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On Sun, 26 Jan 1997 06:46:28, Michele Grottola <mgrotola@INTERACCESS.COM> wrote,
Re: Improving Management Education--General Brainstorming
>
> I'd like to hear ---snip--- constructive suggestions as to how list
>members think management education programs can be improved.

My perspective is 20 years in "management boot camp" with GE, 10 with
Honeywell and the last 8 as a corporate development consultant working
mostly with companies of less than 200 people (because they can still be
helped).

The primary gap in business school graduates (as well as graduates from
engineering and other schools) is their ability to learn for themselves.
Because they have been extruded through a school system which makes them
submissive to teachers and professors, they are largely precluded from
collaborating with, and learning from peers. Yet, when they get into the
business world there are no teachers. They need to learn how to learn from
others. Managers and HR weenies are not much help (guess what their mental
model of learning is). Likewise, most of the Training and Development
sponsored by industry is ineffective (because it follows the "teaching"
model). A mentor program is good but not nearly as effective as peer
learning.

The main subset of learning is communicating; secondly to transfer
information and thirdly to influence others but firstly to ask questions.
So communication skills are highly important but as a means for
co-learning.

A corrolary to this is their gap in knowing how to collaborate. Most are
very conscious of getting ahead and tend to compete with others. We do not
need them to hold hands and sing all day but they need to know that there
are times for independent, pioneering behavior and times for collaborative,
leveraging behavior.

A root seems to be an understanding of personality types and learning
styles (ala Meyers Briggs) so they appreciate how to deal with others who
are different. This is becoming more important as businesses increase in
diversity whether it be ethnic, cultural, thinking style, communication
style or whatever.

Ethics is the second area of needed emphasis. The encroachment of
situation ethics and What's In It For Me is appalling.

The third area is systems thinking. Business became too complex for most
business school graduates many, many years ago and graduates have not been
equipped to deal with it. A related KSA would be Resource Allocation and
Scheduling. How about a class in dynamic programming -- linear programming
is not equal to the archetypes of modern business. As described in the
Fifth Discipline, Paul Dye demonstrated that these things can be learned
quite well by eigth graders.

Fourth, it is time for a new theory of business. How about Drucker's? It
is over 30 years old so should be acceptable to the academic senate even if
it isn't Eastern Establishement. And it leads to the theory of growth (ala
the Santa Fe Institute and the emerging Ecology of Enterprises).

Fifth, let's put attention on accounting and other financial subject matter
in the back seat and help them learn about quality and other forms of
meeting commitments and producing results.

Sixth, help them experience taking risks and making mistakes (lots of
little ones and no big ones). That, of course, brings us back to learning.

Finally, education centers will continue to be confused as long as they try
to serve two masters. The customer is the student. Business people can
only tell you what they need now -- and perhaps two years in advance -- but
certainly not enough in advance to condition your curricula. If you don't
believe this, ask to see their strategic plan or even the long range plan
that they published four years ago. If you take business as your customer
beware of "the blind shall lead the blind and they will all fall in the
ditch, together."

Hope this helps.




Jack Ring
Innovation Management
32712 N. 70th St.
Scottsdale, AZ 85262-7143 USA
602-488-4615
Fax) 602-488-4616

><mgrotola@INTERACCESS.COM> wrote,
>Re: Improving Management Education--General Brainstorming
>>
>> I'd like to hear ---snip--- constructive suggestions as to how list
>>members think management education programs can be improved.
>
>
>The primary gap in business school graduates (as well as graduates from
>engineering and other schools) is their ability to learn for themselves.
Because they have been extruded through a school system which makes them
>submissive to teachers and professors, they are largely precluded from
>collaborating with, and learning from peers. Yet, when they get into the
>business world there are no teachers. They need to learn how to learn from

There is a course series taught at Saint Michael's College in the
Master's of Science in Administration called Leadership I & II. The
professors present the class interaction and simulations without much
direction. Many students find this frustrating and are not motivated to
look deeper into the lesson. The professors use reflection sections to
try and pull the learning. For some it works. The others fail to make
the effort to lead themselves to the learning. The professors make a
real effort to remain patient and not give into the typical style of
force feeding the students.

Other ideas behind the course:

1. First semester focuses on group interaction/leadership analysis.

2. The second semester focuses on the individual using MBTI, the
Leadership Practices Inventory, and discussion/simulations of
intelligence, leadership, management, and others.

This is the closest I've seen to interaction similar to the work
environment. As a graduate student myself, I wonder what I'll be facing
once I enter the workforce again.

3. Ethics are required in every class whether it be law, systems
thinking, or web page management. I know that some schools are lax
here. Saint Michael's, however, is committed to this component.

No new theories of business from me. I'm still working on the old ones.

I would have to disagree with you on the financial and accounting issue.
I don't know how you can think about a business without some background
in these two areas. It helps people think "big picture" and
strategically. It is just as important in a students learning as the
other issues of peer learning, collaberation, and risk taking.

On a final note. Educators need to have the support of the business
community. Relationships need to be developed so quick constructive
feedback can be given.

Hope this tingles the brain a least a little.

