MBA: Masters of Busyness Administration?

-- Transcribed by https://otter.ai --

Frank Butler  00:17
Hello busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  00:24
Good day.

Frank Butler  00:24
And on today's episode, we're actually going to discuss something about MBAs. Recently, in the Wall Street Journal, there was an article about Elon Musk, criticizing MBAs. And he said something to the effect that there's too many MBAs running companies. So that really gets my radar going off, largely because I do teach in the graduate program at UTC. I know Paul teaches graduate classes, it's a topic that comes up frequently, the value of the MBA, to me, this was interesting, because I feel like there's two sides to this I, on the one hand, I kind of agree sometimes with the criticisms of the programs. But on the other end, I feel like sometimes they missed the point of the programs. And so I think that's what we want to really get into today. So Paul, I think what we should really do talk first about why the MBA was created to start with

Paul Harvey  01:15
A little bit of historical perspective is always a good idea. And let me know if I'm wrong about this. But my assumption is that the MBA was created to be used in a different way than it typically is, nowadays, we have a lot of students who have an undergraduate degree in a business field, go back and get an MBA. And I think the original intent was for people who did not have a business education, background doctors or nurses or lawyers or what have you. If they had a desire to get some kind of business education, they would use the MBA program for that purpose Is that your understanding?

Frank Butler  01:49
That was the way I was always understood it, you know, is that the whole purpose of the MBA was helping people who didn't have a business background get basically an accelerated business background, right? It means I'm pressing really what would be a two year undergraduate program into, you know, a really high level, high speed sort of cram a lot in for a graduate program, and give you those tools and understandings that you wouldn't necessarily have about organizations and how they work and operational efficiencies and blah, blah, blah. So yeah,

Paul Harvey  02:20
I think you mean to, say a four year program into a two year program?

Frank Butler  02:24
Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Paul Harvey  02:26
Although it they have increasingly become one year programs as MBA programs over the last 20 years or so I think they're still mostly a two year program. But you see a lot of accelerated one year 16 month types of formats.

Frank Butler  02:40
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you've seen a lot of changes in there. And, and what I really meant by two year undergraduate is that, typically, you know, students go two years in general education, and then the right, two years in that major, but they already getting classes that are actually intro classes in their sophomore year. So it really is more like three years of business courses really compressed down into really heavy intensive 18 months, two years, but now even more so into one year type programs, as you said, so I should clarify why I was thinking that way. I gotcha. Yeah, no, I overtime, for some reason, it sort of evolved into something that students were just going through with business degrees, and then going and getting an MBA, and eventually people will rolling through and getting an MBA right after their undergraduate degree. And, you know, I think,

Paul Harvey  03:27
almost like a fifth year senior, right, exactly for another year and crank out an MBA.

Frank Butler  03:32
And it makes sense, in some cases, right? If the economy is not great, or you're struggling finding a job, for whatever reason, showing that you can have a level of success at the graduate level, can't hurt can't hurt, you know, refreshing ideas that you got as an undergrad that you studied and cram for an exam, forget about it after the exam, and then you get it again, at least in the graduate program, maybe even more intensely, that helps with making it stick.

Paul Harvey  03:55
I would agree that it doesn't hurt. But I think the intellectual return on investment is a lot lower, in a lot of cases, not for everybody, but going into an MBA program without some work experience makes it I don't know, I don't want to over generalize here. But I think if you're not kind of revisiting that material, with some real world experience to reflect on, it's just more book learning in a way that did more of it and more intense level of it. But I've always tried to discourage students from doing that, unless they have a really good reason to get an MBA right after their undergraduate business degree. I think it's certainly harder to teach students who haven't gone out and had some business experience in an MBA class, at least in my experience out of how you feel about that,

Frank Butler  04:38
Oh, I'm with you. I always try to encourage my students to at least go work for a year, two years, and then coming back and learning the material again, or if there's oftentimes new material, like in my strategy class there would be because I don't want to have it be repetitive right at the same time, those different perspectives you get by getting taken out of that context. Now that you've got experiences And being put into a new situation that you would get being in graduate classes. Oh, absolutely can help you then re see or rethink the way. You know, you've been experiencing things. So

Paul Harvey  05:10
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You and I both have MBA degrees out, no, but

Frank Butler  05:14
Actually let me correct you. I do not actually you don't have an MBA, I do not I do not go by, I will say that because of my experience that I had in Germany, because I was sort of in the upper echelon. When I interviewed at Florida State, they actually said, because of that experience, I they waved me through life. So it was funny, I just assumed that you did? Well, you know, it's funny, because for the PhD programs, they tend to want to push that idea of, you need to have the MBA, because really, I think it's a proxy for your ability to have some level of success in the graduate Ph.D. program.

Paul Harvey  05:52
It's like an aptitude test more than anything. You know, it's funny, you mentioned that the only reason I have an MBA actually, is because I couldn't find PhD programs, you know, that were worth going to with that didn't have that as a requirement. Usually, it was that you had to have some kind of master's degree, it didn't necessarily have to be an MBA, but more than once, when I was interviewing with schools, they would kind of chuckle about that. A lot of cases, it was a university level requirement that you have to have some kind of a Master's to be given some kind of a doctorate degree, but they would say, you know, yeah, we have this requirement. I don't know why, cuz it's not very relevant to what we teach in a management Ph. D. curriculum. But one thing that that forest experience did give me was validation of what you were just saying that because I had been out working in the corporate world for a while coming back into the classroom was a very different experience in my undergraduate degree was in finance, and I was working in finance. And when I came back into the MBA curriculum, it sort of validated what I had already figured out in the corporate world, that the really fascinating stuff oftentimes was not so much the numbers, but the people, hence why I went into the field I went into, but revisiting those organizational behavior, business strategy, types of courses, having had that experience, it was a whole different world. In my undergraduate experience, those management type classes, were just things I was required to take, I didn't really give it much thought, coming back with that experience. Oh, my God, it was like night and day. And I mean, I did as an undergraduate, you know, you and I both did some entrepreneur entrepreneurial ventures in our undergraduate days, but it's just a different experience. When you're out in the working world, as an adult, dealing with adult responsibilities inside and outside of work, you really come back to the classroom with a very different perspective.

Frank Butler  07:34
And I think that's it right. And even when I went through the Ph. D program, taking those classes, especially, you know, B HR and strategy, it really did kind of make me look at my career quite differently, right. I mean, I had now terms to apply to some of the things I had been doing it was those things like, Oh, I wish I noticed. And sometimes it was, man, I really wish I had known this, when I was working in corporate, it would have helped me out a lot.

Paul Harvey  08:00
Well, that's a good litmus test, I think for is an MBA program a good idea for you, if you're having those moments in the program, it's, Oh, I wish I had known this before. But then you're learning something good. If it's just more book learning for you, then I'm not sure it's the best use of your time and tuition money now.

