There’s a popular book on entrepreneurship called The E-Myth which claims that bakers shouldn’t run bakeries, plumbers shouldn’t run plumbing companies, and everyone else should think about how they could turn their small business into a franchise. On the face of it, there’s a lot of good advice about how you can’t just be a good baker if you don’t have a business bone in your body and expect commercial success.
Problem is that the reverse is also often true. If you just put MBAs in place — or other professional managers without deep subject matter expertise — you’re equally likely to end up with an uninspiring business that fails to be passionate about the right things. To stay on the ball you need to know what’s a good pass and the best way to do that is to be able to make one yourself.
Many of my favorite companies are driven by people at the top who intimately know how things should be because they could make them so. The obvious example is the detail-oriented nature of Steve Jobs at Apple. But a few other examples I like are Ulrich Bez at Aston Martin who’s not only the CEO but also part of the company racing team at places like Le Mans. Or Thierry Nataf at Zenith who’s CEO and head designer of their luxury watches as well.
But what made me think about all this was Joel Spolsky’s tale of a technical review with Bill Gates back in the 90’s:
Bill Gates was amazingly technical, and he knew more about the details of his company’s software than most of the people who worked on those details day in and day out. He understood Variants and COM objects and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables—and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date and time functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual programmer.
For people who love what they do, whether that’s programming, design, designing watches, or building cars, that’s a great motivation to not grow your company too quickly. Enjoy the time when you can actually be a full participant in the actual activities themselves, rather than just managing them.
The Webloglearner
on 26 Jun 08This is actually true. How can one manager manage a successful bakery if he himself does not know anything about baking? I mean, there are the personnel, the staff, the processes, the oven guys and all. This is the reasn why I always respect people who may not have the perfect education grade but have experiences of ‘manual’ work in the past, or shall we say at least a practicum or an on the job (OJT) training.
MikeInAZ
on 26 Jun 08Just like the old saying, “Those who can’t do, get MBAs”
j/k to all the MBAs out there :)
GeeIWonder
on 26 Jun 08I’d go further: most MBA programs seem to select for the type of people who will eventually end up in middle management. This is partly because there’s some misconception of a career path in business akin to one in law or medicine.
In my experience, you can’t really acquire business sense in an MBA program. If you have it, an MBA will certainly not hurt, but nor will a lack of degree or a different degree followed by an exec. MBA at some point. That’s one career path if you want to move up in a Fortune500. Many of them are run by guys who never bothered with the MBA (even the exec) at all though.
If you want to run a startup or a small company, you better not be counting on an MBA to help you chart the course. Better to start at someone else’s startup first and get a lay of the land.
And some people will never acquire business sense no matter how many MBA PMP and whatever other designations they manage to collect.
Chris Chowdhury
on 26 Jun 08This is all about enjoying the anonymous seasons of life. When we look back on these times later on, we may see they were our best seasons (or at least some of the most meaningful ones).
Great post!
Tim
on 26 Jun 08(delete this when corrected or if I’m wrong)
It sounds to me that this sentence should say “likely” :
No?
Peter Urban
on 26 Jun 08I’ve been working with many large organizations and my experience is that in almost all cases projects fail or under perform because the ‘project owner’ or project manager has no subject matter expertise. In fact I would go thus far to say that as soon as there is a certified project manager involved the chances for failure go way up. PM’s care about the process not about the result. They care about perfect documentation and managing risks that wouldn’t exist if everyone would just focus on getting their job done. The care about being perfectly prepared for the blame game to make sure they can’t be blamed instead of accepting that there is always a risk and taking responsibility for it.
This is where the American way of ‘a good manager can manage anything’ hits back hard. Project management IS important but it needs to be done by people that know what they are doing and are willing to take responsibility without wasting the majority of resources for endless documentation and business cases. My axiom is: Get the job done and find out if it works the quickest and most efficient way possible. If it fails you can use them money you’ve saved on the bullshit to do it right the second time.
Sebhelyesfarku
on 26 Jun 08Seemingly most managers I used to meet have MBS degree – Master of BullShit.
