Managing Leadership^®

More businesses are learning that an MBA degree is often really little more than a congeries of entry-level skills programs in a portfolio of specialized functions. MBAs, for example, learn the basics of finance, accounting, project management, and the like. However, they are masters of none of these areas. They are also increasingly exposed to “creative thinking,” “leadership,” and “decision-making process” training programs. Unfortunately, they are masters of none of these areas, either.

Of course, it is not the intent of an MBA program to make a graduate a “master of all trades.” The idea is to expose the MBA to these vital business function areas in order to enable her or him to understand, to a fairly practicable level, how businesses work both at the functional level and at the level where these disparate functions are integrated. Nevertheless, a growing concern remains that the MBA is failing in both of these areas.

There are two basic reasons for this. One is that the “hard” functions - accounting, project engineering, and so on, are more quantifiable, conceptually definable and transferable, and easier to measure. It is easier to show both students and employers hard stats based on student performance in these areas. Furthermore, they possess the important cache today of being presented via the latest computing and communication technologies. It is also easier for high-octane professors to make their careers in research in fields that lend themselves to statistical work.

The other is that the “soft” functions, such as the peculiar fields of “creativity” and individual leadership - even decision-making - possess neither a consensus regarding what they really are, nor a quantifiable means of teaching or measuring them, or of presenting student performance.

As a result, the “hard” functions continue to get the emphasis, and the “soft” ones are continually being experimented with to a point that simply exposes the general lack of understanding of them and of their role in the relationship between management and organizations.

As a consequence of that, MBAs remain widely and shallowly trained jacks and jills of all trades in the specialty functions, with little true understanding of the integrative process. They often are left to confuse decisiveness for effectiveness in that area.

The above are major reasons why businesses - even consulting firms - are beginning to turn to majors in other areas, including - especially - the liberal arts. They are finding that graduates of liberal arts programs have the analytical skills that combine perspective and focus that these businesses are looking for, as well as the ability to draw well-defined and supported conclusions from these assessments, and to develop insights about what these assessments suggest for future action. After all, most businesses don’t hire MBAs to fill spots in the specialist functional areas - they hire graduates of those specialties to do that. They want people trained to assess the situation, supervise, and set direction - that is, to manage the business. Ironically, they are increasingly discovering that it is not the MBA that has obtained this ability.

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