Jerry Coe
... it was middle- and upper-management in both companies who failed. And that’s mainly due to a malady that has been sweeping the world for twenty years or more – the awful, abysmal, MBA.
So these newly-minted MBAs are then snapped up into management positions, by other MBAs already in place at the big corporations – and the cycle of unknowing incompetence is thus perpetuated.
Yep, beautifully put but
Sunfish had the experience and honesty to say (as an MBA himself):
"Any decent MBA school will send you off with a reminder that an MBA is a licence to learn management."
The other side of this coin is that, from 1988 onwards, I watched older managers (in their 60s) retiring the 50-somethings and hiring these young guns in their 20s. The seniors did not have MBAs, they had old fashioned degrees and decades of experience in learning the ropes of the company and the world. Why did they start retiring the middle group? Save on pensions? Think that, by having young boys and girls in posts of 'management' that they would bring 'new life' and 'new ideas' into the biz?
Speaking as one who spent several years cleaning up the project mess made by others in the 25+ years I was in Telecomms and IT, this disaster shows that BA has a corporate management problem. It has been talked about for years and many threads in here and the press have given clues. This project was too big for the children of BA management. Better bring back the grown ups.
The
really interesting point for discussion is this: How many other companies around the world are in the same position? Running along more-or-less OK because the staff are holding it together, but a big event is too much and the staff can no longer prevent the management being exposed?