Jake
on 26 Jun 08Did someone give you a synopsis in the bar?
I do not remember the E-myth advocating hiring MBAs. What it does advocate is coming up with systems and patterns for dealing with problems so that you as the owner can hand off parts of the business to other people as it grows ( or maybe you hand off parts that you do not enjoy as much).
The book does talk a lot about franchising, but it does not pretend that explosive global growth is ideal for all businesses. The main point is that the processes within your business should be thoughtfully organized to the point where you COULD franchise it. There is value in this idea for any size of business.
If you read the post about Spolsky more carefully, it actually backs up this idea. Gates had a process that he practiced over and over again to vet his product leads. Once they were got through that meeting he handed off control and felt comfortable.
Adam T.
on 26 Jun 08That comment about Bill Gates is interesting, especially after reading a recent article by Todd Bishop at Seattle PI regarding an email he sent in 2003. It sounds like control ultimately got out of his hands and the trust he had in his underlings deteriorated.
Anonymous Coward
on 26 Jun 08The last job I had before the one I am currently working demonstrated this in spades. It was a startup, formed by five people: a man who had been working in insurance and human resources for most of his career, and who was retired on paper, so he could afford to work for peanuts at a startup; a man who had been CFO of a large company, also retired on paper, for similar reasons; two men who had significant subject matter expertise in the offline version of what the company was doing (about which, I’ll just say, it was educational streaming video, in which both men had significant teaching experience and knowledge of pedagogy, while one focused on curriculum and the other focused on networking); and a woman, wife of the CFO, who had been doing database programming and corporate IT stuff.
The original plan was that they’d produce lessons in-house, and outsource the development of a membership site and content management system. A year and $150K later, they took control of what existed of the content management system and decided to rebuild it in-house, piecemeal, on the foundation that the consultants had started, using the same bad technical approaches and poorly chosen development environment.
The business was flailing when I left. The things that the partners had enough subject matter expertise to accurately understand and critique - the teaching videos, the interactive diagrams and animations, the curriculum, the choice of teachers, the presentation of material - were all beautifully executed. Unfortunately, user interface design and the user experience were not among them, and this resulted in a situation where giving a user a one-week free trial of the site resulted in worse conversion rates than we got when they had to choose to subscribe based only on testimonials and screen shots.
It would be nice if having an MBA could be interpreted as a sign of brain death, as it is in so many cases. But there are a large number of MBA holders out there - I can think of at least three that I know well - who are smart people with good business sense that got an MBA in order to learn a little bit of vocabulary, do some networking, and get three letters after their name that would make a certain type of person take them more seriously.
Stacy
on 26 Jun 08I lot of MBAs have engineering, and software development backgrounds, too.
I certainly say that Gates has the MBA-type knowlege because he reads and teaches himself whatever he needs to know. Back in the day, there where many stories about how he would go away for a month or two with a mountain of books and invite experts along too. He’s been doing the same with healthcare topics the past several years.
The whole purpose of formal education is to teach you how to teach yourself. Once (if), you can do that at a high level, you can do whatever you want. If you cannot, maybe you need formal education to advance yourself or just be content at your present level.
Mark Sigal
on 26 Jun 08This is classic tyranny of the ALL or NONE. I have read e-myth, and the primary thing that the author rails against is the “sole proprietorship” mentality; namely, the inability to think and build an organization that can not possibly exist without you as the owner touching everything. Equally, the book talks about the importance of instituting best practices.
I am not an MBA so before anyone assumes what follows is based on that particular bias let me say this. Great ‘chefs’ who can’t understand the business are every bit as handicapped as business types who can neither cook nor understand the customer’s taste, desires and the like.
The rant on MBAs is as one dimensional as the rant on techies not grokking customers and business. I have worked with customer/business clueless techies and brilliant ones, just as I have worked with product/development clueless MBAs and brilliant ones.
The point is that if you don’t have a sense of the gestalt you are extremely limited and are best off the bus or in a passenger, not driver, role.
