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O P I N I O N
F or a short while during my undergraduate years, I majored in management. After a couple of courses, I decided a management focus was too nebulous and too touchy- feely for me, so I changed my major to something more practical: marketing. Leadership and management Move forward in 2017 with Zweig Group seminars across a range of essentials – business development, project management, marketing, and more.
In hindsight, the thing that turned me off to the management program was the academic reliance on theory, clichés, and what I call “Management by Wishful Thinking.” My favorite professor stood out because he was someone who had been-there and done-that. He took management theory and brought it to life by presenting real solutions to real issues leaders face on the job. That’s how I teach my MBA students and that’s how I present leadership courses in our seminars. I hear from a lot of firms that are looking to train their employees in “management.” Not necessarily “project management,” but the all-encompassing “management.” Nobody has ever asked me for a primer on management theory; they all want practical solutions for their employees and their firm. Too many firms accept management theory as the solution to their company’s challenges. They hire
a great-sounding consultant to provide them with “insights” into what their company needs. What they often receive is something less. I’ve seen the work of some of those consultants and it’s horrible. I actually feel sorry for the firms that hire those types of consultants, because they’ve typically spent a good amount of money and have gained no practical solutions. One consultant’s presentation included several nifty looking charts and graphs. Being the inquisitive person that I am, I did some research on their research. I found that those charts and graphs were copied from the internet and pasted into the presentation with no explanation about why they were relevant to the firm. One graph looked impressive enough, but had zero relevance to the firm.
Bill Murphey CONTINUING ED
See BILL MURPHEY, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER December 5, 2016, ISSUE 1178
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