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MBA students are chronically risk-averse. Their risk aversion prevents them from seeking and living a life of meaning and purpose. Yet we all want to lead a meaningful life, one that comes from being part of something bigger a bigger story than one life, one person, one family. This book redefines risk as a business proposition. It shows students that the choices they think of as "safe" (e.g. lucrative jobs that fulfill no personal aspirations aside from financial gain, deferring service to others until retirement, etc.) are actually quite risky, since they typically lead us to sell our souls. A consciousness raising book rather than a how-to Albion's project helps MBA students give themselves "permission" to be who they really want to be. It helps readers develop the will to create a meaningful life. The first step in this process is for readers to identify their own values. How can you create value, Albion asks, until you know your values? Abion encourages readers to re-think and reassess, but he doesn't point them in a specific direction. He walks them through the process of asking and answering four core questions: 1) Who Are You? 2) What Do You Want? 3) What Can You Do? 4) Where Are You Going? The goal is to help readers identify and formulate what a meaningful life looks like for them.

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Extrait :
Money sometimes costs too much.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet
MBAs are focused, driven, thoughtful people who typically choose one of two career paths. The first, the more common, is the one I took. I call it the conflicted achiever path, expressed as “I’ll make some money now, pay off my debts, build a little nest egg, and then... who knows? But business school will give me the skills and cachet I need to change careers, move up, and make more money, after which I’ll do what I’m passionate about and contribute to society.”

The other path is the passionate striver path: “I want to do something meaningful now. I already know the kind of work that I find fulfilling. Business school will give me the skills I need to be more effective in my work and a network to draw on for help along the way so that I can advance faster in my career.” Both paths are fine as long as you don’t get stuck in the wrong job or see your passion frustrated and fade.

The reality is that most MBAs take jobs in management consulting or investment banking. After all, that’s what business school does best: train students to be market or financial analysts. Nothing wrong with that. Just remember that few of you grew up dreaming of selling another strategic plan or making another business deal.

The challenge is to use that job in ways that will help you seek and find your unique contribution—which may very well be in consulting or banking. Those professions have also evolved with your 2interests in mind, offering MBAs work in nonprofit divisions of the most respected consulting firms as others work in “bottom of the pyramid” microfinance at top-tier investment banking companies.

MBAs want to make a contribution through their work, whether it’s in the workplace, the marketplace, or the community. This was not as true in my day, but today it’s true of the vast majority. You’re different, and the world you’re inhabiting is different. Even my venerable school, staid Harvard Business School, changed its mission in the twenty-first century to “educating leaders who make a difference in the world.”

What I’ve seen at the business schools is, as I like to say, “You’ve got the religion. You just don’t know how to get to church.” Regardless of which of the two initial career paths you choose—or some combination of the two—the work of this book is to help you get to a place where you’re appreciated and can make a contribution to others that’s worth more than money.

In that spirit, the book’s central argument is that if you put contribution — crucial to a meaningful life—on an equal footing with money, what you perceive as your safest career choices may actually be your riskiest, and vice versa. That is, if you assess risk with the career goal of a meaningful life (which includes making money), you’ll make different choices or at least be more aware of the risk-reward trade-offs of your choices and choose a job that is more likely to be on your destiny path.

Whether you are searching more for money or meaning initially, each path has its negative externalities. However, you often recognize the externalities of choosing more satisfying work but overlook them when you choose the employer who shows you the money.

That’s the MBA trap: improperly assessing the risk-reward ratio in your career choices by not including all the externalities. This trap occurs when you measure success just by money rather than including the desire to make a contribution as part of a meaningful life. With a meaningful life as your goal instead of money, your definitions of safe and risky change: you now recognize that a “safe” job choice is one that you believe is on your destiny path, and a “risky” choice is one that is not.

3
To explain, I’d like to share a parable that resonates with MBAs more than any other story I know. I believe it gets you to reconsider what constitutes a successful life.
The Good Life: A Parable

The career perspective of the MBA environment may be best expressed in a parable you won’t find in business school. It has received the most responses from MBAs in all my years of writing. I first published it over a decade ago after returning from an idyllic week on an island of just seventy people. I spent my days diving with local dive master Ollie Bean and imagined what it would be like if he met up with the Harvard Business School student in me.

My purpose is to show how your higher education and the values and expectations that often go with it might lead you away from a life path that is enjoyable, rewarding, and contributory. With minor editing,1 here’s “The Good Life”:

An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with a lone fisherman docked. Inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. He complimented the fisherman on the quality of fish and asked how long it took to catch them. “Only a little while,” the fisherman replied.

The businessman then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish. The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s needs. The businessman asked, “What do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, and then teach children how to fish before I stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life.”

The businessman laughed at him. “I am an MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With 4the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor. Eventually you could open your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution.”

