7 ms·

Drucker, the person most attributed with founding modern management, himself stated that you cannot teach management: Prof Drucker expounds: "Teaching 23-year-

by mbesto 9y ago

Drucker, the person most attributed with founding modern management, himself stated that you cannot teach management: Prof Drucker expounds: "Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them management." His view is that management is neither an art nor a science but a practice - in which achievement is measured not by academic awards but by results. https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e2511c8 https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e251...

walshemj 9y ago
The original idea of bschools where they where for mid career mangers where considered high flyers. Now it seems the higher level degree status is used to game visa applications. Maybe a MBA should only be issued if you can prove 10 or 15 years real world work experience which would return the MBA to its roots as a course for experienced people
- baybal2 9y ago
  No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies background.
  - vostok 9y ago
    In the US typical average age at matriculation is around 27-28 at top business schools and they have formal/informal work experience requirements. People who get in straight out of college are typically doing 2+2 or similar programs although I know that submatriculation is technically possible at Wharton. To your comment about people getting in with no undergraduate studies, this is extremely uncommon. The exceptions tend to be people like Blake Gottesman who went on to be very successful.
  - gaius 9y ago
    No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience. The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with
    - cjalmeida 9y ago
      If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously. Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense. Or, more likely, a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people; b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years being part of a team reporting directly to the C-level executives of Fortune 500 corps, solving quite complex problems.
      - coryrc 9y ago
        Or, c) principal-agent problem in action
        ahartmetz 9y ago
        I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but what I heard is that the most common task of management consulting is to sell an already made decision to the rest of the company. The consultant appears neutral and is expected to have good presentation and sales skills. The analysis technique and inputs can be chosen to yield the desired result. The more expensive the consultant the better for credibility. So it's obviously a great way to make money. The principal-agent problem is thus between the company and the person hiring the management consultant(s).
        cjalmeida 9y ago
        Backfilling a CEO idea happens sometimes. And that's not bad per se. They still need to see if their idea holds water, and consultants have great presentation skills that the CEO can leverage trying to explain the idea to stakeholders. But most of the time, at least the top consultancies, they will call out stupid ideas. They have their own reputation to keep and shareholders, the guys actually paying for the party, don't usually like being made fools constantly. Or, most commonly, be hired to shed some light on a bunch of seemingly equally good ideas. Business strategy issues hardly have black or white and sometimes the recommendations fail. People in the company make sure to publicize the consultancy involvement as a cover your a strategy, but hardly share the credit when things work. About the parent comment on principal-agent problem. He must be a management consultant for throwing a buzzword around in a discussion and dropping the mic :)
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    In the UK there are MBA programs in every town that are willing to admit anyone who will pay. A provincial backwater I know of has recently opened a University (with various associations with other real institutions) and the first thing they opened was a business school. A person I know well with a poor academic background, no management experience and no-undergraduate degree joined an MBA program at a similar school. This person had just come into the finances necessary and wanted to jack in their job. After a year they realized that they were wasting their time, and this was not the route to management they were hoping for. In fact the school was packed with people from similar backgrounds, people trying to fill a few years. I advised them to do something else at the beginning which the subject took as me saying they were not capable. And this points at the fundamental dishonesty of the MBA at an institution like this. These people took this guys money in order to fill seats when they knew he was ill prepared for post-grad study and that the MBA, even if he got it, was not going to open any doors to him. It interests me that if you look at the CV's of board members at UK companies, take the FTSE 100 for instance and I don't see a lot of MBA's. Overwhemingy I would say the normal route into top level management in the UK is to do any undergraduate degree at a decent institution, then to join one of the Big Four accountancy firms as a trainee auditor. Throughout my career, in private business, listed companies, and private equity, I see people who are ex-Big4 in top positions. Outside of that there are lawyers, a few engineers and a few sales people. But if I were to be advising a 16 year old how to get into management, I have no doubt that I would be suggesting doing a degree they enjoy and using it to get into a Big-4 auditor.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      That’s a great point. Auditors are in a unique position as they observe and measure success and failure without making business decisions.
      - jimnotgym 9y ago
        It is also interesting that some UK accounting qualifications cover so much MBA type material, that it is possible to get a conversion onto an MBA in some accelerated amount of time. The big difference with accounting qualifications (ICAEW/CIMA etc) is that they have a really serious practical requirement including years of on-the-job experience. I guess that is a world away from an MBA
- Bombthecat 9y ago
  The executive MBA is kinda like that.
analog31 9y ago
