2 Minute MBA!

[PM-Junkie]

I’m a tester with an education instead of an MBA.

Nope, I'm not going to rise to the bait. Sorry.

[Mich the Tester]

Nope, I'm not going to rise to the bait. Sorry.

The day I meet a truly intelligent person with an MBA I'll stop ripping the piss out of them. Maybe that's you. I rather liked your earlier observation that the problem lies in the idea that a business exists purely to make money. I just wish some of the other MBAs I meet would start to view business in a more developed and intelligent way.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Indeed. In essence, that’s actually correct, but making money continually over a period of many years involves a more developed way of thinking, involving an understanding of technology, the outside world, human relationships, social expectations and norms, political developments and so on and so on. A business which loses the goodwill of society is on the wrong course. ‘Society’ includes the customers of a business and the regulatory bodies who can wield power over a business and threaten it’s ability to earn profits.

I’ve started reading ‘The Puritan Gift’. It’s not about religion, but a fantastic book about the puritans who arrived in North America and built up their villages and businesses into highly successful organisations. The puritans believed that to be successful, a business should serve a useful purpose in society, should have and follow ideals, should involve skilled craftsmanship and should place decision making at the lowest possible level where people are qualified to make a judgment.

http://www.puritangift.com/book.html

The decline of this puritan organisational method came in the 50s and 60s with ‘scientific management’ and the rise of the MBAs; professional ‘managers’ who jump from one sector to another applying their primarily financial and statistical methods while having no knowledge of the sector or business concerned. The idea came about that someone who ran a biscuit manufacturer successfully would be just as successful at running a publisher or a bank.

Contrast this with the Rhineland style of management which involves many stakeholders in decision making; derided by US businesspeople for so long, but actually very successful in the long run.

Sod it, this is turning into one of those essays I wrote for my PGDip.

Very intersting observations M.

Milk and Cookies been keeping you awake ?

I read with interest the following :

The idea came about that someone who ran a biscuit manufacturer successfully would be just as successful at running a publisher or a bank.

Yet did not the former CIO of IBM Lou Gestner join IBM from BNabisco biscuit company and then turned IBM from near bankruptcy to pole position circa 95 n the IT World ?

[TimberWolf]

Yet did not the former CIO of IBM Lou Gestner join IBM from BNabisco biscuit company and then turned IBM from near bankruptcy to pole position circa 95 n the IT World ?

Who brought them to 'near bankruptcy'? And was the turnaround achieved by sacking a, erm, select group?

[Mich the Tester]

Very intersting observations M.

Milk and Cookies been keeping you awake ?

I read with interest the following :

The idea came about that someone who ran a biscuit manufacturer successfully would be just as successful at running a publisher or a bank.

Yet did not the former CIO of IBM Lou Gestner join IBM from BNabisco biscuit company and then turned IBM from near bankruptcy to pole position circa 95 n the IT World ?

Perchance he did, but in any field you'll see a curve where some do well and others fail. For every Lou Gerstner there are plenty of others whose lack of knowledge about a particular industry led to the downfall of the business.

I also somewhat object to the idea that a business 'makes money'. You can't 'make' money, you can only 'make' utility or add value. If you nail some planks together to make a table, you've made something useful for which someone will hopefully pay. They pay for the utility that the table provides and you act of adding value to the timber. A trader who breaks up a large production batch into small packages that the customers need adds vlue and makes utility for both supplier, who wants to produce efficently, and buyer who needs only a certain amount.

But herein lies the problem; recently people thought you could actually 'make' money without adding value or creating utility but simply by betting on other people trying to 'make' money.

[MPwannadecentincome]

But herein lies the problem; recently people thought you could actually 'make' money without adding value or creating utility but simply by betting on other people trying to 'make' money.

So what do bookies do?

[Mich the Tester]

So what do bookies do?

They provide entertainment for people who want to bet on things.

Unfortunately bankers started doing pretty much the same thing.

[PM-Junkie]

The day I meet a truly intelligent person with an MBA I'll stop ripping the piss out of them. Maybe that's you. I rather liked your earlier observation that the problem lies in the idea that a business exists purely to make money. I just wish some of the other MBAs I meet would start to view business in a more developed and intelligent way.

The problem isn't the MBA per se (depending on where you do it of course), the problem is the people doing them. I did mine purely to gain knowledge and to learn what my clients were talking about and where they were coming from - most people do them as a career step ladder. The problem with that is they come off the course thinking they are god's gift, whereas all they have done is akin to a carpenter buying a saw. It's what you do with it that is important, not the fact that you have one.

But to call holders of MBAs unintelligent is very disingenuous - any postgraduate degree requires a high degree of intelligence. I'll grant you that most of them have their head up their backside - but that trait certainly isn't limited just to people who hold MBA's

[Mich the Tester]

The problem isn't the MBA per se (depending on where you do it of course), the problem is the people doing them. I did mine purely to gain knowledge and to learn what my clients were talking about and where they were coming from - most people do them as a career step ladder. The problem with that is they come off the course thinking they are god's gift, whereas all they have done is akin to a carpenter buying a saw. It's what you do with it that is important, not the fact that you have one.

But to call holders of MBAs unintelligent is very disingenuous - any postgraduate degree requires a high degree of intelligence. I'll grant you that most of them have their head up their backside - but that trait certainly isn't limited just to people who hold MBA's

Fair comments. It's simply that when I look at the people I meet who have MBA's I struggle to believe that they have had to apply the same academic rigour as I apply to getting an MSc. As I say, perhaps there are clever people with MBAs, and perhaps the people I deal with are clever, but so arrogant that they've lost the ability to question their own ideas. Surely part of the point of postgraduate study is the ability to view one's own ideas critically and take account of the objections others might raise, and not to simply follow the latest management orthodoxy or fad? How about the ability to seek out creative approaches to solving problems instead of the knee-jerk approaches that too many senior managers take?

Maybe the MBA could be more credible if it was turned into a professional qualification with a continuous education requirement, so that the idiots who give it a bad name can be weeded out?

I really think the MBA is in danger of losing credibility among highly educated people. That would not be a good thing; I think it's important to have management education, but perhaps it's time to take some new steps beyond the conventional MBA.

[MPwannadecentincome]

How about the ability to seek out creative approaches to solving problems instead of the knee-jerk approaches that too many senior managers take?

Some of them are (were) too scared too particularly if they worked for Richard Fuld - so I have read in the press. Being a senior manager doesn't give you the authority to actually do what you want to - you still have to convince the guys (idiots?) at the top.