Dean Bruner's Blog

It’s easy to make a buck.  It’s a lot tougher to make a difference. 

    - Tom Brokaw

A career in business can be remunerative and fun.  I also argue that it is a wonderful avenue for making a difference in the world.  Business people produce goods and services that lift human welfare.  The companies they operate provide employment and pay taxes that support communities.  Our alumni are also directly active in their communities, giving generously to social causes, and often serving on boards of civic and charitable activities.  Some work full-time for not-for-profit organizations, again, often in leadership roles.  This spirit of giving back to the community is learned, often well before the student arrives at Darden.  Yet Darden helps to foster this spirit.  This begins at the top, so to speak: the founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, gave virtually all he had to the well-being of his community, state, and country.  Darden offers courses on ethics, corporate social responsibility, and the management of not-for-profit enterprises. 

Some of the most powerful learning about making a difference takes place outside the classroom at Darden.  Through student clubs such as Darden Outreach, hundreds of students donate thousands of hours each year to support communities in the U.S. and internationally.  Here are some examples:

**Charity Auction to Benefit the Shelter for Help in Emergency.   For the past 16 years, the Shelter for Help in Emergency (SHE) has helped women in the Charlottesville area break the cycle of abuse by providing emergency shelter, counseling, and support services.  Over the course of these years, Darden’s student body has raised over $250,000 in support of this cause.

**Building Goodness in April (BGiA).  Last year, BGiA organized over 200 skilled and unskilled volunteers from the Darden and Charlottesville communities to rehabilitate 11 houses in Albemarle and county.  Combined with over $35,000 in funds spent this year alone, we were able to help families repair their homes that they were otherwise not able to do.

**Other Local Outreach Activities included supporting the  Salvation Army Soup Kitchen, the Venable Elementary School Tutoring effort, and Lego League (FTC Competition).

**Students Helping Honduras (SHH) was founded in 2005 with the goal of engaging students to help provide educational and economic opportunities to communities in Honduras.  In the past three years, this group raised over $500,000, and successfully built an elementary school, a dorm, and an education center in Honduras.  This year, three Darden students spent a week in Honduras with SHH, with the goal of increasing the number of students for next year.

**High Touch Abroad – Lesotho is a joint venture with the UVA School of Nursing’s Global Health Partnership.  This summer, a Darden student will travel to Lesotho along with students from the School of Nursing, School of Medicine, and College of Engineering to provide consulting advice for medical clinics in the country of Lesotho.

I commend the students, staff, and faculty who have supported such projects.  These activities enrich the needy and they enrich the Darden Community by their example and lessons.  This is a powerful foundation for a life of business leadership.

“all come together…they may surpass—collectively and as a body, although not individually—the quality of the few best…when there are many who contribute to the process of deliberation, each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence…some appreciate one part, some another, and all together appreciate all.”  -- AristotlePolitics.

“The benefits from discussion lie in the fact that even representative legislators are limited in knowledge and the ability to reason.  No one of them knows everything the others know, or can make all the same inferences that they can draw in concert.  Discussion is a way of combining information and enlarging the range of arguments.”  -- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. 

This is Independence Day in the United States, when we commemorate the passage of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  It’s not a solemn holiday hereabouts: we have parades, picnics, outdoor activities of all sorts, and fireworks after dark.   Yet remembrance of the Declaration lends some insights about some serious subjects, such as what we mean by “deliberation” and the challenges that professionals face in getting the best out of group work. 

Thomas Jefferson (founder of the University of Virginia) was the principal author of the Declaration.  His autobiography recounts the process by which the Continental Congress decided on declaring independence and how to communicate it.   In essence, the Declaration was written between June 11^th and 28^th.  Congress approved a resolution for independence on July 2^nd and then the formal Declaration on July 4^th.  Delegates actually signed the Declaration on August 2^nd. 

Judging by all the merriment today, the Continental Congress made the right decision.  Perhaps this feeling of satisfaction makes us all optimists about group decision-making.  Old-fashioned deliberation--the face-to-face exchange of facts and opinions, reasoning with one another, perhaps voting at the end of the discussion—is a time-honored means for bringing together what people know.   James Surowiecki  in The Wisdom of Crowdsargued that the wisdom of the collective is generally greater than that of individual experts within the collective.  Condorcet’s Jury Theorem lends some rigor to the wisdom of crowds: groups will do better than individuals, and the bigger the group, the better, as long as each person in the group is more likely than not to be correct. 

