As I watched President Bush parrying reporters' zealous questions on his financial dealings with Harken Energy at a recent news conference, I wondered if he was feeling a sense of deja vu. It wasn't the first time he'd had to defend a position on accounting issues against rapid-fire questioning from a group of hyper-aggressive interrogators, after all. Almost 30 years earlier, he'd had to do the same -- in classroom discussions with fellow students at the Harvard Business School.
It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that George W. Bush, Class of 1975, is the first MBA to reach the top box in America's organizational chart. That fact might appear to be particularly relevant now, as he deals with a tumbling stock market, growing corporate malfeasance and questions about his own business background. But if he were to reach back to his two years of management training at Harvard for guidance at this critical point in his term as CEO in Chief, is there any real practical assistance his MBA could offer him for dealing with the problems that are beginning to creep into his presidency?
I've studied Bush's experience at Harvard and went through the same graduate program 16 years behind him, and I think the answer is yes. There's a significant lesson he could -- and should -- draw from his time in Boston. It's not about accounting, though, or advising Americans on stock investments. It's a broader, more philosophical -- but ultimately simple -- lesson: What he needs to do is become a more detail-oriented, hands-on manager than he has been to date.
This doesn't mean that, Jimmy Carter-style, he should start keeping the schedule for the White House T-ball field. But he does need to adjust his very big-picture managerial style.
When Bush came into office, promising a more "businesslike" administration than Bill Clinton's, much was made of his so-called "CEO-model" of management. He does appear, at first blush, to be the prototypical Harvard Business School-trained corporate manager, following the highly delegative, generalist leadership method espoused there and practiced by many Fortune 500 chief execs.
Harvard Business School offers all the standard courses of most graduate business programs -- marketing, accounting, finance, strategy. But the school's emphasis is less on content than on process. Students aren't asked to memorize much textbook knowledge, but instead to develop a decision-making and problem-solving approach that best fits their natural assets and liabilities. Graduates are less likely to leave with the ability to understand complex annual report footnotes than with the confidence to take on any managerial situation they may run into. One Bush classmate puts it well: "I'm not exactly sure what I learned, but I use it every day."
The thing is, Bush takes all this to the extreme. For someone often derided as not having been a good student, he appears to have learned the B-school teachings almost too well. As president, he has created a unique "less is more" managerial style of delegating more responsibility and requesting far less information than the average Harvard MBA or corporate CEO.
Typically, CEOs know their businesses inside and out, and are curious to learn more (with the exception, of course, of those top executives now desperately trying to persuade investigators they had no idea how their companies balanced the books). Even the actual former corporate chief execs in Bush's administration, like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, immerse themselves in the details of their areas of responsibility. Bush, though, has been managing more like a chairman of the board -- a job that doesn't usually require as detailed a familiarity with day-to-day operations.
So maybe it's not surprising that a recent New York Times/CBS poll found that a remarkable 45 percent of Americans believe that Bush is not really in control of his administration, and that "other people are really running the government."
If Bush reviewed his B-school notes, he'd see that Harvard taught him to delegate but verify. He was told not to learn every fact, but to know enough to ask the right questions; not to overthink, but not to overly rely on the thinking of others; to take a big picture approach, but not to ignore grays and complexity; and to not sweat all the details, but to sweat enough of them to manage effectively.
Though he has called business school "a turning point," Bush rarely comments publicly about his time there and devotes only three general paragraphs to it in his autobiography. "Harvard gave me the tools and the vocabulary of the business world," he writes in "A Charge to Keep." "It taught me the principles of capital, how it is accumulated, risked, spent and managed."
So it did. This is actually reflected in Bush's remarks at the Harken news conference. As it happens, he was right on the money with his most widely quoted answer -- "sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures." "I taught him well," says his accounting professor, James S. Reece, now at the University of Michigan business school. "Accounting rules are gray."
