When business schools get it wrong

Mthuli Ncube and Bobby Godsell penned an interesting piece for Financial Mail recently that has to give anyone in business pause for thought.  Why are our business school’s (in this instance Wits, but you can point a finger in any direction and come up lucky) training their students in business leadership if they are not making ethical or principle based leadership the very cornerstone of their syllabus? (See the quote below).  Why the sudden interest in business ethics?  Who is to blame for not making ethical business practice a condition for business leadership if not the schools themselves?  Around the world business schools are taking some serious flack for not emphasising the need for consistency or morality in decision making; nor that performance, at any cost, is just not an option.  A piece like this only inflames an already disappointing realisation:  SA business schools don’t understand the nature of leadership in business anymore than their northern hemisphere colleagues.  See full article at http://secure.financialmail.co.za/09/0529/opinion/bopinion.htm : Quote follows:

In these troubled times then, surely business schools need to be reflecting on their role in the current financial crisis and in shaping the environment for nurturing future leadership in business. The world economy is going through a “great dislocation” and it is not business as usual.  Ethics is the way in which people choose between morally significant alternative courses of action. The subject tends to exist only at the periphery of teaching. Leaders in every sphere of society must choose to exercise their power, authority and resources well or badly. The patterns of meaning that provide a context for responsible, “eyes wide open” choice in business should be a core and compulsory part of a business school’s teaching.  In these troubled times then, surely business schools need to be reflecting on their role in the current financial crisis and in shaping the environment for nurturing future leadership in business. The world economy is going through a “great dislocation” and it is not business as usual.   Indeed the current crisis provides a rich agenda of moral dilemmas. This is the crucible in which business leadership is and will be forged. If it is not to be found wanting, those who claim to teach business should address these issues. This will also require business leaders with courage and integrity. In dealing with these issues, are the world’s business schools up to the challenge?

MBA’s in the firing line

A while back I mentioned how much I enjoyed Philip Broughton’s take on ‘What they teach you at Harvard Business School’  and that it mirrored my own thoughts about the gap in what business school’s teach and what they should teach.  Performance, while doing the right things, and bringing about a balance in one’s life, seems a sensible purpose for a business school to me. Recently, I read in a Financial Mail column from Wits Business School that the Dean and his leadership reckons that business schools needed to address this.  Who’s fault is it I wonder that they don’t?  And now Matthew Lynn has been more direct by laying accountability for the worldwide economic meltdown we are witnessing directly at the door of the most prestigious business schools in the world.  How do you know someone has an MBA?  They tell you they do.  I found that funny first time and it sounds just as good now.  I think the economic crisis we are in though will turn that around:  How do you know someone has an MBA?  They don’t mention it.  Leadership should be inspiring.  Be inspired.

Big bigger biggest

We equate size with power—bigger is better, might is right, loud is better than quiet, large is preferable to small. We spend our lives in the realm of big, bigger and biggest. Think about this paradox though—just as we place greater emphasis on size so nanotechnology (nano=very small) has resulted in the miniaturization of our world. Everything from microchips, to receivers and transformers. Cell phones and computers are the smallest they have ever been and the miniaturization of surgical equipment means lives can now be saved when before they couldn’t. The better a hi-fi the smaller it is and forget those dials—now you have a remote control that does it all and you can crank the sound up to 11 if you like (check out my post on March 2, 2009).  Is it possible that ‘small’ is the new ‘big’ and that the future belongs to small smaller and smallest?  When you are on the right side of right size doesn’t count.  The majority doesn’t matter.  I suppose that the moral geniuses of our time know that …. maybe it’s time for the rest of us to catch up?

Idols 5 – what a farce

Let’s face it—SA Idols season 5 was a disaster before it even started.  First there was the announcement that in the judges opinion only 12 of the Top 24 were suitable to go through to the next level.  Anyone with the slightest understanding of how tough the media world is finding things right now would know the real reason was that the budget had been cut and this was the ‘spin’ the marketing team had come up with to sell to a gullible audience the reason for reducing the budget/number of shows/quality of the set.

 Then we had the offensive replacement of the Idols ‘face’ Colin Moss who had done a pretty decent job over the years of branding the show in a way that showed empathy without being patronizing.  But what to do when Colin decided he would rather pursue a career in movies?  Find a replacement and then ask the marketing team to come up with a suitable strategy for conveying to the audience the change.  Their response?  An offensive, tasteless and altogether without merit skit that showed Colin being hit by a car that looked like a taxi.  And instead of him carrying on where he left off he was replaced by Liezl van der Westhuizen.  What a ghastly way to replace someone.

 And now we have the debacle surrounding the counting of votes.  Talk about a public relations disaster.  So what does MNet do?  Call on the same incompetent marketing team to spin it yet again:  Get the CEO to explain to a disbelieving public how they couldn’t count less than 3 million votes in the time available and that there were no checks and balances to ensure that all the valid votes were counted.  (Idol in the USA had 46 million votes last week—that’s more than the entire South African population and they got it right).  So what does Patricia Scholtemeyer, the CEO of MNet say:  There was a problem and we have fixed it. The public will judge us on that basis. I can’t believe she actually believes that.  Calling a press conference doesn’t actually do anything for the brand when you decide to announce that … listen to this … as a world first we will now have two Idols!  How patronizing.  And she actually thinks that has solved something.  If I was Jason or Sasha-Lee I would tell them to shove it and then sell my story to make up the prize value.

I don’t get twitter

Ok I admit it:  I don’t get twitter.  Unless you are mega famous who cares what you are doing anyway?  And as for business executives using this ‘next best thing’ to communicate with employees, even 140 letters can constitute the most boring conversation ever.  Is this just another social networking site (fad?)  that finds it difficult to appeal to anyone other than the chronically idle or have I missed the plot?

Interview with marketingweb – 14 April 2009

http://www.marketingweb.co.za/marketingweb/view/marketingweb/en/page74600?oid=117867&sn=Marketingweb%20detail

Can business ever be ethical?

Can business ever be ethical?  This question is posed to me more often than any other and that’s because people are truly cynical about ethical business practice and the profit motive.  The premise here is that when profit is involved ethical business practice goes out the window.  I must admit to understanding such a point of view, particularly when you consider the dire straits the financial sector and economies around the world now find themselves in.  This crisis has nothing to do with criminality though and  everything to do with morality in the marketplace, or lack thereof.  That’s why I don’t buy the idea that ethical business practice and the profit motive are mutually exclusive.  Now that may not be a popular point of view in some quarters but some of the best advances in the history of human kind started with someone being persecuted for what the majority thought was a stupid idea.

Imagine what Moses must have encountered when he spoke of leading the Jewish nation into the land of Israel? Imagine the first person to say slavery was wrong? How about segregation, a united Europe, global warming, the end of Apartheid, Israel and Palestine in peaceful co existence? But also imagine what it must have been like for the first doctor to say he suspected there was something – invisible to the human eye – that made people get sick? He was talking about bacteria. Or that one day it would be possible to see through skin and muscle to look at a bone in something called an X-ray. Space travel? Walking on the moon? International space station? Or what about an Olympic games for disabled people? Imagine a business world where businesses have corporate social responsibility programmes? Pay for staff to educate themselves? Where a women would be paid at the same rate as a man? Or that a black woman could be the CEO of a company? Ethical business practice may or may not be something that business is ever capable of. But for now it makes me feel better about the world that it is a distinct possibility ……. look how much we have already achieved.  Leadership is inspiring.  Be inspired.

How to have a good fight

Conflict in the workplace is natural—even necessary. Colleagues who challenge one another’s thinking tend to consider a richer range of options, which ultimately lead to better business decisions. What surprises me though is how quickly disagreement takes on a personal tone. And I think we need to put a stop to it—whether it involves our colleagues or within our other stakeholder groups. How do we do that? Mitigate interpersonal conflict is the key and you can do this in a number of ways—think about these*:

Have a common Vision

Have a common value system

Use humour

Focus on the facts

Multiply the alternatives

Create common goals

Balance the power structure

Seek consensus with qualification—that means someone has to make a decision at some point. The talking can’t go on forever.

