Change Agent - Issue 38

The third (and least important) reason to go to business school is actually to learn something. And this is where traditional business schools really fail. The core curriculum at business schools is as close to irrelevant as you can imagine. If you and I were trying to create a series of courses that would all but guarantee that upon graduating, students would have no useful knowledge about how to do business in the new economy, today's business-school curriculum would be a great model for us.

So eliminating the curriculum may be a great idea. But sooner or later, the illusion of a thriving, useful institution will fade if a business school doesn't offer any courses. Ask people who are thriving in today's economy to name five things that helped them succeed, and they'll probably come up with a list like this one.

1. Finding, hiring, and managing supergreat people

2. Embracing change and moving quickly

3. Understanding and excelling at business development and at making deals with other companies

4. Prioritizing tasks in a job that changes every day

5. Selling -- to people, to companies, and to markets

There are other skills that might show up on the list -- for example, balancing a life for the long term, working with venture capitalists and other sources of funds, being creative, and understanding the impact of new technologies -- but this is a good starting place.

Now take a look at the core curriculum for a $55,000 MBA. You'll find virtually no focus at all on any of these five issues. My MBA students at NYU had never taken a selling course, they had never been taught how to give a presentation, but they were experts in cost accounting, in understanding manufacturing efficiencies, and in applying the Black and Scholes Option Pricing Formula.

People in the real world buy how-to books to figure out how to succeed. So the NoBS curriculum includes only courses that are worthy of being the subject of a best-selling book. And whenever possible, the authors themselves teach the courses. (In fact, my facetiousness aside, you can learn 100% of the MBA curriculum at home, in a month, just by reading books. I'll go one step further: I can condense an hour of class presentation into 10 book pages. If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!)

The last thing to consider about business school is that in many cases, precisely the wrong people attend. Instead of filling their classrooms with people who are too kind to go to law school, business schools ought to find people who are already in the business world, but who are panicking because they don't know as much as they want to know. Instead of looking for people who are working two mind-numbing years at a bank while waiting to get into a top institution, schools ought to seek out entrepreneurs who are champing at the bit to get their businesses started.

There are two kinds of people who don't belong in business school: the talented folks who are in too much of a hurry to spend time studying and the dull ones who don't have anything better to do.

The paradox, of course, is that the best people aren't prepared to leave their life behind for two years. They're in a hurry.

So at NoBS, students only need to attend classes for four weeks every six months. The rest of the school runs online for two hours every day. And the MBA is completed in less than a year.

During the four weeks of live stuff, we all fly to some off-season ski resort with excellent food, decent rooms, and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Classes run from 8 am to midnight, three days a week. The rest of the week, students teach one another from real-life anecdotes. Sharing life experiences prepares people for the arrival of unexpected events.

The "faculty" isn't really a faculty at all. There are no PhDs in the bunch -- not one. Instead, our teachers are compelling public speakers, the kind of people who get standing ovations. People like Zig Ziglar on selling, Tom Peters on embracing change, or Regis McKenna on public relations.

Sound like a powerful experience? Totally nonaccredited. No bureaucracy. One dean. Drop out if you want. Do it for the learning, not for the grades. Everybody is as motivated as you are. Get it over with in just nine months. Walk out with a great credential and 100 lifelong friends.

Is NoBS yet another bizarre thought exercise on my part? Probably. Depends on how many of you mail your nonrefundable $300 deposit to PO Box 305, Irvington, NY 10533. Send it by midnight tonight -- before you forget!

NoBS is worth considering. Before you go to business school, before you decide that a fancy MBA is the one thing standing between you and success, you ought to think really hard about why you're going and what you're going to learn.