Frank Butler  08:13
And I'm really one of those people who believes strongly in the idea of continual education. So I do think that I think everybody probably would benefit from getting an MBA in their careers, obviously, you know, life gets in the way. That's why I try to recommend getting him not right after school. But after a couple years before you're married, tied down to have kids or whatever that life gets, your work gets way too busy. I also then encourage you know, if you get an opportunity to get into one of those executive development programs that your work might be offering, like a UTC, we have an exec ed program. I know, UNH offers one too. We know us? Well. Maybe again, at some point, but I think those programs are all important because what they do more than anything is just, you know, even if it's a rehash of some of the material that you know, or things that you do, it's coming at things from a different perspective, to help you think differently about maybe those encounters that you've had. And that's I think, more important than anything is that it really is to help pull you out of your narrowing focus, and really get you to see step back and kind of reflect and see things maybe from a little different lens and say, oh, maybe I can handle things a little differently or make this tweak. And I'll open up, you know, a whole new world of expectations. And so I think there's value in that continue education, I just think it needs to be managed properly. But going back to these criticisms of the MBA program, I mean, I believe strongly in the value that they can generate. And to your point, saying, if you're having those epiphany moments, then yes, it's creating value.

Paul Harvey  09:45
So what exactly are these criticisms? Maybe we should summarize, and I think you and I both agree with the article that Frank's talking about here with the academic the response from academics, business, school deans and professors is kind of what you would expect. No, he's wrong. MBA programs are good, I think you and I both have the sort of a middle ground perspective on this, that, you know, he is making some good points here like there is some legitimate critiques that he's putting out there. So what are those critiques?

Frank Butler  10:11
Well, you know, what Elon starts with, he says that there should, there should be more focused on product or service itself, less time on board meetings, less time on financials, what he's basically saying is that the MBAs or those who have MBAs are going to focus in on more meetings, and more on things like the financials, then focusing in on the customer experience, or the product quality, you know, and it's really funny, because Bob Lutz wrote a book called car guys versus counters, which he stressed the exact same thing. And Bob Lutz if you don't know him was an automotive executive legend, the guy, you know, really was responsible for a lot of the turnaround and success of the of the American car industry also shared similar sentiments about the MBAs, he would criticize MBAs all the time. And, you know, my response was always, like, that's not what I teach in my strategy class. I think that, you know, in the 80s, and 90s, the MBA programs were a little bit heavily focused in on, you know, it's all about the profits. So that way, you can return the money to the shareholders, we kind of got into that notion. And I always thought that was the wrong way of going about it. Because if you focus in on profits, you're going to make a bad customer experience, and you're going to make bad products, which is exactly what happened at General Motors, which is how Bob Lutz wrote that book out. And that's, that's been the big one, I think, is that focused on the financials.

Paul Harvey  11:29
I'm gonna disagree a little bit on one point that that focus became dominant in the 80s and 90s. I think that's true, but I kind of think that it has continued to dominate the MBA curriculum and a lot of schools since then, I think we don't see it so much, because we're teaching in the different wing of the curriculum, management type stuff. But you know, in your MBA classes, how many of your students are whatever you call it, majoring or focusing on something like strategy or management? For me, and I think for a lot of schools, the vast majority of MBA students are focusing on finance and accounting specializations, very quantitative, a dollars and cents driven stuff. So I think that the criticism is still kind of valid, that overall, we may have strengthened the non-financial non dollars and cents aspects of the curriculum. But most of that curriculum is still largely driven by finance and accounting and analytics, which aren't bad things to focus on. But I think that's where the student demand has been. So that's what we see a lot of students focusing on in their MBA programs.

Frank Butler  12:37
Actually, I think that's, that's interesting. Because like, I know, we just recently added UTC those kind of, I guess, concentrations for the MBA program. We didn't have those. It was just a generic MBA for a while, but then we could spend the general trend here. Yeah, we've got data analytics, and I think a finance track, we had a separate masters of accounting. accountancy. So if you wanted that route, that was a separate one.

Paul Harvey  12:58
I think that's a CPA requirement. It's got to be a separate program. separately. Yeah.

Frank Butler  13:05
Not my world. So yeah. But you know, I think that's the problem, right, is the overly broad statement of all MBAs, because I don't think that's true for stars. I think different programs have different emphasis. I think, to your point, you know, if you do have people who are going into the finance end of the MBA program, you know, maybe they're, they need to be in certain jobs that are focused in on those skills being important, not probably making the decisions for products and services for customers, right, maybe that's where the marketing emphasis or HR type emphases might be better served. But I think that's another element too, is that there are things that these people are learning who take these programs, I think there's many of them will find value in it. I know, in my online classes, for example, I'll get people who work for government, who don't really think about organization, right? They work for an organization, but they don't have to worry about profits or what have you. And so by getting that MBA program, they start seeing that it's not about necessarily having to change the idea of "Okay, we still need to work for profits", but rather, how can we organize more efficiently to be more effective at accomplishing our mission? Right? Let's not worry about the financials. What is it that we have to do to make us better, to better address the problems that we are established to take care of? You're right, I think in general, there's a lot of over emphasis on maybe the financials and a lot of programs. I just know that when they get to my class, I teach the capstone and my goal is to say, focus on the customers focus on the employees and really, it's focused on the employees first. They're going to help you with your customers, but really focusing on the customers that's the products, the services and then your profits should come and I think you see a lot of examples of that if you look at companies like Apple which is you know, I think their primary strategic objective is all built around customer satisfaction. And you look at the repeat buy rate of products that Apple you know, they have one of those highest, like repeat buyer percentages of any company out there. And you look at how their retail stores typically do prior to the pandemic, they were the largest retailer in sales per square foot than even Tiffany's, the jewelry company. And I mean, it was like 10 fold almost, I think, scary big numbers compared to what Tiffany's was doing.

Paul Harvey  15:22
Apple is a great example. Because you can compare Apple to Apple, Apple of the mid 90s versus Apple today, it's been both companies. It's been the customer oriented, obsessively customer oriented company. It's been the finance dollars and cents driven company and back again. And if anyone's like Frank, and I out there listening, who lived the experience of apple in the 80s 90s. And today, today is a much happier place to be as an apple customer.

Frank Butler  15:47
Yeah, I think it is, to an extent I do think that, you know, maybe they're also because they're so large, still have some growing pains and trying to look to deadlines and stuff. And I think there are some elements that maybe they could get a little bit stronger, more strongly focused, again, on the customer experience. Oh, sure. But I think overall, they're still leaps and bounds ahead of anybody else. Right. Yeah, I think they're doing a lot of things internally that help drive a lot of it. But you know, there's, there's, like with anything, there's some functional area issues that they're dealing with. And I think, you know, again, here's what, where I keep coming in at. I do think that a lot of the pushback on these MBAs, is largely because they kind of get taught heavily about the finance, I think this is a good point. And they become so overly focused on the finances, that they don't think about how actually, the differentiation aspect can make all the difference and actually help you on the financial event. Right? If you think about the idea of, if I can make a better product, and more people are willing to pay money for that I can charge maybe the same price for an even better product, because I'm selling so many of it, make more money, be able to reinvest in the company, in the consumer experience side, on my employees to hire continually hire better employees, so on and so forth, and you just kind of get to this new level of success. And your profit margins just get bigger and bigger because you get bigger and bigger, because you're focusing on the right things.

Paul Harvey  17:19
Yeah, but they can calculate the future present value of a 3% coupon rate bond, you know, yeah, just like that. But all that stuff you're talking about, like, Oh, yeah, that's, that's those other management classes they sometimes have to take?

