The online MBA

The online MBA. Yawn. Can’t be done. No value. Wait a minute. How would you like it if you could say you are a MBA from the Jack Welch Management Institute ? Sitting up ? What if it was 20% of the cost of a regular MBA. And what if you don’t have to leave your job for 2 years to do this. Interested ? Read on.

Jack Welch is taking a 12% stake in a company called Chancellor University System LLC, whose leading investor is Michael Clifford an evangelist for online education. His lending of his name to the MBA program will immediately catapult it to star status. But will it work ?

There is no doubt that technology has the capability to transform education. Firstly the pros. It is cheaper and you don’t have to give up your job. You can do it from anywhere in the world. The monster that is the US visa officer can be kissed goodbye. Many more people can do it. The limitation of the classroom size largely goes away.

But there are serious doubts, of course. Can the academic rigour be maintained ? What about case discussions, which are so important in a MBA program ? Personal interaction, networks, etc are a key part of learning. Can this be replicated online ? How about the experience of living and studying together ?

While these are very valid concerns, the issues are not insurmountable. Don’t we build strong networks and friendships online through social networks ? I haven’t physically met most of the people who comment on my blog and yet I am intimately connected with them. An online classroom, which closely mimics the actual classroom is now a reality. Take the example of investor presentations, which are almost exclusively on line these days – they are extremely and intensely interactive. And the youth of today are much more adept at interacting and sharing online.

Methinks online education will be a significant part of the learning systems of the world. It won't replace the traditional university for sure, but it will be a very real choice for people.

There’s something in this. Jack Welch says he first thought this was a daft idea, but is now a convert, thanks to Michael Clifford’s evangelism. And we all know, Jack Welch doesn’t make moves lightly.

What say you ? Wanna enroll for the Jack Welch MBA ?

Are you smarter than a 5th grader?

There’s a US TV reality show called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader ?” In this game, adult contestants make a fool of themselves trying to answer questions from 1st to 5th grade in schools. They mostly fail and prove publicly that they are not smarter than a 5th grader.

I am concluding my current posts on education, with a non business post on something that’s intrigued me.

Two questions come to mind. First an obvious one and the second, perhaps a not so obvious one. Firstly the obvious one - Why does an adult willingly subject himself to shame by being proved on TV to be less smarter than a 5th grader ?

But the question that is more intriguing for me is – Why are 5th graders being taught stuff that honest adult Americans don’t know and  have no use for in real life .

I am amazed at the sort of stuff taught in schools. I think the educational system has completely missed the revolution in our lives that the internet has caused and is still sticking with an outdated concept of education.

In the good old days, information could never be easily found. It had to therefore be learnt and memorized. Hence learning of factual information was the most important objective of education. A student who knew his facts was much better off than one who didn’t. Therefore cram as much of information as possible into a student’s head.

Today, factual information is easily accessible. You don’t need to know it; you only need to know how to find it. One word is all you need to know. Google. Therefore the objective of education must shift to teaching morals, values, how to access information, how to use information and how to make judgments and decisions and how to communicate. For example learning languages is much more important now than it was years ago. In today’s world it’s a huge advantage if you are fluent in the three most important languages in the world – English, Spanish and Mandarin.

Sure a fair degree of factual information is required to be learnt (and crammed), but a lot less than what is currently done.

My daughter is a third grader. Here are some of the stuff she is learning

• The difference between a farthingale and a bumroll worn in the early Tudor period (3rd grade history)
• Explain scientifically why a chapatti puffs up (1st grade science)
• Where is Bubastis (3rd grade geography).
• What is a punctuation pyramid (3rd grade English)
• Explain the difference between trapezium and rhombus (kingergarten maths believe it or not)

If you scored 0 out of 5, welcome to the club !

What ails XXX ?

The day I walked into my business school , all those years ago, I heard this term - "What ails XXX ?- substitute name of business school for XXX. Many years on, I still hear this rhetorical question. From many business schools. Its nice that they do ask this question, but often they stop at that and simply gaze at their own navel.

Imagine an organisation, where you have virtually irrelevant performance targets, no serious performance evaluation, you are unlikely to be sacked, where you bristle against authority and do your own thing, where compensation levels are low, but have little relationship to performance and where demand often exceeds supply, so you don't have to worry about capacity utilisation. That closely approximates a business school - I am being deliberately harsh to make a point. Business schools rarely practice what they preach. That's probably why they hate to take anybody from the industry inside.

Business schools must be run like a corporate - with all its faults, a corporate is still the best form of an organisation we have invented. Hire the best talent. Pay market rates but linked to performance. Sack professors if they are inefficient (what a revolutionary thought). Set sensible performance targets (not number of unreadable papers that are published). Tailor the product to what industry needs; not what you would like to give . Have some form of an organisation structure and accountability - not anarchy in the name of academic freedom.

The CEO of a business school must be from industry, not academia. As I posted before, professors have to go back to industry once in 10 years - not doing consulting, but doing an actual job, where if you fail, you get sacked. At least 10% of professors must NOT have a Phd - ie they must not be career academic types.

If I were to say any of these things in the hallowed portals of a business school, I would get pelted with rotten eggs. But that's the beauty of a blog - I can only be figuratively pelted; not literally.

So in answer to What ails XXX ?, I say Nothing. Just practice what you preach.

Teaching - A "noble" profession nobody wants to get into

A society can often be judged by the professions it eulogises. What are the professions that are aspirational ? What do people want to be ?

