030 - Monetization of the Physician Imagination

This episode is a continuation of my animated conversation with Professor J.-C. Spender, a nuclear engineer-turned-business school professor, author, expert on the history of business education, and former executive and business school dean.<br />At the onset of episode #30 I asked Dr. Spender if getting an MBA degree would provide what’s needed if someone wanted to efficiently manage a healthcare organization.<br />His response was YES. But he added “that’s a kind of modified and slightly tangled yes.” <br />What I heard was “No.” Take a listen and see what you think. <br />Professor Spender’s contrarian penchant is delightful and provocative. He offers no instant gratification: no conversational closure rewarding me with a satisfying hit of dopamine. No schmoozy cooperation providing a squirt of oxytocin. The effect of this professor’s conversational style is attention—what IS he saying? How does this comment jive with that last one? Where are we headed?! <br />He paints a bleak picture when it comes to the management training or even the management potential of someone who has been awarded an MBA degree. Non-partisan in his criticism, he also deemed my assertion that physicians must lead healthcare as “a misdiagnosis.” And what did I hear with that? I heard that Dr. Spender’s primary interest is spotlighting the “multiplicity, the plurality of conversations, that is the fundamental challenge for leadership.” Agreed. <br />When it comes to leadership and management he would have us attend to:<br />•The history of business education--from whence the “bullshit” came<br />•Practice (experience) vs. principles (rules)—and the true crucible of leadership when principles don’t serve us<br />•Uncertainty as the state which drives the engine of business<br />•The fundamental ethical problem of business: monetizing someone else’s imagination to serve oneself<br />•The lack of conversation in business school about human beings’ capacity for imagination—yet it is imagination which produces an organization’s value<br /