Does (management) education teach you anything?

It’s become quite fashionable these days to criticize the value of our education system. And I don’t mean the criticism focused on lifting Australian educational standards to match international best practice. This is necessary if we want to retain our place as a truly competitive nation.

No, I’m talking about the criticism that is leveled against the value of formal management education in driving innovation and creativity. The argument suggests that the structure and theory learned at college and university make people risk averse and unwilling to create new opportunities. They point to people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Dick Smith and Kerry Packer to suggest that formal education serves little purpose in creating successful business enterprises.

Let’s get some perspective on the issue:

Yes, there are some dud management colleges and university courses where the qualifications aren’t worth much. Yes, there are many graduates from management courses and degrees who actually can’t do anything useful.

In general, however, bright and exceptional people (like Jobs, Gates, Smith and Packer) will usually succeed, with or without formal education. They have a natural ability to learn and adapt - and they generally identified opportunities early and didn’t bother finishing their education.

But most of us have to learn how to learn. We have to learn how to assimilate, integrate and analyse information to make intelligent decisions. We have to learn that correlation does not imply causation. We have to learn how to interpret outlier data. We need to know the history so we can build on what has gone before and not reinvent the wheel.

Colleges and universities teach us how to learn. They allow us to advance our own knowledge by building on the work of others. Once we have learned, it is our natural progressiveness or conservatism that comes to the fore. Our personality will then determine whether we seek to play it safe or go out and create new things. Now, maybe colleges and universities attract a high proportion of those who want to play it safe in the belief that an education will give them security. But that is quite different to alleging that a management education through college or university will suppress innovation and creativity.

Management education is an important ingredient in improving the overall effectiveness of Australian enterprise and our overall levels of productivity.

Norman is a Future Strategist and Organisational Architect. He believes in the value of management education and informed decision making.

< Older Post Newer Post >

Subscribe to our regular articles, insights and thought leadership

Part 3: Accelerate Performance With Strategic Alignment - Develop The Appropriate Culture

By Norman Chorn • March 27, 2023

In my previous article "Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Define the logic of your strategy", we demonstrated the alignment between the market and business strategy by matching the logic of the market with the logic of the strategy. The Explore logic emphasises a market where customers seek new solutions for emerging requirements. The strategy responds by exploring new opportunities and driving for growth. The Exploit logic occurs in a more stable market where customers seek lower costs and reliability of supply. The appropriate strategy focuses on operational efficiency and building close customer relationships. Culture is key to shaping the capabilities of the business to successfully implement strategy . It drives the way that people behave, decisions are made and actions are taken. It determines, therefore, the strategy that is actually realised in the market, as opposed to that which is merely intended. We make a key distinction between the desired culture and the appropriate culture. The desired culture is what people may choose because it sounds attractive and in vogue. However, the appropriate culture is the culture that is required to successfully implement the chosen strategy. Often, these can be different. For example, people might seek to develop a culture that is ‘innovative’, ‘flexible’ and ‘empowering’, but this may not be the appropriate culture needed to successfully implement the business strategy. DEVELOP THE APPROPRIATE CULTURE FOR YOUR STRATEGY Developing the appropriate culture requires a deliberate emphasis on certain cultural attributes and making trade-offs on others. As we will see, the attributes that are traded off are usually the opposites of those that are emphasised.

Part 2: Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Define the Logic of your Strategy

By Norman Chorn • March 27, 2023

In Part 1 "How to Accelerate Performance with Strategic Alignment - Understand the Logic of the Market" we outlined different market conditions and defined them in terms of two overarching logics — Exploring and Exploiting . To briefly recap, an Exploring logic is one where customers are seeking new solutions for emerging needs. It’s all about change and action. An Exploiting logic occurs in a more stable market in which the issues are about lowering costs and working collaboratively with customers. It’s a market that focuses on stability and cohesion. FORCES THAT SHAPE YOUR STRATEGY Clearly, it is one of these two logics — or a combination of both — that will shape your strategy as you operate in these markets. See figure 1 below that describes how these logics will form your business strategy: