,I NTRODUCTION
This is a book about management education that is about management. I believe that both are
deeply troubled, but neither can be changed without changing the other.
The trouble with “management” education is that it is business education, and leaves a distorted
impression of management. Management is a practice that has to blend a good deal of craft
(experience) with a certain amount of art (insight) and some science (analysis). An education that
overemphasizes the science encourages a style of managing I call “calculating” or, if the graduates
believe themselves to be artists, as increasing numbers now do, a related style I call “heroic.”
Enough of them, enough of that. We don’t need heroes in positions of influence any more than
technocrats. We need balanced, dedicated people who practice a style of managing that can be
called “engaging.” Such people believe that their purpose is to leave behind stronger organizations,
not just higher share prices. They do not display hubris in the name of leadership.
The development of such managers will require another approach to management education,
likewise engaging, that encourages practicing managers to learn from their own experience. In
other words, we need to build the craft and the art of managing into management education and
thereby bring these back into the practice of managing.
Follow the chapter titles of this book into the chapters, and you will read about management
education—Part I on what I believe is wrong with it, Part II on how it could be changed. But look
within the chapters, and you will read about management itself—again what I believe is wrong
with it and how it could be changed. To pick up on the subtitle, here we take a hard look at the soft
practice of managing, alongside that of management development. There are plenty of books that
provide soft looks at the hard practice of managing. I believe we need to face management as it is,
in a serious way; it is too important to be left to most of what appears on the shelves of bookstores.
Easy formulas and quick fixes are the problems in management today, not the solutions.
I have written this book for all thoughtful readers interested in management education and
practice: developers, educators, managers, and just plain interested observers. I mean this to
include MBA applicants, students, and graduates, at least ones who harbor doubts about this
degree. If what I write here is true, then they especially should be reading this book.
2
Readers interested in management education will get the messages about management practice
as they go along. Readers interested in management itself—this hard look at that soft practice—
can focus on particular parts of the book. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 contain the essence of this material.
Before reading this, however, I suggest you look at the introduction to Part I and the first part of
Chapter 1 (pages Part One–"EXPERIENCE" IN MBA ADMISSIONS) as well as, from Chapter
2, pages Management By Analysis–Infiltrating Ethics, The Case for Cases–Secondhandedness,
and The Impression Left by MBA Education. Beyond Chapter 6, I recommend pages 259-
Proposition 7. All of the above should be blended into a process of “experienced reflection.” and
especially Toward Engaging Management–Table 9.4 TWO WAYS TO MANAGE in Chapter 9,
,pages Module I: Managing Self—The Reflective Mindset–Table 11.1 DIMENSIONS OF THE
MODULES in Chapter 11, and pages Developing Managers IV–IMPact and Does the IMPM
Benefit? in Chapter 13.
I should add that there are all kinds of illustrative materials in the boxes that accompany the
text. Reading these will give much of the flavor of my arguments.
Part I of this book is called “Not MBAs.” Some people may see it as a rant; I wrote it as a serious
critique of what I believe to be a deeply flawed practice. If you have anything to do with MBAs,
whether hiring them, supporting them, teaching them, or being one, I urge you to read this, if only
to entertain some dark thought about this ostensibly sparkling degree. And if you are a manager or
have anything to do with managers (who doesn’t in this world?), I hope that reading this will open
your eyes to a vitally important activity that is going out of social control.
The chapters of this first part flow as follows. What I call conventional MBA programs, which
are mostly for young people with little if any managerial experience (“Wrong People,” Chapter 1),
because they are unable to use art or craft, emphasize science, in the form of analysis and technique
(“Wrong Ways,” Chapter 2). That leaves their graduates with the false impression that they have
been trained as managers, which has had a corrupting effect on the education and the practice of
management as well as on the organizations and societies in which it is practiced (“Wrong
Consequences,” Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6).
There has been a lot of hype about changes taking place in prominent MBA programs in recent
years. Don’t believe it (“New MBAs?” Chapter 7). The MBA is a 1908 degree based on a 1950s
strategy. The real innovations in management education, mostly in England but hardly recognized
in America, serve as a bridge from the critique of Part I to the positive ideas for “Developing
Managers” in Part II.
There is a great and unfortunate divide between management development and management
education. While a full discussion of management development would require a book unto itself,
the presentation of a framework of basic practices (“Management Development in Practice,”
Chapter 8) can open up vistas for management education.
3
The discussion of the book to this point suggests a set of general principles by which
management education can be reconceived (“Developing Management Education,” Chapter 9).