Cheers,
MarkThe Tyranny of the ‘All or None’ http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/01/the-tyranny-of.html
Gabe M.
on 26 Jun 08In my opinion, MBAs suck, but are a necessary element in a modern company. It’s their job to ensure that the business turns a profit, but too often they sap all the energy that one finds in a startup through their “proven” management tactics. It’s best to find a balance between the business-savvy and the people-friendly. That, my friends, is the “butter zone.”
Travis Schmeisser
on 26 Jun 08Agreed. That outlook really bothered me about the book. It’s another way to do things, but often doesn’t apply to every field.
Don
on 26 Jun 08It happens that I actually read that book over the past couple of days. Also within the past couple of days, I watched your speech to Startup School. (Fantastic. “Shoes!”)
There may not be that much tension between your model of “neighborhood Italian restaurant” entrepreneurship and the ideas in the book. The book is really a book about how to translate business dreams into business systems. For that, it’s a good splash of cold water for people (like me) who haven’t spent that much time running a business.
@Jake above is right that the book is sour on MBAs and professional managers - the book advocates having you (the subject-matter expert and owner) build a “system” in which you can have control over your business and impart the subject-matter expertise you’ve built up. For that reason, the book advocates hiring less qualified but cheaper and more trainable folks. I’d like to think that wouldn’t work as well in my field (or yours), but that’s the model that the book sells.
(Overall, I’m not sure I can recommend the book - and you’re certainly not in its target audience. Different parts of the revised edition (which I read) seem to have totally different philosophies of life. The beginning advocates selling your business once it’s established, which jumped off the page because I’d just seen your talk. The later parts speak more reverentially about enjoying the “practice” of running your business like a “dojo.” The first parts were better written but not terribly sophisticated. I started skimming the last few chapters because, while interesting, they weren’t as well done.)
Anonymous Coward
on 26 Jun 08For second there I thought this was gonna be another MacBook Air post!
Tanner Christensen
on 26 Jun 08Amen.
GeeIWonder
on 26 Jun 08It’s best to find a balance between the business-savvy and the people-friendly.
I’m not sure if you’re talking about on a company level or a personal level, but the two are of course not mutually exclusive.
@Sigal: I don’t really believe in the designer vs developer, manager vs. creator thing either. For hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of years it was expected that martial artists or renaissance men would be masters in many disciplines.
General culture is probably more important than one field of expertise anyways. Your degree shouldn’t define you (you can be a lawyer with an engineering undergrad, or a carpenter, or a photographer, or a philosopher), but the flip side of that is that you shouldn’t pursue a degree like an MBA with the expectation of a clear career path to the top. It doesn’t exist.
Gustavo Beathyate
on 26 Jun 08I agree with this post, or more like I relate to it. But, if you are past the initial phase and actually want to improve on your managing skills, what would you do? Would actually take the classes? Read more books?
I’ve been wondering about that for a while. And of course there’s the issue with having no time for this…
GeeIWonder
on 26 Jun 08My advice would be to suck up whatever you can where you can.
There’s value in having read Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, “48 Laws of Power” and it’s ilk even if just so you can identify the playbook of the people you’re dealing with and anticipate a few moves. You’d be surprised how often that works. It’s not unlike chess, actually.
The best way though I think is either to learn through doing (preferably on someone else’s dime), or to find a great mentor and watch his/her successes and failures.
andjules
on 26 Jun 08to be fair, having actually read the E-Myth, the author was not suggesting in the least that you need to install MBAs to run the business. To the contrary, the author was largely pointing out that a business tends to be made up of 1) the work/craft (e.g. baking or plumbing, 2) sales & marketing, 3) the systems and administration that help a business scale and consistently deliver good service. A lot of would-be entrepreneurs are bakers & plumbers working for a company (only doing the work/craft in #1), thinking “I could do this better myself”. The author’s point is that if you really want to run your own bakery or plumbing business, you’ll have to get good at #2 & #3, and you’ll also have to expect that if you want your business (& success & income) to scale, you probably won’t continue to do the hands-on baking or plumbing. So you’d better get systems (3) in place so that you can find & train people to do the work (1) as well as you do.
