terms of putting assignments together. 

We had a fantastic group and there was a lot of collaboration and when it came to the classes themselves and listening to practitioners, the conversation was very easy and relaxed. 

We got on quite well and if there was a need for extracurricular support outside of those hours there was a lot of willingness in terms of people just coming together and having discussions in terms of where they were and where they were trying to get to. 

The timeframe in terms of the level of time on-site and the level of effort off-site worked really well. The academics were great, particularly our own personal tutors; we had an time allocation for the final dissertation, but even as you were going through the assessments, we had a particular academic assigned to us, and their time was always available. 

The benefit that they brought was brilliant, in terms of how to frame an assessment, how to do your references correctly, how to structure the assessments. Particularly for me, as I hadn’t been in an academic setting for so many years. The academics within ATU have a lot of experience in doing that, so being able to leverage that from them at the appropriate time was fantastic. 

If I look back to when I applied to this, there was a little bit of anxiety relative to not being in the academic setting initially, but I think if you’re at all interested in keeping up-to-date and learning new best practice, you just have a go at it. It’s a fantastic course, there’s a lot of support available, and you will get something out of it, I can nearly guarantee it.