George W. Bush is the country’s first MBA president. He’s an HBS guy; that’s the Harvard Business School where they say if it weren’t for the H it would be BS. That’s where they teach you that life is a series of case studies, about finance and production and managing for change. Dubya call himself a hands off manager and a delegator. He’s not a details guy which is why he hired Dick Cheney. Just give him the executive summary and schedule short meetings around his daily workout and then his nap.
Along with him will surely come yet another trendy round of leadership theory, modeled on the first CEO. Except it wasn’t so long ago when we were blaming those case study whiz kids for what was wrong with American business. They were too short sighted, too result-oriented, and ultimately wrong about where the country was headed. The George W. Bush case study, of a business school manager, as president is on this hour of The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Alan Webber and William C. Taylor Founding Editors, FastCompany
Nancy Koehn, from Harvard Business School