Managers Not MBAs

PREFACE

Idon’t exactly have an MBA—the MIT Sloan School of Management called it a masters of science then. But I did exactly teach MBAs, for about fifteen years, until I had enough and asked our dean at McGill in the mid-1980s to reduce my teaching load and salary accordingly. I was simply finding too much of a disconnect between the practice of managing that was becoming clearer to me and what went on in classrooms, my own included, intended to develop those managers.

In these feelings, I have found myself not alone. Over the years, I asked colleagues all over the world and especially in the United States what they thought about teaching conventional MBA students. I have been surprised by how many agreed with me. A well-kept secret of business ...