[lbo-talk] What They Teach You at Harvard Business School

[shag]

At 02:57 PM 8/20/2008, Dennis Claxton wrote:
>http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4443213.ece
>
>
>He is surprised at the large presence of earnest Mormons and unimaginative 
>former-military men in this cauldron of capitalism. But gradually this 
>begins to make sense, for HBS is pervaded with an oppressive atmosphere of 
>unquestioning obedience and creepy religiosity. There is the confessional 
>My Reflected Best-Self exercise, to encourage students "to create a 
>developmental agenda for leveraging their reflected best-self" and "work 
>maximally from positions of strength". Approved results sound like this: 
>"I do not take on the negative energy of the insecure . . . I stay 
>centered . . . I try to model the message of integrity, growth and 
>transformation." . . .

not that i have a handle on the entirety of b school curriculum, but if 
what i went through was any guide -- and my reading of countless management 
books since (we have free sub to o'reilly and some other online libs) and 
i've read out of utter fascination, like a car wreck -- is that this can be 
credited to the book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which seems 
to be incredibly popular.

<...>


>But why the hell would the rest of us want to be led by these 
>spreadsheet-reading, PowerPoint-presenting swots who've devoted the best 
>years of their lives simply to making moolah?

unfamiliar with the slang, swot, but it cracked me up b/c, inadvertantly, 
he used a word that is a common acronym in nearly all of these books:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

but i can see how all of that works, in any b-school, it teaches you to get 
really really comfortable living in your own alternate reality. because 
that's what most of these guys do.

http://cleandraws.com
Wear Clean Draws
('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)