The Cranky Middle Manager Show #316 The Final Cranky Show and the Future of Work with John Blackwell
The Cranky Middle Manager Show #312 The Future of the MBA Ken Starkey
Posted on 31. Jan, 2012 by Wayne in General, Podcast
Today Wayne Turmel talks to Ken Starkey of Nottingham University Business School about the future of the MBA and what business schools think is the next big thing for leaders. We also discuss the biggest problem with learning a new language, whether the old soviet spies could have benefitted from WebEx, and the usual collection of snarkiness and good conversation.
If you’re going to use WebEx, GoToMeeting or any of those tools, don’t you want to use them well? At GreatWebMeetings.com we teach you the skills to present, sell, train or manage your team using web presentation tools. We offer programs in How to Create and Manage Remote Teams, Web Presentation Basics and Leading Effective Virtual Meetings. Drop us a line for pricing and more information.
Show Notes
0:00 Welcome to the show, ni hao and all that good stuff. Today we are talking about the future of education, and so we dedicate this episode to Alexander Semyonovich Feklisov who ran the spy network out of New York after the second world war. Training adults is hard enough, imagine when it’s literally life and death. Also, he got less than his reward for political reasons, a lesson for us all.
4:55 The quote of the week is from Denis Diderot. 200 years ago he worried there were too many books to find the good stuff in…. imagine how he’d feel with the internet.
5:45 Welcome Professor Ken Starkey to the show. We spoke on the old Working Week podcast (click the link to hear that discussion). What is the mood in business schools today? Sounds like a lot of navel gazing and analysis is going on ….except when they think they can go back to business as usual. Did the way MBAs are taught lead to some of the economic crisis and bad behavior?
8:47 Is business necessarily “red of tooth and claw?” What’s the alternative? It seems the information was limited to formulas and data, not to leadership and ethics.
11:10 Is this an Anglo-Saxon mindset that got us in trouble? Genghis Khan and the Medicis weren’t WASPS. Certainly the US and UK caused most of the damage and other cultures have weathered the storm better.
13:07 there are three schools of thought as to the direction of business education: 1) B School is a servant of business and is the way it’s been the last 30 years, 2) Bschool has to face the implications of the crisis and deal with leadership, ethics and values and 3) somewhere in the middle. Is part of the problem with the way it’s been is treating business as education, rather than a “soft science”?
18:43 Does the cost of an MBA impact how people react to it and what they do with it? Is there a change coming in the need for an MBA or even what’s covered so that it won’t be as expensive?
21:00 If Ken had the magic wand, what would he envision the graduate education experience focus on? He’d add philosophy, sustainability and law. Lots of law. Is the function of business to be the agent of shareholders? Art and design would also be part of the curriculum. What should you look for in a B School?
Wayne, Great interview, as usual.
I want to point out that your microphone has a very loud background hum that has been building over several weeks and this week was very annoying.
Thanks, Jay. Glad you enjoyed the interview. I’m sorry about the hum I can’t identify the cause. I’m trying to do a good job of editing it out of my channel when the other person is speaking, and will continue to trouble shoot. Thanks for caring enough to post. Keep the weasels at bay.