Now go find someone to have a good fight with ……..

Want me to talk about any of these in more detail – let me know.  Hey come to think about it want me to talk about anything else let me know.

(* With thanks to HBR, 1997 and 2001)

What can we learn from the SABC?

We don’t live long enough to make all our own mistakes and that’s why, if you are smart, you learn from others when they get it wrong. And that’s where the SABC has got it so right—this is a case study of note on how not to run a media business. Now to put it all down to poor corporate governance is just too easy. Sure the Board is incompetent and senior executives must be so preoccupied with (political?) survival that it is unlikely they are able to apply their minds in any meaningful way to the issues at hand. The real problem though is the cumulative effect of a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy that’s got worse over a period of years. Too harsh? Consider this for a moment: whether it is the Sunday Times, the Weekly Mail & Guardian or Matebello Motloung writing in this week’s Financial Mail (March 13, 2009) the list of infighting, incompetence and the lack of vision is clear for just about anyone to see. Of real interest to me was this statement by Motloung in the FM: ‘Advertising, which accounts for 83% of the SABC’s revenue, is drying up. Of the R783m deficit, R400m was a result of cancelled advertising’. That’s a nonsense if ever I have seen one. SABC revenue is up 9% Y/Y and yet employee costs were up by 38% in the same period. That’s big when you consider 38% was the equivalent of R410m. Add consultancy fees (up 68% more Y/Y) and the total spent on employees and consultancy costs is almost 40% of revenue. That’s up from only 28% of revenue in the previous year. The net effect is the SABC spent R500m more Y/Y on employee and consulting costs when it knew revenue was under pressure. When you look at it like this you know where to start looking for your problem: Management, not the Board. Someone didn’t manage their budget properly. Someone thinks it’s ok to offer salaries at 35% more than the market and doesn’t get the idea it will come back to bite them in the future.  There is more to come ……

Turning up the conversation to 11*

In the old days—that means around 10 years ago—the quality of a hi-fi was largely determined by its size.  The bigger it was the better it was.  I remember getting my Pioneer XF something something 8, bought from the local Hyperama with part time work-money —what a monster. Took up half the lounge and each speaker was almost a meter in height. The guys at school looked at me with a whole new respect and for the first time I knew what it felt like to be the ‘man’ just because I had more debt than anyone else.

Man, this thing had dials and buttons like those on the flight deck of a Boeing 737-800. On the odd occasion I would turn the volume dial up (forget a remote control) to around 6 or 7 just to feel the vibration in my stomach. Crank it up to 8 and the ornaments on the top of each speaker would start to move to the beat and by the time you got to 9 the windows were starting to vibrate.  At a 10 the family budgie couldn’t stay on its perch and the family cat and dog had all but disappeared—along with Granny.  How was I to know that just coz you were deaf didn’t mean you couldn’t feel the beat?  Boy was there trouble when the folks got home.

But what if that 10 could be turned to an 11?  Surely 11 would be better than 10?  That sort of thinking can get you into real trouble … Ever feel in a world as noisy as ours you would like to turn up the conversation to an 11?  Break through all that clutter and make sure your voice is heard above everyone else’s?  The problem is that when you crank it up to 11 everyone else does the same.  But what if it wasn’t just about loudness?  What if loudness was determined by the quality of the sound not the position on the dial?  What if the quality of your conversation was the real reason your volume level was an 11? 

Read a great quote the other day about blogging:  never in the history of humankind has so much been said by so many to so few … thank you for being one of the few…….

(* My thanks to Brian Penrose of the University of the Witwatersrand, Dept. of Philosophy who first introduced me to the idea of having a conversation, turned up to 11.)