为什么说企业家没必再读MBA了？

最近，斯坦福商学院的三角恋丑闻闹得沸沸扬扬。如果说这能够反映点什么的话，那就是一个知名商学院的MBA学位或许根本不像他们宣扬的那么有价值。对于一些有抱负的企业家和商业领袖则更是如此！

斯坦福的这起三角恋故事，依然是我们非常熟悉的套路：一男一女两名教授结了婚，并且生了两个孩子，后来婚姻出现了裂痕，女教授搬了出去，男教授申请了离婚，两个人都开始跟其他人约会。只是他们并非是一对普通的夫妻，他们的故事很快演变成了一桩惊天丑闻。

故事的男主角詹姆斯•菲尔斯和女主角黛博拉•格林菲德尔都是斯坦福商学院的教授。在分居后不久，格林菲尔德和她的领导——也是她丈夫的领导加尔斯•塞隆纳有了一腿。

这段本来可以和平分手的婚姻，在离婚时演变得极为难看。现在两人还在为子女的抚养权打官司，官司已经打了整整三年，光是律师费就花了50万美元。

与此同时，菲尔斯仍然能够看到他妻子的电子邮件、短信和聊天记录，结果在追踪这两人的偷情信息的过程中，他发现他妻子正和他的领导合谋对付他——至少他是这样宣称的。

和格林菲尔德偷情的那位院长大人最终向斯坦福的教务长约翰•艾切曼蒂报告了此事，而且在校方决定处理菲尔斯的时候进行了回避，然而，菲尔斯最后还是被斯坦福商学院解聘了，理由大概是因为他在苹果大学代课太多，导致在本校经常旷工。

走投无路之下，菲尔斯向法院提起诉讼，状告他的领导和学校不应开除他。于是各种各样的猛料都被公开爆了出来，据《名利场》杂志报道，有46名斯坦福商学院的现职员工和前员工宣称，赛隆纳是个靠“个人至上、任人唯亲和制造恐惧”来进行领导的恶人。

等到这些丑闻通过商学院网站Poets&Quants曝光出来之后，赛隆纳终于辞职了。

然而，事情到这并没有结束。菲尔斯现在仍然在苹果大学教书。斯坦福商学院提起了反诉，称赛隆纳的课程材料的所有权属于斯坦福商学院，因此，把苹果公司也拉进了这个泥潭。与此同时，格林菲尔德拿到了她的课程《权利运作》（Acting With Power）的50万美元出书预付款，而斯坦福对此似乎连一点意见都没有。

你就是编，也编不出这么狗血的故事。

我们总是认为，表里不一、任人唯亲、睚眦必报、欺软怕硬、玩弄权术、个人至上是官僚和政客才会干的事。但无论如何，我们绝不应该把这些东西教给未来的企业家、高管和商业领袖。

这种不正常的行为在商业世界里也的确存在，但从我的经验来看，它只是偶发现象，不是通行惯例。如果这种丑恶现象真的在那些运行良好的企业里抬头，通常也会在一个注重精英管理而不是官僚主义糟粕的文化中被清理出去。

可能你还是觉得，有抱负的职场人士有必要到商学院去学习一下商业、管理、领导力和企业家精神，但实际上，人们完全可以在真实世界的经验中学到这些东西，也可以向那些已经实现了事业目标的导师们学习，而且效果可能都要好得多，而不是让一群连自己都有问题的学术研究人员给你讲课。

我们这个时代的很多优秀企业家连大学都没有上完，更不用说商学学位了，比如理查德•布兰森、拉里•埃利森、史蒂夫•乔布斯、比尔•盖茨和马克•扎克伯格等人。这里只举其中的一小部分例子。

虽然杰夫•贝索斯（亚马逊）、沃伦•巴菲特、安迪•格罗夫（英特尔）、赫布•凯莱赫（西南航空）、马云（阿里巴巴）、伊隆•马斯克（特斯拉和SpaceX）、拉里•佩奇（谷歌）、弗莱德•史密斯（联邦快递）和孙正义（软银）等人都有大学学位，但他们中间没有一个人读过MBA。有意思的是，现代管理学之父彼得•德鲁克也没上过商学院。

