CHAPTER 7 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Teaching vs. Talking

“Virtually all students, those with and without exceptionalities, will have difficulty learning or remembering classroom material at times. All students stand to benefit from instructional strategies that will assist them to process information more effectively.” (Banikowski & Mehring, 1999, p.16, emphasis added)

The theme "learning is not a spectators’ sport" appeared in more than one place in the research I conducted. Based on my classroom experience as an adult learner, some academic professionals fail to cognitively realize what that means: active engagement enhances memory and learning. While cognitive memorization has its place to lay the foundation on which to build “knowledge,” it should not replace active engagement.

Bloom (1987) confirms that by engaging individuals actively in learning, most learners will retain:

10% of what they READ
20% of what they HEAR
30% of what they SEE
50% of what they SEE & HEAR
70% of what they SAY
90% of what they SAY & DO

It appears that by using teaching methods beyond traditional lecture (see 20% above), academic professional do indeed have the ability to improve retention and learning. In other words, the fact that we remember how to spell means our elementary teachers knew what they were doing with those alphabet blocks. Applicational learning is vital to comprehension. If one can not apply what is learned, in my opinion, true knowledge is not acquired.

As Albert Einstein is quoted to say; “If you can't explain a concept to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.” It isn’t until we embrace a concept, take it for a spin and are able to teach that same concept in a way a young child could understand, do we truly become a master of the concept.

Drs. Alison K. Banikowski and Teresa A. Mehring put it this way in their article, “Strategies to Enhance the Memory Based on Brain-Research”:

For educators, what's the point? If teaching occurs without learning, we might as well skip the teaching in the first place! Educators must ensure that students attend to learning, attach new learning to previous learning, actively engage in learning, construct meaning, and demonstrate their learning. All of this requires memory. No true educator simply wants to "teach"; educators want students to "learn." Educators want learners to be able to organize, store, and retrieve knowledge and skills. By applying what we know about how the brain learns and remembers, educators can focus on the "learning" aspect of the teaching/learning process. (1999, p. 1, emphasis added)

It seems Banikowski and Mehring agree with Gardiner: there is more to teaching than talking at students. Educators must attend to actually imparting knowledge by giving students information in formats their brains can accept, recall and utilize.

Dr. Anita E. Woolfolk, an expert in educational psychology, explains that there is more to education than lecturing. "Knowledge is more than the end product of previous learning; it also guides new learning […] What we already know determines to a great extent what we will pay attention to, perceive, learn, remember, and forget" (Woolfolk, 1998, p. 247). Banikowski and Mehring agree. They affirm, “The research is clear on the role of prior knowledge to memory and learning. Having prior knowledge or experience which relates to the current learning enhances memory and conversely, lacking prior knowledge or experience with the current learning reduces memory” (1999, p. 13).

Banikowski and Mehring feel that:

Educators [really] have two choices.

1. They can find the knowledge and experience the student currently has and "hook" the new learning to it. [The] goal is to help students recall what they know about a topic and help them use this knowledge gained previously to guide their comprehension of the new learning.

2. If no prior knowledge or experience exists or cannot be tapped, educators can create the prior experience. (Banikowski & Mehring, 1999, p. 9, emphasis added)

CHAPTER 6 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Developing the Lifelong Learner through Emotional Intelligence

As Daniel Goleman points out in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, academic intelligence has little to do with emotional life. In fact, Goleman goes on to site Howard Gardner’s 1983 book (or manifesto) Frames of the Mind, which refuted the IQ view that one form of intelligence, existed. It claimed, rather, that a wide spectrum of intelligences exist. According to Gardner, IQ contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other factors. (Gardner, 1995). While Gardner identified seven key varieties of intelligence, the “Interpersonal” and “Intrapersonal” intelligences correlate with what we learned earlier that are key factors to success in business.

The principles and theories of business are pretty straight forward. Intelligent people can master business acumen over years of practice. What makes the practice of business challenging and rewarding is that no matter what business one finds herself in, people are involved. Successful business people are individuals with high degrees of interpersonal intelligence or the ability to understand other people: what motivates them, how they work and how to work cooperatively with them. While interpersonal intelligence is very important, as we learned from Figure 1, visible knowledge and skills are only the tip of the iceberg. Intrapersonal intelligence is the “correlative ability turned inward; it is the capacity to form an accurate, veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate effectively in life” (Gardner, 1993, p. 9).

At a very young age, I began reading leadership and psychology books. When you have read as many books as I have, you begin to see themes and patterns among authors. I began to realize that we really do not have very many original thoughts, only new ways of organizing and looking at information. Even as I write this paper, I realize how much each of us is a sum of our experiences and the people who have made impressions upon us. I scan books now, looking for gold nuggets of information to add to my knowledge base. I rarely purchase a book unless it strikes me as a new way of looking at a concept or theme. As we continue to be bombarded with more and more information, the need for relevant and useful information seems to be even more critical.

During our MBA leadership instruction, we had the opportunity to select and read various books related to leadership and psychology themes. Two books in particular, when read together, get to the core of how leaders can be effective and why they must take their responsibility as leaders seriously. As you can see from the above discussion, success in business has very little has to do with IQ intelligence alone; yet, it has everything to do with one’s emotional intelligence development.

Research supports the fact that we are born with our IQ; we can get better at taking the tests and improve our score by a point or two, but this number remains fairly constant. The beauty of emotional intelligence and value added to individuals is that with work and commitment, we can each develop areas of our emotional intelligence beyond our genetic make-up. When tapped, our EQ (emotional intelligence) will yield more lasting results to the individual than development of our IQ. Such emotional attention translates to more prepared and qualified MBA graduates.

How Leaders Can Be Effective

The first book I will examine in this section, Dr. Steven Covey’s Principle-centered Leadership (or what I call the “How” book) is a great example of the current perspective on leadership and practical things one can do right now to improve one’s life and leadership skills. Principle-centered Leadership expands Covey’s conceptual ideas (presented in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) to leadership and organizations. As with most of Covey’s work, corporate management and leadership training is readily available for purchase. I was first introduced to Covey’s 7 Habits my freshman year in college and have been directed to it a number of times by mentors throughout my career.

Covey’s Principle-centered Leadership suggests that the highest level of human motivation is a sense of personal contribution. Whether one agrees with this idea or not, this is a common belief among leadership authors. As with the Figure 1 from the Introduction (in which central and surface competencies were represented by an iceberg diagram) Principle-centered Leadership assumes a circle with four dimensions: Security, Wisdom, Power and Guidance. When an individual is out of balance or drawn to one or more dimensions without skills or insight to return to center, the individual has a difficult time achieving a balanced life or leadership style. The center of the circle represents four principles, which work at four levels. The dimensions, or factors, are interdependent. When these four factors are harmonized, according to Covey, it will create the great force of a noble personality, a balanced character and a beautifully integrated individual (Covey, 1992).

