The curriculum debate for middle managers today centers around experiential learning versus in-seat class learning. Business schools can learn from the experience of engineering schools of the 1970s, which had their own failed involvement in experiential learning.
In the 1950s, managers with engineering degrees were favored in many heavy industries. The failure of engineers to consistently make strong managers led to a rethinking of engineering school curricula. Many engineering schools had compounded the problem with the industry cooperative approach, where students alternated a semester working with the next semester being on campus and in class. To accomplish this, core liberal arts courses were cut from the curriculum. Higher-tier engineering schools such as the University of Michigan took another approach. They saw the bigger problem as engineers lacking a broader education Even in the engineering profession, engineers consistently proved to be poor communicators in any format, which adversely affected their careers more than their engineering skills. In addition, engineering skills such as technical training are depreciating assets.
In the 1960s, the University of Michigan took a unique approach to integrating engineers into society. The University of Michigan added 23 credits in English and Liberal Arts to its former base of 120 total credits to address these issues. This made the degree a four-and-a-half-year in-class program. Just as important, the engineering school manned these additional focused liberal arts courses with the best from other departments. These hybrid English, readings, and social sciences were crafted for engineers, but were taught by the best in the other disciplines. Many of the English courses were taught by deans and assistant deans. Speakers, such as sociologist Margaret Mead, were brought in for these courses. Readings such as Norman Wiener’s “The Human Use of Human Beings” were required in the philosophy of engineering and society. Great books that helped cross the ideological bridge between engineering and society were added to these liberal arts courses for engineers. Some of these books included economics such as “The General theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes and “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith; in science, “What Is Life?” by Erwin Schrödinger (1944) and “One Two Three…Infinity” by George Gamow (1947). Personally, these books helped shaped my life and remain on my bookshelves to this day. They also gave me the flexible foundation for a midlife career change.
There was also a shift in business hiring in the 1970s. The failure of technically trained students as management trainees ushered in the idea of hiring Liberal Arts graduates to train in service to become business and industry managers. A new business approach came in the 1980s suggesting liberal arts had a foundational role in developing managers. At one of my steel mill jobs, the plant manager of this major steel mill had been hired and groomed for his job with a History degree from Harvard. He would be one of the better managers in my career. It was part of a broader movement of the 1980s, believing that management was an art, and a good manager would successfully manage a steel mill or a chocolate factory. Companies designed initial specific industry management in-house programs using liberal arts majors. The tradeoff was not perfect. Liberal arts majors lacked the basic aptitude for managing technical industries. These failures suggest business curricula needed a better balance of liberal arts, physical sciences, and social sciences, as well as core business courses.
Professional Career and Life-Long Strategies
The effectiveness and success of a manager is dependent on handling personal challenges while managing others in the organization. An academy for the education of Broadway and Hollywood producers recently made an interesting change in their curriculum based on feedback from the best producers in the business. These professionals saw the line between successful and unsuccessful producers, not in their grasp of techniques and philosophies, but in dealing with failure! The same is true for today’s managers who can expect major setbacks, challenges, and failure during their careers. Often, they must deal with these personal challenges in the midst of managing organizational and business challenges. These are things never found in the basic curriculum. There are solutions and guidance available, but it will not be found in a course.
I need to personalize this a bit. What were some of my greatest challenges? One certainly was managing the fearful employees of a corporation in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, while dealing with my own uncertainties of my own future. Another was laying off hundreds of employees I had inspired to give their all for the company. Eliminating employees with family or in their late fifties as they broke down in front of me was a deeply moving encounter.
The only training I had for such things was in Officers School in the military. You have to put your career as a manager on the professional and mental level of knighthood. It’s not the company or situation, but the loyalty to the profession that must rule.
Students also need to learn cooperative personal strategies for themselves and business. In my career, I did experience an unusual model that worked. In the electric steelmaking industry, superintendents of melt shops had formed a national guild. Upper management hated it because they feared and misunderstood it. The guild had meetings to socialize and help each other. It was a type of employment agency, support group, and cooperative advantage. Yes, information passed without company oversight. However, there were often times when a superintendent might run out a raw material, which would shut the company down. The superintendent was able to get an “off-the-record” exchange of a raw material from the superintendent of a competing company. It was a type of cooperative advantage for all versus cutthroat competitive advantage. Middle managers need this kind of professional status and bonding.
It is difficult to build preparation for such life events into curricula. Religion courses and philosophy courses offer some guidance. It might be possible to offer a course by an experienced manager, but much more emphasis is needed. Experiential learning helps hone early working skills, but it cannot address challenges such as demolition, downsizing, workplace trauma, and a professional view of oneself. It is only with business-experienced professors that such knowledge can be gained.
Part 3 of this series will post May 7.
Dr. Quentin R. Skrabec’s experience includes years as a business student in traditional and non-traditional programs, a total of five degrees in various formats, and a mid-life full-time Ph.D. working as a teaching assistant. His business career includes front-line, middle management, and executive levels, while teaching at night school. He also had a career as a full professor teaching business students in all formats and levels (including 20 years teaching business courses in Internet format). Dr. Skrabec spent a total of 23 years working in business, from foreman to melt shop superintendent to multi-plant Divisional Quality Control manager and eight years in a Japanese joint venture using new workforce practices. His business blog can be found at: anexceptionaldream.blogspot.com.