就我个人来说，当年我还是一个年轻的工程师的时候，也曾听过一两堂MBA课，然后我说“去他的吧”，就再没去上过。现在看起来，这是一个颇为明智的决定。当然，如果你非常想拿到那一纸文凭，我相信它会让你在领英（LinkedIn）上看起来很高端，但我很怀疑它能给你带来多少真正的好处，说不定它还会教给你一些非常恶俗的毛病。

在放弃了读商学院的念头后，我读了马克•麦考马克的畅销书《在哈佛他们不会教给你什么》。这本书对我的职业生涯产生了极大的影响，帮我成为了一名高科技行业的一流高管。或许有人应该写一本名叫《他们在斯坦福商学院会教给你什么，但是千万别学》的书。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎

If the spiraling scandal over a lascivious love triangle at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is any indication, an MBA from a prestigious B-School isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And I think that’s especially true for aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders.

The tale starts out sounding familiar enough: Two professionals get together and have two kids, their marriage hits the rocks, she moves out, he files for divorce, both start seeing other people, yada yada. But this is no ordinary couple. And their story soon turns into a massive train wreck.

James Phills and Deborah Gruenfeld were both professors at GSB. Soon after the separation, Gruenfeld starts a secret affair with her boss, who also happens to be her husband’s boss, dean Garth Saloner.

The couple’s split turns into an ugly divorce and custody battle that’s still going on, three years and half a million dollars in legal fees later.

Meanwhile Phills, who still has access to his wife’s emails, texts, and messages, tracks her not-so-clandestine communications with her lover / his boss in which the pair plot against him, or so he alleges.

And while the dean eventually discloses the affair to Stanford provost John Etchemendy and sort of recuses himself from decisions involving his girlfriend’s husband, Phills still ends up getting fired, supposedly for taking too many leaves of absence to teach at Apple University.

At that point, Phills sues his former boss and the school for wrongful termination. All sorts of dirty laundry ends up getting aired, including a 2014 complaint by 46 current and former GSB employees claiming that Saloner was a bully who ruled by “personal agendas, favoritism and fear,” according to Vanity Fair.

And when the whole sordid mess ends up getting exposed on Poets&Quants – a B-School site – Saloner finally steps down.

Wait, there’s more. Phills continues to teach at Apple . Stanford countersues, claiming that it owns his course materials, anddrags Apple into the fray. Meanwhile, Gruenfeld gets a nearly million-dollar advance on a book deal for her course, “Acting With Power,” which Stanford seems to have no problem with.

You just can’t make this stuff up, folks.

While duplicity, cronyism, vindictiveness, bullying, power plays, and personal agendas may be the sort of behavior we’ve come to expect from bureaucrats and politicians, it’s certainly not what we should be teaching tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, executives, and business leaders.

That sort of dysfunctional behavior does exist in the business world, but in my experience, it’s the exception, not the rule. And when it does rear its ugly head at well-run companies, it’s usually weeded out by peer pressure from a positive culture that values meritocracy, not bureaucracy and the organizational ills that go with it.

Besides, if you assume that up-and-comers go to business school to learn about business, management, leadership, and entrepreneurship, I would argue that you’re way better off learning all that through real world experience and from mentors who’ve accomplished what you aspire to, not a bunch of academic researchers with issues.

Among the many great entrepreneurs of our time – Richard Branson, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, to name a few – there’s not a degree among them, let alone a business degree.

And while Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett, Andy Grove (Intel), Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), Jack Ma (Alibaba), Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX), Larry Page (Google), and Fred Smith (FedEx), and Masayoshi Son (Softbank) all have degrees, none has an MBA. Interestingly enough, the same is true of the father of modern management, Peter Drucker.

On a personal note, I took a couple of MBA classes as a young engineer, said, “Screw this,” and never looked back. That turned out to be a pretty wise decision. Of course, if you’re hell bent on getting that piece of paper, I’m sure it’ll look great on LinkedIn but I doubt if it’ll do you much good. And it just might teach you some pretty nasty habits.

After forsaking business school, I read Mark McCormack’s bestseller What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School. The book had a tremendous impact on my career, helping me to become a top executive in the high-tech industry. Maybe somebody should pen What They Do Teach You at Stanford Business School … But Shouldn’t.