Characteristics of Principle-centered Leaders

While every principle-centered leader has unique personalities and skills, there are common visible characteristics which can be seen universally. According to Covey, principle-centered leaders are continually learning by using past experiences and mistakes to improve the performance in present leadership responsibilities. They are service-orientated with a strong personal commitment to improving circumstances for others as well as for themselves. Principle-centered leaders radiate positive energy and believe in other’s unique talents and abilities. They also lead balanced lives, seeing life as an adventure to be explored and enjoyed. This life adventure provides many opportunities to engage with others in win-win synergistic experiences. When they get tired, they take care of themselves and renew their spirits to engage in another day of life. These individuals have a strong work ethic and personal commitment to the need for continuous improvement in four areas:

1. personal and professional development;
2. interpersonal relations;
3. managerial effectiveness; and
4. organizational productivity (pp. 33-39).

Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside-out on four levels which ties to four principles. Each level is “necessary but insufficient”—meaning we have to work on all principles at each level to create a balanced and effective leadership style. Figure 6 below aligns the principle to the level.

Figure 6. Four Levels, Four Principles
(Adapted from Covey, 1992, p. 31)

Why Leaders Need to Be Effective

The second, or the “Why” book, is, Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead with Emotional Intelligence. This text provides insight into the responsibility we all have as leaders—to add the best we have to the emotional soup among the groups we lead (both large and small)—as well as tangible examples of why and when to use different leadership strategies. Leaders have the greatest impact on organizational results and developing healthy corporate cultures.

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee write:

Great Leaders move us. They ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. When we try to explain why they are so effective, we speak of strategy, vision, or powerful ideas. But the reality is much more primal: Great Leadership works through the emotions.

[…] Even if they get everything else just right, if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should. (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002, p. 3, emphasis added)

The Primal Dimension

According to the authors:

The emotional task of the leader is primal—in two senses—it is both the original and the most important act of leadership. […] Throughout history and in cultures everywhere, the leader in any human group has been the one to whom others look for assurance and clarity when facing uncertainty or threat, or when there’s a job to be done. The leader acts as the group’s emotional guide. Quite simply, in any human group the leader has maximal power to sway everyone’s emotions. All leadership includes the primal dimension—for better or for worse. (pp. 5-6, emphasis added)

It isn’t hard to find examples in one’s life or career in which a leader has inspired (good) or stirred up (bad) emotion within you.

The Open Loop

Goleman et al. explains why this is the case:

The reason a leader’s manner—not just what he does, but how he does it—matters so much lies in the design of the human brain: what scientists […] call the open-loop nature of the limbic system, our emotional centers. […] An open-loop system depends largely on external sources to manage itself. (p. 6, emphasis added)

In other words, we rely on connections with other people for our own emotional stability. Despite advances in civilization, the open-loop limbic system is part of who we are and what makes us human. Even though the open-loop is so much a part of our lives, we usually don’t notice the process itself. According to the authors, scientists have captured this “attunement of emotions” in the laboratory by measuring the physiology—such as heart rate—of two people as they have a good conversation. As the conversation begins, their bodies each operate at different rhythms. By the end of a simple fifteen-minute conversation, their physiological profiles look remarkably similar—a phenomenon which scientists called mirroring.

Remarkably, emotions spread without resistance in this way whenever people are near one another, even when the contact is completely nonverbal. The same effect holds in the office, boardroom, or shop floor; people in groups at work inevitably “catch” feelings from one another, sharing everything from jealousy and envy to angst or euphoria. Scientists have found the more cohesive the group, the stronger the sharing of moods, emotional history, and even “hot buttons” occurs.

Contagion and Leadership

Goleman et al. explain that leaders have much more responsibility over emotional mirroring than others:

The continual interplay […] among members of a group creates a kind of emotional soup […] everyone adds his/her own flavor to the mix. […] it is the leader who adds the strongest seasoning. Why? […] that enduring reality of business: Everyone watches the boss. People take their emotional cues from the top, even when the boss isn’t highly visible. (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002, p. 8)

It was intriguing to learn that even the CEO who works behind closed doors on an upper floor is watched—his attitude affects the moods of his direct reports, and a domino effect ripples throughout the company’s emotional climate. In these studies, even when leaders are not talking, they were watched more carefully than anyone else in the group. When people raise a question for the group as a whole, they would keep their eyes on the leader to see his/her response.

Remarkably, group members generally see the leader’s emotional reaction as the most valid response, and so model their own on it—particularly in an ambiguous situation, in which various members react differently. In a sense, the leader sets the emotional standard. (See research by Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002; Bachman, 1988)

I can’t help but think how valuable this information is/could be to professional educators (classroom CEOs) in the MBA adult classroom.

Definitely worth the time to read, Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee go on to discuss leadership competencies and how they are developed through emotional intelligence. These competencies include:

Self–awareness: which include emotional awareness, accurate information about oneself and level of self-confidence, etc;

Self–management: which include self-control, transparency, adaptability, achievement, initiative and optimism;

Social Awareness: which include empathy, organizational awareness and service, and finally;
Relationship Management: which include inspiration, influence, and the development of others, becoming a catalyst for change, conflict management, teamwork and collaboration.

At this point in our discussion, we are beginning to see the importance of leadership and how critical it is in developing lifelong learners. If emotional intelligence is truly as vital to leadership and business management as these experts claim, there should be more to graduate education than lectures and information regurgitation. The important thing isn’t that we know that MBA students are intelligent, and that lifelong learning and leadership skills are key factors to success. It is that we know how this knowledge applies to transforming graduate business education and act now to apply this knowledge to create informed and strategic change within the walls of graduate business education.

CHAPTER 5 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

“Six Sigma is the most important initiative GE has ever undertaken—and is part of the genetic code of our future leadership.”
– Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric

Six Sigma’s Approach to Problem-solving

Six Sigma is best described as a journey—for business professionals who are truly committed to improving productivity and profitability. Six Sigma isn’t theoretical; it’s an active, hands-on practice that gets results. One doesn’t contemplate Six Sigma; one does it. Doing it has proven to be the fast track to vastly improving the bottom line for major corporations such as American Express, General Electric, Motorola and a multitude of others in all industries.

Because of its success in the business world, I cannot help but think it could be successfully transferred into MBA education, as well, by incorporating similar evaluation measures within the classroom or modeling lifelong learning (six sigma beliefs and methodologies). The thought here is, if the process of educating business professionals emulated the best businesses in the world, it seems those same professionals would be more prepared to join that world after their graduate education.

The Six Sigma story began at Motorola in the 1980s. Reliability engineer Bill Smith concluded if a product was defective, found and corrected during production, then it is very likely that other defects were probably being missed and would later be found by customers. His point was that if products were assembled completely free of defects, they probably would not fail customers later.