These principles have been brought to life in a family of programs that can take management
education and development to a new place, by enabling managers to reflect on their own
experience in the light of insightful concepts (five aspects of “Developing Managers,” Chapters
10 through 14). No one can create a leader in a classroom. But existing managers can significantly
improve their practice in a thoughtful classroom that makes use of those experiences.
All this suggests that the business schools themselves need to be reconceived, including a
metamorphosis into management schools (“Developing True Schools of Management,” Chapter
15). But will these agents of change be able to change?
, 5
PART ONE
Not MBAs
IT IS TIME to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are—or else to close them
down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the
practice of managing. Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management
is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham.
It is time that our business schools gave proper attention to management.
This may seem like a strange contention at a time when MBA programs are at the height of their
popularity, when MBA graduates are at the pinnacle of their success, and when American business,
which has relied so heavily on this credential, seems to have attained its greatest stage of
development. I shall argue that much of this success is delusory, that our approach to educating
leaders is undermining our leadership, with dire economic and social consequences.
Every decade in the United States alone, almost one million people with a credential called the
MBA descend on the economy, most with little firsthand knowledge of customers and workers,
products and processes. There they expect to manage people who have that knowledge, which they
gained in the only way possible—through intensive personal experience. But lacking that
credential, such people are increasingly relegated to a “slow track” where they are subjected to the
“leadership” of people who lack the legitimacy to lead.
6
Considered as education for management, conventional MBA programs train the wrong people
in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences. This is the argument I shall pursue in Part I of
this book. It contains seven chapters. The first is about the wrong people, the second about the
wrong ways, the next four about the wrong consequences. Chapter 7 considers recent changes in
MBA programs, concluding that most of these are cosmetic. A “dominant design” established
itself in the 1960s and continues to hold most of this education firmly in its grip. The notable
exceptions are found mostly in England, whose innovations provide a bridge to Part II of this book.
Some clarifications to begin. First, by “conventional” MBA, I mean full-time programs that take
relatively young people, generally in their twenties, and train them mostly in the business
functions, out of context—in other words, independent of any specific experience in management.
This describes most MBA programs today, in the United States and around the world. With a few
exceptions, the remaining ones (usually called EMBAs) take more experienced people on a part-
time basis and then do much the same thing. In other words, they train the right people in the wrong
ways with the wrong consequences. That is because they mostly fail to use the experience these
people have.
This is a book about management education that is about management. I believe that both are
deeply troubled, but neither can be changed without changing the other.
The trouble with “management” education is that it is business education, and leaves a distorted
impression of management. Management is a practice that has to blend a good deal of craft
(experience) with a certain amount of art (insight) and some science (analysis). An education that
overemphasizes the science encourages a style of managing I call “calculating” or, if the graduates
believe themselves to be artists, as increasing numbers now do, a related style I call “heroic.”
Enough of them, enough of that. We don’t need heroes in positions of influence any more than
technocrats. We need balanced, dedicated people who practice a style of managing that can be
called “engaging.” Such people believe that their purpose is to leave behind stronger organizations,
not just higher share prices. They do not display hubris in the name of leadership.
The development of such managers will require another approach to management education,
likewise engaging, that encourages practicing managers to learn from their own experience. In
other words, we need to build the craft and the art of managing into management education and
thereby bring these back into the practice of managing.
Follow the chapter titles of this book into the chapters, and you will read about management
education—Part I on what I believe is wrong with it, Part II on how it could be changed. But look
within the chapters, and you will read about management itself—again what I believe is wrong
with it and how it could be changed. To pick up on the subtitle, here we take a hard look at the soft
practice of managing, alongside that of management development. There are plenty of books that
provide soft looks at the hard practice of managing. I believe we need to face management as it is,
in a serious way; it is too important to be left to most of what appears on the shelves of bookstores.
Easy formulas and quick fixes are the problems in management today, not the solutions.
I have written this book for all thoughtful readers interested in management education and
practice: developers, educators, managers, and just plain interested observers. I mean this to
include MBA applicants, students, and graduates, at least ones who harbor doubts about this
degree. If what I write here is true, then they especially should be reading this book.
2
Readers interested in management education will get the messages about management practice
as they go along. Readers interested in management itself—this hard look at that soft practice—
can focus on particular parts of the book. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 contain the essence of this material.
Before reading this, however, I suggest you look at the introduction to Part I and the first part of
Chapter 1 (pages Part One–"EXPERIENCE" IN MBA ADMISSIONS) as well as, from Chapter
2, pages Management By Analysis–Infiltrating Ethics, The Case for Cases–Secondhandedness,
and The Impression Left by MBA Education. Beyond Chapter 6, I recommend pages 259-
Proposition 7. All of the above should be blended into a process of “experienced reflection.” and
especially Toward Engaging Management–Table 9.4 TWO WAYS TO MANAGE in Chapter 9,
,pages Module I: Managing Self—The Reflective Mindset–Table 11.1 DIMENSIONS OF THE
MODULES in Chapter 11, and pages Developing Managers IV–IMPact and Does the IMPM
Benefit? in Chapter 13.
