You Can't Learn Management in a Classroom

Forty years ago I was an enthusiastic advocate of formal business education. I was involved in the beginnings of three of the leading business schools in Britain, following my own indoctrination as an executive student at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Now I am not so sure. Business schools have their uses but they overstate what they can deliver and they may be unintentionally letting down their products—the students—by forgoing real-world learning for the classroom.

The letters MBA should, if the schools were honest, stand for Master of Business Analysis, because the tools and disciplines of analysis are what the students learn, not management, or administration as it used to be called. Analysis is a necessary part of good management and leadership but it is not the whole of it. Who to trust, how to inspire, how brave to be, how forgiving or not—these relationship and judgment skills may be discussed in a classroom but they can only be learned by practicing them.