Anonymous Coward
on 26 Jun 08Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” speaks directly about the importance of subject matter expertise here in a 1982 speech at Columbia University.
Eric J. Gruber
on 26 Jun 08I have to agree with Jake; that’s not what the E-Myth is about.
John
on 26 Jun 08I wonder whether any of the people here adding their harrumphs actually bothered to look at what a good b-school teaches (or even have MBAs), or have bothered to look into success in business by MBAs vs. various other degrees (including those more related to the subject matter of the particular businesses in question.)
“Missing the point” comes to mind.
Mark Holton
on 26 Jun 08Enjoyed that post and agree. —follow your dreams with detailed-driven passion for what you love …(kind of a Randy Pausch twist).... good things happen!
Mark Holton
on 26 Jun 08I liked the idea that the vision and passion to learn and to accomplish something is what drove the great leadership in the cases, not the degree. ... formal education is an excellent thing, and for a lot of folks has great value. But keep it in perspective—it isn’t a magic wand for business. Sometimes people value degrees more than knowledge, or diploma’s more than insight. The spirit of the post is spot on, imo.
Joe S
on 26 Jun 08These are great points.
The only thing I would add is that in a larger organization, if you have someone who is a programmer, and they want to manage, sometimes when they manage programmers they forget that they are managing, and they think about things as if they are programming. You end up with a management void and a mess. One of the best training experiences you can give them is to have them manage shopworkers, or something completely new to them, as a way to get them to focus on the management.
Natural managers like the ones you cite often dont need to learn these lessons – they can clearly differentiate between the programming and the management of programming. But for a new manager, where you want to train/build up someone’s management abilities, preventing them from getting distracted by the details is a critical training scenario. If done well, it can be a great learning experience for the manager.
All that being said, I hate working for people who have never done my job…
Don't Quit School
on 27 Jun 08Someone should tell Jobs about this MBA myth as 1 out of 10 of the jobs publicly posted at Apple right now have MBA or “MBA a plus” in the posting. When you look at non-technical jobs such as marketing it’s as much as 25% of the postings put a premium on MBAs.
And though not everyone’s it for the money, there’s always the bottom line to consider: http://www.examiner.com/a-1292433~U_Md__study_shows_MBAs_lead_to_higher_salaries_in_IT_sector.html
Pies
on 27 Jun 08I’m really surprised nobody gave this example before: Google. Unless you think Google fails, ofc.
Brandon Eley
on 27 Jun 08The E-Myth Revisited does not say that an MBA can run a successful (insert industry here) company. What he’s trying to say in his book (and does so very effectively) is this…
A baker, programmer, or mechanic who works for a company and is great at their job, can’t expect to be great at running a business. Running a business is much more than doing a profession. You can be amazing at baking or programming and bankrupt a company.
The reason is many solo-entrepreneurs go into business to get away from “the man” and don’t anticipate all the roles and responsibilities they’ll have as a business owner. Not only do they bake/program/whatever, but they also have to do accounting, bookeeping, purchasing, sales, marketing, customer service, HR, and more.
When many business owners need to hire someone, they’ll outsource what they dislike, such as bookeeping. This is a mistake. They need to work ON their business, not IN it (to some extent). That means even though they love programming or baking, they shouldn’t necessarily delegate business development or bookeeping to some hourly employee.
Gerber’s book has some excellent advice, and I don’t remember him ever even alluding to the fact that any ole’ MBA could run a successful company in any industry. He’s talking to small (i.e. 1-10 employee) entrepreneurs who’re having growing pains. His advice is for people who ARE skilled in their areas of practice, not the average MBA.
I definitely agree with David’s post, just don’t necessarily think The E-Myth Revisited was the greatest reference. It’s true that you need passion for what you do… experience in what you do… to be truly successful. I think that’s a given. But you also need something else… you need to accept the fact that YOU can’t do all the work by yourself. Bill Gates does not program Windows applications anymore. His time is better spent advising his management staff and employees.
pwb
on 27 Jun 08That’s some “old saying”!!