Mikel Harry, PhD, founder of Motorola Six Sigma Research Institute, further refined the methodology, to not only eliminate process waste, but to also turn it into “growth currency”—regardless of the specific type of service, product or market sector. Six Sigma statistically measures and reflects true process capability; its value is in transforming cultural outlooks and norms from complacency to accomplishment across the spectrum of industry, to include, in my mind, the business of graduate-level business education (Brue, 2002).

Six Sigma Methodology Essentials—Cover Your Assets

The first thing to know about Six Sigma is that it relies on good, old-fashioned hard work—coupled with factual data and a disciplined problem-solving approach. There is no magic bullet or quick external fix. It affects every aspect and level of an organization from line workers—middle management to the CEO—to transform people and processes within an organization.

The Six Sigma mind-set considers “your people” as assets not cost liabilities. Work gets done through processes executed by people; success, failure and processes problems are usually the result of what lots of people do, not just one person. Managers often tend to focus just on people in their organization, looking for someone to congratulate or to blame when something goes wrong. Once an organization thinks in terms of “human assets,” it is equally important to realize the monetary value of rooting-out wasted materials and steps in processes, as it is a key factor to unlocking hidden returns on your people investment (Brue, 2002).

This “people investment” notion resonates deeply with graduate education. Truly, educators are investing in their students. The problem comes when that investment is based on out-dated and inappropriate information. Just as a viable business entity would only be governed by real-time information that would profit it considerably, business educators would benefit greatly with information gained by recent business experience or applicable lifelong learning practices.

Likewise, their investment in their people/student assets would be more valuable to their institution if visible gains resulted from evaluating and re-evaluating their educational processes—just as a business organization yields gains by consistently and continuously re-evaluates its manufacturing, management and marketplace processes.

The Six Sigma methodology uses statistical tools to identify the “vital few factors”, or the factors that directly explain the cause-effect relationship of the inputs that drive the process and the process output being measured. Typically, there are 6 or fewer factors (even where hundreds of steps can generate a defect) within a process; thus, slight adjustments will improve the quality of the process and generate bottom-line results. By changing the way one looks at processes and by understanding the vital few factors that cause waste, error, and rework, one can improve the ability of processes to deliver higher quality to customers and achieve lower costs associated with delivery.

Once the vital factors are known, improvements that deliver dramatic results can follow. By putting one’s people to work solving process problems with proven statistical tools, one eliminates errors, but also the rumor mill of inaccurate speculation by individuals as to why processes don’t work. Instead of opinion, one’s people and organization is armed with quantifiable information—based in facts, not on hunches or guesswork. When armed with facts, a manager is in a position to fix the problem permanently and gain long-term benefits throughout the organization.

The Six Sigma methodology is not rigid. Applications and approaches vary between companies and/or industries, in some cases are significantly different between players within the same industry. Six Sigma professionals recognize that the methodology is a “roadmap to improvement.” Indeed, it doesn’t even matter what the model is called; the point is that this set of tools help managers and employees understand and improve critical organizational processes. Six Sigma consists of four or five phases based on a few key concepts, as noted in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5. Six Sigma Phases & Key Concepts
(Adapted from Brue, 2002)

The application of this model to MBA education seems evident. If educators defined, measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled their instruction and institutional goals, more of their students would learn and retain information vital to their future success. Indeed—the benefits of this model to graduate education comes in at least two forms: 1) graduate students can learn the model their instructors are employing as well as 2) benefit from its successful integration first-hand as graduate business education improves.

Six Sigma has been employed in countless circumstances and has been proven to effectively direct an organization’s assets and processes to lead to greater success and decreased costs. Though this model has been employed mainly in business organizations and corporations, it could easily transfer to graduate business education.

CHAPTER 4 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Lifelong Learning and the Successful Twenty-first Century Business Organization

In order to prepare the next generation of problem solvers, educators must have a good sense of the kind of challenges these leaders will face in organizational models which have not predominately existed in corporate America.

As Dr. John P. Kotter points out in his book Leading Change, the typical twentieth-century organization has not operated in a rapidly changing environment. Often organization structures, systems, practices and culture based in twentieth-century thinking have been more an inhibitor than a facilitator of the kind of change required for twenty-first-century success. “If environmental volatility continues to increase, as most people now predict, the standard organization of the twentieth century will likely become a dinosaur” (Kotter, 1996, p. 161, emphasis added).

While it is impossible to predict the future, according to Dr. Kotter, there are clear indicators of what twenty-first-century winning enterprise will evolve to as time passes.

These indicators include:

1) A persistent sense of urgency,
2) Teamwork among upper management,
3) People who can create and communicate vision effectively,
4) Empowerment at all levels of the organization, and
5) An adaptive corporate culture which transforms organizations and determines their success in an ever-changing global competitive market place.

Figure 3 provides a snap-shot of the visual cues or characteristics that can be seen in these kinds of organizations.

Figure 3. The Winning Twenty-first Century Organization
(Adapted from Kotter, 1996, p. 172)

The key to creating and sustaining the kind of organization described above is leadership, not only at the top but also throughout the enterprise. In other words, over the next few decades we will see both a new form of organization emerge as well as need a new kind of employee to meet the demands of a faster, more competitive work environment.

According to Kotter, the twenty-first century employee will need to know more about leadership and management than previous counterparts. For those raised on traditional notions about leadership, that it is bestowed on the chosen few, the traditional idea ignores the power and potential that lifelong learning has toward empowering individuals at all levels of the organization.

A relationship exists between lifelong learning, leadership skills and the capacity to succeed in the future. Even before I read Kotter’s book, intuitively I knew that men and women like Art Seiler had something unique that many seek to understand.

Kotter does a good job articulating what that “it” is, so to speak. In his research of 115 students from Harvard’s Business School class of 1974, he found two elements that stood out to explain why most where doing well despite the challenging economic climate that took place around the time they graduated. These elements were: 1) Competitive drive and 2) Lifelong learning, or the ability to apply gained knowledge to new environments and adapt behavior based on this learning.

Kotter clarifies:

Competitive drive helped create lifelong learning, which kept increasing skill and knowledge levels, especially leadership skills, which in turn produced a prodigious ability to deal with an increasing difficult and fast-moving global economy. […] people with high standards and strong willingness to learn become measurably stronger and more able leaders at the age of fifty than they had been at the age of forty. (Kotter, emphasis added, p. 178).

Figure 4 below articulates the determining factors which lead to an individual’s capacity to succeed in the future.

Figure 4. What Determines an Individual’s Capacity to Succeed in the Future?
(Created from research by Kotter, 1995)

Just as organizations are being forced to learn, change and constantly reinvent themselves in the twenty-first century, so will increasing numbers of individuals. Lifelong learning and the leadership skills that, in the past, were only available to small segments of the population may just be the key that determines organization and individual success in the future.