David Croke
MSA Graduate Assistant
Saint Michael's College
Colchester, VT
>

On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Jack Ring wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Jan 1997 06:46:28, Michele Grottola <mgrotola@INTERACCESS.COM>
wrote,
> Re: Improving Management Education--General Brainstorming
> >
> > I'd like to hear ---snip--- constructive suggestions as to how list
> >members think management education programs can be improved.
>
>
> The primary gap in business school graduates (as well as graduates from
> engineering and other schools) is their ability to learn for themselves.
> Because they have been extruded through a school system which makes them
> submissive to teachers and professors, they are largely precluded from
> collaborating with, and learning from peers. Yet, when they get into the
> business world there are no teachers. They need to learn how to learn from
> others. Managers and HR weenies are not much help (guess what their mental
> model of learning is). Likewise, most of the Training and Development
> sponsored by industry is ineffective (because it follows the "teaching"
> model). A mentor program is good but not nearly as effective as peer
> learning.
>
I concur with this observation. However, business education programs
focus on feeding information and knowledge from the expert. Surely, there
is a place for "programmed knoweledge" to be transferred. However,
developing one's learning ability and the questioning insight does not
seem to be a focus. It appears that we need managers who can learn from
commrades in adversity and from themselves.

> The main subset of learning is communicating; secondly to transfer
> information and thirdly to influence others but firstly to ask questions.
> So communication skills are highly important but as a means for
> co-learning.

So meaninful. Most of the problem comes from communication. It seems to
me that action learning sets provides the social setting for developing
such skills: influencing, questioning and convincing others.

> A root seems to be an understanding of personality types and learning
> styles (ala Meyers Briggs) so they appreciate how to deal with others who
> are different. This is becoming more important as businesses increase in
> diversity whether it be ethnic, cultural, thinking style, communication
> style or whatever.

I used to put EMBA groups and managers in ED programs by means of their
tempermental types. MBTI is good. I place more emphasis on learning style
so I used Honey & Mumford or Kolb's learning style as my guide. As a
result, I can have a good mix of activitists with reflectors... so that
they can appreciate individual differences & see others' character as
strength rather than weakness.

> > Ethics is the second area of needed emphasis. The encroachment of
> situation ethics and What's In It For Me is appalling.
>
I worked in an organization known as the Independent Commission Against
Corruption before. I must say that with the white collar crime cases I
have seen, training in ethics is most essential for eradicting the
problem which is destroying our system. We need managers with integrity
and social responsibility. I feel disappointed that ethics is not given
much attention in business education. Either we do not belive it is
important, or we have failed to do something about this problem. I have
in many occasions proposed to give emphasis on this area when setting up
MBA curricular, but priority is often accorded to functional knowledge
subjects.

> The third area is systems thinking. Business became too complex for most
> business school graduates many, many years ago and graduates have not been
> equipped to deal with it. A related KSA would be Resource Allocation and
> Scheduling. How about a class in dynamic programming -- linear programming
> is not equal to the archetypes of modern business. As described in the
> Fifth Discipline, Paul Dye demonstrated that these things can be learned
> quite well by eigth graders.

I surely think systems thinking is essential for developing one's ability
to identifying and solving problems. We need learning managers and learning
organizations which have the ability to reflect and see problems with
fresh insights.

> Fourth, it is time for a new theory of business. How about Drucker's? It
> is over 30 years old so should be acceptable to the academic senate even if
> it isn't Eastern Establishement. And it leads to the theory of growth (ala
> the Santa Fe Institute and the emerging Ecology of Enterprises).

I wish that we can put our minds together for a new theory of business.
Others contributions will stimulate thoughts.

> Fifth, let's put attention on accounting and other financial subject matter
> in the back seat and help them learn about quality and other forms of
> meeting commitments and producing results.

I agree but I have seen politics stop this from happening. We need people
who are interested and positive to management development support this
notion. For MBA programmes, quite often accounting, finance and other
functional subjects are given the front seats. I have worked in a
University in which Management Development is given the prority. But,
such an emphasis was eroded. Chairs in Economics & Finance ,
accounting... try to take control for the successful MBA with a strong
management development component. The program was revised and revert back
to the traditons 60s MBA. So we have to work harder to help managers
learn to be more competent rather than just giving them more functional
knowledge.

> Sixth, help them experience taking risks and making mistakes (lots of
> little ones and no big ones). That, of course, brings us back to learning.

In concluding, I just find that I am proposing quite a bit from the
thinking of Action Learning. It is also by coincidence that this learning
approach offer some possible lights of solution to the problem posted.
Action Learning encourages risk taking and learning from real issues. Of
course, this is not the only solution. May be it is a starting point for
many other to give creative approaches to improving management education
through our brainstorming effort in this listserver.



Aaron PUN EdD DPhil
MD & OD consultant in Toronto

Jack,

I couldn't agree more with your dialogue. I'm a corporate director of OD and
Leadership Development for a large healthcare system. I keep moving further
and further away from traditional management development classes as I never
have seen any results. I've been working with the management team of one
hospital for a year in a much looser, more informal "learning" mode utilizing
dialogue as the primary learning tool. They learn as much from each other or
more than they do from me. The results have been phenomenal. However, our
Administrators are still asking for traditional classes and traditional
topics - Corrective Action in this day and age. Can you believe it?? I
find ways to go around them and involve them in other ways. You've got to be
very cagy in this busines. Would love to hear more of your ideas.

Nancy Probst

Dear Nancy,
Your administrators want you to provide those traditional topics in a
classroom setting to justify your existance. A formal class with
structured times, numbers, etc. is more tangible than the
facilitation of self-learning on an informal basis. Often times, that
which is easily measured has less impact than the less tangible.
Unfortunately our materialistic society demands the quantitative.
I am glad you are cagy!