The Dark Side of Formal Education

Under our new management paradigm, management schools and inhouse training are both essential tools for producing well-rounded managers.

But formal education can also be overdone; and overschooling can be dangerous to managerial health.

Some of our most successful contemporary (E)ntrepreneurs had no formal education – and that may be why they are so successful. They did not have their (E) and (I) trained out of them. They were never told to turn to a rulebook for solutions. No one convinced them not to trust their instincts. They knew how to adapt, how to be creative in new environments – and they made their own solutions. A senior vice president of one of the largest banks in Mexico is a high school dropout, but his Ph.D. subordinates consider him a leader of stature. “Unhindered by education, he can think,” one of them told me.

A good portion of any type of education involves learning models that apply to specific situations – preprogrammed solutions to problems that are expected to come up repeatedly. These models, of course, are an organization’s single most effective tool for eliminating waste and promoting efficiency. However, they are also dangerous.

In the process of being educated, students learn to accept and even welcome a certain amount of programming. This presents several dangers. They may become too dependent on their supply of easy, reliable models, and forget to distinguish between decisions that can be made automatically and those that cannot.

If they rely too often on formulas to solve problems, eventually they will be out of practice at working through a difficult decision. Their ability to be patient, to be tenacious, and even to think clearly and communicate clearly will have dissipated.

Or, in the event that a nonprogrammed decision is required, they may get lazy and decide to force-fit an already available solution, even if it is inappropriate.

The famous philosopher and sociologist Ivan Illich argued that our contemporary education system, instead of teaching people to learn and think for themselves, actually programs them to live up to the expectations of the establishment.7 Certainly it is true that our schools spend more time teaching people the “right” answers than teaching them to ask the “right” questions. If our management schools are reliably to produce great managers and leaders, this system will have to change.