Business Schools Teaching Implementation: An Unnatural Act?
Implementation or "execution" can be taught. Whether business schools are the best places to do it remains a question with the readers responding to this month's column. For many, the requirements for teaching the craft of getting things done—the need for coaches (and perhaps students) with real-world experience, one-on-one coaching relationships, a project-oriented curriculum, and time—appear to make it much less economically practical and effective to do it outside the job. Given the natural allure and accessibility of topics in strategic planning, both faculties and their students may devote most of their study of management to them, relegating the less-accessible matters of getting things done to the back burner—and, in the view of some, rightly so. As one respondent put it, "'doing' needs more coaching than 'planning.'"
Charles Scholhamer, Jr. commented that, in teaching implementation, "There is no substitute for experience...[implying the need to] integrate older more seasoned...mentors and coaches...into the classroom." Jesus A. Ponce de Leon reminds us "classroom time is so limited." Mark Munley suggests, presumably in contrast to planning and planners, "What managers manage is largely invisible—processes and handoffs between functions...typically without data." Trevor Rose says that there is "less interest in implementing strategy. It's not the sexy end of the business."
Nevertheless, many thought that there was a place in the business school curriculum for the teaching of topics that provide a context for subsequent action. Dr. B. V. Krishnamurthy summed up this view by saying, "...whether we can 'teach' the craft of getting things done is very much in doubt. What we may be able to do, by precept and practice, is to show several paths, including those related to values, ethics, and judgment." Others, more hopeful, suggested a number of ways in which matters of implementation could be approached in a more formal educational setting. These include Stever Robbins' support for more "first-person learning...[as opposed to]...third-person discussion [that] doesn't produce behavior change," Audrey Hansen's argument for "more coursework in such areas as project management," Nancy Pluzdrak's suggestion that more "simulation exercises" be employed, and Petter Östlund's advocacy of "more experienced class members."
This leaves us with the question of not whether, but how much of the groundwork for preparing effective doers can be provided in the classroom. Is the business school setting the most effective way of doing this? Is it practical to think so? Do the economics of education for management even permit it? What do you think?