Results 1 – 1 of 1 for “Those who can’t do, get MBAs”
Andrea Hill
on 27 Jun 08Wow, I need to read that book… my first foray into online development/marketing was when I was still in college. Two business grads we knew started a magazine, and you could tell they were following what they’d been taught. An English and a French major thought we could do better, and our passion made our vision come to life and be successful.
Ten years later, I recently graduated with a Masters in Computer Science. 10 people graduated with that degree, whereas 128 graduated with MBAs. They all have the same knowledge now: where is the competitive advantage (in addition to the deep subject matter knowledge….)?
Jangus
on 27 Jun 08Currently, I’m in an MBA program and a project manager to boot.
(I am hoping that isn’t the kiss of death on a post like this.)
I have professional, personal, and (unfortunately) political reasons for getting my MBA. I did, however, have an interesting conversation with one of my professors last semester. His background was entrepreneurial and was wildly successful. We started discussing electives I should take in the upcoming months. He said, “Take an art class, a music class, and get as far away from the business side as possible. The worst thing you can do is turn into the usual MBA recipient.” He mentioned that he felt that he relied on as much on his background in music as his business knowledge in his ventures.
This and many other articles has made me think quite a bit about the “Why” portion of getting an MBA. Thankfully, it still fits in with my goals but I do worry at times that it will be “Scarlet Letter” of my career. I also have worked for MBAs that are incompetent jerks with no passion for what they are doing. I seriously hope to avoid that by “getting away” from the business.
Now back to my economics homework…
Geoff
on 27 Jun 08@ Peter Urban: ”...in almost all cases projects fail or under perform because the ‘project owner’ or project manager has no subject matter expertise.”
Well said.
JD
on 27 Jun 08Nobody with a formal education should run anything.
Robert Einspruch
on 27 Jun 08MBAs come in all shapes, colors and sizes. And different MBA programs are good at producing different kinds of graduates. But the reality is that companies have different management needs at different stages. Most start ups can live without MBAs. But companies with 20,000 employees do.
Do not use Bill Gates or Steve Jobs as examples. Nobody reading this forum is that smart. :-)
Jed
on 27 Jun 08I agree with you, and while I haven’t read the E-Myth, I’m familiar with the idea.
I like screen printing, but I do NOT want to make a living doing it. I would much rather invest some time and money into buying a good setup and developing good systems (training, accounting, sales, etc) to set up a shop that builds itself.
Building a business is building a series of systems that you can wind up. That said, there’s no better way to build such systems than by knowing what they hell the systems are meant to do.
So you’re both right.
Also, MBAs are good for people who want to show off how good they are at taking orders.
Andres
on 27 Jun 08Quite a shortsighted article and, arguably, the result of an oversimplified way to view the situation described.
Oversimplification is not, by any means, a requisite of a didactic analysis. But, if we were to strip reality of its wide tonal range, I’d rather have the right people leading the wrong business (business people doing business) than the wrong people leading the right business (bakers doing business).
Although I’d love to pretend this article never ocurred…certain prejudice against MBAs seems to come through a number of articles written in 37signals.
The point is: I’d hate to see such bright people consciously limiting their (business) relations based on such a stereotype.
Andres
on 27 Jun 08@Pies 27 Jun 08 “I’m really surprised nobody gave this example before: Google. Unless you think Google fails, ofc”
What do you mean? Google has its’ fair share of technical people, MBAs, and those who are both…as a matter of fact, I don’t know of any big tech co. that stays away from MBAs.
J Lane
on 27 Jun 08Quid pro quo good chap.
That was a really long winded way of saying that you disagree…
Ryan Jones
on 27 Jun 08You missed the author’s point.
He was saying that if you are a technician you have to be ready to also be a manager. Bill Gates would’ve never built microsoft had he only wanted to program. He was prepared to take on other tasks that the business required him, which was exactly what the author’s point was.
N
on 27 Jun 08How did you get to link to an article dated 4 days into the future!? or is that inc.com’s 701st article of the year?
Oh well, no point to the rant – I see it’s linked from their home page :-(
Bradtastic
on 27 Jun 08College just got in the way of the things that I wanted to do… it didn’t seem like the right choice.