Its a sad fact of our times that in no nation would the teacher figure at the top of the list. Very few people really want to be teachers anymore. If the best minds are not working at the schools, colleges and universities, how is a knowledge society like ours going to be sustained.

This is true of business education as well, With all respect to my academic friends, the best minds in the business world are not at the business schools.

Why ?

The obvious answer is that there is little money in academic life. It is a well known fact that an outstanding professor with a lifetime of experience would earn less than a green horn passing out of business school on his first day at the job. So why would anybody, other than those laudable souls who do it out of passion, ever aspire to an academic career.

But its not only money. Business schools often do not practice what they preach. The working environment in the business school is not great. Its a culture that breeds "satisfactory under performance". The best minds are not challenged to work there. More of this tomorrow.

Business schools also suffer from the extreme stratification that happens in say the sports field. The stars are feted like gods. In business schools the top 5% are world renowned - they get the plum consultancies, sit on Boards of companies, get invited to speak everywhere and are treated like rock stars. The balance 95% see nothing. This is not so stark in the business world. 50% may be toilers, but the other 50% can reach places.

But, at the end, its the value society places on the teaching profession. In many ways their position is similar to the nursing profession. If you ask somebody to rank the most "noble" of professions , teaching and nursing would come at the top and a businessman would appear close to the bottom. And yet, do we want to become teachers and nurses. No.

Yes, it does boil down to money. We must pay our teachers 5 or 10 times more. Some of the best minds in the world must get into academics. Its an investment societies have to make.

With apologies to the Duke of Wellington, "The battles of business are won on the corridors of Harvard". Little wonder that the business world is where it is today !

Academicians vs Managers

Management is one of the most applied of all sciences. Its not a theoretical science. You would therefore expect that in this field there is the closest of cooperation between academicians and practitioners. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The two mutually loath each other although outwardly its all bonhomie

Managers think academicians are outdated, theoretical and of no use in the "real" world. They think what is taught at business schools is of little relevance to corporate life , even though they may have been from a business school themselves.

Academicians see practitioners as non cooperative, contributing little to the profession and certainly irrelevant to the academic world, except for allowing professors to write cases. They see them as something of an intellectual vacuum.

Interaction between the two is therefore largely restricted. Top notch professors sit on company Boards and do consulting, but the vast majority of academicians have retreated into their academic world and interact little with the business world. Similarly a few business leaders and some committed souls visit universities and give guest lectures, or cooperate in an academic endeavour, but the vast majority of managers would react with horror at the thought of spending a week in close proximity to a professor.

End result is that both lose.

The academic research that is done is often trivia and many publications are unreadable. Pick any PhD thesis and the average manager would probably not even understand the title. Does "Perceived Organizational Support and Organizational Commitment: The Mediational Influence of Psychological Well-Being " excite you to get up at 4 AM in the morning and read; this is an actual PhD title for example.

Managers have virtually gone obsolete and have forgotten management theory (read my last post). So you get Boards that don't understand credit default swaps leading the whole world down the tube.

In my view, no Professor should be allowed to continue in his role, if every 10 years, he hasn't worked one year in business. Actual work. Not consulting. Where he feels the responsibility in the pit of his stomach and the shit hits the ceiling every alternate day. And no manager must be allowed to keep his business degree if he hasn't gone back to university every 10 years and requalified.

The world of management is ill served by this tiff between academicians and practitioners. Just to prove this point, both sides, if they read it, will tell me that this piece is utter rubbish.

The Obsolete Manager

How obsolete are we ? If I were to judge myself, pretty obsolete.

This week I am posting on Education, as the theme. Starting with an outrageous statement - the manager is obsolete the minute he steps out of business school (or whatever school) and then it is a long road to utter obsolescence until he retires.

Management science is a pretty dynamic science. The body of knowledge is expanding at a terrific pace and we rarely keep up with it. Company training programmes are meant to missed, citing "extremely busy" as an excuse. How many times have we gone back to university to relearn or do a refresher programme - none , unless your company has sponsored you for one of the Advanced Management Programs (note to my company - are you listening ? Harvard would be nice !)

Take for example the field of finance and accounting. A few years ago, in my company, we played a game - Who wants to be a Millionaire (or Kaun Banega Crorepati to my Indian friends) on basic IFRS principles. We played this amongst the top accountants in the company from many countries. Not one guy won any money. Everybody flunked. We were that ignorant.

Try this in your company. Walk up to your CFO . Do it for a dare. Ask him to price a plain vanilla option, on anything - say your home currency against the US$. Watch him wriggle and squirm.

Experience is a great teacher ; no doubt. But mere experience is not enough. "Back to school", say every 10 years, is a great way of getting abreast and relearning everything we have forgotten.

And reading. Reading a lot. Airport business books don't count. Real stuff. How many of us managers, have read an issue of the Harvard Business Review during the last one year ?

So my recipe to guard against obsolescence (which I haven't thus far practiced, except for the last one), is

- Go and do a formal course in a B-school every 7 or 8 years

- Read the leading business journals of the world (Financial Times and Wall Street Journal don't count)

- Lecture occasionally at Universities.

- Write a business blog ! In order to write sensibly, you have to read something, right ?

I speculated on what grades I would get if I went back to Business School and wrote the exam now. Here's my candid assessment

Business Strategy - A

Quantitative Methods - F

Finance - F

Accounting - C

Marketing - C

Operations Management - F

Economics - F

Pathetic.