Barrier:
When Success Leads to Failure: Is the way we teach and shape leaders fundamentally broken?
Over the last few decades, the MBA program in particular has been heralded as giving us highly trained (or trainable) industry leaders. If you examine the web locations for most EMBA or MBA web locations, one or the whole focus of the different marketing materials suggest that these programs, indeed, are the best at producing robust corporate leaders. As the MBA diploma has proliferated over the last few decades, it’s defendable that we as an industry have been altogether successful at producing high quality managers for a great long while.
Even so, if you further examine the curricula and pedagogy across MBA programs, they are remarkably similar; and in many ways, pretty much identical (baring the differences among & between the different faculty members teaching at the different campuses). Programmatically, the way each program is shaped is slightly variable, but largely describable in about a half to a dozen different permutations.
The broad assumption, because of the overlap and redundancy, and frankly imitation and replication of leadership training and MBA curricular design across large swaths of our industry suggests that the way we are doing it IS the way to train leaders for a broad number of industries. However, might this not be a case where our collective success over time, ultimately, has led us dangerously close to failure?
Frankly, leadership training (and perhaps the MBA as a whole) has become stale. We have become complacent. We haven’t demanded more innovation from our MBA programs all the while we claim we demand it from our students. It is arguable that the leadership that our “top” programs have sent into the word – the very same programs that brought us the heads of Enron, AIG, Lehman Brothers, brought us Credit Default Swaps and the Mortgage melt down – is proof positive of this claim – that the way we teach leadership and train leaders is fundamentally broken.
I submit the existing status quo – the way MBA programs train leaders – as a barrier to improving management across the board. Might there be a different way to produce high quality leaders? Through a dialog about this barrier, I think we can come to a definable pathway forward. I don’t have a solution, but I welcome the discussion as to which might be the best way forward; or have we gone too far down the “leadership” pathway to beat a retreat to where we last truly understood high quality management?
Thanks Aaron, for raising this excellent challenge, in such a thoughtful post. While you say that you have no solutions, I think you offer several here. First you are challenging the system. Second you are engaging the rest of us in the key issues. Third you are attending conferences to look for solutions.
This is a very timely piece for me Aaron, and I hope you will continue to roll out ideas in this area. I am interested in radical changes too, and have a few ideas along the lines you write so thoughtfully here too. Two weeks ago I met with a dean who is interested in changing leadership at MBA into Innovative leadership, and it looks like I'll be using MITA teaching and assessment approaches to help make it happen.
Seems to take forever to get renewal, and yet it is people like you, and the amazing leadership you add to raise and address core issues - that helps it to happen. All the best as you move deeper into the water and count me in if I can support you in any way!
- Log in to post comments
It is not the MBA program that is the problem, it is the expectations of the people in it that is at the root of the problem. People today are taught that to succeed you have to make the most money, build the best company for the share holders, beat out the computation. The problem with the MBA's today is they and the world are looking at success in the wrong light. We can use all the big words you want but until we can see that the measure of success is measured by how you build to help society you have no success. It is not a hundred yard dash it is a marathon.
I am old enough to remember when you went to work for a company, you left your blood and sweat on the line all because you felt the company was there for you and you owed it to them to be there for them. That is all gone. Today you have to move out to move up, you have to get what you can now because you do not know what tomorrow will bring. All you have to do is look at companies like Lincoln Welding or Mag Light to see that if you think of the people first, the company second and the share holders third then you are a success.
In my humble way of thinking if you want to fix today's MBA you have to change today's expectations of the measure of success.
- Log in to post comments
Dear Ellen,
Thanks for commenting. There were a few more sessions today discussing "leadership" and "ethics" as well, but I didn't walk away with something brand new and inventive in terms of breaking the existing model. It's more of the same, and some schools toss a lot of cash at their programs to build "global" approaches to training our next generation of leaders. The danger is that if what we are doing is the wrong way to go about it, and we are training leaders in an entirely western way, might we risk doing serious harm around the globe as well?
I"m glad you found this piece timely. Any thoghts on what the new model for leadership education woud look like going forward?
- Log in to post comments
You make an interesting case for the need to revamp courses, Aaron, I agree that Leadership and Ethics seem like a terrific place to start.
One thing the MIX can offer to innovation and to minds that could help to reconfigure MBA programs, is the forum they have offered, and the structure to build trust enough to take risks for change together.
As to your question: Any thoughts on what the new model for leadership education would look like going forward?
Yes, I am helping to implement an MBA Leadership course, titled: Leading Innovation with the Brain in Mind. In addition, I just learned that a former student who took the MITA course several years ago is also proposing this approach for an entire MBA program on innovation, as he has PhD on innovation now.
