Of possible interest, from the Toronto, ON, Globe and Mail.
Sounds as if Mintzberg is blasting away at virtually everyone in
sight--excepting only his own students of course.
Perhaps Mintzberg and Pfeffer at Stanford should hook up.
Thursday, Jul 8, 2004
Book should make people think twice about hiring MBA grads
By David Ticoll
UPDATED AT 9:06 AM EDT Thursday, Jul 8, 2004
McGill University celebrity management professor Henry Mintzberg says in a
new book that MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways, with
negative -- and sometimes disastrous -- consequences.
While not exactly a dockside page-turner, Managers Not MBAs can fire up
enough adrenalin for a spurt of exercise or barbecue-side debate. More
important, it ought to make people think twice about hiring a raft of young,
fresh MBA grads -- or pursuing such a course for yourself.
Prof. Mintzberg's target is the conventional MBA -- full-time programs for
inexperienced people, generally in their twenties. MBAs ostensibly prepare
students for general management, but he argues that they actually teach
analytical techniques for specific business functions such as finance,
operations, marketing and information technology. This approach to training
managers is rooted in the 20th-century myth of scientific management -- an
idea first proclaimed by Frederick Taylor in 1911 that there is "one best
way" to run a business operation. If Mr. Taylor was right, you could train
managers early in life, just as you train physicians, scientists or
accountants.
But, argues Prof. Mintzberg, the opposite is true. Management is neither
science nor profession. It's practice, the activity of leadership in a
specific situation at a point in time. By definition, you can't teach
management to young, inexperienced people. In fact, teaching is the wrong
word. To play on a popular phrase: It's about learning, stupid.
People learn to manage in real situations, aided, perhaps, by the right
kinds of coaching and support. Managers handle residual messes -- the tough
problems and complicated relationships -- that remain after the easy stuff,
the functional analysis, is done. The practice of management, Prof.
Mintzberg says, is fundamentally "soft," which is why we commonly apply
labels such as experience, intuition, judgment and wisdom to it.
So what, you might say. Even if MBAs don't really learn to manage, don't
they still acquire practical facts and analytic skills?
Prof. Mintzberg responds that MBA grads join a fast track to strategic
influence and corporate leadership. The problem is not just that MBAs are
inexperienced. It's that their impatient, analysis-based, bottom-line
elitism has corrupted our managerial practices, organizations and social
institutions.
"MBA programs," Prof. Mintzberg says, "are not solely responsible for all
the dysfunctional aspects of managing we now see around us, from the
exaggerated executive compensation schemes and the failed strategies and
mergers to the scandals of dishonest corporate behaviour, all indicative of
a demise of leadership. A hyped-up business press and questionable
consulting practices have contributed, too. But they have done so in
conjunction with the educational programs, which have both legitimized and
encouraged some of the very behaviours they should be challenging."
Prof. Mintzberg backs up this contention with data. He points out that MBA
grads gravitate to consulting and investment banking -- industries that
specialize in analysis and technique, with little responsibility for the
consequences. Fortune reported that the five employers most preferred by
2003 MBA candidates came from these two industries. Enron hired 250 new MBAs
a year during the 1990s. Ten of the 19 1990 Harvard MBAs who made it to CEO
were clear failures (their company went bankrupt, they were forced out of
the CEO chair, a major merger backfired, and so on).
To this I'd add my observation of the era when Stamford MBA
pseudo-entrepreneurs who hadn't yet mastered the art of shaving colluded
with slightly more adept investment bankers (also MBAs) to shill the MBA
notion of the supremacy of shareholder value.
In a mini-study of my own I found that only one CEO in the 10 biggest of The
Globe and Mail Top 1,000 Canadian companies sports an MBA (Richard Waugh of
Scotiabank). Most got into business and climbed to the top with little more
than an undergraduate degree. Gordon Nixon of Royal Bank of Canada has a
bachelor of commerce. Tony Comper of Bank of Montreal has a BA in English.
Gwyn Morgan of EnCana is an engineer (he also took an "executive business
program" at Cornell). BCE's Michael Sabia sports graduate degrees from Yale
-- in economics and politics. Not coincidentally, I'd suggest, these men
have done relatively well on measures of corporate performance and good
governance.
After 150 pages, Prof. Mintzberg's uncharacteristically serious critique may
wear thin. Take heart and stick with it for the solution: an eloquent and
inspiring description of a so-called International Masters in Practicing
Management (IMPM) program that Prof. Mintzberg co-initiated and delivers in
five two-week modules in five countries (Britain, Canada, India, Japan and
Switzerland) over 16 months.
IMPM, as its name implies, is exclusively for practising managers, typically
in mid-career. It covers many of the same bases as a traditional executive
education program for high-potential managers, and includes its share of
reading and homework, but that's only part of the story. The program is
heavily laden with reflection on participants' actual experiences and
challenges; immersion in the places, cultures and peoples of its varied
geographic sites; industrial site visits and problem analysis; and "white"
time that allows participants to shape their own interchange. The result
actually does seem to produce more effective managers who are wiser and more
world-aware.
Here too the proof is in the pudding, namely retention rates. A few years
ago I worked with a company ranked among the best in Canada as a place to
work. It was profiled in a major publication; the laudatory interview was
with a rising star who had just completed a company-sponsored executive MBA.
However, within two months he'd abandoned this "best employer" for the
competition. Such tales are all too common, but Prof. Mintzberg cites the
opposite experience. Precisely because the IMPM helps their human
development and focuses on real workplace inquiry, only a tiny minority of
graduates have so far jumped ship from their employers.
Managers Not MBAs is an inspiring and insightful book. It will revolutionize
your thinking about what makes management education tick.
Regards,
Fred Nickols, CPT
Distance Consulting
"Assistance at a Distance"
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us