But Bush's business education isn't going to provide him with much more help than that in determining how to clarify fuzzy corporate accounting procedures; nor is it far-fetched for him to say, as he did last week, that he's the "wrong guy" to talk about stock recommendations. It can, though, help him figure out how to head off the nascent disarray -- in everything from handling the corporate crisis to organizing homeland security to the continuing war on terrorism -- that potentially threatens his administration. All he has to do is think back to the case studies.
At Harvard, every night, Bush had to analyze and come up with an action plan for cases in three different courses.These well-researched narratives provide students with real-life situations seen through the eyes of a manager facing an important decision. Here's a hypothetical one: "George W. Bush sat in his usual front row seat at Arlington Stadium on a warm July night, watching his Texas Rangers struggle to score runs. As managing general partner, he would soon have to decide whether to give the final okay to a trade bringing veteran .300 hitter Harold Baines to the Rangers in return for a 20-year-old rookie with only one career home run, named Sammy Sosa." In each class -- whether it be general management, negotiation or accounting -- someone would be cold-called to open with a 10-minute analysis and action plan on the situation in front of 90 fellow MBA candidates ready to pounce analytically during the subsequent Socratic free-for-all.
In the classroom, Bush displayed an unusual confidence that stood out even among America's most self-assured. "Plenty of students were scared out of their wits," recalls Rudy Winston, who taught the Human Behavior in Organizations class. "George felt from the beginning that this environment was something he could handle."
Part of this might have been personality and upbringing, but a large part, in fact, was that he worked hard and came to class prepared. In fact, a former roommate of Bush's told me that early in his first year, Bush moved out of a house full of second-years so that he could focus more on his studies. "I was there to learn," he writes in "A Charge to Keep," "and that's exactly what I did."
His uneven performance at the news conference, however, clearly showed that, in Harvard parlance, he had not "nailed" the Harken case. News reports said he had joked through a prep session earlier in the day, assuring his aides that he knew his stuff and didn't need to knuckle down. As a result, he had come to class under-prepared, which for him can be problematic. Bush's presidential management model, Ronald Reagan, could lead effectively without in-depth policy knowledge because the former actor more than compensated with unparalleled communication skills. Bush is a transparent speaker; it's obvious when he knows his stuff and when he doesn't. He can't wing it.
Harvard instructs students to play to their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses. If you perform best with a certain level of preparation, figure out a way to get it. For Bush, that sometimes means going beyond the executive summary.
Historically, Bush has performed best in managerial situations in which he's had a strong grasp of the subject matter. When he was with the Texas Rangers, his first business success, he probably knew more about baseball than any other owner. Then, as Texas governor, he focused on four policy areas and learned them well. It's no coincidence that the issue he knew best, education, is the one where he accomplished the most.
In the weeks after Sept. 11, the president displayed a CEO-level command of the facts, and his public performance reflected it. He seemed more confident in off-the-cuff situations, frequently making himself available for reporters' questions. The improvement wasn't due to an overnight transformation in Bush's natural rhetorical skills. He became more hands-on, he put in more hours and he began to sweat the details. He was better at it, because he knew his stuff, and seemed to see value in knowing more rather than less. Similarly, last summer, much was made of the unusual (for Bush) amount of time and deliberation he accorded the issue of stem cell research. Even those who disagreed with the final outcome applauded the way he got there. Why, then, doesn't he employ that decision-making model more often?
At Harvard, according to his classmates and professors, Bush thrived in group activities and was often the consensus leadership choice. Whether in the annual business simulation, in which he was elected president of one of the better-performing mock companies, or as captain of the highly competitive intramural basketball team, he exhibited the same hang-loose managerial traits on display now. But back then he didn't hesitate to take control when necessary. On the court, in particular, ex-teammates remember a point guard who took charge and whipped some headstrong individuals into a cohesive and ultimately successful squad. At Harvard, "George showed he could herd cats," remembers team center Jim Schroer.
With recent signs of managerial disorganization, particularly in homeland security and economic policy, it's time for America's CEO to roll up his sleeves and take control. As he approaches an important midterm, Bush should remember that the lessons he learned and the style that worked for him 29 years ago at Harvard can help in the White House now. For the MBA President, the time has come when more is more.
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