Won’t bore you with details Aaron, but a few distinctives include: No lectures; social media as central; leadership components created to improve a broken part of their business; compares effective leadership approaches through original research; all assignments are evidence based and all are applications of theories – rather than memory of these; topics differ radically from typical text topics – and all will actively engage MBA learners; Gary Hamel’s and Bill George’s texts will be used; my own text (on leadership with brain in mind) which I am currently collaborating at invitation of two terrific team members will be used; learners will create the case studies used in course; both team and individual projects used by assessments will be negotiated, and differ vastly from traditional “gottcha” assessments, and will double as motivational learning and innovative growth prompts; smart skills will help to integrate hard and soft skills as tools to solve business problems and sustain innovations; final exam consists of a Celebration of Innovation – which I posted in the MIX, and which get very positive feedbacks.
‘Nuff said Aaron – and others here likely have even better ideas but that’s my 2-bits. Yours?
- Log in to post comments
This is very timely barrier topic. About a year ago I got extremely frustrated with my MBA program. My frustration bore out coursework that mirrored that undergraduate coursework. Therefore, the challenge of learning new leadership or managing models in relations to global-ness of business. In short, the MBA is a glorified undergraduate program.
When one views other disciplines, e.g. Psychology, graduate level programs encourages and challenges current thinking and finding solutions to innovative and realistic.
If you haven’t notice, I am a newly minted MBA graduate. I am a student of leadership and hope to add constructive thoughts and practices to this barrier.
- Log in to post comments
Aaron -
Thanks for the post. You are absolutely right! The current MBA program is broken. But I don't think we can rebuild it by changing courses or the way they are taught. Johns Hopkins University just made the news because they launched a new totally redesigned MBA program that's supposed to be different from status quo. Yet, when I read the program description, I saw that they only changed some minor course delivery details and left all the traditional flaws in the program.
BTW, have you looked at Mintzberg's "Managers, Not MBAs" book? He has some great ideas for what MBA programs should be...
- Log in to post comments
Ellen,Thanks for your two bits. Funny you should ask. I delivered the segment I call "Leadership and Communicating for Change" in class last evening to my current cohort of EMBA students here. And we discussed this barrier as well as my thinking on what is currently flawed with the way we deliver leaders to industry vis-a-vis the EMBA program. Instead of the usual fodder, I incorporated the work of Warner and Schmincki on "High Altitude Leadership." as it harmonizes with my thinking on Expeditionary Strategy Development: http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/sick-and-tired-or-porters-five-fo...
Even so, I rehashed the usual Blanchard situational leadership model, but what I find most disturbing about much if not all of the work on leadership, it's largely theoretical and unproven empirically [not to mention that the corresponding literature on "followership" is razor thin]. If I had a faculty job where I had some latitude to conduct some real empirical research [which is exacerbated by the Catch-22 I currently live with: how do you get a research agenda rolling if you don't have a faculty gig, but how do you get a faculty gig with out a research agenda], we might want to just pick one of the most popular models and test it. Does it hold water, or what do leaders really do [Jone Pearce tries to address this in her book OB: Real Research for Real Managers, but it's a bit more general than specifically focused on leadership]?
In my research, and forthcoming book, what I found was that leaders tasked with transformational efforts were mainly flying by the seat of their pants - model constructors would have you believe otherwise. So, there is something there, but more empirical work needs to be conducted to get our brains around this notion. It's not enough to simply suggest that this may be the case, or intuit the notion, and expect people to believe us.
Jackie, thanks for chiming in as well. I'm sorry to learn that your graduate experience was watered down. Many faculty members who teach in graduate programs also teach in undergraduate programs and slip into the easy way out of teaching by simply regurgitating their undergraduate syllabi and adding a more robust term project or one more assignment. It's a mistake and unacceptable. Graduate level course work should elevate well beyond the undergraduate experience. You should ask your dean for a refund and see what she/he says. For too many years, faculty at many schools have been given a pass for mediocre performance for a wide array of reasons; but that's best left for another post.
Matt - glad to have your two cents as usual. I was wondering why Johns Hopkins is getting into the B-school biz. It seems like the whole industry is over saturated with the exact same model - hence the reason for this post. I haven't read Mintzberg's book, but I'll have to put it on my list now.
- Log in to post comments
Thanks a lot for posting this, it really brings a few things forward.
I have been mulling over the "Corporate Social Responsibility" of the institutions providing the MBA to students. In addition, the ROI from the student perspective.
So,if you turn the lens around from what is being taught at the schools, and apply the ROI and CSR components. What can schools do to update programs as you say, and
ensure that the psychological contract between the student and school is valid? Is it the schools' responsibility to ensure their customers receive ROI on investment?
- Log in to post comments
What do the current MBA programs offer students so they continue to apply and attend?