Frank Butler  17:33
Well, I think that's it right. If you think about it, I think we like to focus in on the meetings, or on the finances, because they're tangible. And I think this is one of those things that you keep coming back to, or, you know, I keep coming back to rather it was, people don't like uncertainty, and they feel like tools like meetings or spreadsheets are giving them more certainty. And I think that's a displace trust in the wrong things. Because they're just, you know, meetings, they're about socialization, and a lot of ways they're about hashing through ideas, even though that's a whole different aspect too. But if you get death by meeting, you're not getting anything done. You're not focusing on developing yourself, more so in and that's one of those things to go back to Apple. You know, one of those things that came out in Harvard Business Review by Podolski, who's their dean of their Apple University, you know, one of the things he talks about is that every manager at Apple is an expert in their area, because people want to learn from the experts, right, they became an expert. But one of the things that I found was very interesting is that because you're an expert, but as you move up, you have to also become more of a generalist. In a sense, you're really good in a specific area. But now that you have more reporting areas to you, you're not necessarily going to be able to be an expert in all things. But as long as you're an expert in something, that's good, but one of the things that they have in here is that one of their vice presidents, the Apple's vice president of applications, Roger Rosner, he has created a portfolio for his leadership. And what he has here, for example, is that 40% of his times focusing on the things that he considers himself the expert in, and his particular context is basically UI design and software architecture. That's where this dude is really strong. And then he spends 15% of his time teaching those strengths for other applications. And in particular, it says here, like teaching for like keynote, or pages or numbers, but on the other end, there's areas that his expertise isn't that great. And so he spends 30% of his time learning how to improve that understanding of those areas. In this particular case, it puts in here parts of the news app, or voice memos or weather. So he's still trying to learn through that process. And then 15% of the time is delegating, for example. iMovie Final Cut Pro GarageBand. You can start seeing some themes there. Right, final cut. GarageBand and iMovie are really entertainment based

Paul Harvey  20:05
creation great of things. Yep.

Frank Butler  20:07
And leaving that to an expert who's probably going to be better at that, because those are going to be much more comprehensive applications and some of those other things. And they're going to have to do a lot more, and they, and so on. So I see this as being a very interesting way of thinking about it. It's like, where do you see a lot of meetings in here, right? There's not it's 40% 30% 15 1515 probably meetings to teach in or to discuss product designs and stuff. But at the most part, there's a lot of learning still in that job built in.

Paul Harvey  20:35
Just to clarify, I don't remember if we mentioned this, one of Elon Musk's criticisms of MBA graduates was that they're obsessed with board meetings and meetings of every stripe and administrative stuff. So that's why we're talking about meetings and stuff in this context,

Frank Butler  20:51
Right. I mean, that's the thing is that Elan Musk is saying they need to do they can't just be lost in the financials and in the, in the meetings. Right. And that's to me, I think, is something that's really important. Getting on the production floor talking to you. I will say that that was one of the things that my experience in Germany taught me was back then, because I was the token American, I think in the company. A lot of people would call me up and be like, hey, you want to get a cup of coffee, and they would want to practice their English or what have you. But they also knew that at least I had the ear of some people in the upper echelons, you know, the CEO, and so on, I'd have access to them. So if they were having a grievance, they would hope they could also tell me about it. And that maybe I could do something to help them out. Right. So there was all these sort of elements that went in there. And of course, I tried to be approachable anyway. And so I drink a lot of coffee, it was heavily caffeinated for years. But at the same time, I learned so much more by just talking to the average employee about what's working, what's not working, what their challenges are. And I worked very diligently to try to find ways of removing those obstacles for them. So they could do their job and be more effective. Yet when it made sense, right. Sometimes it was just little individual concerns. And that's fine and all but there were some truly institutional issues that you try to fix.

Paul Harvey  22:06
And that both helps you become and sort of requires that you be to some extent, a generalist of sorts. And yeah, I think that's the really sad irony about the validity of some of Elon Musk's criticisms here. And the general criticisms about MBA programs is that the MBA was designed to be a generalist degree for someone who had a specific knowledge about something in the business world and wanted to become a manager want to learn a generalist perspective, and it has increasingly gone in the other direction to be a much more specialized degree, you were saying that you just instituted these MBA specialization tracks at your university, we did the same at ours. And that's what the market is demanding. Students want the ability to specialize in finance or accounting or analytics or, or whatever marketing management, due to market demand, the degree is shifting away from its generalist roots towards almost like an undergraduate degree where you major in something where you're really just kind of becoming a an expert in one thing, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's not what an MBA was designed to do. So the increasing specialization of MBAs is really what's contributing to a lot of this criticism that musk and others are leveling at them. If we were still running MBA programs, as generalist degrees, most of these issues that they're bringing up wouldn't be happening, at least not to this extent,

Frank Butler  23:25
You know, there's something to all that I think at the end of the day, one of the things that, you know, if you have an MBA or you're pursuing an MBA, do it, it's important. But also remember, you got to stop, take a step back and focus in on, what are you doing, when you get that degree? What are you doing to, you know, make sure that your decisions are made with the right perspectives in mind? I think there's kind of three big areas. Is it good for the employees? Is it good for the customers? And is it ethical? And I know ethics is a thing that, you know, and I don't want to get into that dive in. But I mean, I think there's a lot of gray area, and you can make the right decisions with the right team around you. And I think that's something that one of these deans have said that Elan Musk is a visionary. And he would benefit from the execution of those who have MBAs because of the skill sets they do have. But I think that it comes back to then, yes, you have to have that execution. But it's all about then conveying how you expect your employees to function. Right? I think that's one of those things that might be missing is that notion of Let me tell you what I want you guys to do, and how I want you guys to work. I don't want you spending time in board meetings and overly focusing on the finances. I'm gonna have this person responsible for the finance aspect of things and make sure that we don't go off the rails. But I think we need to focus in on the customer experience or on the employee experience or both. Should be both. What have you. So I think that might come back to a leadership problem. I think Elon Musk is definitely a visionary I think has his abilities to be he can be abrasive in some cases, but it's...at the same time, you can't question his success with his business ideas.

Paul Harvey  25:05
And the thing is, yeah, he's a cutting edge guy and a cutting edge field. And

Frank Butler  25:10
you can't spend enough time, you can't spend too much time in cutting edge in the finances.

Paul Harvey  25:15
No. And I think you also can't expect to learn a lot of the applicable skills in a traditional MBA program or any kind of educational curriculum, when you're in an industry that is breaking new ground, so to speak, there's always going to be a bit of a lag for the rest of society to catch up. So the skills that you get in an MBA program are probably gonna be less relevant to a company like Tesla or any of those cutting edge tech companies than a more traditional GE manufacturing company. And the industry has been around for a while because MBA curricula have developed with those industries in mind, we don't really know how to teach cutting edge new industries, because it is cutting edge new industries, there's not a lot of research out there in those contexts. So I think if he was the CEO of a less cutting edge company, he might have more, you might be having better luck with MBA graduates than he is.