CP
on 27 Jun 08Over the last few series of “The Apprentice UK” it’s usually the contestants with the highest qualifications that get booted out early and only the ones who display flexibility and creativity in managing tasks that make it to the latter stages.
This year the winner was a college drop-out who suffers from dyslexia.
Anonymous Coward
on 27 Jun 08I disagree. George Bush is the first President in US history to possess an MBA (from Harvard) and see what a great job he’s done :}
Andrew Pincock
on 27 Jun 08I agree with Brandon Eley’s assessment. I’ve run a few small businesses and have found the E-Myth principles to hold up quite well. That said, I think David’s comments are good overall—that success will most likely be achieved with the right mix of business sense and passion/knowledge of subject matter.
VT
on 27 Jun 08real nice post!
Anonymous Coward
on 27 Jun 08Great post indeed.
I’ve recently read about many companies are being driven in the wrong direction because a great fraction are run by MBAs instead of practitioners.
Damon
on 27 Jun 08The MBA is a red herring. I have one, and understand the repulsion that the degree generates in some people. But I believe that has much more to do the the personality type attracted to business school than the actual degree.
Getting an MBA doesn’t make you a worthless prick. But a lot of worthless pricks get MBAs. I don’t know why.
The truth here is that people who care about their business tend to be better at it than some worthless prick MBA who doesn’t (all else equal). But that’s not a surprise, is it?
But I’ve met an awfully large number of MBA’s who were smart, driven, interested and embarrassingly good at what they do.
Also, consider how Warren Buffet fits into this. He has an MBA. He has no significant passion for any one of his businesses that I can see, and he is unquestionably good at what he does.
Anonymous Coward
on 27 Jun 08Don’t blame the MBAs. I have one as well. Never cared for one, but that was the requirement of the marketplace to be taken seriously as a candidate for jobs at most top IT companies, even though I came with years of programming, networking, systems engineering, project management and other related experiences.
Got one at a top 20 school and suddenly I was taken seriously. Although I can honestly say I learned nothing in that program that I hadn’t already known with BBA. MBA provided some good network contacts and that’s it.
It’s the same way that SATs are b.s. for college. GMATs are b.s. for MBA programs
It’s just another filter. Nothing more.
Matt
on 27 Jun 08Wow, this post failed on several points.
First, the E-myth did not say that plumbers shouldn’t run plumbing companies. It did say that if they do run a plumbing company, then they need to treat it like a business and shift their focus to the high level business decisions. In addition, I do not remember the book ever discrediting the experience, or expertise, of the individual in the case study.
Second, I am not sure how you arrived at the title of your opposing theory, the”MBA Myth”—as if the degree somehow places the holder in opposition to the entrepreneur. In fact, many MBAs work toward the degree in hopes of being an entrepreneur in the future. Most programs even offer a course in entrepreneurship to cater to this demographic. Furthermore, most MBAs do not jump from business undergrad to the MBA program. In my classes, the majority of students are from other professions, such as engineering, law, and accounting.
Stacy
on 27 Jun 08I got an MBA from Stanford when I was 29 and I can honestly say some 20+ years later working in tech (I have engineering degrees too), it has never stop working for me. IF you can get into a TOP school, it will be the rock of any personal finance, entrepreneurial, and career moves you make. I have never heard one of my peers say it was a waste of time or money. So if you can do it, don’t listen to the people who bad-mouth MBAs on principal or because of a poor manager they had. Of course it doesn’t guarantee success, but you’ll have boundless personal and career flexibility in the future.
Martial
on 27 Jun 08My experience is that MBAs are fine in moderation and when they are themselves moderated. MBAs who aren’t at the top, but who influence the top against the grain of advice from the practitioners are the dangerous ones. The moment you give them the keys to the car (i.e. allowing them to push you hard on concepts like growth for the sake of growth) you’re doomed to unhappiness – even if your company may be more succesful by some metrics.
