
The Management Myth: Want to succeed in business? Study philosophy - kylelibra
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-myth/4883/
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gaius
"That which convinces is not necessarily true, merely convincing" -- Nietzsche

Because this article is not about succeeding in _business_ , but in management
consulting...

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kylelibra
Good point, I was trying to shorten the subtitle of the article into something
less than 80 characters. The end result could have been more precise.

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euroclydon
I read this years ago on an airplane. I though the history of Frederick
Winslow Taylor and his work in the iron yard was a pretty powerful indictment
against his version of management theory. And if Taylor's methods are
represented in today's MBA programs, than I'd say auditing a marketing or
advertisement curriculum would be better than an MBA or a Philospphy degree.

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sasvari
for those of us prefering single page articles:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/06/the-
manage...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2006/06/the-management-
myth/4883/)

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barry-cotter
To summarize in English: Stewart started an unnamed firm, and tried to exit
mid-bubble four years later; his partners didn't want to buy his equity, so he
sued them. By the time he got his shares bought three years later the firm had
imploded.

[http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/05/12/the_myth_of_the...](http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2006/05/12/the_myth_of_the_5.html)

Here's a previous discussion with comments
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581487>

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jacques_chester
This article was expanded into a fairly readable little book.

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lionhearted
Some good points, some bad points.

Re: studying business, yes, a lot of is useless. You get two very good things
out of it, and mostly only these two things:

1\. You get an overview of all the language, terms, and general domains of
business. You'll know most of the common business law clauses, the
fundamentals of accounting, basic economics, business models, different
management structures (who reports to who, centralized/decentralized, etc).

This stuff actually isn't super actionable, but it makes you know what you
don't know. So when an organization is having a hard time redoing their
product portfolio, R&D, or your company hits the wall after hiring a bunch of
people, you probably react a little bit faster and find some opinions on it a
little bit faster. The accounting and business law, by far, are the most
valuable things you get. (Project management and operations - scheduling,
utilization, re-estimating based on how far you're late right now, etc - are
good too. Finance is also good in theory, but can be learned adequately from
good books without instruction)

2\. Case studies. Almost anyone that studies business will tell you that the
case studies are the best part of it. So you'll do a few case studies on
crises, which helps you keep things together. Some of the seemingly obvious
solutions aren't obvious in a crisis. So you'll look at how Lou Gerstner
turned around IBM and the hurdles he had to face, how Tylenol dealt with the
tampering thing intelligently, how Bridgestone/Firestone didn't, why DHL
couldn't break into America successfully, etc. Many of these are super obvious
in retrospect, but actually walking through an executive's psychology during a
crisis helps you deal with it later when you have a crisis.

Beyond that - sure, study philosophy. Philosophy is good too. Studying
business is no substitute for _doing_ business - it primarily gives you an
overview of the important domains, and immersion in a bunch of case studies.
If you don't go out and apply it, this is pretty much useless. A lot of it
isn't actionable without diving in. None of it is required for succeeding at
business.

But there is some value there beyond "outside of the box thinking" - a good
instructor on management might walk through the classical innovator's dilemma
where a business has high overhead supporting a large market that's going to
be cannibalized by an upcoming product. You'll look at a bunch of companies
that failed and died trying to transition, and a few that succeeded. It
doesn't guarantee success by any stretch, but gives you better chances.

Also, final thought - studying management/business is currently more geared
towards runnning a large, mature operation and less on entrepreneurship and
creativity and starting from scratch. That's starting to change a tiny little
bit, but you need to be very critical picking and choosing what to apply from
management studies if you're in a young company - the lack of structure and
ability to function in a loose and crazy environment is what makes startups
able to move fast and win. Trying to impose management theories broadly is
like taking a sledgehammer to that - though, there's tons of useful points
from hiring, business law, finding a business model and market fit, marketing,
and especially accounting and not having your expenses/cashflow get out of
control are valuable. The art and talent is figuring out where more structure
produces gains larger than the slowing-down effect they have on you.

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pitdesi
I'm a former BCG consultant (but by no means a cheerleader for the industry),
the stuff about consulting that he writes I think is considerable horseshit...
if consulting didn't bring any value clients then why would almost all of the
fortune 500 hire them? There is a fantastic book on the issue called The Lords
of Strategy (<http://www.thelordsofstrategy.com/>). The term strategy really
came from management consultants. Speaking from my own experience, I think the
top firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain certainly) create value. For me, the move to a
startup was more about quality of life and doing what I'm passionate about.

The author does a good job of hiding who he worked for... it seems that he
worked for Mitchell Madison which went bankrupt several times.

