But jack welch was no MBA!

Was he?!?! No, he wasn’t! And still isn’t, for records! Jack – who writes quite regularly for our group magazines – apart from being considered the most outstanding manager ever (he was rated the Manager of the Century by Fortune), also led the most successful corporation ever (General Electric), which ended up contributing more to shareholders than any other corporation in the history of global capitalism (GE’s m-cap increased from $14 billion in 1981 to $410 billion in 2001, when he resigned). Come to think of it, did not even Bill Gates, the richest man ever, drop out of Harvard? In short, do companies that hire ‘non-MBAs’ perform better than those which don’t? Do firms having the ubiquitous ‘non-MBA CEOs’ achieve more than those having MBA leaders?

A majority of Fortune 500 firms have traditionally avoided hiring MBA CEOs. Professor Harry Mintzberg, one of the noted management authors, last year regurgitated a similar thought process when he said, “MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences...” Guy Kawasaki, a known management author and himself an MBA, threw up much worse with respect to entrepreneurial firms, “I don’t think an MBA matters very much...” How would you describe such a distinct playing-to-the-gallery thought process? I have one word for it... Stupid! It is unbelievable that in today’s world, there could be anyone supporting such a blunderingly hollow ‘anti-MBA’ viewpoint.

It perhaps took the might of MIT’s Sloan School of Management to put the ultimate seal over legions of unlettered MBA opposers. In the pathbreaking research titled Managing With Style, MIT Professors Marianne Bertrand and Antoinette Schoar – after undertaking a most massive research over 7,500 of the world’s leading corporations – proved most conclusively how companies with MBA CEOs perform better than those having non-MBA CEOs. The report statistically shows how “the most interesting finding is the positive relationship between MBA graduation and corporate performance.” In fact, CEOs holding MBA degrees are associated even with higher operating return on assets, one of the topmost factors to determine corporate efficiency. Not only are such MBA CEOs “more aggressive” and “responsive to the presence of growth opportunities,” they also have “a stronger tendency to engage in diversification moves,” proven to be extremely critical factors to increase shareholders’ wealth. In fact, despite age old inhibitions even in Fortune 500 corporations, the benchmark 2006 survey titled Corporate Leadership by the exemplar London Chamber of Commerce shows how the proportion of MBA CEOs in Fortune 500 giants is continuously increasing to now reach a very promising 42%; female CEOs are even better at 45%. The final word in HR researches, the SpencerStuart 2006 Route To The Top survey, corroborates this (for example, in 2005, only 35% of Fortune 100 CEOs had MBA degrees), and shows how a smashing 62% of all S&P 500 CEOs now have at least one type of an advanced degree (MBA, Master’s, Doctorate etc). In fact, even at Bachelor’s level, the BBA qualification, after the engineering degree, was held by the maximum number of S&P 500 CEOs.

According to the NYSE CEO Report 2007, a thumping 75% and above CEOs believe that their corporation’s ‘Management Team’ will have the maximum impact on their sales and profits growth. At such a time, it is unbelievably ludicrous that any corporation can believe that hiring management illiterates rather than MBAs could provide stupendously dynamic growth. The world’s best performing firms thankfully don’t think so! CEOs of 7 of the top 10 Fortune behemoths are management graduates. That’s 70% for you. Did I hear somebody say Jack and Bill had no MBA? To set the records straight for the innumerably vain soothsayers of the anti-MBA bandwagon, perhaps there’s nobody else in the management world who fanatically supports recruiting MBAs the way Jack Welch (an engineering M.S and Ph.D) has done, a fact he has accepted even in the columns he writes for us! Eat this – GE has been consecutively ranked amongst the world’s top ten MBA employers and Microsoft in the top 20 (Fortune Top MBA Employers 2006 Survey). By the way, even Jeff Immelt, Jack’s successor at GE, is an MBA (from Harvard), and Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Bill Gates’ Microsoft, attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business! Oh, before I forget, while Melinda Gates (Bill’s wife) is herself an MBA from Duke, June 2007 also sees Bill Gates trudging back grudgingly to Harvard to receive his long lost degree... So my most beloved non-MBA CEOs, there’s one thing you should start falling in love with quite fast... The door! You’re going to see quite a lot of that very soon...

One-on-One with 4Ps B&M

The cover feature in your latest issue ‘Can Zee become the Real Star?’ was a very in depth analysis of these two media giants. Indeed the story brings forward the silent strategy of Zee to become the market leader. I am a regular reader of your magazine find the strategy section very much interesting apart from the cover stories. I would request you to have more interviews in the Strategy One-on-One section as after reading that I always wish to know more from the company itself about their strategies.
Rajiv Dutta, Operational Manager, ONGC

The new section Global Focus is a very interesting initiative taken by 4Ps B&M. As an old reader of the magazine, I have witnessed the magazine’s growth and this new section was the magazine’s initiation to go beyond national boundaries. Even Big Idea is a great read and as an economist, I never read advertising stories but Big Idea really has created my interest in ad world. So the first thing that I see in the magazine is ad-ranking section followed by Big idea. I would love to have global focus in the ad section too.
Anil Pal, Economist, Mumbai

The Movements section is what I’ve noticed lately in the magazine and it’s really a nice way of writing which makes the read all the more interesting. And of course, being an avid reader of 4Ps B&M, I couldn’t miss out on yet other new section, Globe Trotting which delivers content on the trends of the world and company strategies... As usual, great work, keep it up!
Mansi Jain, by email

Rajita’s article, as always makes a lot of sense... look at every other ad and it’s the jingles that build brands with children specially... But, these days there are a very few ads with memorable jingles.
Linus, Goa

Your article titled ‘The idiotic Readership Survey’ and the earlier, ‘National Ridiculous Survey’ have in fact made quite a few, including me think about the validity of these researches in general, and I just wonder, if the common man will ever come to know the reality, or will he be lost in the ambiguities and vagaries of surveying institutions... I hope you’ll throw more light on a solution to these issues as well.
Bobby, Hyderabad

The cover story on Zee and Star was quite interesting. Maybe it’s time Star had a re-look at its programming line-up.
98734*****

I liked it..
I really liked the cover story ‘India’s 10 Best Marketed States’ and I must say unlike other business magazines, which ranks a state only from tourism perspective, 4Ps B&M has maintained an optimum balance between tourism and investment perspective. Even the ranking covered all parameters including human development index that are crucial to identify where a state stands.
Mahuya Dutta, Psychiatrist, Kolkata