Why Are MBAs Still Popular?

Apparently MBA programs at universities are still incredibly popular. But I’m a bit of a loss as to why. Everyone makes fun of MBA students/graduates. You can say that ‘everyone’ is doing something when that something starts showing up in advertising. Take, for example, FedEx’s advertisement in late 2003 where a co-worker is saying how easy it is to FedEx something. The MBA graduate says ”But I’m an MBA” implying that he’s now trained such that FedEx-ing something is beneath him. The co-worker then responds “Oh, you’re an MBA. Well, I’ll have to show you how to do it then.”

I bring this topic up because Joel posted his thoughts about MBA grads saying that ”there’s too much evidence that MBAs substitute book-learnin’ for common sense or experience. And he goes on to say that he would rather ”hire someone who created and ran a profitable lemonade stand than someone who has taken two years of finance courses at Harvard”. I haven’t had much exposure to MBA students or graduates but I have agree that after getting a Bachelor’s degree, there’s no substitute for experience.

One of the best examples (in addition to Joel’s bakery experiences) is the way the Army functions. Most people don’t understand how the Army works unless they’ve had some exposure to it. But I’ll let you in on some secrets. The Army is like a big corporation split into three groups: the executives and executive track members (the Army calls them officers), the managers (the Army calls them senior NCOs), and the rest of the workers (the Army calls them troops or soldiers). In a corporation you have CEOs and VPs, in the Army you have Colonels, Majors, Captains and Lieutenants. In a corporation you have managers and team leaders, in the Army you have Sergeants and Corporals. Finally, in a corporation you have the rest of the workers, in the Army you have the troops. You still may not get the scope of things but bear with me.

In the Army, the senior NCOs are older, more experienced soldiers. By the time I became a Sergeant, I had been in the Army as a tank guy for 9 years. In that time, I had fired most weapons and driven most vehicles the Army has to offer. I’d dug more slit trenches than I care to admint, done the late night sentry shifts looking for bad guys that never came, eaten cold meals, been on training exercises where I hadn’t showered in 10 days and shaved in the dark in temperatures well below freezing. I hadn’t loved doing those things all the time but I loved being part of the Army. But more importantly, there wasn’t too much about tank stuff that one of my troops could ask me that I couldn’t answer. And there wasn’t any job that I asked the troops to do that I hadn’t done at least thirty times myself.

My initial Sergeant training resulted in my promotion to Sergeant but it was my experience that commanded the respect of the troops. I could have studied all the books in the world on leadership and tactics and executing tasks effectively but it was only through experience (and following the Army’s principles of leadership) that I was able to learn how to properly be a good leader.

In the Army, most ‘junior executives’ start out on the Executive track as 2nd Lieutenants and are placed in charge of a group of senior NCOs and troops. The MBA types immediately try to make things better (even though they may not be broken) because they ‘know’ the best way to do things, which is the completely wrong way to go about it. Instead, the better junior executives start by asking their managers (aka Sergeants) what’s wrong and how things could be improved. They then try to learn as much as they can from their Sergeants; when you have the support of your Sergeants, you have the support of the troops. And in the end those executives who learned from their managers will have more respect and ultimately, in most cases, go on to become much better senior executives.

Back to MBAs; I can’t say I place any value on having an MBA without the experience to back it up. And if you have the experience then I’m not sure the MBA is anything more than a confirmation of your experience. Except that you’ll have that stigma attached.

1 comment »

1. By lopezm 3 days later:

   
   
   I think the concept that someone with an MBA doesn't know what they are doing is wrong. I think that anyone who tries to take on the exposure to more information and knowledge should be respected as they are simply adding tools to their tool box. I think the bad rap the some/most MBA students get is that they are missing the perspective that one needs to be effective in the real world. But I promise that someone who has natural talent will be even better in a finance job after doing MBA courses at Harvard than someone who thinkgs they are bigger than that and Masters programs in Business are for have nots only.