GMAT: Bro-How vs. Know-How
Gentle reader, I ask for your indulgence. I’m preparing to take the GMAT some time this summer. As part of my loin-girding process, I’m drilling vocab, memorizing theorems, and covering the walls of my bathroom with Algebra equations (reminiscent of the shed from A Beautiful Mind). I’ve resolved to beef up my writing skills for the Analytical Writing Assessment portion of the exam by spending 30 minutes every day responding to a sample topic from my GMAT book. If the resultant essay isn’t complete dribble, I’ll post it here for your enjoyment. Without further ado:
“In any business or other organization, it is better to have managers with strong leadership skills than managers with expertise and work experience in a particular field.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Some contend that it is more valuable for a business’ managers to have strong leadership and managerial skills than it is for them to have a thorough understanding of their field. I’m in an interesting position to evaluate this contention, since I’ve spent the last four years working in a technical consulting firm owned and operated by a gentleman fitting the latter description, serving clients who fit the former.
There is certainly something to be said for possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of your field. No one with a lick of sense will dispute that a firm’s frontline workers and supervisors must understand the technical aspects of whatever it is that they are supposed to be doing. My current employer is considered by many to be the preeminent expert in his field. He has spent the last 30 years actively engaged in his specialty, executing work that is arguably in the upper 10th percentile of quality for his industry. Added to this wealth of practical experience is his academic background: he has completed doctoral coursework in his field. This is truly a distinction, and it has enabled him to provide expert services on matters of great complexity and technical sophistication. But does this level of technical mastery a guarantee of business success?
Unfortunately, it isn’t. Businesses succeed or fail based on factors unrelated to the depth of their field-specific knowledge. This is because businesses are little more than loose groups of people, individuals with their own interests, aims, and desires. These interests, if unmanaged, may very well conflict with the interests of their employer. The fact is that groups of people are unpredictable at best, and unruly or uncooperative at worst. Managing them requires a very specific set of skills, and amorphous toolbox filled with impossible-to-quantify things like empathy, EQ, and leadership.
This is not to say that leadership trumps knowledge in every instance. Most of my employer’s clients are very shrewd leaders and businessmen. They have inadvertently neglected some fundamental technical principal, and now find themselves dealing with a problem that is beyond their ability to correct. They require the services of an expert to mitigate this loss and correct the issue.
One should not think that these managers are irresponsible or negligent; quite the contrary, most of their project are executed well, owing to their abilities to effectively manage their employees and contractors. Most people cannot be universal experts, equally facile in project management, website development, and the translation of ancient biblical texts written in archaic languages. Limitations on time and energy require us to specialize. These managers have judged that the likelihood of a major technical problem is so slight that, when it does occur, it is more cost effective to hire an expert than it is to invest the energy to become experts themselves.
My experience indicates that managers would do better to master the art of dealing with people. The rudiments of a field can be learned, and will help avert the most common disasters.
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