But agreement on the Declaration of Independence was not a simple process: contentious, fraught with delays, and but for some late-arriving delegates, would not have had the unanimous support of the states.  This reminds us how difficult it is for group decision-making to achieve constructive closure. 

Group decision-making can produce pernicious outcomes.  Speaking to this is the book, Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, by Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at University of Chicago Law School.   Sunstein says that face-to-face deliberation “is full of pitfalls.  Deliberating groups can blunder badly; sometimes they act like mobs….Does deliberation actually lead to better decisions?  Often it does not.  Group members may impose pressures on one another, leading to extremism or to a consensus on falsehood rather than truth….The problem is that deliberating groups often do not obtain the knowledge that their members actually have. “  Sunstein says that deliberating groups suffer from four problems.  They amplify the errors of their members.  Sometimes members of a group simply don’t share with others the information they have—perhaps out of respect for information publicly announced by others.  (The failure of some engineers to speak out in advance of the Challenger disaster is an example.)  Third, deliberating groups can display cascade effects, in which individuals go along with the crowd to maintain their good opinion, or in which two uncertain people appears to lend credence to a position that other uncertain people decide to follow.  Finally, deliberating groups can go to extremes, or polarize, if members of the group tend to think alike.  Nicholas Negroponte and Cass Sunstein have described the effects of echo chambers or opinion “cocoons” formed by information filters that tend to give you only the news you care to hear (Lou Dobbs on CNN versus Fox News)—in the absence of diverse news and opinion, the individual’s views will grow more polarized. 

Teachers observe these difficulties about group deliberation in the context of the case-method classroom.   Managers face these difficulties as well in trying to reach a decision in a business meeting.  In any of these settings, the task for the discussion leader is to bring out the knowledge and opinions that everyone has.  Ideally, one will have some influence over the composition of the group—diversity of backgrounds helps to fight amplification of errors and polarization.  But Sunstein argues that deliberation is not the only route to good group decisions and suggests three alternatives. 

1. Survey the members of the group and simply compute the statistical average of their sentiments.  Such surveys are the epitome of the Condorcet Jury Theory—with all of its strengths and weaknesses.  If members of the survey group know their stuff and individually have a tendency to be right, perhaps group surveys will work.  Condorcet emphasized that the voters in a survey must be “enlightened.”  Increasingly, I see in meetings the use of voting buttons to gain a quick sense of the group.
2. Develop some kind of market for ideas and allow members to invest in their beliefs.  The Iowa Electronic Markets, for instance, have proved to be excellent predictors of the outcomes of key uncertainties, such as elections.  The problem with markets for ideas is that they are as susceptible to error as are other kinds of markets—think of the bubbles in mortgage loans in 2006 or in tech stocks in 1999.
3. Employ the Internet to solicit information and opinions, and to converge to an outcome.  Examples of mechanisms are Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon.com, and the countless blogs.

Perhaps by the Tercentennial in 2076, the technology-enhanced methods of deliberation will have been perfected to the extent that we can greatly reduce the need for face-to-face deliberation.  The impact on business practices and management education makes for interesting speculation—it seems probable to me that both will change fundamentally in the coming decades.  However, I think that Aristotle and Rawls have it right: we still need deliberation—enhanced however it may be with technology—to aggregate the knowledge and wisdom of the group.  The remarkable outcome in July 1776 is one reminder of the importance of good deliberation and the skills of leadership necessary to achieve it. 

Economic indicators suggest that growth of the world economy is slowing.  High commodity prices and fear about future conditions are driving investors and customers out of the market.  What would it take to restore us to sensible growth?

Probably many things.  But among these would certainly be good general management.  My previous posting about general managers argued that GMs are the glue that binds together the different functions of the firm.  Recent research at Darden reinforces this notion in the context of the growing firm.  Ed Hess, professor at Darden and Executive-in-Residence at our Batten Institute, has been studying the role of general managers in producing long stretches of organic growth within companies.  He wrote to me recently to say that building a stretch of strong internal growth depends on creating “a seamless, consistent, self-reinforcing alignment across strategy, execution processes, structure, leadership, culture, HR policies, accountability, technology, measurement and rewards.  In other words good growth leaders (CEOs) at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, SYSCO, Tiffany, UPS, etc were good general managers who were able to think in a systems integrative mindset across functions. My research shows that to be a consistent high performance company, strategy is not enough- you must be a great execution company. And to be a great execution company you need a deep bench of good servant leaders, high employee engagement, customer centricity, and a good technology platform across your company-especially your supply chain.  Again, this is the power of integration and alignment. General management is a way of thinking- a mindset which appreciates the integrative complexity of human behavior.”