According to Kotter, lifelong learners develop five simple habits.

First, they are risk taking, willing to push themselves out of their comfort zones. Instead of becoming set in their ways, they keep experimenting.

Second, they engage in humble self-reflection, with honest assessments of successes and failures (especially the latter) to educate themselves to make adjustments and to take corrective measures toward improvement.

Third, they actively solicit the opinions and ideas of others. They believe that with the right approach, they can learn from anyone under any circumstance.

Fourth, more than the average person, lifelong learners also listen carefully with an open mind. They know that careful listening will help give them accurate feedback on the effect of their actions.

Finally, lifelong learners overcome a natural human tendency to shy away from pain. By surviving difficult experiences, they build up immunity to hardship. The very best lifelong learners and leaders have high standards, ambitious goals and a real sense of mission in their lives (Kotter, 1996, pp. 182-183).

Kotter feels:

A strategy of embracing the past will probably become increasingly ineffective over the next few decades. Better for most of us to start learning now how to cope with change, to develop whatever leadership potential we have, and help our organizations in the transformation process. (Kotter, emphasis added, p. 186)

So how does the academic community empower adult learners seeking Master’s degrees in business to become lifelong learners and leaders in the Twenty-first Century?

CHAPTER 3 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Beyond Business Ethics

In most athletic events, the referee blows a whistle to call attention to a form of misconduct or to call a time-out. In the world of business, academia or government, “whistle blowing” is synonymous to selling out, becoming a rat or using passive aggressive behavior to get even for being wronged or mistreated. Often the very act of calling attention to misconduct places an individual at risk of retaliation, yet frequently, the individual’s intent was to merely call a time-out to discuss the issue at hand or to make corrections in behavior.

Often, corporate/academic culture and norms turn into Groupthink, a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During Groupthink, members of the group avoid promoting viewpoints outside the comfort zone of consensus thinking. A variety of motives for this may exist, such as a desire to avoid being seen as foolish, or a desire to avoid embarrassing or angering other members of the group. Groupthink may cause groups to make hasty, irrational decisions; individual doubts are set aside for fear of upsetting the group’s balance.

James Surowiecki argues, in his book The Wisdom of Crowds, that by studying situations (such as rational bubbles, in which the crowd produces very bad judgment), one can see that the failures of crowd intelligence surface because of conformity. Surowiecki argues that in these types of situations, the group’s cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than to think differently. Although he gives experimental details of crowds collectively swayed by a persuasive speaker, he says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw.

Surowiecki asserts that when the decision-making environment is set up to accept only the group’s way of thinking, the benefits of individual judgments and private information are lost. Making the group only as smart as its smartest member, rather than perform better (as he shows is otherwise possible).

Detailed case histories of such failures include the following descriptions:

Too homogenous. Surowiecki stresses the need for diversity within a group to ensure enough variance in approach, thought process, and private information.

Too centralized. Surowiecki stresses the importance of open feedback loops. He cites the Columbia shuttle disaster as an example and blames it on a hierarchical NASA management bureaucracy that was totally closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.

Too divided. Surowiecki stresses the importance of shared information and resources. He asserts the US Intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001, attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible by another. Surowiecki's argument is that crowds (of intelligence analysts in this case) work best when they choose for themselves what to work on and what information they need. (He cites the SARS-virus isolation as an example in which the free flow of data enabled laboratories around the world to coordinate research without a central point of control.)

Surowiecki goes on to explain that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA have created a Wikipedia-style information sharing network called Intellipedia; and believes this will help the free flow of information to prevent such failures again.

Too imitative. Surowiecki stresses the importance of critical thinking by individuals and groups. He argues, where choices are visible and made in sequence, an "information cascade" can form in which only the first few decision-makers gain anything by contemplating the choices available; once this has happened it is more efficient for everyone else to simply copy those around them.

Too emotional. Surowiecki stresses the importance of rational thinking by individuals and groups. He argues, where emotional factors, such as a feeling of belonging, can lead to peer pressure, herd instinct, and (in extreme cases) collective hysteria.

One does not have to look very far to see examples of famous whistle-blowing cases. Quite often, these cases involve a single person blowing the whistle on misconduct, where after the dust settles, was really just a voice to a large number of concerned people who didn’t speak up, until after it was too late. With scandals breaking each day, from corporate to government, the notion that wisdom can actually exist in crowds may seem more Pollyanna than reality. As Surowiecki explains, there is wisdom in crowds, but only under the right conditions. In order for a crowd to be smart, he says one needs to satisfy four conditions:

1. Diversity. Surowiecki asserts a group with many different points of view will make better decisions than one in which everyone knows the same information. Think multi-disciplinary teams building Web sites as an example. Where programmers, designers, business developers, QA folks, end-users, and copywriters all contribute to the process; each with a unique view of what the final product should be. Contrast that with, say, the President of the US and his Cabinet or committees in the US Congress.

2. Independence. Surowiecki asserts a group that values independence will make better decisions than ones where groupthink is dominate. Groups where people's opinions are not determined by those around them will be stronger and wiser. This principle is also known as avoiding the circular mill problem.

3. Decentralization. Surowiecki claims, when power does not fully reside in one central location, and many of the important decisions are made by individuals based on their own local and specific knowledge rather than by an omniscient or farseeing planner, then the intelligence of the crowd increases. Surowiecki went on to discuss the open source software development process as an example of effective decentralization in action.

4. Aggregation. Finally, Surowiecki asserts there must be some way of determining the group's answer from the individual responses of its members. The evils of design by committee are due in part to the lack of correct aggregation of information, not necessarily the lack of information. A better way to harness a group for the purpose of designing something would be for the group's opinion to be aggregated by an individual who is skilled at incorporating differing viewpoints into a single shared vision and for everyone in the group to be aware of that process. (Good managers do this.) Aggregation seems to be the trickiest of the four conditions to satisfy because there are so many different ways to aggregate opinion, not all of which are right for a given situation.

It seems to me, if groups of academic professionals could satisfy the four conditions identified by Surowiecki above some of the error involved in group decision-making could be eliminated. By creating an environment where the wisdom of groups can be empowered to include practitioners – both as educators and graduate students in the classroom – in the process of developing graduate level business curricula. Based on Surowiecki’s research one would expect to see significant improvement in real world content within curricula which would then translate to improved relevance within the practice of business by MBAs after graduation.

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Brue, G. (2002). Six Sigma for managers. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Caffarella, R. (1994). Planning programs for adult learners: A practical guide for educators, trainers and staff developers. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Caine, R.N., & Gaine, G. (1997). Education on the edge of possibility. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Covey, S.R., (1992). Principle-centered leadership. New York: Fireside of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Edmunds, C., Lowe, K., Murray, M., & Seymour, A. (2002, June). The ultimate educator: Achieving maximum adult learning through training and instruction. Grant Number 95-MU-GX-K002(S-5) awarded by the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice.

