Philip Delves Broughton

WITH NEW ANALYSIS OF HBS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS When Philip Delves Broughton abandoned his career as a successful journalist and enrolled in Harvard Business School's prestigious MBA course, he joined 900 other would-be tycoons in a cauldron of capitalism. Two years of Excel shortcuts and five hundred of HBS's notorious business case studies lay ahead of him, but he couldn't have told you what OCRA was, other than a vegetable, or whether discount department stores make more money than airlines. He did, however, know that HBS's alumni appeared to be taking over the world. The US president, the president of the World Bank, the US treasury secretary, the CEOs of General Electric, Goldman Sachs and Proctor & Gamble - all were bringing HBS experience to the way they ran their banks, businesses and even countries. And with the prospect of economic enlightenment before him, he decided to see for himself exactly what they teach you at Harvard Business School. Philip Delves Broughton's hilarious and enlightening account of his experiences within Harvard Business School's hallowed walls provides an extraordinary glimpse into a world of case study conundrums, guest lectures, Apprentice-style tasks, booze luging, burn-outs and high flyers. And with HBS alumni heading the very global governments, financial institutions and FTSE 500 companies whose reckless love of deregulation and debt got us into so much trouble, he discovers where HBS really adds value - and where it falls disturbingly short.

My Two Years Inside the Cauldron of Capitalism

What They Teach You at Harvard Business School

Luca Stromann

In a chapter called "What to Bring", two students had written:“Don't bring that guitar or piano you were planning on picking up again. Do bring those skis and golf clubs that you will pick up again ...Don't bring the deal toy you received after 'leading' that hot tech IPO in 1999, Do bring the offer letter you secured after actually leading that dull bond offering in 2005... Don't bring any books from literature or history classes you took in college. I get it. You're smarter than me. You don't need to quote Keats every time I see you in the Aldrich bathroom...Don't bring 'I’ll never' Do bring 'I’ll try' Don't bring your cynicism. Do bring all the diverse rest of you. We can't wait to share the experience.“

I am constantly being told by business men that we cannot teach „business“. I heartily agree with them; we do not try to teach business in the sense in which business men ordinarily understand their routine methods, or in the sense in which you speak of teaching young men to be "money makers" or "to get the better of their competitors." We believe that there is science in business and it is the task of studying and developing that science in which we are primarily interested. It is our aim to give our young business men the breadth of horizon, as well as the equipment of information and grasp of principles which will enable them... to be better citizens and men of culture as well as broader men of business.

"You know, these people are freaks. Why do they think they're all going to be leaders anyway? Who wants them leading anything?"

"I know, I know," I said. "Im just worried that if I stop recognizing the freaks, I’ll become one of them."

"Remember this. And this is something that I have not been particularly good at," she said. « You probably won't look back and wish that you'd worked harder... In the end your family and your friends are the most important thing. And just remember that as you think about what you're going to do."

Margret had decided she wanted to see a class and this happened to be the one she sat in on. Afterward, I asked her what she thought. I had found it riveting but worried she might have been bored.

"Are you kidding?" she said. "This is what you get to do every day? You get chief executives beamed in from China to take your questions? It was amazing" Sometimes I needed to be reminded how lucky we were.

We were in the world of stone-hearted Wall Street traders for whom a product is a six-digit number flashing green on their screen, amid hundreds of other flashing numbers and fluctuating graphs. To them a product had no color, taste, or texture. It was something that produced cash flows.

What would sound like the ravings of a madman coming from, say, Kim Jong-Il had become perfectly commonplace coming from business leaders. The obsession with a single firm-wide culture. Discipline. Order. Unrelenting assessment by one's peers. The fear of denouncement. A cult of the leader.

Earlier graduates could join a large company and stay there for their entire careers. We would have to take care of ourselves as individual assets, unique fragments within the business universe, moving from company to company, place to place, responsible for ourselves.

Either your children were the center of your life, or they were not. Everything else was commentary.

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