New hope for generalists

An article in the Independent today, 'Culture of success: European schools introduce arts subjects to management curriculum' is yet another example of how the financial crisis is forcing some interesting rethinking across the spectrum. And this is another one which I am quite happy about. The article focuses on examples of arts and humanities topics being added to business courses and a shift towards looking for business thinkers that are informed by knowledge of culture and the wider world due to the need for change in business thinking.

The article quotes Ken Starkey, professor of management and organisational learning at Nottingham University Business School who has written a paper on the need for change with the French school, Ecole des Mines de Paris. He believes that business schools need to think about how management education has contributed to the philosophy behind the excesses of the last two decades:

"With the financial crisis we're seeing that the whole driver around business has been quasi-science," he says. "Clearly it's not a science. We know that the MBA is implicated in the current crisis – and look where it's got us."

Starkey says that business schools need to work towards a curriculum that balances the analytical, the economic and the financial, with a more philosophical understanding of management. "You need the science, but thats got to be balanced by culture, and that's what's been driven out."

And Theodore Zeldin, historian, author, and lecturer, who has written the syllabus for an "MCA", an introduction to culture and creativity for all MBA graduates, says:

"It is a reaction against the MBA. The MBA is a specialism and it is now accepted as the standard...But CEOs, when questioned, always say that the best future leaders will be generalists.

"The reaction to the financial crisis should be: how can we mend the system? This is an opportunity to rethink what we want to get out of our financial activities. We've got to create a new generation of business leaders who are generalists and can understand new ways of thinking."

Of course this is not to say that we do not need people to be highly specialised in their areas of business. However in any given working situation, it is easy to see how quickly we become focused on a very narrow set of problems, goals and outcomes. So how can we blame those who worked in the financial sectors for not seeing the wider picture, or for not thinking through the effects that their approach could have outside of their own profit-making targets, just as in any other business. It would have taken some imagination, and a concern with something other than individual or company success.

It can be so easy to get caught up in the arguments of a narrow way of thinking. Broadening the picture inevitably makes things more complicated. I have always found this within the academic disciplines that I have encountered too. A theory can seem completely revelatory until pitched against something else. And just about any discipline can feel incredibly exciting, and like 'the' essential way in which to interpret the world. Hence the irresolvable rivalries between students of science, humanities or art.

Immersion in a field can be very exciting, and it is far less inspiring to allow oneself to be confused by other ways of thinking about the same problem. Of course any intelligent thinker will be used to thinking about different sides to an argument, but here I am talking about the ability or even need to counterpose completely different ways of defining the arguments. I have always believed this is absolutely essential, as no single discipline or approach can by itself have the answers.

I have always felt it strange that I feel the need to be defensive, or apologetic about my tendency towards being a 'generalist'. Many times I wish I could 'find' my area and gain the respect that having specialist knowledge gets you. But on the other hand, I think it is completely essential that every area of life has its generalists. Allowing conflicting ways of thinking to inform an opinion may result in less conviction or drive, but maybe sometimes that is for the best. Maybe it is an approach that can also bring different sectors together and help to encourage the worlds of business and finance to think beyond the economics of success.

The more you encounter the debates and priorities of different disciplines of thought, the more confusing it all becomes. This usually feels like it is taking one further away from understanding things rather than closer, but in the words of Socrates who rather appropriately cropped up in my google page quote of the day just now, "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing".