Outside sales guys told we're having a 4-hour sales meeting. Big boss guys arrive with a giant power point.
Basically every metric, graph, chart, map, picture, that tells us why we suck. Not one conversation on improving the place or what business we should be chasing. A few hours of us answering whether we are going to finish strong. I walk away with not a single note on my pad of paper.
So are MBA's and accountant's ruining companies?
I think at least the requirement of MBAs for certain positions that don't really need them is certainly detrimental to companies.
I was part of Katerra, one of the Softbank multi billion dollar failures. I came in with 20 years construction experience and would lose arguments to fresh out of college MBAs from fancy colleges all the time. Their egos wouldn't allow them to walk back a decision they made to allow for the right one to move forward.
One of my favorites was losing an argument that production drywall wasn't done with joint compound, it is done with 20 minute mud so the crews can sand quicker. They would not admit that having to stop every 20 minutes to clean off all of the tools and mix new mud was a time waste vs being able to go all day long with joint compound. These were 200 plus apartment buildings. I could go on for hours.
There were some really good ones that wanted to listen and learn, but they would ask questions and push back on things that didn't make common sense. They unfortunately never got promoted and the worse continued on.
Hell, Lee Iacocca said that years ago: "MBAs know everything but understand nothing.”
I agree, though I still wish I had gotten an MBA.
I said this when I was teaching Statics in grad school back in 1991.
The worst problem with the higher ups with MBA has been the shift to making shareholders happy. That initiative is the worst thing that can happen to a company, as it immediately shifts focus to the short term. Instead, we should have been following Toyota's example of selling great cars that get better every year- and the stock price will follow.
Anyway, it's as true now as it was 30 years ago.
Not just MBAs, many accountants kill companies. Left a full scholarship at GM in the 70s because the stupidity of design changes were making cars worse while Japan and Germany were constantly improving. Spent my career in manufacturing watching accountants and MBAs ruin operations. Part of the problem though is the culture in this country of short term profits over everything else. These types are just the minions carrying out the destructive plans.
In reply to porschenut :
Accountants are like engineers- they just do what they are told to do. They are not the ones making the decisions. They are not the ones that made the rush to the bottom in terms of cost, as opposed to the rush to the top for value to the custimer- which is what most Japanese companies did.
I've seen US auto engineers bashed in the exact same way, but having worked with them for as long as I have, our engineering force is among the most creative and knowledgeable in the world. There's a reason why pretty much every car company in the world has a tech center of some type in SE MI. But when they point out flaws in the decisions, and then are overridden, it's not their fault.
Had the leaders seen the higher profit margin from adding value as opposed to just seeing the higher cost to make something- both of which come out of accountant data- we'd be in a different boat right now.
I don't know that it is MBA's or any other highly educated (formally group) that is the root cause of the issues talked about. To me I think the problem is a lack of balance. Formal education and hands on experience need to have some balance. If you have a bunch of degrees and no hands on experience you tend to make ill informed decisions. If you have hands on experience in a specific field and no formal education it can be hard to see the forest instead of the trees.
For a lot of reasons there are way more examples of the overly educated being promoted into highly damaging roles but I have seen it both ways.
Please note that I think formal education can be replaced with honest curiosity and reading and expanding a person's knowledge base if they have good hands on experience. Also good managers with education only are out there but they check their egos, ask real questions and listen to people that have real hands on experience.
I've never heard it explained succinctly what an MBA actually is.
An MBA, short for a master of business administration, is a graduate degree that provides students with practical and theoretical training to aid them in better understanding the general functions of business management.
Oh, well that clears it all up then.
Bad employees kill companies, it doesn't matter what title they have.
MBAs and accountants just crunch numbers. The order as to what numbers to crunch and for what reason comes from the guys who hire the MBAs and accountants.
As the man says, "I can get you any result you want. What's it worth to you?"
MBA's aren't the problem. MBA's who only know how to MBA trying to run messy systems is a problem.
Really, anyone who only understans one way of doing things and then gets put in charge of a complicated system that requires a diverse set of philosphies and toolsets.
I've got a friend who's a good MBA, because he got his MBA after getting a liberal education, having done production work, and worked IT.
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference, and in practice there is.
Edit: Also Elon Musk is a charismatic cult leader.
One of the big negatives of MBA's is many don't understand that quality is the most important product their company can produce and without it the bottom line will shrink.
When quality slips they go on hunts to make the product less costly to produce in order to help the bottom line.
The next thing you know Pinto's are exploding because a $3.00 part was taken off to save money.
Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:MBAs and accountants just crunch numbers. The order as to what numbers to crunch and for what reason comes from the guys who hire the MBAs and accountants.
As the man says, "I can get you any result you want. What's it worth to you?"
I kind of disagree with that simple notion of an MBA- in theory, you are right, but in practice, having an MBA is the main gatekeeper to higher management. So that many if the highest management are running the company based on what they were taught in MBA school.
Accountants and engineers both need to get an MBA to get to those places.
I have been in companies with the good and bad side on MBAs. The best ones were engineers first, MBA second. The worst ones just knew how to run a spreadsheet.
I'm fortunate we're I am now....I'm the "senior" guy....our old guard all left, and the new guys, while sharp, are young and lack experience.
They can ask questions, but accept the push back I give them. That balance is key.
I feel attacked. 
Seriously, though, there's a LOT of generalization going on in this thread. Not all MBAs are bean-counting automatons. Many, in fact most that I know, have a technical undergrad degree (like I do) and added the MBA later to improve their career prospects. I took only the bare minimum of accounting and finance classes, because that wasn't where my interest was. Most of my electives were around business information systems (essentially IT), and now I do marketing for a software company.
