My Favourite Course

I’m still thinking about what to do with democracy. Somehow, the main problem is that the concept of a country has become outdated. It is far too small an entity for some modern challenges, yet far too big for others. We have a vote, but only within this out-of-date bounadry. Keep the votes, but change the structure. More to follow.

In the meantime, I was gratified to read an article in this week’s Economist about Harvard’s MBA. They want to change the basis of syllabus and teaching away from one based on case studies towards more direct field experience. Hooray, I say.

The article brought back happy memories of a course I did at Shell in the mid 1990’s. That course has stayed with me, as the most fun and the most beneficial I ever did. I still use the lessons today.

The whole basis of the course was that we were split into teams of about four, and sent out as consultants to a small business for two weeks. The time spent with the small business was interspersed with some classroom content. At the climax of the course we had to present our ideas for our small business – to our teachers and the managers of the small business itself.

This was a neat idea. Once a year Shell took out an advert in a trade magazine looking for volunteer small businesses to accept raw consultants. It was potentially a good deal for them, as they got some fresh insights and at least some cheap labour for a couple of weeks, for free.

I was blessed in the business I was assigned to. My team worked with a Jewish butcher from the east end of London. They had a processing factory near Smithfield incorporating a tiny office, and a shop in Golders Green. The employed maybe twenty staff, and, like most small businesses, most of the leaders came from the same family.

We had such a laugh. The family really welcomed us. Their own relationships and business practices were bizarre and funny. The boss was constantly doing deals on his mobile phone (a new gadget at the time) and played a passing impression of Topol from Fiddler on the Roof. It was an insight into a totally unfamiliar world for us, and a privilege to be included. I will always remember doing a price survey and market research among the Jewish housewives of the Golders Green road.

I recall that one challenge the business faced was about the weekly cycle. Smithfield only had its best value meat on Friday, in time for weekend shoppers. During the winter, the firm had to buy meat, get it blessed by a Rabbi, process it and distribute it to stores, all before sundown, when Jews have to stop working. You don’t get that sort of challenge in MBA text books – yet it mirrors something very realistic for many businesses.

In the end, I think we gave the family something of value, though I have doubts whether they implemented any of it, such was the impulsive nature of the boss. But the gain for our team was immense. And the reason we gained so much was because the course directors sent us into the field and did not get in the way.

A case study is almost always from the point of view of the CEO, with defined parameters. Field studies expose a broad canvas of human actors with human issues. Just like real business.

A case study can be solved at leisure, in the time of the students. A field study has to respond to the tempo and distractions of the client. Just like real business.

A case study is constrained by a classroom. Field studies show the squalor and primitive conditions most real businesses operate in. For a load of pampered Shell kids, that was perhaps the biggest realisation of all. Real business is not usually like Shell business.

A case study has a financial and a strategic element. Only a field study can show up conditions where the cash needed to pay the wages the next week is the dominant consideration, yet somehow the business has to drive forward in that environment. Just like real business.

In a case study students have to convince learned professors of their ideas. In a field study, students have to gain credibility and influence among real decision makers, often with very different world views. Just like in real business.

Altogether, a field study offers potential a case study can only scratch at. So why has it taken so long to move from case studies? Well, the professors mainly. The former approach allowed them to show off their brilliance in the classroom. It allowed them to re-use material time after time. There was little risk of students coming up with angles and challenges that other students had not brought up before.

In a field approach, the professor cedes control. In a way, the professor becomes like another student, trying to understand the subject company and fit its challenges to familiar models. Hard work, that. And perhaps beyond the skills of most of the cosseted professors out there.

So well done Harvard, I applaud you, and I look forward to the day when a field based approach is standard practice and MBA students can emerge so much better qualified as a consequence. It doesn’t surprise me that Harvard professors required convincing before accepting this new experimental approach, and no doubt they will find other reasons to slow it down. But my guess is that this is the start of a whole new way of teaching MBA’s. And not before time. After all, some trainer at Shell thought of it twenty years ago.