Yes.

 I have received a number of comments regarding my post on the Scoretop issue. I appreciate your thoroughness, your opinions, and your interest. We will carefully examine your comments and gather all the facts.  Since the situation is dynamic, this will take some time.  We will respond in due course.   Please direct specific questions about the investigation to GMAC.  For added perspective, I encourage readers to see a set of frequently-asked questions (FAQs) that GMAC has posted for schools on gmac.comwww.gmac.com\scoretopFAQ <http:\\www.gmac.com\scoretopFAQ>  and for students on mba.comwww.mba.com\scoretopFAQ <http:\\www.mba.com\scoretopFAQ>.

We tend to become the stories we tell about ourselves—or so cognitive psychologists remind us.  As a teacher, I have seen numerous examples (good and bad) in students.  We see this in organizations too.  That’s why my colleagues in strategy, ethics, leadership, and communications emphasize the importance of mission/vision statements and business leaders for reminding their enterprises about the collective aspirations.  Our stories can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I was reminded of this yesterday by Adam Nelson, who qualified for the Olympics in the shot put event.  He is a member of Darden’s Class of 2008 and won the Silver Medal in shot put in the 2004 and 2000 Olympic Games.   I met Adam in the course, General Managers Taking Action.  He was a capable student, articulate, respected by his peers, and with good judgment.  What I saw on TV yesterday was an incredible competitor: focused, tightly coiled, and then with massive—almost explosive—physical power.  To the casual observer, Adam in the classroom and Adam in the field were two different people.  I think they were one and the same.

Indeed, I think that most students who come to Darden carry some extraordinary ambition for which the learning experience at Darden represents a partial down payment.  In addition to his academic work, Adam invested heavily in conditioning, training, and competing that would prepare him for the Olympic Games.  Such preparation is so complicated and arduous that it requires serious skills of management to go forward.  Patrick Sweeney (D’98), an oarsman who missed the Olympics by a split-second in the qualifying races, described himself as an entrepreneur: raising money to cover his training, managing his development, handling logistics for various contests, and so on.    

Darden students carry very complicated stories about themselves.  For Adam, it was to get an MBA and an Olympic Gold Medal as a prologue to a career serving world-class athletes through business.  For others, the “and” may entail founding a business, addressing a social problem, serving in politics, starting a family, or becoming an expert.   Rather than striking a contradiction, it is usually true that getting an MBA makes sense in the context of the larger story that our students tell about themselves.  Indeed, it is the prevalence of such stories—combined with strong will—that presages a destiny that is remarkable in some way.

The outcome of the Olympic Games in China will be thrilling to watch, not least because of the unfolding drama of the stories of the individual athletes.  But the Games are never the whole story about these people.  The Darden Community wishes Adam Nelson great success in China and then great success in achieving the rest of his story.    

I had dinner last week with a group of Darden alums who work for General Mills.  Whenever I do these, I hear encouragement for the school to continue the momentum of excellence.   And I often hear ideas about what to do.  This evening was no different.  Betsy Frost (D’05) runs the “Old El Paso” food brand for General Mills (note that she is three years out of Darden and is running a business with $600 million in revenues).  She said that outsiders tend to view brand management as some kind of technical specialty, when it is not.  She spends 30% of her time on technical marketing, and the rest on issues of manufacturing, supply chain management, finance, and organization.  Betsy’s job is not that of a narrow technician—by any stretch of imagination, she is a general manager.  She said, “the power is in the interconnectivity and the bigger picture.”  She and the other alums at dinner that evening urged Darden to deepen the integrative nature of its teaching so as to build the capacity of its graduates for general management.

Historically, Darden has been no slouch in this area.  Last January, Financial Times ranked Darden’s MBA full-time program #3 in the world in the field of general management.  Our executive education business gets very high rankings in the area of leadership.  A team led by Darden’s Professor John Colley has published a leading textbook in general management.  Something like a sixth of our alumni holds the title, “chief executive officer”—and this ignores folks like Betsy whose executive responsibilities would surely qualify as general management.  Maybe two-thirds of our graduates either are or have been general managers. 