This is the conventional wisdom in the "real world" as well. There is expected to be a big difference between getting an MBA straight out of undergrad, and getting one after a few years of business experience. On the other hand, this could just be an age bias, e.g., someone with more experience also happens to be older, but their "experience" might not have formed them into a competent manager or leader. In fact, it's actually a toss-up. Mind you, somebody has to do the accounting. We still need clerks, though they have different titles now. I tend to see middle management as being largely an information processing task: Collecting, organizing, analyzing, and communicating information. The MBA's learn how to communicate in a more or less standardized way, like having a standard API for a computer program. I've been a middle manager, but do not have an MBA. Where managers, including MBA's, tend to be weak, are in the areas of leadership and decision-making. You can put someone through business school, but it's a toss-up whether you can turn them into a leader.
speleding 9y ago
The top MBA programs require that applicants have at least 4 years of work experience.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Most accredited MBA programs do too. This quote about 23 year olds is attacking a straw man.
- mdorazio 9y ago
  Source? HBS has no such requirement (a friend got in with just 3 years of management consulting experience). Here's a quote straight from the Stanford GSB page: "Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program." Work experience isn't even listed as a requirement on the Wharton application. Etc. Perhaps you're referring to European programs?
  - speleding 9y ago
    They may not all list it as a hard requirement, but a school like MIT sloan says on their site applicants have an average of 5 years of work experience [1]. You can maybe get accepted with less than 4 but you would need relevant other life experience. (I'm pretty sure HBS listed 4 years when I applied decades ago, but I cannot find a reference) [1] http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment-reports/mba-current-report/ http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment...
    - mdorazio 9y ago
      Ah, that explains it. The business school cohort average age has dropped considerably since you applied. These days it's typical to apply with 2-4 years of real-world experience (acceptance & start add a year to that) and uncommon to apply/be accepted if you're over 30. Keep in mind that average experience statements like the sloan one are heavily skewed by the few old-timers in the programs who have been working for a long time in comparison to the kids who make up the majority of cohorts. [1] https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQE7CzE_-7bwNA/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0?e=2123917200&v=beta&t=bspvZvELY4ls5S-5F9uZTRoTVyTaIycQKISXlB0QqiA https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQE7CzE_-7bwNA/articl...
duxup 9y ago
That line reminds me of the old FedEx MBA advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA I've certainly had plenty of run ins with young MBA n00bs who have just so little experience in the world that they're not just somewhat a negative, you can't even communicate with them. A company I worked at loved hiring them and putting MBA grads under some managers and giving them tasks. Most seemed to feel there were decisions to make and they were going to make them (hey they have an MBA) and that was that. Some simply didn't show any curiosity about anything, they didn't ask questions so they just never knew and thus their decisions were almost always flawed. One wonderful fellow was given the task of making the schedule for a call center type environment of about 20 or so people. People would email him schedule preferences and he would make the schedule. This was a fairly straightforward task that had been done for many many years. Except that he never responded to emails and as far as anyone could tell the end product didn't reflect anyone's preferences. It was actually hard to get him to understand that other than responding to his boss's emails... he needed to respond to those who were not his boss. In addition we had to teach him that scheduling someone an overnight shift and then a day shift, and then a night shift and so on was a bad idea. These guys were so stuck in their MBA world that it really was difficult just to COMMUNICATE with them as there was no shared experience. I don't think he ever had an actual job of any consequence, and his internships were with other MBA type folks doing MBA things with other MBA people. I've no doubt there are young folks graduating with MBAs who would and will do great, but if you're talking about professional management and such roles IMO most people need a hell of a lot of life experience before they know what they are doing.
- pm90 9y ago
  This is a common problem with folks who start in management roles right after college. It sounds incredibly trivial, but you have to kinda be on the other side ... "be managed", to better understand the difference b/w good management and bad. I also had some very incorrect paradigms about the world which I was able to correct in the first couple of years of work (and which I continue to do today whenever I find them to be wrong). Not having the opportunity to do so is a great disservice to these folks... they may never realize some very simple things that most people find rather trivial but they seem to have great difficulty understanding. e.g. that person who never responds to emails. If I were to guess, it sounds like he has a very inflated sense of self (not common right after college, especially from a top university). It is likely he thinks whatever he does is AWESOME and the boss will realize this and he doesn't need to communicate with the rest of the team.
heedlessly3 9y ago
The average entering MBA student is 28 years old the top universities. 23 year MBAs probably went to an no-name online degree program
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The average entering MBA student is 28 years old the top universities. That sounds about right for the mean, with the median a few years younger, and then a smattering spread out of a larger range above the median than below. > 23 year MBAs probably went to an no-name online degree program No, they are probably younger tier, direct entry from undergrad students at conventional insitutions. No name online MBAs Target mid-career people, and are probably much older.
  - heedlessly3 9y ago
    >No, they are probably younger tier, direct entry from undergrad students at conventional insitutions. No name online MBAs Target mid-career people, and are probably much older. Name 1 reputable MBA program which directly accepts undergrad students in this decade.

