Now that the first half of my ‘program’ is over and gone, and I see myself turning into a bulk processor of cases and reading materials, I couldn't help but look outside the window. No, this was not a knee-jerk reaction to something titillating going on outside, but a thoughtful response from a Harvard educated management practitioner. For all of you skeptics out there, yes, my loving attorney (my wife) has OKed the use of the H-word on record, as most of my so called management education has been through Harvard cases.
Now let me tell you that the one big takeaway from all these cases has been this ‘look-outside-the-window’ approach - the one and only surefire way to enrapture the readers with the dichotomy that you are facing. And if you can start to ramble more about your company, things look even better. For me, even though I have been blessed with good company off late, there is enough reason to get started off on my own case, at least to fill up all the time that I have freed up in this term, using some innovative elective selections. So here I go…
I am choosing to call mine, the ‘grand mother of all dichotomies’, one that confronts management students all over the world, past present and future. And here it is.
Is the premise of management education as something that can be imparted to a class of willing, well founded? And more importantly, can managers be created using formal schooling or is this all part of a self-fulfilling system, a system, leftover from the yesteryears of ‘too many’ competing for ‘too few’ opportunities and MBA being used as an artificial entry barrier for acceptance into coveted management positions? Hasn’t decades of entrepreneurship, innovation and ubiquitous information made such a system obsolete?
I am not discounting the fact that there is always knowledge that can be assimilated or skills that can be acquired that can improve one’s effectiveness as a manger or an entrepreneur. In fact even in my own case, there have been some indisputable ‘program learnings’, which is the subject of a whole different post that is already in the works. But that aside, my basic question is on the approach of dedicating one or two years of time, money and effort, all in an attempt to learn management, full time, in a class room setting?
There cannot be any doubt in our mind that we want our doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants etc. to be well schooled and on top of the happenings in their field. Something as common as a common-cold may not send me scurrying for a doctor, but the moment something uncommon starts happening, I go looking for a certified physician. And these days it is a straight drive to ‘specialization’ on precisely the very organ that is troubling you, without even a glance towards the generalist.
Now, how about if, what you are having is an uncommon idea? Something which you think has an economic value because of it addressing an unserviced market space or an unrepresented product space? Do you run to the nearest IIM to get some fresh ‘managerial’ talent or is it a ‘DIY’ (Do it yourself) task that we have at hand?
To me it appears that if you,
- can truly understand your potential customers and what economic value means to them
- are clear on the big-picture of how your idea provides this value and how to make it work financially
- can spot talent and build teams, be it to design/build/market/do accounting
- can pick up rudimentary management ‘gyaan’ on the fly
have enough emotional acumen to connect with your team and elicit high performance from them
you don’t need anything more than a song on your lips and a smile on your face to build great businesses, to become great entrepreneurs.
Then there are great general managers who build tremendous shareholder wealth, not only by scaling their businesses but also by perfecting its internals and ensuring its profitability, predictability and sustainability. Now are these folks created in the crucible of their own real world experiences and in spite of what they have studied or were ‘taught’ or are they executing a recipe which is being bottled and marketed by B-schools around the world?
Brealey & Meyers even went to the extent of documenting the 4th unsolved problem in Corporate Finance as – Is management an Off-Balance-sheet liability? For example, the stock of closed end funds often sells for substantially less than the value of the fund’s portfolio. Real estate stocks appear to sell for less than the market value of the firms’ net assets. Many of the oil companies tend to have market values less than the market value of their oil reserves. All this can only happen if the value added by the firm’s management is less than the cost of the management.
Now that leads the layman in me to ask the same question in a slightly different way - Isn’t management just common sense clothed in good presentation skills? With the obvious corollary of – Aren’t B-schools all over the world, just over-hyped institutions that select for common sense and convert the selects into good workers by giving them enough and more to work on?
One of the trends that gives this away is the popularity of articles which tout the concept of ‘What they don’t teach you at B-schools’. Now if a lawyer or a doctor starts practicing what they were not taught in their respective schools, I am pretty sure that they will soon run out of opportunities to experiment. Now how is this different from business education and why is this contrast not unsettling?
Like all good cases, mine also ends with no right or wrong answers. Even worse, I don’t even think that I have any answers to offer. But sometimes as they say, it is more important to have all the questions than the answers. Looking forward to that day when I will start getting paid for my questions….till then, there is so much to be managed and so few people to do it.
And to that I say - I shall do it. I have substantial experience to boot…not to mention the innumerable Harvard cases that I have cracked…