Gardiner, L.F. (1998, Spring). Why we must change: The research evidence. The NEA Higher Education Journal, Thought and Action, 121-138.

Gardner, H. (1995, Winter). Cracking open the IQ Box. The American Prospect, One observer notes.

Gardner, H., & Krechevsky, M. (1993). Comparison of IQ tests and spectrum abilities. Multiple intelligences: The theory in practice. New York: Basic Books

Goleman, D. (1997). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantman Books.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). Primal leadership: Leaning to lead with emotional intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Jensen, E. (1998). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Keirsey, D., & Bates, M., (1978). Please understand me: Character and temperament types. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.

Kotter, J.P. (1995). The new rules: How to succeed in today’s post-corporate world. New York, NY: The Free Press, Division of Simon & Schuster.

Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Lieb, S. (1991, Fall). Principles of adult learning. VISION. Retrieved October 29, 2006, from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/adults-2.htm.

Spencer, L.M. Jr., & Spencer, S.M. (2001). Competence at work: Models for superior performance. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Surowiecki, J. (2004, June). The wisdom of crowds. New York: Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Wessel, D., & Davis, B. (2007, March 28,). Pain from free trade spurs second thoughts. Wall Street Journal, p. A1.

Zemke, R., & Zemke, S. (1984, March 9). 30 things we know for sure about adult learning. Innovation Abstracts, VI(8). Retrieved October 29, 2006, from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet /committees/FacDevCom /guidebk/teachtip/adults-3.htm

Other Suggested Readings

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB). (2002, August). Management education at risk. Report of the Management Education Task Force to the AACSB International Board of Directors. Retrieved October 29, 2006, from http://www.aacsb.edu/Publications/metf/default.asp

Benton Organization. (2002, May). Strategic communications in the digital age: A best practices toolkit for achieving your organization's mission. Retrieved November 13, 2006, from http://www.benton.org.

Bernholz, L., & Guthrie, K. (2000, May/June). Knowledge is an asset, too. Foundation News, 41(3). Retrieved November 9, 2006, from http://www.foundationnews.org.

Davies, A., & Cline, T.W. (2005, January/February). The ROI on the MBA. BizEd. Retrieved January 27, 2007, from http://www.aacsb.edu/resource_centers/value/p42-45.pdf, p.42-45.

Kennedy, P., & Gaddis, J.L. (2003). The strategic plan of the council for advancement and support of education: 2003-2008. Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Perkins, D., & Salomon, G. (1992). The science and art of transfer. In A. L. Costa, J. A. Bellanca, & R. Fogarty (Eds.), If minds matter—A forward to the future (Vol. 1). Palatine, IL: IRI/Skylight Publishing.

Prahalad, C.K., & Hamel, G. (1990). The CC of the Corporation. E-Article.

Smith, B. J., & Delahaye, B.L. (1987). How to be an effective trainer (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Sydow, D. (2000, June). Long-term investment in professional development: Real dividends in teaching and learning. Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group, 24(5), 385-397.

US Office of Personnel Management. (2004). Optimizing organizational performance: Workforce and succession planning. Retrieved November 10, 2006, from http://www.opm.gov/hr/employ/products/workforce/workforce.asp .

Woolfolk, A. E. (1998). Educational psychology (7th ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Wolfe, P. (1998, May). Direct connection (Newsletter). Lawrence: Kansas Staff Development Council.

CHAPTER 2 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

“We should take care not to make the intellect our god— it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality— it cannot lead, it can only serve.”
– Albert Einstein

How Business School’s Lost Their Way

I was struck by the authors’ insights in the article, “How Business Schools Lost Their Way,” as I went through my MBA program. Upon reflection, I believe the article resonated with the sometimes-heated dialogues I had with Art Seiler (lifelong learner with a razor-sharp mind who had seen and survived much) on the business/philosophical topic of the day before he passed away.

The above-mentioned recent article in the Harvard Business Review succinctly explains:

[Today,] Masters of Business Administration (MBA) programs face intense criticism for failing to impart useful skills, prepare leaders, instill norms of ethical behavior—and even failing to lead graduates to good corporate jobs. These criticisms come not just from students, employers, and the media but also from deans of some of America’s most prestigious business schools, [… citing the] main culprit is a less-than-relevant MBA curriculum. (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, May, p. 1, emphasis added)

Art Seiler would agree. I recall my conversation with Art after the Enron scandal broke. Having successfully taken 30 failing companies to profitability through turn-around change strategies in his career, Art was perplexed. He found it hard to understand how an accounting firm such as Arthur Anderson could be involved, how so many executives would go along with “corrupt practices” without taking a stand and, ultimately, allow the demise of so many innocent people. He shared how his accountant would have addressed him (the CEO) with a swift “knock upside the head” and his resignation if Art had ever crossed that line. Art counted on that; he trusted that if he ever got caught up in politics, power or ambitious drive, that his accountant and others within the leadership circle would call him out.

“The job of the CEO is to listen to his people.” Art would say, “If they don’t tell you the truth, especially when the truth is tough to share, you shouldn’t have them there.” Art also shared with me a situation in which he chose to do things his way, to ignore what his people were telling him. It was a several-million-dollar lesson—one which he never forgot. He shared, “some people are really great vice-presidents, but make lousy CEOs.” Puzzled, I asked why.

“First,” he said, “They don’t understand money, how to make it, keep it and how to keep making it.” Understanding what drives business is essential to success. Art pointed out that vice-presidents who move through the ranks as subject experts, with limited practical experience working horizontally within an organization, will crumble under the weight of the CEO’s responsibilities.

“Second, they don’t make the tough decisions early and often enough.” The inability to act quickly and often undermines leadership effectiveness. Art explained that turning the course of a company takes a series of tough decisions based on a successful corporate strategy. This parallels the thought, if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there?

“Third, [which he believed was the worst of all] they let their egos get in the way and stop listening.” Art explained that years of paying ones dues and moving through the ranks creates a strong sense of self within evolving vice-presidents; this is critical to being a successful CEO. However, when surrounded by yes-men and -women, a CEO will be isolated from real, unfiltered honest information and feedback.

With a strong leadership team who will tell the truth in every situation, especially during tough critical moments, a CEO will make the right decisions (most of the time). The key is to surround oneself with quality leaders, learn to ask questions and listen. Art’s failure to listen to his people cost the company millions of dollars, a CEO lesson he remembered and utilized during the remainder of his career and into his mentoring years.