Frank Butler  26:11
Here's where I think I'm going to challenge the thought about these sort of established organizations. Because established can oftentimes mean stale. And look at GE as being the prime example that you mentioned. Right? Ge is a shell of the company, it was in the 80s and 90s. And I'm wondering, is that because of the MBA-infixation of their management, for example, right in the focus in on good put safe bets. And I think that's one of the challenges is that perhaps the focus needs to be on in an MBA program. I think it's important because I hear here's something I know I'm kind of bouncing a little bit. But one of these Dean's had said something about the best part about the MBA is that an MBA can give corporate leaders a holistic understanding of business from supply chain operations and manufacturing, to marketing to customer service in human resources. I think that's correct.

Paul Harvey  27:09
If it's taught in a generalist format, when you're giving equal emphasis to all those things, not saying okay, sure, take off, take 80% finance classes and a few other requirements.

Frank Butler  27:18
Yeah, and I think ours is still kind of generalist, for example. And then we have like, nine credit hours around that concentration. So I think you're still getting those things. I think it's important that you do get those things in that program. But to me, I think one of the things that we need to do a better job of is saying, Look at the leaders who made their companies always successful, right? It's those who are not afraid of uncertainty. And maybe we should try to work harder at helping work on our own ability to be comfortable with uncertainty, let's not always stick with the Safe, safe elements of using spreadsheets and meetings to come to a consensus, but rather, let's maybe think about the bold aspect, what do we need to push forward? So we're around for the next 30 years going to those B-hags as big, hairy, audacious goals and thinking about what's that world look like in 30 years? And how does our company contribute to that world? And let's push that company in that direction. Right? That's what Elon Musk is trying to do with the future of the automobile. He's created a whole new industry with the electric vehicle. And that's a different thing than your normal internal combustion engine car. That means that you are operating in a world of uncertainty. And so a focus on the bottom line will hurt your ability to continue to push forward. right because of that, right? I mean, it's not saying that it's bad that you want to seek some profitability. But it's that notion of that tension between exploration and exploitation. We got to exploit the products now. But we really have to focus in on profits don't matter as much. It's getting to that future that we're envisioning, that are going to matter more. And that means that we have to focus in on the products, the services and the people.

Paul Harvey  28:58
And so much of the machinery of society reinforces the other approach, the one that Elon Musk is criticizing and the ones that a lot of MBA programs inadvertently reinforce of, you know, the focus on short term financial returns and certainty, because that's what the stock market rewards. That's what investors reward. That's what, therefore, managers, leadership of publicly held publicly traded companies reward. So we've got, as we always say, the situation where what gets measured, and what gets rewarded tends to be what people do. So there's a very built in incentive for MBA programs to cater to the tangible skills, the skills that provide certainty, both in career trajectory and in the worldview of students. So to really kind of shift the trend back towards a more holistic and generalist, I guess, perspective, to address a lot of these criticisms. There's a lot of headwinds against that happening, unfortunately,

Frank Butler  29:59
Yeah. I agree and kind of building out of that to kind of going back to the generalists and the headwinds there. I think, you know, obviously, part of that's being driven by schools feeling that they have to compete for the MBA students, right. So they're trying to be competitive, and they're trying to create value-add and find their niche and what have you.

Paul Harvey  30:16
And I think that certainly does play a large role and another piece of this societal machinery, right, pushing everything in this direction.

Frank Butler  30:24
Right. Right, exactly. And you know, and that's all well and good. And that's sort of how it happens. And you know, I remember talking about this in my strategy class in graduate school with Jim combs, he was talking about the swings of the pendulum, I think it was him or maybe was Dave catching either way, they were talking about the swings of the pendulum. And so right now that pendulum swinging out into a different direction, and I'm sure it'll come back again, and so on. I think that's the beauty of our world is that there are checks and balances as we see the results of things. And I think that's what's true academia, things are cyclical, right? I think that's where academia is also very strong is that willingness to adapt, even though we can be slow, we still are willing to adapt to the needs, but I want to kind of go back because this is the Busyness Paradox. And this is something that I kind of chuckle out a little bit, because musk does say, as I said earlier, is that they need to be focused more on the product or service itself, and less time on board meetings and less time on financials, all stuff, that would be really kind of busy work. Right? Yes. You know, it's like, if you're, if you're in a board meeting, or if you're in meetings with other people, are you really focused in on the right things? So it's like, are you just are you just feigning business, because you have some free time in your day? And so you try to fill? Are you counting the hours? Yeah. And that's why I think going back to this idea of what like the apple leadership tries to do with having a learning component. Okay, I need to spend more time learning about these areas, because these are not my strong suits. That's something that you could do that instead of, maybe, maybe it's less about financials, but thinking more about, I need to think about the future of this company, I need to think about how much uncertainty that's going to drive, and then work towards it. I think that's the key is, you have to be able to cope with uncertainty. But the way we cope with uncertainty is to give us an idea of the roadmap of what the future might look like, if we're hitting some milestones. So what does that world look like in 30 years, and then step your way back. So you can provide sort of a roadmap, but then it's going to be flexible enough that you can have pivots and what have you, because you're not trying to hit that goal, that's going to be 30 years out, but rather adjust as the competitive environment around you shifts as regulations shift as consumer preferences and tastes shift. There's all these things that go on, that are going to help with driving that. I think that's the key. And I think that's where you could spend some of the non that time you try to fill up with meetings or studying the financials or what have you. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that, you should certainly do that. But that shouldn't be a big chunk of it, but rather doing either executing in what's your area of expertise in or learning about the areas that are tangential to your expertise, but are important to your job?

Paul Harvey  33:01
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. And I'll try to prevent myself at least for this episode from getting too far down this rabbit hole. But I think business school curriculums, especially at the MBA level, contribute a lot to the Busyness Paradox, you look at how much emphasis there is on the amount of work required in a program. Like even in the recruiting literature. It's like, Oh, yeah, you're gonna be doing all-nighters in this program, like, so much of the emphasis is on quantity of work, right? as an indicator of rigor and a proxy for learning. And I think people just carry that back into the working world with them. Busy, busy, busy, lots of meetings, lots of busy work. Yeah, I think we're part of the problem in that. In that respect.

Frank Butler  33:43
It's funny you say that, because I will say that my students probably, either they like what I do in the class, or they hate what I do. I never give page guidelines. I never tell them how many pages ever has to be done. I very seldom give them

Paul Harvey  33:57
That blows some people up doesn't it

Frank Butler  33:58
Oh, man,

Paul Harvey  33:59
I need to know how many pages!

Frank Butler  34:01
You’re not going to tell me exactly what needs to be in this. No, I'm not.

Paul Harvey  34:04
You're not doing your job, man.

Frank Butler  34:06
It's your job to go out and figure it out. Because guess what, when you're a leader in a company, there's no frickin here's exactly everything you need to provide. That's something

Paul Harvey  34:14
See, that's a student who needs to go out and work for a few years. Get out of the classroom

Paul Harvey  34:19
Or somebody who doesn't cope with uncertainty? Well, I mean, I'm one of those people who I hate giving page number links to I do not provide a job. This is exactly the format everything needs to be, go figure it out, go spend some time researching on Google or go and look at other versions of these kinds of projects that companies have to do,

Paul Harvey  34:35
What length does it need to be? What format does it need to be to convey the point you're trying to convey?

