What is the proper education for business?
Michael Hammer, the renowned management consultant, says this: I often recall advice once offered to me by a senior executive at a major pharmaceutical firm, an Englishman with the advantage of a traditional public school education. “All one need learn,” he said, “is Latin and computer programming — Latin for communication and programming for thinking.” He wasn’t far offIt’s very unlikely that this executive ever writes any computer programs at work, and it’s even more unlikely that he uses any Latin in his job. So why did he say what he did, and why does Hammer agree with him?
Hammer argues that learning programming is a good way to develop thinking skills of a particular kind. “…computer programming is nothing but an exercise in systems thinking. Each line of software that you write will interact with each and every other line of software. Unless you develop some big-picture thinking capability, your program will never work. The marvelous thing about a cognitive capability is that it operates across domains; the thinking style that one needs to write and debug a substantial computer program is the same one needed for solving problems in a business process. Once the synapses are put in play, they’ll snap on anything.” Exposure to other kinds of engineering can also help develop these cognitive skills, in Hammer’s opinion: “The heart of an enginering education is not learning and applying equations but learning how to create large systems built from small components…once again, I am not concerned with the content of the discipline but with the cognitive style it requires and engenders. I like the old definition of education: what remains when you forget what you have been taught.”
Hammer goes on to argue that the conceptual skills developed by programming/engineering are only part of the mental set needed by today’s businesspeople; ‘They must know how to ask why…Once again, I would submit that critical thinking operates across domains. Once learned in one area it can be applied to virtually any other. To this end, I maintain there is no better preparation for our technological age than a classical education…It might seem odd to suggest that the works of Plato and Madison and Joyce prepare one for the twenty-first century, but they are constants in a world of change…Wrestling with questions of good and evil, of democracy and justice, of personal and communal responsibilities is a quest without end. But, having engaged in this struggle, one is better prepared to deal with the more mundane, but nonetheless challenging, issues of the workplace.”
Hammer’s (rather contrarian) recommendation for aspiring businesspeople is this–a double major in computer science and classics. For those who don’t find this combination particularly appealing, he suggests alternative double-major possibilities:
- electrical engineering and philosophy
- mechanical engineering and medieval history
- aeronautics and theology
The general idea is one “hard” and one “soft” discipline. (I’m sure, though, that Hammer would be looking for humanities disciplines/programs which, while “soft” in the conventional sense, are taught in a highly-rigorous manner.)
Hammer goes so far as to say “If you aspire to a career in the business world, avoid an undergraduate major in business at all costs. You may learn some superficially useful skills, but not the fundamental capabilities needed for the long haul…There is plenty of time to develop expertise on the job or in a professional school.” This experise must include “An appreciation of the basics of business — the concepts of strategy, cost structure, market economics, cash flow, and capital utilization..”
I think Hammer’s argument is fundamentally sound: the student who pursues (for example) both an aeronautical engineering program and an intellectually-rigorous theology program is likely to develop conceptual skills that will serve him well in industries and jobs having nothing to do with either aviation or religion. When pursuing his first job out of school, however, he may well face a challenge in explaining to the hiring manager (and the HR people) why he is a better choice for the position than is the garden-variety undergraduate marketing major.