When I studied physics in college and engineering in grad school, I kept wondering when we were going to stop trying to use grossly oversimplified one and two-dimensional models to explain complex phenomenon in the real three-dimensional world. The thing is, we never did.
I’m sure that sort of modeling is useful for scientists, but it didn’t do much to prepare me for the high-tech world I entered way back in 1980. Truth is, I never used a single thing I learned in school in my career, except maybe V=IR. Inside joke for engineers.
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Today I see business school profs and organizational psychologists using the same sort of overly simplistic models and popular metaphors to mold student sponges into MBAs so they can go out in the world as management consultants and analysts to show real executives how to run their companies.
Again, I suppose that sort of nonsense is good for something – like churning out popular business books that can be boiled down to one meaningful sentence or research studies that draw broad conclusions that always seem to conflate correlation with causation – but it won’t do squat for real business leaders.
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And no, I have no theories, models, studies or research to back up that statement. While I’m sure there are exceptions to my opinionated postulate I wouldn’t bet the company on it. I seriously doubt you’ll find the next Peter Drucker, Ted Levitt or Warren Bennis on TED, Twitter or a podcast.
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