HBR: Smart take on the MFA/MBA cliche
HBR has another good article breathing new life into stale concepts (the first one is blogged here). Right now, it feels like that the “MFA is the new MBA” is stuck in a squishy or puddle-thin space. For some, it’s a call to be a right-brained thinker — take a drawing class, learn an instrument, write a short story! A little more intelligent, but kind of thin, is the argument that the MBA teaches you decision-making, the MFA teaches you synthesis. Not bad, but it doesn’t unpack into actionable ideas.
Katherine Bell, who got an MBA, worked in business, and then got an MFA at the highly selective Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has a “conversation starter” that gets deeper into the skills and attitudes that MFAs can acquire. It goes deep enough, in fact, that it feels actionable. Her points, which are also covered in the ideacast, are:
- the workshop is an important management tool and cultural goal in a business that thrives on ideas — Bell’s MFA is in writing, and one of the biggest adjustments she had to make was to the workshop: a class where your fellow students look at your work and critique it along with your professor. Everyone has to develop skills for an effective workshop:
- the author needs to learn to accept criticism about very personal things, how to sift good feedback from bad, and how to incorporate it into her work;
- the students need to learn how to give useful feedback. This one is particularly interesting because it goes beyond “don’t be negative” into “don’t give executional feedback.” This is something a lot of design shops, clients, and companies trying to be more design-focused have trouble with. Comments should be “the colors are feeling kind of flat to me, not as energetic as this”, rather than “can you make it more red?”
- the professor needs to set the right tone for the workshop, facilitate the critiquing, and give measured, but strong comments.
- by writing fiction, you learn empathy — Bell spends a lot of time talking about how writing fiction forces her into her characters’ heads and out of hers. Being able to get so far into a character that it acts in ways that surprise you is one of her litmus tests for empathy. But she highlights that management is all about understanding who you’re talking to and feeling empathy with them. (It’s also important for design, and Adaptive Path’s Subject to Change has a terrific chapter about what empathy is and isn’t and how to focus your work on building empathy).
Even if you can’t go to a workshop or don’t bother writing fiction, it’s a useful read and think as it highlights parts of work and types of thinking that MFA==MBA inclined managers should dig into.