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Today’s Dilbert strip nails one of my principal problems with the Harvard School of Business and its MBA program.
I will never understand how Harvard managed to slip the ridiculous idea over on American business that having studied how to run an abstract ideal company on paper qualifies anyone to step straight into any company and run it competently without having any substantial in-depth understanding whatsoever of the company, its product, its processes, or its market.
Math is hard, let's do a hostile takeover
Formal mathematical statement of business problems sounds ... difficult, but conceptually interesting.
Your point about there being an extent of applicability is taken. There are underlying business practices that have more or less universal applicability and can be learned abstractly on paper. But if you haven't taken the time to study your company, learned how it operates, learned how its market reacts to different events, learned the strengths and weaknesses of the product line and how technological change impacts it ... how can you ever possibly hope to run the company effectively?
This is the same kind of tunnel vision that says that when times are hard, it makes sense to lay off the most senior engineers first because they're paid most. ...You know, the ones who have been working on your products for fifteen and twenty years and know them inside and out. The guys who can quote the specs from memory, and who can listen to a customer describe a problem over the phone when the customer has a twenty-million-dollar machine down and is losing a quarter million every hour that it's down, and say, "That sounds like the XQ34 valve has stuck half-open. Have your field engineer swap out the XQ34. You can isolate it by closing valves TN16 and PR16 and opening valve DD23, but make sure to bleed the N15 circuit down first or you'll blow out the secondary hydraulic accumulator."
When you lay them off, all their expertise goes out the door with them — but that's never taken into account, because if you can't assign a simple numerical value to it on a spreadsheet, the MBA program says it can't be important, and assigning a specific numerical value to expertise is hard.
Re: Math is hard, let's do a hostile takeover
Old joke — you may have heard it:
A highly complicated machine breaks down at a factory and production comes to a halt. The MBA calls up an old, grizzled engineer and asks if he can fix it. “Yeah, but it’s gonna cost you a lot.” MBA can’t afford for the line to be down, so he agrees to an exorbitant price.
The engineer comes down, looks askance at the machine for a bit, then gives it a swift kick. The machine comes back to life. The engineer looks over to the MBA. “That’s twenty grand, please. I told you it was going to be expensive.”
The MBA refuses. It’s an outrageous price for the work done! And besides, it isn’t even itemized!
“One hour spent driving down here: $30,” the engineer replies without missing a beat. “Thirty years of learning how to give just the right kick: $19,970. Have a nice day.”
That was one of the jokes I told the MBAs and BusAds I came into contact with in the B–school. If they actually understood the joke and understood that it was a management lesson, I’d tell them my other favorite joke.
A man in a hot air balloon is lost. He’s crossing a city park, so he throws a sandbag over the side, drags himself on the ground to come to a halt. He looks down at a passerby. “Hello there! Can you tell me where I am?” he calls.
The guy on the ground looks up, looks at the angle the balloon is off the ground, paces out a distance until he’s right under the balloon. “You’re precisely twenty–two meters off the ground!” he calls back.
The balloonist is offended. “You must be an engineer!” The man on the ground blinks a couple of times, surprised, and nods. “I knew it!” the balloonist says. “Like all engineers, you give answers that are totally accurate and totally meaningless!”
The engineer on the ground tells the balloonist, “You must be an MBA!” The balloonist is confused, but admits that yes, yes he is. “I knew it!” the engineer calls back. “Like all MBAs, you don’t know what you’re doing, where you’ve been, where you’re going or how to get there — but the instant you ask me one vague and poorly worded question, it all becomes my fault!”
I have met only one MBA who has ever impressed me. Teresa Letlow, who had a remarkable head for people — and never lost sight of it.
Re: Math is hard, let's do a hostile takeover
"Five shillings for hitting it with a hammer. Forty-nine pounds, fifteen shillings for knowing exactly where and how hard to hit it."
Re: Math is hard, let's do a hostile takeover
Also, you may find Wikipedia’s page on OR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research) to be of interest.