You Can’t Teach Managers

…. Harvard Business School is …. ark of …. tabernacle in ….management education. Many schools more or less ape …. HBS, especially its 'case study' method of instruction - though mulling over out-of-date business anecdotes is about as helpful in actual management as ….waging war by tramping over old battlefields. …. specific management element in these mind-bending studies is hard to isolate. Although managers should be numerate (and many are not), they don't require ….skills in higher algebra; and many great businesses have been created by men who all but count on their fingers.

…. story tells of ….two schoolboy friends, one brilliant at ….maths, one innumerate to …. point of idiocy, who meet much later when …. first is …. professor and …. second …. multi-millionaire. Unable to control his curiosity, …. professor asks …. figure-blind dunderhead how he managed to amass his fortune. 'It's simple,' replies Midas. 'I buy things at £1 and sell them for £2, and from that 1% difference I make …. living.' …. business world is full of ….successful one-percenters who live, not by their slide rules, but by knowing …. difference between …. buying price and …. selling price. It is also full of ….clever fools who work out elaborate ….discounted cash flow sums to justify projects that …. one-percenter would laugh out of sight.

…. clever fool syndrome would explain why one controversial study of ….HBS students found that, after …. flying start, …. alumni (presumably among …. ablest young men of their day) gradually slipped back to …. general level inside their chosen management hierarchies. …. HBS graduate has no reason at all to suppose that he will manage more effectively than a less instructed contemporary. The HBS man can only claim that he is more highly educated: and high education and high achievement in practical affairs don't necessarily go together. John F. Kennedy found that assembling America's brightest brains in Washington neither got bills through …Congress nor avoided …. Bay of Pigs; and many companies have discovered that business school diplomas are … thin defence against ….incompetence.

The Naked Manager by Robert Heller (BrE)