I have written before about how MBAs have been thought to have been responsible for corporate collapses.
There is nothing wrong about holding MBAs to account as they are probably in senior positions and should know better.
Quite often the real reason for failure can be invisible from the outside and are deeply rooted in company culture.
The Chinese proverb about the Fish and rotting from the head springs to mind, but an MBA may come into an organisation that has already has a culture that has been developed from previous heads, so although the metaphor may be true, there may be deep rooted cultural issues that merely replacing the head cannot solve and, to mix metaphors ,the cultural tail may wag the leadership dog.
An MBA coming into a new post in a position of power may find out behaviours they were not told about at interview, or indeed did not spot on their due diligence.
These behaviour may include
Arrogance – there is only one way of doing things (Andersons)
Bullet proofing- companies are convinced of their own superiority (Enron)
Innovation- or rather lack of it ( Motorola/Kodak)
Over competitiveness and obsessions with growth and bottom line return (Tesco)
The most insidious kind of culture is perhaps the most threatening and the most human- lack of care
To paraphrase a Clinton saying ‘Its the people stupid’
Staff merely show up and collect their pay, they lack direction and simply don’t know why they are doing this, their service levels to themselves, their colleagues and their customers simply tail off. At worst this toxic behaviour breeds cynicism and drives good people away just leaving waste and incompetence
When an MBA is taking the dream job, part of the due diligence may be actually to walk round the organisation and look for signs of this culture, only then will they know the extent of the job in hand and the first 100 days may just be simply taken up with changing this behaviour and get the fish swimming in the right direction with a smile on its face (do fish smile?). I have worked with a lot of CEOs ( some even had MBA qualifications) in my experience the ones that have the emotional intelligence to spot and change this behaviour are the more successful.
