What They Don’t Teach You at HBS

“The best lesson anyone can learn from business school is an awareness of what it can’t teach you.”

I picked up these two books largely for an unserious read, but I did approach it open-mindedly. They were both “good” in their own ways and I can say that I did gain something, although it wasn’t directly from the words etched onto the books. It was more so the assurance that people going into business are actually very human underneath, they are just hyper-aware of the game being played.

Look no further than McCormack’s “What They Don’t Teach You at HBS” to illustrate the world of business. Part 1 was about “reading people” and how important that is in the business of business. Part 2 writes on “the art of the deal”, how to sell someone on something and closing out a deal. Part 3 is all about “management and culture”. All of which contains an endless streams of analogy and parables based on McCormack’s own dealings.

Part 1 wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Having read Erving and Goffman, reading McCormack’s explanation of a persons’s “true self”, impression management, and utilizing it to your own benefit seemed a bit banal. Especially given that McCormack is approaching it solely from a business view, instead of a sociological view. The corollary point being incessantly attempting to read everyone and even yourself by instrumentalizing everything is pretty neurotic.

Part 2, I summed up to myself as “just game theory”. McCormack is basically saying, after reading the other person, the “negotiating table” is solved by understanding each other’s utility function fully and fleshing out all the lines that could be taken. It aptly reinforces the idea that a lot of economics and business can be boiled down to an “information game” being played out by everyone. The takeaway here is that instead of modelling situations, an astute business person needs to be on about the same level as a chess player “in the field”.

I skimmed Part 3 and don’t really remember much of it.

What They Teach You at HBS

“Of the class of 1985, who graduated into one of the great stock market booms, sixty-five were prosecuted for securities violations.”

Something something Porter, something something Piketty, something something Tirole. The book itself was more of a memoir by Broughton, which makes sense because before going to HBS he was journalist. I heavily skimmed through the book and found the “economic talk” was almost hot air. What I found incredibly enticing and interesting to read about was the author’s desire to discuss ethics throughout the book.

Ethics, especially in a book about HBS is really interesting and really funny¹². Broughton doesn’t fail to make that message clear. A particular case was when Broughton found out that most his classmates “cooked their books” to receive more financial aid by clearing their own personal accounts. The other was the more philosophical discussion of even the idea of “business ethics” in light of the goal to “make profits”. If the market will punish people efficiently as well as reward, doesn’t it make sense to try to lie, cheat, kill and steal?.

At UVA we get honor reports which basically is a report on all the cheating and misconduct allegations. The business school here never fails to be the largest % which either means they lend to be cheaters or extremely accusative of each other. ↩
I heard that the title of this book changed after the housing market crash to what it is now. ↩