Frank Butler  34:40
I'm like, you figure it out. That's your job. Because guess what, there's no manual, how to do this stuff appropriately, you have to base it off the context. And so I tend to not give a lot of guidance in my class, the students. Like I said, they either love it or they hate it. But my whole point is that what I'm trying to do is I try to build in uncertainty into my class. I'll change deadlines on them, just to see how well they deal with it. And of course, you know, evaluations will reflect some people hate the way I manage the class. I'm like, Yeah, the reality is, that's just the way I think it should be done. Because, you know, having been in a project manager having been making decisions for in unknown environments, those kinds of things. There's no roadmap, there's no one right way of doing things. And I do not want to take that creative aspect away, what I want you to do is figure it out, and learn from that experience and go, Oh, I can do it here. But I'd rather have you do it in my class and maybe make some mistakes and get you know, dinged on it. Because you're missing something. And learn from that thing going and do it in your work and getting fired for it.

Paul Harvey  35:42
It's like being a parent, you'll appreciate this when you're older. Right now. Yeah. For the moment, you just got to trust me.

Paul Harvey  35:47
And so much of it depends on the specific students situation. I think that's a topic or a question worth addressing here, before we wrap this up, an MBA program is expensive, depending on the school year, anywhere from, I don't know what 40,000 to I think Harvard's up to like, 220,000 for a two year program. So who exactly should get an MBA? And I think, to answer that question, you have to ask another question of, why are you getting an MBA, I have many students who ask, think I should go get an MBA, and I'll say, why, why do you want to get an MBA? And that's where the conversation has to start. So I think it's perhaps helpful for listeners to maybe hear our thoughts on this. Why do you think a student should or should not get an MBA, like what specific reasons would have to be in place for you to say, Yes, I think you should get an MBA or No, I don't think it's the right idea for you.

Frank Butler  35:47
Right. Exactly. Anyway. So I think at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of appropriate criticism on MBA programs. I see it, I agree with him. But I think at the same time, there's nothing wrong with a level of specialization or generalization in those either I think there's a lot of importance in getting to get those ideas replanted in your head or refresh ideas, or you know, you're going to learn new things, or you're gonna get new perspectives.

Frank Butler  37:05
Let's just start with students, I think there are programs that create additional specialization that might be good for helping them get a job. So we have like a Masters of Science and data analytics, I think if you want to really make a strong case for yourself as being a data analytics person, I think it's one of those tracks that, you know, getting an undergraduate degree and going into that Master's of Science program, because it's in conjunction with computer science, is going to put you in a significantly better position to be successful in data analytics. Now, that's a very specific kind of area. Right? That's one area that I strongly believe that you cannot go wrong having that back to back.

Paul Harvey  37:46
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not sure I would consider that an MBA in the traditional sense, because it has become so specialized. Yeah, like you said, it's a Masters of Science in data analytics. It varies from school to school, but there is some MBA structure left in a lot of those specializations. But I agree with that, to me, that's one of the most compelling reasons given your career goals, or where you are in your career. Is there a specific skill or set of skills that any graduate program B, an MBA or something else will provide for you? Like, is there a logical progression here to get to where you want to be career wise? Is there something you need to get there that an MBA or other master's program can provide? I think that's honestly the most important question. But for a lot of students, I think that is really the primary consideration, because it's often career motivated, that they're thinking about an MBA program at all, but what I try to do is steer people away from the idea that, "well, when I have an MBA, I can get a better job." Like that...that ship sailed 20 years ago, having an MBA

Frank Butler  38:44
Yeah, there's too many people who have MBAs. Yeah,

Paul Harvey  38:47
Everyone's got one, every school offers them. And that by itself, is really not going to open any doors for you. So if your idea is I'm going to get an MBA, so I can have a bigger house and a flashy car, because I'll be making so much more money like,

Frank Butler  38:59
yep,

Paul Harvey  38:59
stop

Frank Butler  39:00
wrong attitude

Paul Harvey  39:00
Stop.

Frank Butler  39:01
Yep

Paul Harvey  39:01
Save the money.

Frank Butler  39:02
Yep. I think that, you know, there's certain areas like if you want to become a CPA, you can actually go get an MBA if you have an accounting undergrad and get an MBA, because I think part of it's the 40 100. And I think it's 140 hours, 150 hours, 750 hours. So

Paul Harvey  39:14
I think that varies by state. But yeah,

Frank Butler  39:17
and I think you can do that getting the MBA or going into a Mac program. You know, you might want to go into the MBA, because it's going to give you the generalization aspect of it. Because what's important for some, there's a lot of accountants who do a lot of consulting too, right. It's not just about the taxes or what have you, but they do a lot of consulting as they get higher up into their organizations. So I think that's an important kind of getting into that generalization aspect of it and not being too in the weeds of just the numbers.

Paul Harvey  39:43
That's the irony. So many accounting students, even undergrads get hired into consulting firms. The Big Four, they all have their consulting wings. And yeah, I know a lot of students that one day they're in the classroom next day, they're on a consulting team at one of the big four companies really like now. Understand the way it's structured. They're not like they're kind of human in in those early roles. But yeah, having such having a very specialized background going into consulting has always struck me as a little ironic, right?

Frank Butler  40:10
No, I agree. I agree completely. I also think things like HR, for example, if you have a good concentration or specialty in HR, you'll because HR is so rules based, and there's so many laws and aspects to that. I think that's another area that it couldn't hurt to get that degree. But again, that's thinking, then what are you going to do down the road to help you be better? I think there's some specializations that it really does help in. But there are some that it's probably better to be specialized in and go broad. I think HR was one of those things that the more you can get as a specialization, probably the better off you're going to be.

Paul Harvey  40:40
So data analytics, good to go into a specialization, HR could go into a specialization. You mentioned another example, finance. So really, I would dare to say we have a paradox here that the true value of a generalist MBA program is that it prevents a lot of the narrow perspective that Elon Musk is criticizing. But when it comes to advising people on whether or not to get an MBA, it almost always comes down to specializing in something that will give you a specific skill to move forward in your career. So you see the paradox here that in theory, I don't think an MBA program should be specialized, it should be the generalist degree that it was meant to be. So it prepares you for upper level management positions where you're familiar with a lot of different fields of business,

Frank Butler  41:28
and you have to become a generalist as you move up, you really do.

Paul Harvey  41:31
But if we have a degree that helps you to become a generalist, then by definition, it's not specialized in any of these things. And it becomes a lot harder to recommend the degree to any, to any specific person assuming that career goals are a big part of why they want an MBA in the first place. See what I'm saying?