“And then what would I do?” the fisherman wondered.

“You would then, of course, need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then probably Los Angeles, and eventually locate in New York City, where you would run your expanding enterprise.”

The fisherman asked, “How long will this all take?” “Ten to fifteen years,” the MBA replied. “But what then, señor?” The MBA laughed, saying that’s the best part: “When the time is right, you would announce an IPO [initial public offering] and sell your company stock to the public. You would become very rich, making millions of dollars.”

“Millions? Then what?”

The MBA businessman concluded, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, and then teach children how to fish before you stroll into the village each evening where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”

A simple parable worth reading again, “The Good Life” is about values often taken for granted as the material world and its partner “greed” pull you away from yourself, magnified in most business school settings.
Your Business School Environment

Business schools have a culture that narrows your perceived options and can often direct your behavior as a businessperson, at least early in your career, by the values espoused. What are those values? 2

In the 1970s, the elite business schools were organized around the goal of producing general managers. The CEO as enlightened corporate statesman 5was still of interest, although it would fade in the 1980s with the emergence of investor capitalism and its takeover wave.

By 1980, business experts wrote that countries like Japan were turning out better managers. American managers needed to learn how to manage more effectively toward one goal: maximization of corporate value. Shareholder primacy became the new mantra. The New York Times duly noted that the new model of corporate “goodness... eschews loyalty to workers, products, corporate structures, businesses, factories, communities, even the nation.” The new flood of corporate takeovers meant that only “maximizing stock price can be allowed to matter.” This maxim would dominate the culture of most business schools.

These arguments led to aligning managers’ incentives with those of shareholders. The executive option market flourished, one of the most disastrous developments in the history capitalism. It exacerbated the fixation on short-term profit regardless of longer-term cost. The same ethos would dominate the culture of business schools.

The era can be summed up by an early-1990s televised comment by a large insurance company CEO who resigned soon after the interview. He had agreed to come on the show to discuss the company’s new innovative employee assistance programs for minimum-wage workers. But the interviewer focused on the just released quarterly results, which were one penny below expectations. The CEO’s comment: “Now I get it. If you want to do something that serves the interests of society, the environment, the community, or the poor, and it costs your shareholders one penny, it is immoral.”

In October 1993, Net Impact (known until 1999 as Students for Responsible Business) was created to build a community of MBAs that believed that the responsibility of a corporation is not just to shareholders but to all stakeholders. Managing Director Daniel O’Connor best expressed Net Impact’s business philosophy in a 1999 speech at the University of Michigan. Daniel explained that the purpose of business is to create value for its society. Through a mission-driven network of emerging business leaders united by a shared commitment to use the power of their careers, Net Impact would create a better world for all.

6
In the 1990s, the majority of business schools saw Net Impact as a fringe group primarily consisting of liberal “tree-huggers” and “do-gooders.” But as the twenty-first century dawned, the new global economy transformed the cost-benefit parameters of business through the market realities of climate change, the price of oil, and the demand for young talent who often have social and environmental interests. Net Impact began to grow rapidly as a network for emerging progressive business leaders.

As I write, Net Impact has over 190 business school and professional chapters and is growing rapidly worldwide, with its first European office and chapters in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At many business schools, Net Impact is the largest student group. Net Impact and its local chapters have also been instrumental in changing business school curriculum while unleashing an energy best seen at the annual conference, which hosts two thousand attendees.

This decade has seen the rising prominence of Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes school rankings. The biennial rankings are based on how well business schools integrate social and environmental stewardship into their curriculum and research. Students are demanding that curriculum more closely reflect their values, and business schools are accommodating those changes. Green business courses were available at nearly two-thirds of business schools surveyed in 2007, twice as many as in 2001.

Still, how much have the schools themselves really changed? Schools have opened institutes, some jointly with other university departments, and many offer elective courses in sustainable business, microfinance, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise. Yet there remain no tenured or tenure-track professors in these fields, indicating that the values espoused by these courses are still not central to most business schools.

Business schools remain driven by rankings and fundraising (helped by higher rankings). Rankings are determined in part by the starting salaries of graduates, not whether they like their jobs or can express their values at work. Where can MBA graduates get the highest starting salaries? See your options narrowing?

For the most part, the bottom line remains the same. As reported in “A Growth Industry” in the April 14, 2008, issue of Newsweek, business schools 7are adopting the philosophy “make a bunch of green by going green”; indeed, the article’s subtitle states, “business schools are teaching entrepreneurs how to get rich helping to save the environment.”

Interest in a “triple bottom line” can be accommodated as long as the financial bottom line is satisfied. Like Wal-Mart and Toyota, two companies invested in “greening” their companies, environmental responsibility is a business calculation of innovative ways to save and make money.

