Does business school teach people how to assert power before they're ready?

"""Business school should stick to teaching the mechanics of running a successful business as much as possible, and leave the psychology out of it."""

This is an interesting thought that I don't agree with. Management is simply the art and science of achieving results through people. If you broke management down into its major components, I believe that you would find that management is mostly rooted in psychology with a sliver of economics. If you leave the psychology out of it, there isn't much left.

(X-posted to blog comments)

Sachin's conflating the teaching of techniques he finds distateful with the general notion of teaching management skills in general.

Trying to teach the mechanics of running a business without going into psychology is like trying to teach the piano with only a book and a metronome. I cannot tell you how many times an MBA2 student (I'm currently an MBA1 at Michigan, which is awesome and amazing) has made a comment like "I was in [x] situation that was eerily just like a roleplay situation in my MO class."

The mechanics of running a business are exactly the sort of thing you can learn in a book (or a blog); dealing with people to get optimal outcomes takes a classroom environment with an excellent teacher and groups of other students. You have to bang the keys to really learn how to be an effective manager of - and hopefully, leader of - people.

In my experience with business school and engineering school, EVERYONE asserts power before they earn it. Others may call it "fake it till you make it", but I would say that over-confidence and power games are rewarded in social constructs which make me (and other techies I know) very uncomfortable.

Does tech school teach people to assert competence before they're ready?

"Business school should stick to teaching the mechanics of running a successful business as much as possible, and leave the psychology out of it."

I disagree. At least 85% of success is knowing how to put on a good show. Knowing what behaviors/signals/designs will get what reactions is key, and it's something that can really only be learned from a competent teacher.