Frank Butler  41:46
Yep, I get it. And of course, that then goes also to track well with what Apple's method is of hiring experts to lead experts. Right. I think that's the key as I always think that there needs to be some level of expertise that you have, and you get to exploit that to some extent. And then the generalist program would be really great. If you're really good in an expert area, to help you broaden out so that we might we might prepare you better to deal with people. Or think about other elements that you might not be as aware of as being important because of your special, you know, a specialist or any specialty rather,

Paul Harvey  42:19
that's what I've always felt I'm a little biased, because in a sense, this sort of is what I did. But I kind of think it makes sense for undergraduate to specialize in something finance, accounting analytics to learn a lot about something so they can go out into the working world and hit the ground running with a specific skill that they've learned and honed in the classroom, and then come back for a generalist type MBA program, where they're learning how to be managers, and how to make that progression from specialist into generalist. In reality, we end up seeing if anything, kind of go the other way, where we have had a lot of students that majored in a non-business field or in one of the more creative or something less specialized as an undergraduate. And then maybe they're having a hard time finding jobs. So they come back and they get an MBA with a specialization in finance, or accounting or analytics, so they can get more jobs or a better job. So in practice, I think we kind of see it being used in a way that's practical, but not as advantageous as if we were doing specialization first, and then generalist the way an actual management career goes, instead of the other way around. You know,

Frank Butler  43:26
that's interesting. I think that's really interesting. Well, I mean, I think that's spot on. Because I do believe like, as much as I love the idea of a general management major, you don't graduate from college and become a manager, right? You know, you might be in a management training program or something like that. But, you know, you do have to think about, what skill Are you going to learn? What's that muscle, you're going to be able to flex coming out, right?

Paul Harvey  43:52
If you have no management experience, back to what we were saying, at the very beginning today, it's hard for you to really appreciate what you're applying what you're learning in the classroom, if you have no reference point from your own experience to base it on. So if you're specializing in something, learning how to how to do data analytics, how to whatever, as an undergraduate, and in the go and work, get the experience, bring it back into an MBA program. It's all making more sense to you. Now, the general management approach, great, it just seems like the market is not playing along with that trajectory. So I think the MBA program really kind of has been painted into a bit of a corner of specialization and uncertainty avoidance that is contributing to the criticisms Elon Musk is talking about

Frank Butler  44:34
this article in prophecy, maybe

Paul Harvey  44:36
self-fulfilling prophecy?

Frank Butler  44:38
The reality is that I think the MBA can have value I even think that you know, whether it's specialized or generalized, even if you let's say in finance, you know, you probably don't need to get additional finance unless there's a certificate or certification that you need. That's the irony. Like you already know finance, why you back you're learning or benefit from getting data analytics, or maybe you benefit from getting a HR specialty instead to add to it so that way, you know, you can broaden your skill sets to make you more or get a just general MBA to broaden your skill sets again, right? Because it's really easy to get so focused in on an area. And then you become so good at it that you lose track of what it might mean to be able to think about those other processes that are important to a manager, and especially like how to lead people or even things like HR law, like what can I and can I not do, right? And, for example, HR gets into a lot of cool things like how you can use incentives to align with what your goals are in the right benefit packages and what have you. So I think there's a lot of important

Paul Harvey  45:44
forecasting stuff, right? There's a lot of cool stuff.

Frank Butler  45:47
I agree. And I think all of that could create a lot of value or thinking about HR, like you're an HR person getting a degree in, you know, a master's in, in data analytics that mean, again to go that Oh, yes, man, that's hand in hand. That's gold, right? So I think there's a lot of reasons. And I do believe that if you're going to go straight through, you want to think about, okay, what can I get, that's going to help me augment myself. So if you are a finance person, and you go straight through, then maybe it is like HR data analytics or something in the masters. But if you're a general management major, then you need to find a path that you can focus in on and not get a generalist MBA, too, because I don't think that's where you're going to get the real value creation. But I do think then, at that point, you got to think about what's the next educational step that you might take? In a few years? Is it going to be some sort of executive development programs that are out there, it's going to be some sort of continuing education programs? Or is it going to a different type of master's program altogether, one, that might be something else, or maybe even those graduate certificate programs that you get three classes or four classes, and then you get a certificate, that you continue to augment your skills, I think you can't stop learning. And whether you're doing it by going and taking classes in graduate schools, or getting certificates or getting MBAs or by carving out a piece of your day, instead of trying to look busy by actually helping your personal development. That's what you got to do to always keep looking forward. And I think the other element we got to take away from this, too, is don't get too focused in on trying to predict the future. And with some level of certainty, you've got to be able to skate to where the puck is going, you know, as it's been said, right. So what made Wayne Gretzky so successful, and he said, I always skate to where the puck was going. And that's something that is a skill that's very hard to learn. And it's incredibly hard to teach. And I think that's, you know, there's a lot of things to say there's a lot of security to sit in the unknown, because it's comfortable. But the reality is that, that hinders that future growth. And I think that's where, you know, Elan Musk is going to, you know, he's a risk taker, he's willing to take huge risks. That's where I think there's a survey that that rest mucin Mr. Rasmussen has done, where he said that MBAs that CEOs who have MBAs don't necessarily perform better on stock price return, which I don't like that measure to begin with, I think it's a poor proxy of success. But, you know, I think there's a, I think it's a good proxy for size, maybe you know, or first mover advantages, but not necessarily have a good proxy,

Paul Harvey  48:19
it's a data point

Frank Butler  48:20
it's a single data point out of multiple that you should be referencing. But at the end of the day, I know that I often say you cannot be stagnant, you got to always be thinking about that future, and trying to get to that envision future. And if you're not somebody who's visionary or can't tell a great story of the future, there's nothing wrong with that. So make sure you find somebody in your office or that you can work with either that you met through your graduate programs, or whatever network you've created, or you already work with them, that can actually it does actually have that skill of being able to kind of think about the future and be a visionary, you guys can work together to hone that into an idea that then you might be more practical and need more certainty, lean into, turn it into that and create those deliverables. That would become your strategic objectives for the company to keep it moving forward. But again, the other element, you got to be flexible, right, you got to be able to understand that change does happen. I'm going to give you my favorite example. It's Microsoft, and Apple when Steve Jobs stood up in January of 2007, and announced the iPhone. And two weeks later, Steve bomber who's the then CEO of Microsoft, laughed it off and said, nobody's going to spend that much money on a phone. And nobody's gonna want it because it doesn't have a physical keyboard. So because of that perspective, Microsoft, Microsoft didn't actually have a competitive product until December of 2012. They had finally created an operating system. Now they had a full touchscreen phone, but they didn't finally get one until 2012 December, that was sort of more capable like Android was at that point in iOS and whereas Microsoft now in that mobile sector,

Paul Harvey  50:03
So we had a very specialized data-driven, uncertainty avoiding perspective coming out of Microsoft at that time. And it didn't work so well. Whereas we had a far more generalist approach going on at Apple at the time, and it worked. Well, it's not to say that it's always going to be that way. Sure, there are times where you do want to really let the current trends and data guide your decision making in terms of going to where the puck is going to be, you know, the real trick is figuring out what sort of environment are you in. And like you said, that's a very hard thing to learn, I think the only thing that we can really say is that, you just need to be learning period all the time, to get to that point, you need to be able to understand the benefits of one perspective versus another of one specialization over another. And whether you're learning in a classroom, on your own reading books, watching YouTube videos, you've got to always be learning to get to that point.

Frank Butler  50:58
And I think it's about making connections. Right? Good. I saw this article about Elon Musk, it obviously created a clear trigger to the bob Lutz and the car guys versus the bean counters. I mean, that was a clear because Bob Lutz went off on MBAs as well. So that was an easy one for me to think about. And actually, I need to start assigning that book in my class, because it's so great.

