It has long been remarked that there is a converse correlation between economic cycles and enrolment in MBA programs. When business is down, the business schools start filling up with managers seeking to pad their credentials. And so as we enter the current global crisis we can probably expect a boom in MBAs within a year or two – just in time to hop the next economic train through town. But will they be driving the next boom, as so many imagine, or setting up the next bust?
There seems to be a peculiarly odd riddle hidden in the rise of supposedly exceptional individual leaders to the top of their organizations. We have discussed here the inadequacy of the doctrines of the modern leadership movement for developing such leaders from raw material, or even of predicting which such material is especially amenable to such training. Indeed, there is an abundance of evidence that many such predictions or depictions – some trumpeted with especially unfortunate prematurity – have proven decidedly and despairingly false. . .
This is an old story here: there is no such thing as leadership in the absence of something to lead. So, why do we imagine that we have “leaders” whose only need is a leadership position?
As we noted yesterday, there is much made of the putative distinction between leadership and management. Moreover, this assertion is inevitably paired with the proud presumption that leadership is also superior to management. This argument is sufficiently pretentious to be objectionable in and of itself. Concealing a deficit of substance with a surfeit of powerfully [...]
The apprenticeship model of management – or leadership – development is a deeply perceptive approach to this vital topic that is most effectively championed by Wally Bock, of Three Star Leadership. The basic premise is that leadership cannot be learned in school, but must be practiced on the job. The wise organization will provide mechanisms – from career path assignments to mentoring programs – to facilitate this. That single insight by itself can save organizations a tremendous amount of aggravation in infusing truly effective and robust talent development systems into their structures. And it need not start only at the entry level for management . . .
Consider a civilian automobile factory, for example, in which someone moves up from being a blue-collar front-line factory employee – and, perhaps through some of the the supervisor levels, as well – to ultimately enter the white-collared ranks of management. There are definitely advantages to this pipeline. For one thing, such managers are often able to detect the sorts of orders coming down from on high that are destined to be greeted, by those who are to carry them out, with amused bafflement – almost never a productivity enhancer. Sometimes they can do something about those, and this usually works to the benefit of both the recipients and the issuers. But there is another interesting aspect to this . . .
Among the many great hopes pinned on the MBA is that attainment of it suggests meaningful things about one’s knowledge, ability, and character. That is not an overstatement of the regard in which it is held. While it’s fair enough to assume that someone who has completed such a program can be expected to know what was taught in it, his or her ability to apply that knowledge cannot be assumed with equal confidence . . .
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