Understanding business drivers, making tough decisions and learning to listen are applicable to all business, even the business of graduate business education. Being in charge of a classroom or a graduate business school puts a professional educator in a CEO-like position, as success and failure depends on his/her leadership among perceived subordinates. These subordinates are adult business practitioners who bring a wealth of experience to the classroom, which unfortunately is not tapped consistently by those in charge of the learning environment.

Through empowerment and proper channeling, professional educators have the ability to plant and/or cultivate the principles of lifelong learning in a classroom setting.

Bennis and O’Toole continue:

[the] actual cause of today’s crisis in management education is far broader in scope and can be traced to a dramatic shift in the culture of business schools. […] Instead of measuring themselves in terms of the competence of their graduates, or by how well their faculties understand important drivers of business performance, they measure themselves almost solely by the rigor of their scientific research. […] Some of the research produced is excellent, but because so little of it is grounded in actual business practices, the focus of graduate business education has become increasingly circumscribed—and less and less relevant to practitioners. (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, May, p. 2, emphasis added)

The life blood of any educational institution is students. Without students, the university system would not exist. The University’s hope is that successful alumni will contribute gained wealth back to support future generations. Often, graduate students are perceived as vehicles for research, to the benefit of academic professionals striving to meet research requirements for publications in academic journals for tenure promotion. The more one publishes, the more likely one is to become a permanent member of the university community.

When business schools do not measure their success on the quality of their graduates, and build relevant research grounded in actual business practices which is applicable within the general business community, the body of knowledge suffers from a practitioner’s standpoint, as does the quality of business education.

In my mind, research conducted by a business practitioner can and should be different than research conducted in the hard sciences, such as chemistry, physics, etc. In the hard sciences, one starts with a single hypothesis and then seeks to prove or disprove that statement— essentially proving or disproving a strong correlation between variables identified through the hypothesis proof process. While very important in basic research, such a method is hardly meaningful in business practice, as real-life problems are not always solved through research on one piece of the puzzle. Business problems often draw on multiple disciplines inside and outside of the normal business curriculum. As one begins to solve the perceived problem through action; one sees new variables surface that may also need to be solved to facilitate arrival at the desired state.

To better illustrate this point, I am reminded of a particular conversation I had with Art a few weeks before he passed away. He was in stage-4 heart failure, having survived 18 months longer than most in that condition. His eyesight gone, he asked me to read the newspaper to him.

The article that resonated most with him that day was about building a technology/business park in Missoula, Montana. The article was supported by several scientific studies, including impressive facts and figures. It pointed out all the reasons why this would be the “next best thing” to turn around Montana’s declining economy. Without missing a beat, Art went on to explain how ludicrous the idea was that this one thing would solve “it”—citing countless reasons for business failure, including location, the lack of developed infrastructure and the lack of quality leadership.

The part that really frustrated him was that developers were trying to persuade the public using facts and figures—rather than a viable business strategy supported by evidence. As an engineer and business practitioner, Art understood hard science; yet, he emphasized the need for quality strategy and solid planning based in research and grounded by the realities of business.

For me, understanding the Porter 5-Forces model is a benefit of my MBA education. Yet, while I agree it has its place, I can not conceive of a single time I would draw the Porter model on a white board with my colleagues in a boardroom and check the boxes to see if our proposed business strategy meets Porter’s idea of the world.

In my experience, if a newly minted MBA attempted such a thing, s/he would be laughed out of the room. Yet, this is how we are taught in business schools. We are taught to regurgitate the information that our instructor deems valuable to know—even if that instructor has never stepped foot in an actual business setting, other than as a customer. Clearly, there are countless exceptions—academic professionals who provide consulting services within corporate situations, or have transitioned from practitioner to academic professional. And, justly, these professors stand out to MBA student practitioners as hands-on experts, as they actual engage in maintaining relevance through practice. Yet, it is very common in graduate business education to be at the mercy of business educators who have never worked in corporate or industry settings, who profess to be experts.

Professional educators who do not maintain business relevance through practice set unreasonable expectations in theory which have no perceived relevance to current business issues. Many professional educators become too comfortable within the walls of academia by tenure protection. Over time, this complacency drives out the edge which comes from the uncertainty which is the basis of life.

My generation is expected to have 5 to 6 careers within a lifetime, which yields a career move every 3-5 years. In the face of uncertainty, the human brain evolves and finds either new ways of processing information and doing things or merely locates the next job doing the same thing at a different place of employment. Yet, as CEOs in the classroom, professional educators determine your grade, and (in my experience), often see nothing wrong with using out-of-date or ineffective teaching methods and course content in the classroom. It is not uncommon to be presented material decades old—which has little or no relevance to the evolving business landscape. Such neglect clearly demonstrates that lifelong learning is not required to maintain status as an academic expert; in many cases, the material used in the classroom comes from one’s dated PhD dissertation research.

As a practitioner, I’ve never received “a grade” in the business world. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and received positive and negative feedback along the way. I’ve received raises and recognition for a job well done. I’m evaluated on performance and product, which are tied to what I managed to get done in less-than-perfect situations with less-than-perfect information and to how much I am valued as a member of a contributing team. Sometimes I miss deadlines; then, depending on whether or not the deadline was hard or soft, consequences follow.

In business, the landscape is always moving; often, issues are overcome by events. Though one can identify similarities between the academic world and the business world and can draw on those parallel experiences, unless one has experienced real uncertainty and navigated it successfully, one cannot profess to understand current business practices. Indeed, how can professional academics who chose not to evolve understand how best to guide practitioners learning to apply solid business theory to actual business reality?

Allow me to clarify: the business theory in graduate business education is very important to bring a businessperson, such as myself, to a higher level of understanding. But such theories must be relevant outside of the classroom or they will not stick, nor will anyone ever benefit from the real purpose of the MBA education process.

Bennis and O’Toole point out:

Business is a profession, akin to medicine and the law, and business schools are professional schools. […] Like other professions, business calls upon the work of many academic disciplines, […] including mathematics, economics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology. The distinction between a profession and an academic discipline is crucial. (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, May, p. 2, emphasis added)

The practice of business is as much an art as it is a science. Of course, to be successful one must understand business drivers. There is much more to it than merely explaining accounting or finance principles. When a plan or deal comes together, there is an elegant beauty in the pieces that come together at the precise moment to make or break a deal. While I believe, educators and students alike recognize the difference between theory and practice, homework and reality. The real disconnect is in the space between practice and theory, the place where brilliance and finesse exists. Educators that know how to align what they teach with what a student will soon be experiencing in the field are invaluable within the academic community. Art Seiler was just that kind of teacher.

Having completed his undergraduate degree in engineering from Montana State University and later receiving his graduate business education from MIT, Art would be the first to agree. When I became disillusioned by the business world, I resolved to return to graduate school, to change my career path and become a professional educator—believing that I was on the wrong path and needed to take corrective measures while I was still young enough to do so. Art questioned my choice, asking me why I would give up everything I had learned to that point to take a seat in the bleachers? Evidently he believed the old adage, “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.”