Paul Harvey  51:19
I have my MBA students read that

Frank Butler  51:20
Wow, see, I need to start giving that too. But then, the connection to the Apple article that Podolny wrote about the expertise and the things that was you have to stretch a little bit to make those connections, but they're there, right. And I think that's part of that exercise that helps with that critical thinking is how can I take stuff I'm reading, or learning about or watching on the History Channel, I'm seeing this stuff? How do I take that in and maybe connect that to help me understand what I know differently? And maybe see the world through a different lens? As you said, you know, for example, Microsoft was very much leaning on data, right? And especially data, it tends to be historical in nature. It's not predictive necessarily. It can be predictive, but times change

Paul Harvey  52:03
It can be used in that way.

Frank Butler  52:04
Right

Frank Butler  52:06
It's...by itself, not

Frank Butler  52:06
Right. So it's one of those things that you have to have history to have data and it can give you trends and stuff. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's always going to be that way. And I think that was where Microsoft was because they thought the physical keyboard had been so successful for them. And even on the because they had a smartphone before Apple iPhone drives. It just had those little chiclet keys and a stylist and stuff. But I think that's what sort of tainted their view and made them a little bit more rigid. And it certainly hurt them. And it costs the bombers job eventually. And you know, it changed how Microsoft is today. Now, is that a good thing or bad thing? I don't know Microsoft's killing it right now. So they're doing really well.

Paul Harvey  52:46
Yeah, worked out well, for them in the end, I guess.

Frank Butler  52:48
But there was there was some certainly some troubling times there. So yeah, I think at the end of the day, that the idea is that those skills that you get, definitely get an MBA, it's about that constant learning. Be very careful about how you think about -

Paul Harvey  53:01
IF it's the right degree

Frank Butler  53:02
Exactly. If it's the right degree, yet, even if it's not, and you get another degree, you might still consider later down the line getting an MBA to maybe, especially if your company pays for take advantage of those things. That's a big one, if your company pays for it, take advantage of it. If your company is not going to pay for it, but you know, it's going to add value. Find a school that's going to be affordable. Unless you know that you can get into a you know, one of those top schools like Wharton, that network alone is gonna help a lot.

Paul Harvey  53:30
And by top schools, we mean top schools like top 25. If you really even tougher if you're looking for a school, an MBA that is going to do what a lot of people think an MBA does like open doors for you and really just get you into a different level of higher ability. Yeah, you really need to be talking about the big name brands, for better or for worse, it's just the way it is.

Frank Butler  53:53
And actually kind of ironically, this study by that rest mucin that was in that wall street journal article about musk really, ironically, is that the returns equity returns by CEO from the different MBA programs. They just broke those out individually. The best was Northwestern, followed by University of Chicago, University of Southern Cal Cornell, Michigan, and Stanford. But then down the line, we see Columbia was negative, no MBA was negative. Indiana was negative. Harvard was negative. Wharton was 12. Negative New York University was 13th and negative. University of Virginia, really? minus point two, four negative and UT Austin.

Paul Harvey  54:31
Negative you mean a negative return on the investment and tuition?

Frank Butler  54:35
Yeah, not the negative alpha on those returns, equity returns interesting. But this is the caveat that they're not statistically significant, because largely, it's a small sample size, right? If you think about it, but it's very interesting if you ask me that the best is sort of these. I mean, they're still very, very excellent schools, but you would think like Harvard and Wharton, they tended to be more negative, but you also have to think I wonder if they took into account things like outliers and what Have you are these? Whatever? There's a lot of different factors in there.

Paul Harvey  55:04
Yeah. I don't know if that's really data that we can take at face value.

Frank Butler  55:08
No, but I, you know, I just thought it was interesting to bring that out. But I agree, though, I think if you've got, if you're willing to stomach the $100,000 plus debt that you might accrue at those top schools, it certainly helps.

Paul Harvey  55:24
I think there's better ways to have a good career, and then paying a lot of money for a sexy name on your resume. But yeah, teach the road.

Frank Butler  55:34
I agree. But anyway, so instead of being busy, or feigning busyness, you can actually be appropriately busy in a way that's going to help you kind of change gears, I think that's something that's important. Because if you try to do the same thing for too long, you get bored, you get tired. So you, you know, you might start ruffling papers or start looking like you're doing something that's important, just change gears and do something that's going to create value for yourself. And I mean, don't just fake business, try to use it appropriately and keep yourself occupied and learn something.

Paul Harvey  56:03
And that's what Steve Jobs we keep talking about. Apple always said that he felt that creativity was directly related to the diversity of your past experiences, that if you've just kind of followed the usual progression that everyone else at your company has followed, maybe that's you know, high school, college business degree work, and then an MBA program, you're going to kind of have the same ideas and perspectives and experiences that everyone else you're working with. But if you say when Bill wells in Africa safer a few years and did some other stuff, and have a crazy undergraduate degree in poetry or something, you know, you're, you've got knowledge that other people that you're working with probably don't have. So you really have to always be learning, but in a way that works for you, not just following the prescribed methods of study this major in that go to this kind of school, you know, do what works for you.

Frank Butler  56:57
And maybe this is going to be a whole different aside, I think what you just said, it was actually very interesting to me, you know, sometimes people who do go get these sort of undergraduate degrees that we might not necessarily see a value in in terms of a career path. But then they follow up by getting a you know, they get a job working for some company, and they eventually go get an MBA, and all of a sudden, they become a superstar. It all comes together, right? Because they've, to your point, right? They've got sort of this creative element, they see the world through this lens of their profession that they've studied. But then they get that business degree. And they start seeing how things have to be organized, and they start understanding in a certain way. And that just becomes the game changer, right? That sort of adds that layer of Okay, now I can see it, but then you can be creative and do new and explored. I think there's a lot of value in that. So as much as some of these degrees that people get might not seem valuable on the surface over the long term, they really do create value in their own ways.

Paul Harvey  57:55
I wish we wouldn't mock people for getting, like liberal arts degrees. Yeah,

Frank Butler  57:59
I agree. I mean, because, yes, their job tends to be they all end up working at Starbucks or something like that. But that's, that's not necessarily true. They have to fall into the careers, and they have to be willing to take those risks. That's another thing that I think we don't do very well, because we're so focused on wanting to certainty. Sometimes you say no to opportunities that actually would open up new doors for you. So you got to get outside of your comfort zone is tough.

Paul Harvey  58:22
We put them into this huge amount of debt, getting their degree in whatever crazy thing that they decided to get a degree in, they almost sometimes have to go work at Starbucks because they needed to do something to make their student loan payments.

Frank Butler  58:37
And that's unfortunate. Well, that Starbucks actually does pay for tuition, too, for certain. Yeah,

Paul Harvey  58:41
So we shouldn't pick on Starbucks here. But they're not always, at least initially, I think able to really take full advantage of their own intellect and what they have learned because they got to pay off those student loans first, which is unfortunate.

Frank Butler  58:53
Yeah. And I think too, you know, you think about it, that idea of career, right, they're going and pursuing a passion. I think that's really good. Yes. But that takes time. And so that's why I think maybe mining in entrepreneurship, or general management or something would be ideal for those. Yeah, liberal arts students just to kind of give them some additional skills that they might be able to bring because, you know, you think about like, some degree in English, they're probably going to make a great technical writer for us.

