Posted by abb1

After demonstrating that he doesn’t have a clue, the guy goes on to show that he’s actually anti-clueful, capable of destroying any clues which get too close.

There’s always some conflict of that type. But note that it was the failure to invade the next niche that did these companies in.

Dr. Wang’s insistence that his son, Fred Wang, succeed him contributed to the company’s failure. Fred Wang was a business school graduate, “but by almost any definition,” wrote Charles C. Kenney, “unsuited for the job in which his father had placed him.” His assignment, first as head of research and development, then as president of the company, led to jealousy and to resignations by key R&D and business personnel.

Anecdotally, at least, a typical story you hear over and over is the one of frustrated talent leaving bloated corporation to start their own company. It grows, quickly becomes the leader in its niche, then the suits take over and poof – the cycle is completed. The suits are never satisfied, they want to expand, expand more, kill the competition, control the world; you should hear their quarterly psych-up speeches.

Maybe this is how it is supposed to be, I don’t know. I hope not.

I would say a huge mistake in eastern MA was the failure of the minicomputer companies to understand the importance of the personal computer.

An Wang was a physicist, Ken Olsen an engineer. I’m not sure who ran Data General.

Fair enough, that’s a part of it, but there’s certainly more to it. It’s the things I’ve seen in Eastern Mass in the last two decades.

No doubt MBA’s make mistakes. So do non-MBA’s. Still, I think your complaint has more to do with your personal dislike of working in a corporate environment than with the incompetence of managers who are, by your own description, succeeding at what they set out to accomplish.

Not at all. That a sophisticated, intelligent, and highly influential ethical philosophy suggests a problem in our ordinary intuitions about “good leadership” gives us cause to critically reevaluate our ordinary intuitions, not the reverse. That doesn’t mean the Kantian view is right, only that common conceptions of leadership are not necessarily or obviously clear or correct.

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“how does that kantian test—as understood by ppl who know something abt kant eg not me—deal with eg yr piano teacher forcing you to practice scales a lot”

I don’t know—maybe someone more knowledgeable about Kant than I can answer? My best guess: in the case of an adult, you aren’t really forced, so it’s not really a case of “following” a “leader” but a self-determined social interaction. In the case of a child who really is forced to do it: either as a child, she is not capable of true autonomy, so it’s appropriate of, if the child is capable of true autonomy, then the teacher (or more likely the parent) is truly reducing the child to a means to their end (usually, their goal for what kind of adult they’d like their child to be).

I think the difference between voluntary instruction and “leadership” is that in the former the instructor provides leadership only given the learner’s autonomous participation, whereas in the standard examples of “leadership” (political and moral, employers, etc.) leaders are distinguished by their ability to influence (usually manipulate) the autonomy of others rather than respond to it.

But even a large company, I dunno, I’m not sure the only way for it to operate is by enforcing strict hierarchical control. I can’t think of any examples right now (I dunno – Bell Labs? Was it managed MBA-style back in its glorious days?), but I certainly hope it’s not so.

Excellent verbalisation, which leads into how MBA’s are useful, in that they learn enough about each facet of the business to deal with the tough issues where everything interacts with everything else, whereas specialists can’t do any better than just duke it out between each other. Of course, some MBAs are better at integration than others, but I have worked for many managers and I would rather work for a good manager than a bad one, and a good trained manager rather than a good untrained manager.

Yes, I would say, he should be a good manager—he really is the boss of the executive branch of government. That is not the same thing as being the boss of the whole country’s citizens, and part of being a good manager would be to recognize that.

Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t necessarily realize that a small, entrepreneurial company can’t necessarily remain exactly the same as it grows. Most successful small companies are founded on an idea – either they have some unique proposition in terms of products or services, or they do a better job of implementing an existing idea. But once the company attains its initial success, it can’t simply continue to do what it’s doing – it needs to change to continue to grow.

Branding campaigns might seem ridiculous, and they might not be executed well, but I’d defy anyone to argue that there’s no value in a successful branding campaign – just look at Apple’s recent success. And ask anyone who’s gone from managing a company of a few dozen individuals to just a few hundred, and they’ll be able to note a lot of significant differences (let alone the prospect of adding a few thousand to the mix).

I assume that the author prefers the culture of a small entrepreneurial firm to that of a larger one, and that’s fine. But it’s silly to think that that preference is transferrable to an objective definition of successful organizations.

But I’ve seen a lot of disastrously incompetent MBAs. And these MBAs tend to fail in a small number of ways:

1) MBAs lacking domain-specific knowledge tend to make lousy strategic decisions. For example, Ars Digita’s decision to prematurely announce their Java-based ACS 4.0 very nearly killed the company: It brought sales for their ACS 3.0 product to a screeching halt before a new product was ready.

At the very least, a successful manager must know—and avoid—the clichéd mistakes of their industry.

2) The standard MBA curriculum focuses heavily on manufacturing and large-scale service businesses. This curriculum is heavy on finance, operations research, and other useful subjects. But not all organizations work this way. The military, as mentioned up-thread, is a special case. Less obviously, professional service firms (law, accounting, architecture) also face specialized challenges. The value of a professional service firm lies almost entirely in its people. The day-to-day concerns of such a firm revolve around professional development, senior/junior staff mixes, and project selection.

In this environment, I’ve seen some MBAs thrive—but I’ve also watched Harvard MBAs manage companies straight into the ground. (For a good overview of professional service firm management, see David Maister.)

Oh stick it up your ass, Dilbert.

Daniel, I don’t think that this remark is fair to Tony Healy. Bill Gates was a notoriously hands-on manager, well-known for reading specs and asking hard technical questions. And Microsoft benefited from Gates’ expertise. After all, it’s easy for technical staff to bullshit non-technical managers into dumb decisions. Gates kept this tendency ruthlessly in check.

It would be pretty difficult to argue that Microsoft, today, is as well-managed as it was in the 90s. Headcount is way up, but Vista has been a strategic disaster, and Microsoft has repeatedly failed in their attempts enter new markets.

Mind you, technical CEOs like Bill Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are rare individuals. They posses skills and talents far beyond those of the average engineer. But nonetheless, there is disproportionately high number of such CEOs in technical industries. And I’m not comfortable dismissing this pattern out of hand.

And what does it have to do with me anyway? I’m not a manager. Fwiw, I merely give you my impression of the executives I used to work with. If you disagree, give me yours.