The following comments were made on The Economist over the "Would the economy be better off without MBA students?"
guest-isoswwj wrote:
MBAs are strewn along the hallways of banks and consulting companies like litter along the roadside. They contend that they bring value to business, and to some extent they do. They remind us that there ought to be cooperative connections between departments in a company that contend against each other for precious resources. They are able to tell us that by moving the sorting table closer to the conveyor belt, we can box our products more quickly and boost our daily output by 2 percent. That's wonderful, but to be honest, they do what anyone would or could do if he were willing to stop thinking according to the party line and to think for himself.
The big problem I have with MBAs is that they are in love with their own set of buzzwords, those words that are either invented (so they can be "branded") or redefined and imparted with specially nuanced meanings that only the cognoscenti would understand, unless of course they stoop to the level of the hoi polloi where we usually reside to explain in the most patronizing way what they mean to say in plain English.
MBAs are not risk takers. They would be scared to death to be exposed to the capital risks of business ownership, to stake the welfare of their families on the outcomes of their decisions to go with this product or that service, and to trust one's inner hunches as we, who actually run businesses, do. They are quite comfortable doling out advice at exorbitant rates, knowing full well that whether or not their advice bears any fruit is completely disconnected from the "value" that they assess for an hour of their time.
I am not opposed to education. I spent 11 years in higher education accumulating degrees, taking extra courses to puff up my resume like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Did it make me smarter? No, but it made me sound smarter to those who had not willingly subjected themselves to the same rigors. It is odd to see how people with sound judgment defer to someone else with a degree. It is as if adding some alphabet soup to the end of one's name is the same as throwing dust into someone's eyes: he has to beg for assistance to navigate a path he has trod many times before.
MBAs do have their place, and my feeling is that their first stopping place should be in the mailroom. From there they could start to climb the ladder, eventually moving into sales where they have to learn the very visceral lessons about what it takes to produce a dollar of real revenue, what it takes to listen to "No" said a thousand times before a "Yes" is uttered, and what it takes to sell an product that is imperfectly aligned with highly moveable public tastes. Finally, when he has mastered sales, he can move into compliance where he can learn what it is to keep a company in the good graces of government regulation whose scope and reach change more frequently than women’s fashions.
Once the MBA has had that kind of "street" education, the combination of what he has learned in class and what he has learned on the job becomes truly valuable...if he has something different to say from what those of us who slug it out on a daily basis already are thinking. There is an old adage in the computer programming business that goes, "If it were so easy, everyone would be doing it." Owning and running a business is not for sissies. It requires a personality that can deal with uncertainty, economic hazards, potential litigation from employees and customers alike, and worst of all, the deeply rooted inner sense that perhaps one cannot endure the costs of perpetually trying to outmaneuver his competition.
If MBAs want to find a real market for what they offer, they should get into the business of building courage and inner strength in business executives who burn out in their late forties, who are doomed to have heart attacks before they are sixty, and who will likely die an early death from the stress of running businesses upon which their employees and their families depend. I think more than ever, what the economy needs are businesses and business leaders who have a conscience and a sense of the debt they owe to society for patronizing their businesses. Instead of the current crop of business leaders, advisors, MBAs, and the rest of the hangers on that are in constant pursuit of "monetizing" essentially worthless endeavors, we need new blood that understands that the most important objective of business leaders is to enhance the lives of those, who by dedicating one-third or more of every working day of their lives to the goals of their employers, make business success a conceivable outcome. Those same business leaders need also to adopt the view that their second and inferior objective should be to enhance shareholder value. If that were to happen, society would truly be different, and the MBAs that emerge from their schools with their faces all scrubbed clean, their hair parted, and their shoes shined like bowling balls would probably be different, too.
CnKQ7pSia6 wrote:
Dear Sir,
I'm applying for an MBA degree right now. And I've been a management consultant for 6 years.
To see what value MBAs add you have to ask which are the most common sectors/employers that MBAs go into. The answer is unanimous - management consulting and investment banking.
Not to say that these two fields add no value to the economy, but having been a management consultant I can tell you first hand, one doesn't know much at all about a sector at least for the first 2-3 years. Worse still, many of my colleagues don't even know what they don't know. Having the name McKinsey or Bain on your business card doesn't transform you overnight into an insightful visionary (in many cases it makes you obnoxious but just as dumb as you were yesterday). When I first entered the field I was amazed how much crap gets passed around as "business knowledge" and the word I probably hate the most - business "learnings" (I used to angrily say there was a word in the English language - LESSONS - so there's no need to make up nonsensical words). I learned that the clients I was supposed to "advise" had been working in that industry for decades - and me, a come-in-yesterday Johnny is going to advise them on how to do their job better? What a joke. It taught me to listen carefully to the men who actual had their feet on and ears to the ground... you know, the people that my fellow consultants think are not worth listening to... the accountant in that X office who knows how the company negotiates with its suppliers, the field manager who knows how the product actually gets sold and so on.
But now its too much for me. I've come to think that consultants are just smooth slick snake oil salesmen with no real skin in the game. Same goes for investment bankers. Both sets collect their fat fee, no matter what the result.
As for the bankers, I love finance. I really do and that's why I want to study that in business school having never had any formal education in economics or finance (I was a scientist and physician). But I see finance as a critical but support function. I once said to a couple of fellow consultants that our kind and bankers were at best like midwives and it was the entrepreneurs and actual business managers that gave birth to actual value. They looked at me as if I were from another planet.
But you know what the biggest tragedy of it all is? Its that these kids are the brightest and best. The ones sitting around me graduated from universities like Harvard and MIT in subjects like math, physics, economics and chemistry. You know, those old fashioned fields where you need to REALLY think and analyze. Not just make pretty slides. And I used to think at least half a dozen times each day "What a waste!"
There is such a ridiculous echo chamber in these groups that everyone will parrot the latest mantra. I'll conclude with two examples -
1. Teamwork - whatever one can do, a team can do better! Or at least that's what's drilled into you. One of my favorite questions when interviewing candidates for my firm was "Tell me two examples of something that are better done individually than in a team" I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of candidates that could even attempt a decent answer (among dozens of candidates).
2. Another mantra is "leadership" - but what exactly does that mean? Are the qualities required of the US Army Chief of Staff the same as those needed by the head of Amnesty Int'l? Would a great CEO also be a great president? Is there some formulaic design for leadership? You'd be astounded at how many of the MBA types think so.
I hate to say it but I wouldn't put most of my colleagues in charge of managing a corner grocery store, let alone a large organization.
And yeah - I'd wish they stop using all that stupid jargon! In my experience, the more a person uses big important words to explain something, the less he actual understands the subject. A genius can explain a concept in a way that even a fool would understand. But a fool will explain the same in a way that even a genius would not understand.
Thanks.
My personal views are also similar. And hence wouldnt like to add anything more.
My personal views are also similar. And hence wouldnt like to add anything more.
