Henry Mintzberg is probably the most outspoken critic of the MBA. The Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal
and an entrepreneur in his own right, Mintzberg argued in his 2004 book
Managers Not MBAs that the entire notion of graduate business education
needs reform. His opinions have only grown stronger since then. Not
only do MBA programs teach an insufficient style of management, he says,
but they also fall short in discussion of ethics. In fact, he has
written, "conventional MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong
ways with the wrong consequences."
You say nothing has really changed in the years since your book came out.
I think some business schools are moving in new directions, but not many and not much. They're too fat and too successful and make too much money from what's destructive. I think the problem with the American economy is not economic; it's managerial. Anyone who accepts a bonus of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars while their company is failing is not a leader. Which means almost no one in the Fortune 500 is a leader.
People say, "I can't believe what is going on in my company," and a lot of it is led by MBAs. They learn management by remote control. You learn to read case studies and sit in classrooms and have to pronounce judgments on companies about which you know almost nothing.
There's also a social element. Why does the U.S. still have an electoral college? Because America's in social gridlock. It can't move forward. The country is totally unreflective, whether it comes to healthcare or the economy or the financial sector. It prides itself on technological adaptability, but it is socially unbelievably paralyzed.
I did an article for Fortune a few years ago that tracked the record of Harvard Business School's most renowned graduates. There were 19 people on the list, and 10 of them turned out to be complete disasters, four were questionable at best, and only five had clean records. These were listed as Harvard's best, and 10 were fired, their companies went bankrupt and worse. Wouldn't that be a signal that something was wrong, if your greatest graduates failed?
Do MBA programs hold any value for entrepreneurs?
Look, I'm not a fan of conventional MBA programs, but you do learn business functions like marketing, accounting and finance, and entrepreneurs do need that. Many go bankrupt because they don't manage the books well. But they don't need all the other baggage that goes with the MBA--the technocratic view of management. Those entrepreneur-focused MBA programs that are sensitive to that and are not copying the regular MBA probably can provide some help. I'm a fan of something different. I co-created a program called the International Masters Program in Practicing Management (IMPM). We have quite a few entrepreneurs who have come from our program.
How is IMPM different from an MBA?
There are two sides entrepreneurs can learn from in our program. One side is business functions. The other is a sounding board, where they can discuss common problems, like how to deal with the bank or market a program nobody has ever heard of. They're given a forum to discuss their problems with other entrepreneurs. Half the time they reflect on their own issues, and the other half they problem-solve with other students.
What should entrepreneurs do if they don't want an MBA but want more education?
They should look at CoachingOurselves.com, which is by a guy who did our master's program. In full disclosure, I'm a partner in that activity. It's a training program used by entrepreneurial companies and brings business concepts into the workplace. You get managers and entrepreneurs together in small groups, and then download discussion topics, things like dialoguing and branding. Then the managers chat among themselves. They do the whole course all for themselves, and that's really effective for entrepreneurs who need to talk to each other. They need a conceptual basis, and they use the discussion points as a stimulus to get into their own problems. It's an effective way to learn, and a bunch of entrepreneurs can create a team and use it to compare how they're doing with their banks and customers vs. other business owners.
What's the harm in getting an MBA? Doesn't it show initiative?
There's a role for MBAs for people who go into technical positions, like financial analysts, but other than that, anyone with an MBA should have a skull and crossbones on their forehead. It doesn't prepare them correctly and gives them the wrong impression of management. Instead, I think people should get smart, get educated, but mostly they should find a business or venture or activity that they really love and get immersed as deeply as possible before they try to create something.
You say nothing has really changed in the years since your book came out.
I think some business schools are moving in new directions, but not many and not much. They're too fat and too successful and make too much money from what's destructive. I think the problem with the American economy is not economic; it's managerial. Anyone who accepts a bonus of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars while their company is failing is not a leader. Which means almost no one in the Fortune 500 is a leader.
People say, "I can't believe what is going on in my company," and a lot of it is led by MBAs. They learn management by remote control. You learn to read case studies and sit in classrooms and have to pronounce judgments on companies about which you know almost nothing.
There's also a social element. Why does the U.S. still have an electoral college? Because America's in social gridlock. It can't move forward. The country is totally unreflective, whether it comes to healthcare or the economy or the financial sector. It prides itself on technological adaptability, but it is socially unbelievably paralyzed.
I did an article for Fortune a few years ago that tracked the record of Harvard Business School's most renowned graduates. There were 19 people on the list, and 10 of them turned out to be complete disasters, four were questionable at best, and only five had clean records. These were listed as Harvard's best, and 10 were fired, their companies went bankrupt and worse. Wouldn't that be a signal that something was wrong, if your greatest graduates failed?
Do MBA programs hold any value for entrepreneurs?
Look, I'm not a fan of conventional MBA programs, but you do learn business functions like marketing, accounting and finance, and entrepreneurs do need that. Many go bankrupt because they don't manage the books well. But they don't need all the other baggage that goes with the MBA--the technocratic view of management. Those entrepreneur-focused MBA programs that are sensitive to that and are not copying the regular MBA probably can provide some help. I'm a fan of something different. I co-created a program called the International Masters Program in Practicing Management (IMPM). We have quite a few entrepreneurs who have come from our program.
How is IMPM different from an MBA?
There are two sides entrepreneurs can learn from in our program. One side is business functions. The other is a sounding board, where they can discuss common problems, like how to deal with the bank or market a program nobody has ever heard of. They're given a forum to discuss their problems with other entrepreneurs. Half the time they reflect on their own issues, and the other half they problem-solve with other students.
What should entrepreneurs do if they don't want an MBA but want more education?
They should look at CoachingOurselves.com, which is by a guy who did our master's program. In full disclosure, I'm a partner in that activity. It's a training program used by entrepreneurial companies and brings business concepts into the workplace. You get managers and entrepreneurs together in small groups, and then download discussion topics, things like dialoguing and branding. Then the managers chat among themselves. They do the whole course all for themselves, and that's really effective for entrepreneurs who need to talk to each other. They need a conceptual basis, and they use the discussion points as a stimulus to get into their own problems. It's an effective way to learn, and a bunch of entrepreneurs can create a team and use it to compare how they're doing with their banks and customers vs. other business owners.
What's the harm in getting an MBA? Doesn't it show initiative?
There's a role for MBAs for people who go into technical positions, like financial analysts, but other than that, anyone with an MBA should have a skull and crossbones on their forehead. It doesn't prepare them correctly and gives them the wrong impression of management. Instead, I think people should get smart, get educated, but mostly they should find a business or venture or activity that they really love and get immersed as deeply as possible before they try to create something.
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