Betsy has a point.  General management in business is like “dark matter” in physics: it is the invisible force that binds everything else together.  One easily loses sight of its importance—and its difficulty.  It is easy to suppose that once you have dipped into all of the functional specialties, you can be a general manager simply by practicing the functions well.  I doubt that.  General management requires an enhanced awareness of the connectivity among the functions, an ability to anticipate how the functions can interact.  These interactions can be virtuous where the functions pull together in a way to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts—or the interactions can be pernicious, dragging the enterprise down.  The general manager must have wide-angle vision—an enhanced sensibility—with which to parse the virtuous from the pernicious and have a bias for action with which to do something about the interactions he or she sees.  I don’t think you are born with these qualities; you must learn them. 

We get it.  The design of the first year of our MBA programs promotes integrative thinking through the case method, as intrinsically integrative, and through Darden’s unique faculty, who are by choice and in practice intentionally holistic and cross-disciplinary in approach.  This year, we are introducing new program classes incorporated into individual courses but intentionally focused on integration.  We are also introducing a new course configuration in the first year that should build this integration further.  It is called, “Leadership Experience At Darden” (LEAD, for short) and entails enhanced coordination and team-teaching among a number of courses.  This summer and fall, faculty committees are taking a fresh look at the integration within our curriculum.  A team of students is helping us think about fresh opportunities.  We will find a way to broaden the general management reach of our graduates while continuing to deliver great depth of functional mastery—our model is the so-called “T-shaped” manager who is both broad and deep.

To be great, a school must constantly innovate in the design of its programs—and do so in a way that serves its constituents.  We hear the appeal for greater development for the integrative, general management point of view.  We will continue to reach for the higher level.

Lei Shi is on the run, a fugitive in a foreign country.  A U.S. court slapped him with $2.3 million in damages and seized his assets in the U.S.  His problem: he operated a website, www.scoretop.com, that misappropriated and distributed actual questions appearing on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).  For some $30 he sold subscriptions to the questions on the web site.  The owner of the test, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC)[1], tracked him down and sued him for distributing copyrighted material.  Mr. Shi is now the focus of a criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

Worse for ScoreTop's customers is that in the seizure of assets, GMAC obtained the hard drive to Mr. Shi’s computer.  A GMAC official said, "GMAC is principally focusing its efforts to pursue those individuals responsible for stealing GMAT items and posting those items on the ScoreTop website.  If there is compelling evidence of a test taker knowingly violating GMAC policy regarding improper or inadvertent access to test content, GMAC will execute its responsibility to schools to cancel GMAT scores of the breaching test taker and notify recipients of the cancelation."

Getting admitted to a competitive B-school is a life-changing event.  The GMAT is a high-impact part of the admission process.  Therefore it is tempting to try to obtain live test questions (and probable correct answers).  Darden and its peer schools will brook absolutely no cheating--those who provided actual test questions for resale to others were violating the integrity of the test, sometimes for their own gain.  The integrity of the GMAT is vital to the discovery and admission of the best talent.  The GMAT is easily accessible and objective; therefore it helps to democratize the discovery of talent.  The advancement of society depends on the promotion of strong talent from wherever it may originate.  Thus, it is appropriate for GMAC and all B-schools vigorously to defend the integrity of the test. GMAC is a not-for-profit organization governed by over 200 B-schools.  This effort to defend the integrity of the GMAT (and other efforts like it) promotes the integrity of business academia and less directly, the integrity of the business profession.   

An official at GMAC told me, "There are many test preparation organizations available to test takers, some reputable and some not. Any test preparation organization advertising “real GMAT items” is guilty of lying, stealing or both.  ScoreTop advertised access to live GMAT items.  In preparing to take the GMAT test, one should steer clear of these organizations as they can harm your future.   Buyer, beware!"

We at Darden don’t know all the facts of the situation at this point, so we are not going to do anything precipitous.  If, as we learn more, we believe someone has cheated, we will take appropriate action.

It is not unreasonable to assume that if you obtain live test questions from any source, GMAC will discover it and come after you.  Applicants are well-advised to deal with only the most reputable test-preparation providers and to write an honest test.