Paul Harvey  59:23
Don't. Don't say that to a... Don't say that to an English professor.

Frank Butler  59:26
I know. I mean,

Paul Harvey  59:27
I think they'll die.

Frank Butler  59:29
But the reality is that they're going to be so much better at writing than I am, you know, and I write for a living basically. Yeah.

Paul Harvey  59:34
And that's what kills them. It's like, that's the way to make money writing. No, we want to write poetry or

Frank Butler  59:41
You can, it snowballs right you just have to build up to this like everything you don't just become a CEO you don't become Dali out of school you that takes years to perfect that craft and so -

Paul Harvey  59:53
It's kind of their version of selling out I think, but now I think it's more anxious because like, if you want to actually work in a field with that degree like, that's often what you end up doing.

Frank Butler  1:00:05
Yeah, well, I mean, but there's, it's helping develop your chops on that. And then you take your free time and you start crafting that and you start looking for jobs and you find that I think that's the thing is that

Paul Harvey  1:00:15
God knows if anyone would actually write a good manual. Right? Or something? Yeah, the world will that will reward you for that

Frank Butler  1:00:22
Let's just make sure that those tech companies like tech companies or companies that have like ovens and stuff like that, don't have engineers write the manuals, they very seldomly write, think in a way that the average person thinks, yes, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that's what makes them great engineers. But it makes them terrible at explaining to lay people like myself, how to set the freaking clock on the VCR. If you remember what a VCR is.

Paul Harvey  1:00:47
That's why technical writing has become a field really, I think it's to translate from engineer ease into human language,

Frank Butler  1:00:56
right? Still not very good. But now a lot of people have translated from a foreign language and not proof read, so they're not very well.

Paul Harvey  1:01:03
And seriously. Like, pay someone on mturk, five cents to fix the typos in your damn manual, man. Come on.

Frank Butler  1:01:10
Yeah, no, no. But anyway, I know, this was kind of turned into maybe more of a way of thinking about your education. I think that's really what this is probably about is, which is the important thing to think about. Yeah, I think well, so here's those are the two elements to me. One is, if you're an executive, and you're complaining about the MBAs in your company, train them, you're using them wrong, they have skills that are important. Use it and you have to set up a way that it's going to make it work for them be clear how you want them to work. That's your job. You got to lead.

Paul Harvey  1:01:42
Or work on your selection to make sure you're hiring MBAs who specialized or went to a program that specializes in the types of either skills or management philosophy that you're looking for in your company. So if you hire people straight out of programs that specialize in finance, and then get annoyed because you've got a whole bunch of whiners focused finance quant jocks, well, guess what you hired them. So

Frank Butler  1:02:07
That's what it I'm saying like, don't fire them. But tell them how you want them to approach that job. Tell them what you think is important. Get them to understand that and then provide them the right incentives to look at those things.

Paul Harvey  1:02:17
Right, you got to find that balance. And let them know that before they start working there, you know, this is what we're looking for. If that's not your thing it's cool. But you know

Frank Butler  1:02:24
Like I say, if you already got him, you got it, you develop it develop, provide the right incentives that is going to drive that kind of behavior. Look, you're looking for providing the training and talk to him be clear about, you know, even if you can't be super clear about it, at least they should. They're smart enough because they've gone through enough education. And they're at that point that they're going to be able to adapt. And that's your job as a CEO, that's your job as a leader is to help people adapt. It's your job to lead. So that's one element. The second is if you're going to get an MBA, or a master's degree, you should absolutely do so. But think about what your background is what you think is going to help you in your career. What do you think your what you think you want to do in your future and work towards that path? It's very seldom that you go down a linear path. When I graduated as an undergrad with a degree in Ms. I thought it was pretty clear how it was going to work. University of Georgia with MS degree either went to chick fil a, or you went to Accenture. Well, I graduated right before 2001, September 11 2001. The IT industry was already starting to have a little bubble burst, because of the whole vaporware aspect of the promise of the internet and stuff like that. And it was becoming ever more difficult to get jobs. And I was a little bit thinking Oh, yeah, it'd be no problem. And so I was like, yeah, I'm either gonna end up at chick fil a or end up at or Home Depot or end up at Accenture, right. But then three weeks after graduation, boom. I graduated in August. So three weeks after that, it was like boom, September 11 happens to hatch, and it was done. And so then I took a job somewhere I didn't expect then all of a sudden I was I was in a study abroad program that took me in a different direction. I was in MIT, it was in it still but I was not in the management information systems anymore. And all sudden, it's like holy cow, you know, my world change. And that put me on this path here. Which when I graduate, I had no idea what beyond to begin with. But that's the whole thing is that you've got to be prepared to go down paths you do not expect your path isn't linear, it does have a good idea of what do you want to kind of do. But sometimes you just don't know you got to be willing to take risks and say yes to things sometimes don't do illegal things or say yes to a drug cartel. I'm saying Paul's I actually see Paul over there actually. He said, you know, the reality is, you know, truly though it find your path. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time and it's okay. It's okay. So anyway, neither here nor there.

Paul Harvey  1:04:50
I think it's both here AND there. It's very relevant stuff. A lot of students feel a lot of pressure. I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what I wanted. Well, you're not going to often you're not going to figure out You've worked some jobs that you want to do until you go out and do stuff go out and do stuff. Yep.

Frank Butler  1:05:04
Right. And I think that's another reason why I recommend people to get an MBA a little later. Because that's when they might figure out, hey, you know, actually, I don't like HR, I think I like finance better, well, then you can go get an MBA with that specialty, and finance and leverage the skills you've already learned, which is important with people in HR, but then be able to take your new skills and really pursue the thing that you're going to be passionate about. So you can really, I think, be successful

Paul Harvey  1:05:28
I tell students, it's not a pleasant thing to major in something and get a job in that field and go work in that field and find out you don't like that field. It's even worse, if you've gotten a master's degree in that field before you found out that you don't like that. Yep. So you got to get out of the classroom and do stuff. There's a time and a place for everything. There's a time where it's a good idea for you to be in the classroom. And there's times where you're going to develop more outside of the classroom, and there's no formula there. It's gonna be different for everybody. So you have to understand where you are in your life and where you want to go. Is this degree right for you is a different degree right for you is any degree right for you right now? It's going to change over time. It's going to be very different from one person to the next. I’m out. Drop the mic. Thanks, everyone!

[Sound of footsteps, door swinging open and shut]

Frank Butler  1:06:19
Paul…? Okay, that was kind of weird. Well, thanks, everybody for listening. The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Frank Butler and Paul Harvey. Our theme music is adapted from its business time by Jermaine Clement and Brett McKenzie, our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we would love to hear from you. Please send any questions, comments, or ideas for future episodes to input at busynessparadox.com, or find us on Twitter, at Busyness Paradox. Also, be sure to visit our website, Busyness paradox.com, to read our blog posts, and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our show on Apple podcast, Spotify iHeartRadio, Google podcasts, or whichever podcasting app you choose. Again, thank you for listening

-- Transcribed by https://otter.ai --