Here is a provocative transcript of an interview between Henry Mintzberg and a representative of the Red-Blooded-Corporate-Big-Business Conference Board.
Mintzberg contends that MBAs are fine as far as they go, but they do not produce true managers, nor leaders. Managers and leaders (Mintzberg chafes at the distinction) are developed by managing and leading, not by obtaining an advanced degree.
So I will leave you with a couple of things that Mintzberg says in the way of whetting your appetite for the whole interview, which I hope you will invest your time in reading.
"The more we train for leadership independent of management the more we get hubris - the idea that the leader is somebody big and important, separate from someone who has to deal with the daily nitty-gritty of running an organization."
"Most management is a craft - that is, it relies on experience, on-the-job learning. I put it this way: It's as much about doing in order to think as thinking in order to do."
"So some people are the wrong people to begin with. MBA programs seem to attract more than their share of people whom I characterize as impatient, aggressive, and self-serving. Not all of them of course, but a noticeable number. It doesn't take that many because they're the ones who are grabbing all the attention. Those characteristics in turn are reflected in their management style."
"It's not coincidental that the rise of the term human resources coincided with a wave of downsizing. You can fire resources, but you can't fire human beings very easily."
"The MBA education is unbalanced by denigrating experience in favor of analysis, which in turn leads to two dysfunctional styles of management: the calculating and the heroic."
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