One student at Aspen’s top-ranked school, Stanford University, said it best. A twenty-nine-year old with an engineering background, he spent two years studying environmentally sustainable business. Is he doing this because of his values? “The honest answer is no. It makes good business sense to be sustainable.” He hopes to be working at a private-equity fund upon graduation.

Whether curriculum change leads to cultural change remains to be seen. Business schools reflect the interests of the surrounding business community, particularly their alums. As green business opportunities in clean technology have grown, curricula have grown in these areas, too. There are now a handful of new schools like Presidio School of Management and Bainbridge Graduate Institute, where sustainable business practices are not a calculation but a commitment to social justice and environmental responsibility as much as financial results.

To conclude, business school remains focused on your financial growth, not personal growth. I believe you get at best only marginal help in business school at understanding your values and what is important to you in your career.

If you don’t know exactly what you want to get out of business school, then the business school’s curriculum and culture will do little to help you clarify your purpose, awaken your passion, and realize your potential. Just look at the pressures and challenges the typical MBA faces.
A Mirror on MBA Decision Making

With the pressure of job interviews starting in early September (in my day, none were allowed until March), the driving determinant for most students remains money. You take time from work and pay tuition for which you expect a good return, a hefty ROI (return on investment).

8
Much has changed during my thirty-five years with MBAs, but career decision making has not changed measurably. Synthesizing what you’ve told me over the past five years in conversations and e-mails, your decisions are primarily driven by six factors:
MBAs often don’t consider their own values very high on the list of motivations in making a career decision.
MBAs are not usually encouraged to consult a personal compass to direct their goals when making career decisions.
MBAs feel peer pressure to earn a lot of money when they enter the working world after graduation.
MBAs are expected to measure success in money and public recognition rather than in personal fulfillment.
MBAs are risk-averse, so they often choose to make career decisions that they’re supposed to make rather than the decisions their hearts would have them make.
MBAs fear that taking a job that fulfills their heart’s desires will not provide enough money to live on.
You may not see yourself in this description of the “typical” MBA. Good for you! But most business schools reinforce this stereotype. To remain atypical, you need to be clear about your answers to the four chapter questions and stick to them. The questions and lifelines can help reaffirm your thinking and existing career goals and aspirations and turn them into a plan of action for your future, your pe...
Revue de presse :
“More than a master of business administration, Mark Albion offers his read- ers an advanced degree in the meaning of life. His MBA is a Master of Blessed Attitude, and it suggests a course of personal development that will give every- one more than money—it will give them purpose, direction, and hope.”
—Alan M. Webber, former editorial director and managing editor, Harvard Business Review

“Dr. Albion has developed the tools for helping us find our way in our professional lives. While this book is written for MBAs, it will speak to anyone who has struggled to find more meaning in his or her career. A compelling writer, Dr. Albion is open about himself, admits his mistakes, and through his own telling of how he learned from them, teaches us how to recognize ours and change the course of our lives for the better.”
—Phoebe Higgins, Dominican University of California, MBA, 2007

“The basic messages of the book summon up, and resonate with, my own experiences as an MBA student, and I realize that I would have been one of the people this book was intended for. I’m reminded of some of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way since leaving my MBA program. Not only does More Than Money invite us to question how success is really best measured, but it also offers some practical tools for finding a more holistic return on an MBA investment.”
—David Wood, Fisher Graduate School, Monterey Institute, MBA, 1993

“Before getting an MBA, read More Than Money. This book revolutionizes business school education and will help any MBA student get more out of school. In his special way, Dr. Mark leads you to define first what you want to do with your life. He does so by guiding you not with answers but with crucial questions that help you connect with who you are and what you wanted as a child but deemed impossible. Now it is possible.”
—Anton Arapetyan, Lviv (Ukraine) University MBA, 2006, Lviv Business School

“More Than Money reaffirms that as human beings we first need to love and be loved—before we are MBAs. Our MBA degrees, our positions, money, and assets are tools that can help us to love. For when all is said and done, on our deathbeds, love is the only thing that will have mattered. Thank you, Dr. Mark, for being that voice that speaks to our spirits, not just our heads.”
—Tolulope Ilesanmi, McGill University, MBA, 2005

“This book has me thinking in a very serious way about my life, my place in the world, and how my strengths and talents can be of service. It has me remember- ing the best times at work and how good it felt to be working together toward common objectives with a common purpose and with passion. I’d like to find that again. More Than Money is really going to help me focus on doing so.”
—Douglas Hammer, New York University, Stern School of Business, MBA, 1999

“We have all heard stories of business school graduates who took decades to realize the careers they chose right out of school were the wrong ones for them. Benefit from the teachings in this book and start building yourself a sustainable career now, so you don’t have to undo your mistakes later.”
—Erika Haas, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA, 1998

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  • ÉditeurBerrett-Koehler
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