And I can assure you, B-schools are teaching about quality. W. Edwards Deming is practically a god if you've ever taken any kind of operations management class.
- Tom (BS -Eastern Michigan 1993, MBA - University of Michigan - 2006)
As an MBA holder myself, It's not the degree that is the issue. it's the holder of the degree that never got the real world experience to provide additional perspective that is the problem. It's like the difference between a parts cannon and a mechanic.
So if I'm a business analyst and I've only been taught to read metric then I'm going to come up with the answer purely based off the numbers. I'm not looking at the underlying issues or seeing how that effects the other groups/teams involved. But a good BA uses the number to start the conversation. They dive in an talk to the teams that have an effect on the numbers and get further insight on the issues and come up to a more rounded solution.
The other issue is there is so much pressure to provide answers that good analysis and investigation is not always possible. This is a result of under staffed organization.
The real killer of corporate America is private equity and CEO pay structures and not MBAs.
Certainly, some MBAs are bad at their jobs and the management of some companies focus too heavily on making MBA generated metrics look good in the short term without understanding what really drives them and what makes for good long term outcomes but I don't think it's fair to condemn the whole discipline. That's as bad as focusing entirely on making the worlds greatest product without taking into consideration any of the factors needed for the business to be successful.
I'm an engineer so I tend to think about the product first but I've seen companies that made money with crap products and others with excellent products that never made a dime of profit.
Just as there are good/bad engineers, restaurateurs, and heavy equipment operators, so too are there good and bad MBA's. Part of the problem, I should think, is the fact that so many colleges and pseudo-colleges offer Executive MBA programs, meaning that anyone with sufficient cash and a little time can grab themselves a degree to help further their career.
I considered one for myself, of course. Took the GMAT's and did very well. Never could find a way to justify putting life on hold and going back to school.
Quantitive analysis is a tool. Accounting is a tool.
You can't really blame the hammer...
I'd like to blame venture capital, who likes to run everything into the ground to extract as much profit as possible. Yes, they are good at doing that but it's not good for long term success.
It’s not necessarily MBA’s that are the issue. It’s (some) of the people who have them. IT really should be the ‘bean counter mentality’, but that’s where many people with BMA’s work. There was a period 10-20 years ago where it was basically impossible to get into senior management without an MBA. I didn’t get one, but I’ve still made it reasonably far in the industry. So, when I say MBA, or consultant, I am not really meaning ‘a person with an MBA’, I mean ‘A person with the bean counter mentality’.
When I was at Ford back in the Electronics division, I saw the following two scenario's play out more than once.
Even heard of My Ford Touch? The above is a perfect example of that.
Two other scenarios that I saw were:
Consulting firms full of MBA's coming in to tell senior management after six months of pestering Engineers on details and six or seven figure consulting contracts exactly what the Engineers had said previously, but in a 30 min power point presentation rather than the original two page bullet point summary that took two weeks to produce.
The other one is my biggest pet peeve. 'Benchmarking' companies against others in the manufacturing industry then telling rooms full of auto execs that the R&D budget is way too high considering how small it is for other similar industries like. AND I AM NOT KIDDING HERE. Coke and Gillett. I wish I was kidding, because of course there is just as much work coming out with the new 37 blade razer as there is in a new platform. I have seen that on more than one occasion from more than one consulting firm, and Wall street analysis company.
Having said all that, at the end of the day it's not necessarily the degree that does this, it's the understanding or lack thereof, of the industry and the product in general. One of the things that I do when interviewing people, even for not directly Engineering positions, is ask questions about their interest in cars (I still work in automotive Engineering), experience with working on them, even if it's just oil changes etc. People who have an interest in the product, have a better inherent understanding of what it takes to engineer things.
The funny thing is through all my now 32 years in the industry, the biggest car geeks, people with the most passion, for cars, engineering, racing, car culture etc. have not been Engineers on average. It’s the men and women who work in the Design Studio, creating the next generation of vehicles. Those people have so much passion and knowledge it's scary, and it's also the area in the company that has the most 'enthusiast' vehicles in the parking lot.
Design was also where I saw the best ever push back on MBA ‘by the number’s’ types. The Ford Mustang Mach E, no, not the name. I never met one person in Design or Engineering who thought the name was a good idea. But that program got delayed for a couple of years. The initial Design studies were for a smaller sedan type vehicle as a Prius fighter. That vehicle was very attractive. But then the targets started coming in for fuel economy (yes with an all electric) and aero. The proportions got squeezed roof line changed, wheel openings modified, wheels and tires shrunk in diameter and width etc. etc. What ended up was an ugly ass vehicle that would have ticked every box for the 'specs' but would have flopped as it was simply plugly. There was a presentation that had successive slides that showed what it started off as, what it was forced into, then as a comparison we took an early rendering of the Tesla model 3 and showed that on two success slides, as it was, then morphed into the proportions that they were trying to force on us. Again, the vehicle looked awful. There was one person who saw it, who I won’t call out as they are a member of the Ford family and wouldn't' want to embarrass them, so I won’t mention Elena Ford by name, and she didn't see the issue, to here there was no real difference between the versions. Luckily after a lot of push back, and luckily support from the exec level enthusiasts (there are/were many) it was accepted that what was needed wasn't a by the numbers Prius fighter, but a true step forward for Electric vehicles in all ways. The result is the very good Mach E.
I have had innovative boss's that have had just a high school diploma and all the way doctoral. Most leaders are born great very few learn to be great (you either got it or you don't).
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