by mbesto 9y ago

walshemj 9y ago

The original idea of bschools where they where for mid career mangers where considered high flyers. Now it seems the higher level degree status is used to game visa applications. Maybe a MBA should only be issued if you can prove 10 or 15 years real world work experience which would return the MBA to its roots as a course for experienced people

baybal2 9y ago
No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies background.
- vostok 9y ago
  In the US typical average age at matriculation is around 27-28 at top business schools and they have formal/informal work experience requirements. People who get in straight out of college are typically doing 2+2 or similar programs although I know that submatriculation is technically possible at Wharton. To your comment about people getting in with no undergraduate studies, this is extremely uncommon. The exceptions tend to be people like Blake Gottesman who went on to be very successful.
- gaius 9y ago
  No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience. The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with
  - cjalmeida 9y ago
    If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously. Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense. Or, more likely, a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people; b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years being part of a team reporting directly to the C-level executives of Fortune 500 corps, solving quite complex problems.
    - coryrc 9y ago
      Or, c) principal-agent problem in action
      - ahartmetz 9y ago
        I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but what I heard is that the most common task of management consulting is to sell an already made decision to the rest of the company. The consultant appears neutral and is expected to have good presentation and sales skills. The analysis technique and inputs can be chosen to yield the desired result. The more expensive the consultant the better for credibility. So it's obviously a great way to make money. The principal-agent problem is thus between the company and the person hiring the management consultant(s).
        cjalmeida 9y ago
        Backfilling a CEO idea happens sometimes. And that's not bad per se. They still need to see if their idea holds water, and consultants have great presentation skills that the CEO can leverage trying to explain the idea to stakeholders. But most of the time, at least the top consultancies, they will call out stupid ideas. They have their own reputation to keep and shareholders, the guys actually paying for the party, don't usually like being made fools constantly. Or, most commonly, be hired to shed some light on a bunch of seemingly equally good ideas. Business strategy issues hardly have black or white and sometimes the recommendations fail. People in the company make sure to publicize the consultancy involvement as a cover your a strategy, but hardly share the credit when things work. About the parent comment on principal-agent problem. He must be a management consultant for throwing a buzzword around in a discussion and dropping the mic :)
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  In the UK there are MBA programs in every town that are willing to admit anyone who will pay. A provincial backwater I know of has recently opened a University (with various associations with other real institutions) and the first thing they opened was a business school. A person I know well with a poor academic background, no management experience and no-undergraduate degree joined an MBA program at a similar school. This person had just come into the finances necessary and wanted to jack in their job. After a year they realized that they were wasting their time, and this was not the route to management they were hoping for. In fact the school was packed with people from similar backgrounds, people trying to fill a few years. I advised them to do something else at the beginning which the subject took as me saying they were not capable. And this points at the fundamental dishonesty of the MBA at an institution like this. These people took this guys money in order to fill seats when they knew he was ill prepared for post-grad study and that the MBA, even if he got it, was not going to open any doors to him. It interests me that if you look at the CV's of board members at UK companies, take the FTSE 100 for instance and I don't see a lot of MBA's. Overwhemingy I would say the normal route into top level management in the UK is to do any undergraduate degree at a decent institution, then to join one of the Big Four accountancy firms as a trainee auditor. Throughout my career, in private business, listed companies, and private equity, I see people who are ex-Big4 in top positions. Outside of that there are lawyers, a few engineers and a few sales people. But if I were to be advising a 16 year old how to get into management, I have no doubt that I would be suggesting doing a degree they enjoy and using it to get into a Big-4 auditor.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    That’s a great point. Auditors are in a unique position as they observe and measure success and failure without making business decisions.
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      It is also interesting that some UK accounting qualifications cover so much MBA type material, that it is possible to get a conversion onto an MBA in some accelerated amount of time. The big difference with accounting qualifications (ICAEW/CIMA etc) is that they have a really serious practical requirement including years of on-the-job experience. I guess that is a world away from an MBA
Bombthecat 9y ago
The executive MBA is kinda like that.

analog31 9y ago

This is the conventional wisdom in the "real world" as well. There is expected to be a big difference between getting an MBA straight out of undergrad, and getting one after a few years of business experience. On the other hand, this could just be an age bias, e.g., someone with more experience also happens to be older, but their "experience" might not have formed them into a competent manager or leader. In fact, it's actually a toss-up. Mind you, somebody has to do the accounting. We still need clerks, though they have different titles now. I tend to see middle management as being largely an information processing task: Collecting, organizing, analyzing, and communicating information. The MBA's learn how to communicate in a more or less standardized way, like having a standard API for a computer program. I've been a middle manager, but do not have an MBA. Where managers, including MBA's, tend to be weak, are in the areas of leadership and decision-making. You can put someone through business school, but it's a toss-up whether you can turn them into a leader.