Don’t get me wrong; Art supported education as a strong advocate of the need for higher learning. He believed that individuals that chose a career as professional educators should hold themselves to the highest standards and should continue to practice lifelong learning so they could continue to guide future generations through personal example. Thus, his issue with education as an institution is that it doesn’t live up to its own standards; he felt it breeds complacency in those who preach the word, so to speak.

Thinking back to that conversation and recognizing where I am now I can see some things more clearly. I believe that feelings of accomplishment or success have less to do with the career or job one chooses and more to do with how an individual chooses to perform in that endeavor. Passion for what one does seems to be a key ingredient for success, no matter the profession.

Bennis and O’Toole seem to agree with Art. They explain where business education drifted off course and what needs to be done to catalyze realignment:

By the end of the twentieth century, nearly all the nation’s leading business schools—the two dozen or so elite MBA-granting institutions and another dozen schools fighting to join the highest echelon—offered a curriculum of academic distinction. But, in the process, their focus switched, and now the objective of most B schools is to conduct scientific research. Going back to the trade school paradigm would be a disaster. Still, we believe it is necessary to strike a new balance between scientific rigor and practical relevance. (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005, May, p. 3, emphasis added)

To restore the proper balance between scientific rigor and practical relevance requires an asserted effort by the academic community collectively. Leadership within the ranks at all levels must address relevance in curriculum, classroom delivery and quality research grounded in business reality.

CHAPTER 1 - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Why We Must Change

Economist Alan S. Blinder, former Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman and perennial adviser to Democratic presidential candidates, is now saying that a new industrial revolution—communication technology that allows services to be delivered electronically—will put as many as 40 million American jobs at risk of being shipped out of the country in the next decade or two. This figure is more than double the total workers employed in manufacturing today.

Mr. Blinder says there's an urgent need to retool America's education system so it trains young people for jobs likely to remain in the US. Just telling them to go to college to compete in the global economy is insufficient. A college diploma, he warns, "may lose its exalted 'silver bullet' status”. It isn't how many years one spends in school that will matter, he says, it's choosing to learn the skills for jobs that cannot easily be delivered electronically from afar (Wessel & Davis, 2007).

Jobs at Risk?

Economist Blinder divides 817 occupations into four categories, depending on how high the risk they will be moved out of the country, or "off-shored.” Each category has a corresponding index, with the number of workers affected. The higher the index number, the more likely it is for the job to be off-shored. Figure 2 below is a chart which summarizes his estimates and breaks down major occupations (those categories with 300,000 or more people) within the rankings.

Figure 2. Jobs at Risk
(Alan Blinder, Bureau of Labor Statistics, as cited in Wessel & Davis, 2007, p. A1)

Note: Excludes 499,860 computer support specialists, whose jobs span two classes, highly off-shoreable and off-shoreable, with scores of 92 and 68.

The Research Evidence

Bennis and O’Toole are not alone in their assessment of the education crisis. Lion F. Gardiner's Article, “Why We Must Change: The Research Evidence,” summarizes research findings and raises a number of important concerns regarding both how students learn as well as how ineffectively American education is at addressing their needs as learners.

As an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, Gardiner’s perspective is profound:

We find a substantial body of evidence that clearly demonstrates a crisis of educational quality in our nation's colleges and universities. […] This crisis should evoke a serious and determined response from the entire professorate. But rather, [...] we too often find complacency within our ranks. We seem to turn a blind eye to the quality of our educational processes and results. The busyness of daily routine and the seeming rightness of the familiar obscures the need to change. (Gardiner, 1998. p. 121 emphasis added)

Gardiner continues by explaining the consequences of such faculty complacency:

We urge our students to think critically and provide activities we believe will help them to learn how. Yet, 30 years of research shows us that most of our students hold epistemological assumptions that prevent them from understanding and, therefore, engaging in critical thinking. (1998, see p. 123)

Gardiner’s frustration regarding the lack of practical application in education was translated to numbers as he cited one national study. It seems that only 12% of educators polled “utilized feedback from their earlier students” and only 8% invite experts into their lectures. Gardiner’s conclusion was that faculty “seemed to teach as they had been taught” (p. 125), with very few exceptions.

The problem with such educational habits is that faculty claim to advocate “effective thinking”—indeed, many claimed it “was their primary educational purpose.” Yet, Gardiner’s investigation found that “70 to 90 percent of professors use the traditional lecture as their primary instructional strategy” (p. 126). He further discovered that rarely are essay tests used (as is cited below), and that the main focus of each course was simply fact or concept recall—not application.

Gardiner goes on to explain:

If students are not thinking during lectures, what are they doing? Their attention drifts after only 10 to 20 minutes. They are listening, asking or responding to questions, or taking notes only half of the time. Up to 15 percent of their time is spent fantasizing. […] how much course content do students retain? Studies sometimes find rare high values where students retain 50 percent of the content, but values of 20 percent or less are common. (p. 127, emphasis added)

While Gardiner’s insight may be common among academic professionals, it does not negate the fact that we need to find better ways for students to retain more relevant information. If better ways can not be found, and only 20 percent is possible, then that 20 percent had better count.

Gardiner continues to expound on the weaknesses of education:

Only 17 percent of 1,700 faculty respondents at a research university said they use essay tests. These same respondents claimed only 13 percent of their questions required problem-solving. [...] numerous studies demonstrate widespread cheating among students on classroom tests, possibly involving 40 to 90 percent of all students. [...] One-third of students [in a national study of 6,165 respondents] with A's and B+'s cheated, as did two-thirds of 6,000 students at “highly selective” colleges. (Gardiner, 1998, p. 129)

[…] For well over a decade we have been warned that if we do not put our academic house in order, others [...] will step in to do so. They have begun to do this. We must act quickly. (p. 121) (emphasis added)

Clearly, many experts believe education is not living up to its own standards.

INTRODUCTION - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

“Without some awareness of the whole—
without some sense of how means converge
to accomplish or to frustrate ends—
there can be no strategy.
And without strategy, there is only drift.”
– Paul Kennedy and John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University

Introduction

The events which led to my desire to obtain a MBA after years of business experience were as much circumstantial as they were self-driven. After a failed attempt to secure a well-deserved raise, I took a hard look at myself, surveyed my career and recognized that to continue moving forward, I needed to travel from where I was to identifying who I was, believing that this process would somehow transform me. A wise man often told me, “Spend the first 40 years of your life putting yourself in every possible situation to learn. Then, spend the next 40 years of your life applying what you learn to earn.” That man—Art Seiler, a man 62 years my senior, a mentor and a friend—practiced as much as he preached.