My cousin who runs the family business got an MBA and it was a good thing. The networking has paid off many, many times over. The introduction to current systems and the implications of the wider world helped the company shake off the shackles of ignorance and tradition and stopped a slide into irrelevance. But he is, after all, the one in charge and he was a practitioner first (all the family members who want to work in the business start by sweeping up the shop floor and have to work their way to more interesting things).
Justin Bell
on 28 Jun 08Other good examples include John Sculley and Steve Ballmer, who obviously didn’t/don’t know what the hell they’re doing, despite both being business men.
LV
on 28 Jun 08By entering the words in the box, you are also helping to digitize texts that were written before the computer age. The words that you see were taken directly from old texts that are being scanned and stored by the Internet Archive.
Jeff Judge
on 28 Jun 08As a few others have said, the book (which I’ve read over the past week by recommendation) is about thinking of your business in a different way – specifically thinking of it as if it were a franchise like McDonald’s, thus forcing you to think through automation of manual tasks, a consistent end user experience, and putting the right plan together for growth. The book doesn’t advocate that plumbers and bakers shouldn’t run a business, hiring MBAs, or that everyone should turn their business into a franchise – rather it’s about striking the right balance between doing, planning, and managing. It discusses how many entrepreneurs spend their time (which is limited) doing what they know, and become overwhelmed when they’re forced to plan and manage for growth.
The book is a little odd in parts (the whole series of talks with the baker reads like a motivational speaker series), but I appreciate the message.
Steve R.
on 28 Jun 08I worked for an MBA Program. One of our instructors taught part time at ours (U of I Champaign) and at Kellogg – one of the best in the country. I helped him grade exams at one point. Average score was in the 20% range. High score was in the 40% range. No one got lower than a B-. The subject matter was no more complex than I took during my undergrad Finance classes. I asked about this, as it seemed very odd that students would need such a huge curve for such elementary material. I was told that “An MBA is not an academic degree” and that “Companies won’t pay for classes if the student gets less than a B-, so we don’t give grades less than B- unless the student simply does not come to class or do the work.” I was also told this was common practice at even top-tier schools like Kellogg.
My impressions of MBA as a credential took a serious hit and to this day, I am left with the impression that while they may be good introductions for those without undergraduate exposure to fundamental business concepts, overall they are merely a ticket-punch and networking opportunity.
I would expect that an MBA would prepare someone to manage much as a CS major prepares one to design, but that seems to not be the case.
Jason
on 30 Jun 08I have seen this argument from both sides. I was a web developer for a number of years and had all kinds of preconceived notions that MBA types were all swarmy and all talk.
But a few years ago, I decided to go for a career switch, and the MBA was a logical choice. The degree helped me focus on what’s truly important for the business and my clients and quantify / analyze things in rational ways that I wasn’t able to before. It has opened up a number of doors for me since then. My clients take me more seriously as do potential employers. And because I have some development background, I can talk tech when I need to. This helps build credibility with my team and my clients.
CJ Curtis
on 30 Jun 08Nothing against MBAs, but I always say that one year of experience is worth five years of “education.” At least.
I think a world class designer that runs his own company, or a great chef that runs his own restaurant is really what makes the difference between what might be a successful company and a GREAT company.
Passion for the business has to come from somewhere, and it typically has to come from the top. If it doesn’t, the passion that may exist within the employees usually will not last. This is especially true in creative industries. Passionate designers and developers working under an MBA-type manager that doesn’t give a shit can be a very trying time. I’m sure many of us have been there.
Greg Paulhus
on 30 Jun 08Business comes down to sales. If you can’t sell what you do, you haven’t got a business. Drucker had it right when he said the purpose of a business is to create a customer. Making a sale is harder than it sounds, you have to get comfortable with the concept of asking people for money. Most people aren’t comfortable with that, and most people (MBAs included) aren’t that good at sales. I also agree that this article missed the point of the E-Myth (or perhaps the author didn’t actually read it).
Mark Sessoms
on 02 Jul 08For all this talk about subject matter expertise… I have two words. Lou Gerstner. All business. No tech. At least at the beginning.
I’m can only believe he developed subject matter expertise during his tenure, but on products and business lines, not programming.
This discussion is closed.