Business school

This may be the classic Harvard Business School post. Bury the lede, offer up an endless anecdote about a popular WASP pastime, such as fishing, kiss Malcolm Gladwell’s ass, and take two or three times as many words as necessary to get your point across.

Before I came to Washington, I worked briefly for a top business school. I found there a fine line between extraordinary management scientists and glorified baloney throwers with no real talent other than convincing a bunch of people who should have known better to pay them six figures for spouting pop psych platitudes. The bright lights were truly bright: they understood naturally how to structure business units to be most effective and have the highest morale, and whether to pursue growth internally, through partnerships, or through acquisitions. The dim bulbs were an embarrassment.

Take a look at a few typical examples from Column B.

1) You Are a Leader — Really!:

Someone said to me recently, “I don’t see myself as a leader. I do not feel comfortable embracing that label. I feel like it isn’t something I have earned.” This is a dangerous point of view – and it’s certainly inconsistent with what our new president called for in his inaugural address! All of us must lead if we are to create sustainable change and make our world better.

If, for whatever reason, you don’t think you’re a leader, then give me a minute or two to offer a couple of observations that might help you see things a bit differently. Do you know of anyone in a management role who doesn’t know how to mobilize people toward valued goals? Do you know people who have no hierarchical authority but are great at leading others? My guess is that the answer is yes to both these questions.

Leadership is not about position. Nor is it about career stage, gender, or culture, although the way leadership plays out is influenced by these and other factors.

Sustainable, mobilizing, valued goals, hierarchy…Is this guy still talking, and what happened to my wallet?

2) When One Team Member Is Ruining Your Team:

• My first suggestion is to work on improving the team behavior of every team member. In this way, the one person you are having problems with won’t feel ‘singled out’ by you.
• Have each team member ask each other team member a simple question: “In the future, how can I do a great job of helping our team demonstrate effective teamwork?”
• Encourage each team member to be positive and focused in their replies to other team members.
• Encourage each team member to listen to, learn from, and express gratitude for these suggestions.
• Have each team member discuss what they have learned from the other team members with you – in a one-on-one dialogue.
• Provide your ideas – as the manager of the team — after you have heard the summary of the other suggestions from this person’s team members.
• Ask each person to commit to following up with fellow team members on their plan for improvement to get ongoing suggestions and reinforcement.
• Participate in the process yourself – so that you are ‘leading by example’ not just ‘leading by preaching at everyone else.’

This isn’t sensitive management; it’s the pretense of sensitive management. Depending on the circumstances, a manager of this sort is probably abdicating his responsibility or being a passive-aggressive pain in the ass. Demanding bosses can be difficult, but they’re usually a lot more tolerable than the kinds of bosses who pretend to be sympathetic to your feelings, while actually being completely oblivious or willfully ignorant of them, and undertaking things of a sort and in a manner likely to make you angry or indisposed to work.

This isn’t actually how to manage employees. It’s how to manage children. Contrary to popular belief, you didn’t learn all you need to know in kindergarten. Ask your oncologist or your ob/gyn. (Did you ever find it ironic that those posters always seemed to be up in doctor’s offices?) When you’re managing adults, you have to be firm, but you have to be forthright, and you can’t be passive-aggressive about it if you want anyone to respect you.

That’s the great irony of good business schools: some people go there and learn how to draw on their natural abilities to become tremendously effective owners and managers. Others go there and end up just as mediocre as they were before, only 10 times as enervating.