The MBA (Master of Business Administration) remains central to any progression pathway, especially to those who wish to harness their entreprenurial or creative instincts. At it’s simplest, the task of an MBA is to teach you some tools to leverage your abilities in a smart and efficient manner. Dare I say organised manner. Administration is as simple as that – though it is probably the word Administration there that is a trap. To administer is only an umbrella term, a catch all phrase that offends nobody. But then, in turn, it turns into a behemoth that eventually only serves itself. A limiting factor. It is not just administration that we seek when we employ or invest in business administration. We seek leverage, we seek leapfrogging our own abilities.
The new MBAs in weeks, the redesigning of the MBA by the greatest of global institutions and the constant quest to find the best program all seek to answer this question – how can you, madam potential, be equipped to maximise your reach. What can we give you that helps you understand the direction of this reach, how can we help you practice it a few times so that you are not torn apart the minute you enter the jungle, and how do you learn to iterate, pivot and push beyond what you had even thought possible.
The new MBAs promise you this with projects. The old MBAs offer theories. The school-of-experience-as-MBA showcase some theories of change. At the centre of them all lies the core question of – how. At it’s simplest, the MBA is about skills.
There are three types of skills that matter here. One is the obvious – ‘how to do business’. That is the core set of buying, making, selling, accounting, AI and all that stuff. Much more to it of course – but you get the idea.
The second set of skills to to rapidly scan and learn from other people’s successes and failures. This bit is the one that we intellectualise and teach as management theory. This academisation of learning for business is also what managed to help it transcend caste and rise from blue collar to white collar. What used to be apprenticeship now became a degree, what used to be vocational, or even professional now upgraded itself to an academic area, a science. This was necessary to get to the higher pay grades and more investment into actually sharpening the learning edge. Never forget, business is about winning, and what we are learning is how to leverage everything we have, or can borrow, to win. The more we can refine it, the more the reward – hence the upgrade.
The third set of skills is about internal pivots and external fulcrum. Being agents of change. Business School makes an unsaid promise – we shall make you so solid in your self belief and will power that you will be able to power through the toughest of situations and transform them for the better. B School is an agent of power. It does point you towards ethical uses of such inner energy but after you graduate your morals are your own. The harnessing, the use, and managing the consequences of power wielded, is the third leg of good training for business.
The challenge to the old MBA lies right within this articulation, as it does to the newbies trying to pretend that projects represent mastery of the art of managing business.
The old forget their grimy roots and remember their greed for rising in shiny white collars – and so – often do not provide enough of a skills focus. This enables their graduates to ride the merry go round built by others but many are singed when they come in contact with the real world. Many of them succeed, as they will, for their only sin is distance which is easily covered.
The new short cuts to an MBA are not very different from the school of experience is as good – approach or work in your daddy’s business. Each provides a short dive into skills and experience but certainly cannot provide a comprehensive grounding in the sheer range of learning available. Maybe they do not need to, but unless they bring rigour into their ability to learn from others rapidly, their students will remain in the shallows. To excoriate yourself in the quest for mastery may seem to be a toxic ask – and this is what it will look like unless one dives into the third – the ability to recognise one’s own power.
This is the part that is the toughest for a BSchool to get right. Often power is seen as knowing it all, greed, growth, dominance and worse. True power comes from humility. The humility to learn, to be flexible, to find pathways when others face brick walls. True power heals oneself and one’s people ready to try again the next day. Teaching this is near impossible when the public face of power through history seems to have demonstrated toxic control. This focus on the outside, the fall out and the visible bark ignores the strength of the roots that fuel true growth. This is what very few MBAs can get right – and this flaw has brought the arena of teaching business administration to its knees.
The MBA Next has its three tasks clear ahead of it, but the question is – can the teachers of this teach themselves all three? Can institutions rearrange themselves to become engines that foster all three? Any thing less is just not good enough. This too is such a journey of growth for all who currently teach business administration – the venerable must learn to step forward to skill, the small must learn to understand power in ways they may know but have not delved into let alone enabled. And the avante, the new providers who claim to serve the new needs must learn that there is much noise in the shallows but sustained learning that proves itself in the real jungle comes from the heft of every step your student turned manager takes.
Meeta W Sengupta 