- Log in to post comments
You have raised a powerful thought for the future of Management. I wish you had progressed beyond a sense of unease being an insider in the industry.
Is there something missing with the programme? Must be for the students are anything but Masters when they emerge. Knowledge of Finance or Marketing or Production or Ops. Research only provides the MBA an idea of where to look for problems and how to quantify them. But that is a fraction of the problem. People make up up a bulk of the problem both as those who will be effected by the solution as well those who will decide the problem and implementation of the solution. The choices are never clear. Very very often those in the driving seat go for the obvious instead of the reality, like a doctor prescribing an antibiotic instead of diagnosing the cause. The result is a mess. The same is true of the business scenario.
Senge has opined that with Systems Thinking the organization can proceed to get what it wants. Can MBAs proceed to get what they want? I have yet to come across a fresh MBA who understands the meaning of discipline leave aside know about the related skills to emerge reality. They know about perks but nothing about Knowledge flow or its importance.
I have just yesterday read a great hack on the nature of Knowlledge by Raj Kumar. It addresses an ages old problem of success. I wish that were more widely known. We are progressing more towards failure than success. Knowledge is becoming increasingly easier to acquire. The problem lies in applying it, in making quality judgments, in forming Collectives for Feedback, and in fostering Trust&Teamwork for the purpose.Till today they were tasks beyond the ambit of computers. Forget MBAs, how many practicing professionals know the ABC of applying Knowledge? Raj Kumar says his work will change the scenario. How many listened to atomic energy befor the biomb exploded?
The reality, in India at least, is that an MBA assures a certain level of intelligence and ability to communicate. These are important parameters for performance. Demand for an MBA may not have much to do with course content. As you have indicated there is not much distinction in this across institutions anyway. This indicates the reluctance to disturb a cash cow, i.e., complete disregard for experimenting to raise value addition. Perhaps the institutes were always aware that their offering was not Knowledge but a product capable of ambition and networking and opportunity management.
Dhiraj
- Log in to post comments
Tony, happy to post. Thanks for commenting. ROI is challenging to determine from a school perspective as students aren't simply customers or consumers - they hold a special place of being both a part of the essential machinery of an operation - with out them, schools are nothing - and also being intelligent consumers of the products delivered (although, I know many faculty who would argue otherwise - as in, "how can a student know if what I deliver is high quality as they don't know what's good for them until I teach it"). Even so, it behooves the institution to calculate the ROI, but sometimes the yield is 30 years out.
Let me further elaborate. In other words, we need a more robust definition of what constitutes the right formula for calculating ROI. It's not simply increase in salary pre and post MBA like some popular publications would have you believe. There are more intangibles to it, as well as over the long term, it's hard to know how one's education affects some one thirty years out. That's the difficulty of being a teacher vs. say, selling iPads. The net gain is hard to calculate of education delivered. Think back to your best elementary school teacher. Did s/he add value to your life? Possibly. Have you thanked her/him for it lately? What was their reward for having delivered a high quality education?
Patricia - great question. I'll leave that to MBA graduates to answer. I don't have an MBA, so, I'm not the best judge, but I do have my opinions about that; particularly given the social justice and CSR bent to what we do here at SF State.
Dhiraj - let me see if I grasp your commentary. Are you suggesting that the MBA is a surrogate for quality screening process by companies to ensure a quality hire? You may be onto something here. This may lead to another fundamental flaw in the far end of MBA programs - as in, what happens for our graduates, and who are the major consumers of them; read employers. If you surf about my contributions to the Mix, I think you will find some solutions that answer your earlier questions. Thanks for chiming in.
Cheers all - Oh, yeah - and all Hail the Mighty San Francisco GIANTS! Champions of Baseball here in the USA!
- Log in to post comments
I think one great solution is to hire more military. The military teaches true leadership and management and doing it incorrectly can actually get people hurt. I think the biggest thing MBA programs forget to teach is COURAGE. I'm not talking about the kind of courage our military faces everyday, but the kind of courage to actually stick up for your ideas. The trait I see missing most often from MBA leaders is the courage to hold onto your ideals and beliefs especially when that means contradicting your boss. People back down all too often and it has lead to an increase in mediocrity that, frankly, I find disturbing in our workplace.
- Log in to post comments
Failures are the part of our strategy. In most of the cases, we have found that people (leaders) those have the ability to enjoy success are also having the courage to face failure in their life. We never deny the importance of failure in our life, it helps to boost our confidence level to fight back. I would like to follow the complete description from here regarding success lead to failure. Thanks for such a wonderful article.
http://www.reginafasold.com/blog/how-to-overcome-the-fear-of-failure/
- Log in to post comments
You need to register in order to submit a comment.