speleding 9y ago

The top MBA programs require that applicants have at least 4 years of work experience.

bduerst 9y ago
Most accredited MBA programs do too. This quote about 23 year olds is attacking a straw man.
mdorazio 9y ago
Source? HBS has no such requirement (a friend got in with just 3 years of management consulting experience). Here's a quote straight from the Stanford GSB page: "Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program." Work experience isn't even listed as a requirement on the Wharton application. Etc. Perhaps you're referring to European programs?
- speleding 9y ago
  They may not all list it as a hard requirement, but a school like MIT sloan says on their site applicants have an average of 5 years of work experience [1]. You can maybe get accepted with less than 4 but you would need relevant other life experience. (I'm pretty sure HBS listed 4 years when I applied decades ago, but I cannot find a reference) [1] http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment-reports/mba-current-report/ http://mitsloan.mit.edu/career-development-office/employment...
  - mdorazio 9y ago
    Ah, that explains it. The business school cohort average age has dropped considerably since you applied. These days it's typical to apply with 2-4 years of real-world experience (acceptance & start add a year to that) and uncommon to apply/be accepted if you're over 30. Keep in mind that average experience statements like the sloan one are heavily skewed by the few old-timers in the programs who have been working for a long time in comparison to the kids who make up the majority of cohorts. [1] https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQE7CzE_-7bwNA/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0?e=2123917200&v=beta&t=bspvZvELY4ls5S-5F9uZTRoTVyTaIycQKISXlB0QqiA https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/C4E12AQE7CzE_-7bwNA/articl...

duxup 9y ago

That line reminds me of the old FedEx MBA advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA I've certainly had plenty of run ins with young MBA n00bs who have just so little experience in the world that they're not just somewhat a negative, you can't even communicate with them. A company I worked at loved hiring them and putting MBA grads under some managers and giving them tasks. Most seemed to feel there were decisions to make and they were going to make them (hey they have an MBA) and that was that. Some simply didn't show any curiosity about anything, they didn't ask questions so they just never knew and thus their decisions were almost always flawed. One wonderful fellow was given the task of making the schedule for a call center type environment of about 20 or so people. People would email him schedule preferences and he would make the schedule. This was a fairly straightforward task that had been done for many many years. Except that he never responded to emails and as far as anyone could tell the end product didn't reflect anyone's preferences. It was actually hard to get him to understand that other than responding to his boss's emails... he needed to respond to those who were not his boss. In addition we had to teach him that scheduling someone an overnight shift and then a day shift, and then a night shift and so on was a bad idea. These guys were so stuck in their MBA world that it really was difficult just to COMMUNICATE with them as there was no shared experience. I don't think he ever had an actual job of any consequence, and his internships were with other MBA type folks doing MBA things with other MBA people. I've no doubt there are young folks graduating with MBAs who would and will do great, but if you're talking about professional management and such roles IMO most people need a hell of a lot of life experience before they know what they are doing.

pm90 9y ago
This is a common problem with folks who start in management roles right after college. It sounds incredibly trivial, but you have to kinda be on the other side ... "be managed", to better understand the difference b/w good management and bad. I also had some very incorrect paradigms about the world which I was able to correct in the first couple of years of work (and which I continue to do today whenever I find them to be wrong). Not having the opportunity to do so is a great disservice to these folks... they may never realize some very simple things that most people find rather trivial but they seem to have great difficulty understanding. e.g. that person who never responds to emails. If I were to guess, it sounds like he has a very inflated sense of self (not common right after college, especially from a top university). It is likely he thinks whatever he does is AWESOME and the boss will realize this and he doesn't need to communicate with the rest of the team.

heedlessly3 9y ago

The average entering MBA student is 28 years old the top universities. 23 year MBAs probably went to an no-name online degree program

dragonwriter 9y ago
> The average entering MBA student is 28 years old the top universities. That sounds about right for the mean, with the median a few years younger, and then a smattering spread out of a larger range above the median than below. > 23 year MBAs probably went to an no-name online degree program No, they are probably younger tier, direct entry from undergrad students at conventional insitutions. No name online MBAs Target mid-career people, and are probably much older.
- heedlessly3 9y ago
  >No, they are probably younger tier, direct entry from undergrad students at conventional insitutions. No name online MBAs Target mid-career people, and are probably much older. Name 1 reputable MBA program which directly accepts undergrad students in this decade.