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Business schools are at a crossroads. For 50 years they have focused on analytical skills, models, and statistics. But if the global economic crisis did not make it clear, its aftermath makes it painfully obvious: The existing MBA curriculum is insufficient for the challenges of the 21st century.That's at least the core finding of a new book, based on a wealth of interviews and statistics: ¨Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads¨ by Harvard Business School's Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and Patrick G. Cullen.
Why? Because, said co-author Professor Datar in an interview, ¨The landscape of business is shifting from leaders who had high authority and faced low conflict to leaders who have lower authority and face greater conflict. Leadership skills that worked in the old model are unlikely to work today.
¨MBAs need to understand how to work "through" people, how to motivate and inspire. That takes skill and practice. MBAs need to ask themselves, "How do I engage people to accomplish a task while I remain in the background?"
So what skills do MBAs need? ¨They need to have a global mindset, for example,¨ Professor Garvin said. ¨The single strongest theme we heard in our interviews,¨ he added, ¨was the need for MBA students to cultivate greater self-awareness. Executives said, 'The more an MBA understands his or her impact on others and vice-versa, the more effective he or she will be.'
So what skills do MBAs need? ¨They need to have a global mindset, for example,¨ Professor Garvin said. ¨The single strongest theme we heard in our interviews,¨ he added, ¨was the need for MBA students to cultivate greater self-awareness. Executives said, 'The more an MBA understands his or her impact on others and vice-versa, the more effective he or she will be.'
¨The second theme we heard was the need for practical skills: how to run a meeting, make a presentation, and give performance feedback. The third theme was the need for MBAs to develop a better sense of the realities of organizations within which leaders operate. Politics—issues of power, coalitions, and hidden agendas—are part of that reality.¨
One of the problems is that if MBAs are trained with an analytical focus, they will try to find the "right" answer. But organizations often prefer a "good enough" answer, as long as they can implement it effectively.
It's always satisfying to find out that one has been right all along. Since 2000, I have had the opportunity to teach a Leadership-In-Action approach at Columbia University, University St. Gallen and other business schools--precisely the leadership skills stressed by the co-authors of ¨Rethinking the MBA.¨ Download the free syllabus. And if you have contacts in business schools or universities, feel free to forward it to them.
Together, let us transform the paradigm and practice of leadership.
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Original article at Harvard Business School >>
Original article at Harvard Business School >>
Of interest is what apallingly poor leadership skills have been displayed recently by Jamie Diamond, Robert Rubin, Lawerence Summers, Timothy Geithner, and other "economic giants" now in the spotlight and under questioning for their role ion setting up up a ruinous and unchecked plutocracy in the United States. Rather than lead, they have followed the old CIA rule for spies caught in the act: "Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counteraccusations". If these gentlemen had sounder values, a firmer moral compass, and a more solid, humanistic, and compassionate focus on sound public policy, their leadership practice might have kept the economy out of the ditch.
ReplyDeleteso how would you change the mba curriculum such that future leaders have ¨sounder values, a firmer moral compass, and a more solid, humanistic, and compassionate focus,¨ as you put it so eloquently? and how do teach this stuff so that it sticks, instead of just talking about it?
ReplyDeleteAt business school I found accounting and finance to be the best (and hardest) courses. Advanced analytics, modeling, and statistics are needed for business leaders. A moral compass is needed too. But so often leadership and organizational behavior classes are lacking and don't leave people with clear take-aways (which is probably understandable, given the unique context of challenging situations.)
ReplyDeleteIn any case, more work needs to be done to legally, organizationally, and inter-personally structure incentives properly so that more humanistic goals can be achieved.
The best values advice I received while in business school were two quick remembers. After a great statistics course, one professor gave a simple reminder that we are smart people, and with hard work we would do well in our careers so we need not resort to underhanded tactics. Similarly, an accounting professor told a story of a student who devised a brilliant, but nefarious accounting model. He said, "Yes, you deserve an A for accounting skills, but you get an F as a person."
your stories show that a role model who leads by example has the power to shape the core values of emerging leaders. in my own leadership course (see the syllabus at http://www.thomaszweifel.com/Leadership-In-Action.html), i ask students to recount a time when they faced an ethical dilemma. (as you probably know, there are 4 types of ethical dilemmas: short-term vs. long-term, individual vs. group, justice vs. mercy, and honesty vs. loyalty.) one student from india told me a professor offered her an advance copy of a test so she could write a superior test and get into an ivy-league school. then the question is: how did you prioritize your values to resolve the dilemma?
ReplyDeleteNICE BLOG!!! Education is the process of bringing desirable change into the behavior of human beings. It can also be defined as the “Process of imparting or acquiring knowledge or habits through instruction or study”. Thanks for sharing a nice information.
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