Charles Green may be right, Harvard faculty probably do bear some responsibility for our quagmire of credit default swaps. After all Lawrence Summers is closely identified with leadership of the institution; and he fits Green's description of The Problem with business education as well as anybody.
Summers was a Harvard professor of economics and the 27th President of the University. The 28th is Drew Gilpin Faust who is, in my opinion at least, a paragon of virtue.
I was struck by Faust's recent interview in the New York Times, in which she reflected on the challenges of leadership. Here's a tidbit:
"People impute all kinds of things to leaders, and sometimes it’s thinking of them as disproportionately powerful, and imagining them to be much more transcendently significant in what they can accomplish, to have many more tools and weapons than they actually do. Another is to imagine that they have all kinds of designs or purposes that they may or may not have. So communication seemed to me something very important from early on, so that people not have that sense of mystery about what a leader is up to."
If I could, I would insert that quote into every executive recruiting and new hire orientation in corporate America. Right below it I would add a command that the CEO of a mega bank gave to new employees in an orientation program I designed:
"Act like you own the whole company."
When employees stop hero worshipping and take more risks, initiative and responsibility, then they will become the creative, inventive discoverers of Jean Piaget. The meritocracy envisioned by Ray Dalio in his Bridgewater Philosophy will be the rule rather than the exception.
But would that be a good thing?
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