The Biz of Coding

Harvard Dean: Bill Gates shouldn’t have dropped out (what was he thinking?)

by Ujwal Tickoo on June 8th, 2007

One of World's most influential and powerful Business Leader has spoken and imho spoken well. While addressing Harvard University grads Gates said:

"Judge yourself not on the professional accomplishments but on how well you have addressed the world's inequities, how you have treated people who have nothing to do with you other than a shared humanity"

Harvard bestowed an honorary doctorate on Gates; who had dropped out (of Harvard) in 1975. Whats surprising is Dean Bok's words to Gates about his potentially achieving more if he hadn't dropped-out:

"Just think what you could have achieved if you had stayed another two years"

I guess the Dean was being irrelevant here. I deeply value education and the genuine contribution of all leading universities to the world. However, what pisses me off is the arrogance that reeks in the marketing talk of several top universities which seeps into and then infects (media driven) social consciousness. It also inherently blocks opportunities for people in general and creates wrong notions around leadership and those "empowered" to take such roles.

Jeff Skilling who was one of the pepetrators of the Enron fraud that caused finanical losses to hundreds of people "stayed-on" for his Harvard MBA. George Bush who "stayed-on" to get his undergraduate degree from Yale and MBA from Harvard has today become a lame-duck US president. He has caused loss of thousands of innocent lives (both American and non-American), and has politically and militarily destabilized one of the most sensitive areas of the world — Middle East Asia.

Management guru Henry Mintzberg reflects on Bush's Harvard trained leadership skills (pdf)

Bush is the first American president with an MBA, granted by HBS in 1975. In 2004, I published Managers not MBAs, a book about how such programs develop hubris in the name of leadership. It was not about this president, but it may help to explain an important aspect of his presidency, and perhaps of contemporary America as well. Has there been much public discussion at the HBS about the possible effect of its education on the conduct of this presidency? I wonder.

From my observations in India I notice the madness surrounding admissions to elite schools like IIMs and IITs. The media in India idealizes IIT and IIM graduates as some kind of super intelligent, created in heaven, default leaders of the society.

Interestingly when students go to IITs for undergraduate studies they are just 18. What if at that age someone who is extremely intelligent, is primarily interested in social change, and has no interest in making it big in the business or professional world — and so never goes to an IIT (and later an IIM)? What if this same person decides later that the business world is a good way to influence social change. How difficult will it be for the person to get a chance to make that change given set social stereotypes? Hasn't the media built up stupid expectations around those who can have a claim on leadership traits?

Most top US Universities claim that they (almost exculsively) educate leaders! To amuse yourself further Search for "MBA educate leaders" in Yahoo! or Google. This marketing claim heavily invested upon subtly influences hiring companies to ignore top talent that didn't go to pedigree schools. Getting an MBA from a top school is hardly a sign of management leadership skills, yet the job market heavily backs "top school" graduates in terms of opportunities and salaries. In an interview to CNN, management guru Henry Mintzberg criticized the wrong assumptions surrounding MBA education:

CNN: Can management be taught?

MINTZBERG: No you can enhance the characteristics or qualities of peoples who are managers you cannot create managers in the classroom. You can teach all sorts of things that improve the practice of management with people who are managers. What you cannot do is teach management to somebody who is not a manager, the way you cannot teach surgery to somebody whose not a surgeon.

CNN: You are very critical of MBAs?

…The impression left of management in MBA programs is distorted. In fact the MBA programs are very effective at business training at giving people an understanding of business functions even creating enthusiasm for business. But they give a distorted impression of management precisely because the people studying for the younger programs are not managers. And MBAs are largely orientated towards analysis and analytical kinds of things but that is one kind of management but it is not a small part.  describe management as arts, crafts and science. It is a practice that draws on arts, craft and science and there is a lot of craft — meaning experience…

Bill Gates is a natural leader and manager. Extra years at Harvard wouldn't have made a difference to him. And yes, thank you Dean for you advice to Gates which was actually directed to the younger generation and to an adoring media. Some people can still can sort out top-university mind-numbing marketing crap from reality. Henry Mintzberg an academic from within the education community is quite leading the way.

POSTED IN: Bill Gates