According to recent brain research, “human beings have an innate desire to learn; we are literally born with intrinsic motivation. Learning is required for survival. The brain is built to seek information—integrate it with other information, interpret it, remember it, and bring it to bear at the appropriate times” (Arter, 2002, p. 2, emphasis added).

This research also suggests that certain adverse conditions can “drive out one’s intrinsic motivation—providing a fight or flight reaction which inhibits the production of neuron-chemicals required to learn” (p. 3). These conditions can include: coercion, intimidation, having rewards/punishments linked to one’s self-worth, negative competitive relationships, infrequent or vague feedback, the limitation of one’s control of a situation, and/or having responsibility without authority to act. This research goes on to suggest that there are things one can do to “increase intrinsic motivation and prepare the brain neuro-chemically to learn.” These include: providing a sense of control and choice, increasing frequency and specificity of feedback, challenging ideas and concepts without personal threat and providing for self-assessment (Arter, 2002; also see Caine & Gaine, 1997 and Jensen, 1998).

While it takes at least an IQ of 110 to 120 to earn an advanced degree such as a MBA (Spencer & Spencer, 2001), outstanding performance in executive ranks of organizations also requires that individuals develop advanced competencies beyond book smarts. A competency, or underlying characteristic of a person’s personality, can successfully predict behavior in a wide range of situations or job tasks.

As defined by Lyle M. Spencer, Jr., PhD, and Signe M. Spencer, competencies indicate ways of behaving or thinking, which can be generalized across situations and endure for a reasonably long period of time (2001, p. 9). The Spencer research suggests there are five types of competency characteristics, which include: motives, traits, self-concept, knowledge and skill.

While knowledge and skill competencies tend to be visible characteristics of people, self-concept, traits and motives are deeper and much more hidden. As seen in Figure 1 below, surface competencies such as knowledge and skill are more easily developed than core competencies such as traits and motives.

Figure 1. Central and Surface Competencies
(Created from Spencer & Spencer, 2001)

In other words, selecting individuals for leadership roles who exhibit valued core personality traits and motives will be more cost-effective in the long run than selecting individuals based on knowledge and skills alone (see p.11).

While graduate business education currently focuses on developing skills and knowledge, it seems that the real value added to individuals is within the hidden part of the iceberg model—to self-concept, traits and motives. If our brains are wired with intrinsic motivation to learn, and one removes the adverse conditions that drive out one’s intrinsic motivation (given the intellectual capacity of members of the MBA classroom) one could conclude that the possibility exists that core personality competencies (while more difficult to develop) would become more developed during the graduate business education process.

So if such development is possible, why is there such disparity in the quality of MBA graduates coming out of advanced business programs? It is easy to write this off as: some students are better, more intelligent, experienced than others, etc.? I’m not buying it. While each individual has the capacity to learn, and the amount of knowledge any individual can obtain at any one time in an adult classroom setting will vary, the important question remains: how much of what professional educators want students to learn is actually learned—that is, translated to “rich knowledge” which can be applied to real-life problem solving?

Having been exposed to the institution of education from a very early age by my father, a professional educator, and by mentors such as Art Seiler who inspire personal excellence through lifelong learning, I see this paper as a way to contribute, as a practitioner, my observations to the body of knowledge. While I will hardly scratch the surface of learning theory or Argyris’ double loop learning, I will take you on a journey through the landscape of graduate business education to shed light on areas where rich knowledge can be further developed within the student practitioner. I will anchor personal insight and observations to expert evidence to support and clarify for the professional educator why the focus on these areas will net higher returns to the MBA investment, both to the individual and the business community.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a window into how practitioners think, view education and the MBA classroom. I hope to build from expert insights on adult learning and focus specifically on what motivates adult learners to become lifelong learners. My hope is that professional educators can use this knowledge from their colleagues to bring more practical relevance to the MBA experience by working with student practitioners as active participants in the education process to increase intrinsic motivation and lifelong learning.

While you will find this paper quote heavy, I am merely a questioning observer and leave the imparting of knowledge to the experts. As my paper topic is written for the academic community, I felt it was much more effective to assemble information from practitioners and professional educators in a user-friendly format to invoke personal reflection to improve the MBA classroom. Understanding my audience, I believe it is easier to pallet the thoughts of colleagues and of a successful CEO, rather than just the observations and conclusions of a newly minted MBA student.

ABSTRACT - EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROBLEM SOLVERS: A Practitioner’s View of Graduate Business Education

Karey Love Shaffer D’Penha
San Francisco State University
October, 2007

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a window into how practitioners think and view graduate education. The paper is built on recent brain research and expert insights on adult learning with a focus on what specifically motivates adult learners to become lifelong learners. To do this, I drew heavily on the conclusions and studies of experts in both academia and business. I then introduce the Three Facet Business School Learning Model in the conclusion which is built from the discussions presented within this research piece, and when applied will net tangible results. My hope is that professional educators can use this knowledge from their colleagues to bring more practical relevance to the MBA experience by working with student practitioners as active participants in the education process to increase intrinsic motivation and lifelong learning among the next generation of problem-solvers.

Lesson Applied: ROI through Empowered Learning

“Strategically plan employee training to meet specific business objectives and resourcing needs.” Karey Shaffer

The Traditional Approach: Training as an Event

Often, when confronted with a human-performance issue, the standard "solution" is to send everyone to a training event. While well-designed training can be an important part of performance improvement, training alone does not dramatically increase performance. In fact, studies of training impact show that the knowledge gained at a seminar or workshop deteriorates dramatically within a few days after the course. The problem does not lie in the training itself, but in the context in which that training occurs.

The following graph illustrates this dynamic:

Figure 1. The Traditional Approach, The Empowered Learning Model™

The bottom line shows the level of performance, and is the critical line in this graph. Knowledge (the top line) is important, but the real question is, how much knowledge has been converted into improved performance? Improvement in this "bottom line" drives improvement in the financial bottom lines of our organizations.

In the traditional approach, nothing happens before training, so the knowledge and performance lines stay the same. During training, individuals are exposed to new knowledge, and the knowledge line takes a significant leap higher on the graph. The critical issue, however, is what happens after training.

Note that after training the performance line on the bottom dips slightly. This occurs as individuals attempt to apply new knowledge to their old work environments. In a non-supportive environment, the resistance people encounter will often drive them back to their old ways of working, and performance returns to the original level. Since the new knowledge has not been applied, it is quickly forgotten. No performance improvement has occurred. Time and money have been wasted.

The Power of a Process

As illustrated in the graphic below, the curves change shape dramatically when a training workshop is part of an effective process of preparation, participation, and performance support, and is carried out in an environment of measurement and accountability.

Figure 2. The Power of a Process, The Empowered Learning Model™

Source: Covey Leadership Center and FranklinCovey