I should add that there are all kinds of illustrative materials in the boxes that accompany the
text. Reading these will give much of the flavor of my arguments.
Part I of this book is called “Not MBAs.” Some people may see it as a rant; I wrote it as a serious
critique of what I believe to be a deeply flawed practice. If you have anything to do with MBAs,
whether hiring them, supporting them, teaching them, or being one, I urge you to read this, if only
to entertain some dark thought about this ostensibly sparkling degree. And if you are a manager or
have anything to do with managers (who doesn’t in this world?), I hope that reading this will open
your eyes to a vitally important activity that is going out of social control.
The chapters of this first part flow as follows. What I call conventional MBA programs, which
are mostly for young people with little if any managerial experience (“Wrong People,” Chapter 1),
because they are unable to use art or craft, emphasize science, in the form of analysis and technique
(“Wrong Ways,” Chapter 2). That leaves their graduates with the false impression that they have
been trained as managers, which has had a corrupting effect on the education and the practice of
management as well as on the organizations and societies in which it is practiced (“Wrong
Consequences,” Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6).
There has been a lot of hype about changes taking place in prominent MBA programs in recent
years. Don’t believe it (“New MBAs?” Chapter 7). The MBA is a 1908 degree based on a 1950s
strategy. The real innovations in management education, mostly in England but hardly recognized
in America, serve as a bridge from the critique of Part I to the positive ideas for “Developing
Managers” in Part II.
There is a great and unfortunate divide between management development and management
education. While a full discussion of management development would require a book unto itself,
the presentation of a framework of basic practices (“Management Development in Practice,”
Chapter 8) can open up vistas for management education.
3
The discussion of the book to this point suggests a set of general principles by which
management education can be reconceived (“Developing Management Education,” Chapter 9).
These principles have been brought to life in a family of programs that can take management
education and development to a new place, by enabling managers to reflect on their own
experience in the light of insightful concepts (five aspects of “Developing Managers,” Chapters
10 through 14). No one can create a leader in a classroom. But existing managers can significantly
improve their practice in a thoughtful classroom that makes use of those experiences.
All this suggests that the business schools themselves need to be reconceived, including a
metamorphosis into management schools (“Developing True Schools of Management,” Chapter
15). But will these agents of change be able to change?
, 5
PART ONE
Not MBAs
IT IS TIME to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are—or else to close them
down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the
practice of managing. Using the classroom to help develop people already practicing management
is a fine idea, but pretending to create managers out of people who have never managed is a sham.
It is time that our business schools gave proper attention to management.
This may seem like a strange contention at a time when MBA programs are at the height of their
popularity, when MBA graduates are at the pinnacle of their success, and when American business,
which has relied so heavily on this credential, seems to have attained its greatest stage of
development. I shall argue that much of this success is delusory, that our approach to educating
leaders is undermining our leadership, with dire economic and social consequences.
Every decade in the United States alone, almost one million people with a credential called the
MBA descend on the economy, most with little firsthand knowledge of customers and workers,
products and processes. There they expect to manage people who have that knowledge, which they
gained in the only way possible—through intensive personal experience. But lacking that
credential, such people are increasingly relegated to a “slow track” where they are subjected to the
“leadership” of people who lack the legitimacy to lead.
6
Considered as education for management, conventional MBA programs train the wrong people
in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences. This is the argument I shall pursue in Part I of
this book. It contains seven chapters. The first is about the wrong people, the second about the
wrong ways, the next four about the wrong consequences. Chapter 7 considers recent changes in
MBA programs, concluding that most of these are cosmetic. A “dominant design” established
itself in the 1960s and continues to hold most of this education firmly in its grip. The notable
exceptions are found mostly in England, whose innovations provide a bridge to Part II of this book.
Some clarifications to begin. First, by “conventional” MBA, I mean full-time programs that take
relatively young people, generally in their twenties, and train them mostly in the business
functions, out of context—in other words, independent of any specific experience in management.
This describes most MBA programs today, in the United States and around the world. With a few
exceptions, the remaining ones (usually called EMBAs) take more experienced people on a part-
time basis and then do much the same thing. In other words, they train the right people in the wrong
ways with the wrong consequences. That is because they mostly fail to use the experience these
people have.
