Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't know what it want's to be, 5 Sep 2008
[This review is actually for the US version of the book Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School, but since this is the main UK version I thought I'd post here instead.
Firstly, I'm a recent HBS graduate, and like Mr Delves-Broughton, I was also from the UK, though I had more of a traditional business background before attending. This book has been gaining quite a lot of interest from the HBS community with various debates as to how fair a representation it is.
My major criticism is that the book really doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a description of the day-to-day experience of HBS?, Is it a commentary on American Capitalism and the HBS adminstration? Is it the author's own introspective look at his own life and what he ultimately wants to be? It is in fact of all of these things, but due to lack of consistency in the writing style it ends up feeling quite disjointed and a difficult read as it switches at random from excruciating detail about particular classes to broad ruminations about the author's overall view.
As for the content, everything that's mentioned in the book are fair criticisms of the school. Every single point that is raised is based solidly in fact and the HBS administration would do well to pay heed to many of the observations. In fact the back cover of the US edition, highlights a particular bug-bear of mine, the gaming of the financial aid system by many HBS students who benefit despite having huge financial resources - and these are the same students who debate from the moral high ground in a class about ethics! However, in his haste to highlight these failings of the school I feel that the author is really missing the big picture. As you read you can't help but feel that he decided that he would never fit in before he went to HBS and has written a book that picks out all the bad elements of the school to justify his position.
During my time at HBS I found all the things that the author mentions equally frustrating but they were far out-weighted by the school's positives. The outstanding quality of its faculty, the supberb facilties, my fellow students who were not only academically bright but incredibly active in a huge range of activities (setting up businesses, running charity campaigns etc..) all made it a very rewarding place to spend two years. Sure, there was plenty of idiots who get caught up in the rush to banking or consulting or are ultra-competitive and lacking in social skills, but nobody's perfect and if you let other people ruin your day then you're the idiot.
Overall I'm wavering between 3 and 4 stars. 3 stars because its not that well written and the author seems to never want to be part of it (you can't help the feeling that he always intended to write a book), 4 stars because if you've ever wondered what its like to go HBS its a reasonable expose. Just read it with a pinch of salt.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An inside look at the economic elite, 11 Aug 2008
Philip Broughton went into the Harvard MBA like an anthroplogist goes to live with an obscure jungle tribe - this book works on the same principle of outsider wisdom, of the newcomer able to see just how strange the social norms of these hard-to-access cultures can be. Marvel at these elite MBA-ers and their language of "creating a developmental agenda for leveraging their reflected best-self"! Puzzle at the strong emphasis on business integrity and moral judgment, when fact is everyone's really there to learn how to make a lot of money. But, however odd, the Harvard MBA programme indubitably produces global business & economic leaders who shape a substantial portion of our lives, and so it's in everyone's interests to understand how this elite are taught to think.
'What They Teach You At Harvard Business School' is not just a guide to the economic and management concepts the MBA students study. Broughton does talk about these topics, giving examples of the Harvard study system of analysing hundreds of case studies. This method seeks to teach the students how to handle the chief challenge in business: making good decisions with inadequate information. It's no substitute for the actual course, largely because none of the examples' statistics are published in this book, but as a non-economist I definitely learnt a lot regardless.
But of wider relevance is Broughton's discussion of the 'hidden curriculum' of Harvard Business School, the assumptions it inculcates in its students and the distorted beliefs they already hold about work & the economy. What do they think is the value of the money they'll be earning, when will they know that they've made enough? "When you've got your own jet." Even the pre-arrival guide says, "Don't bring that guitar... Don't bring any books from literature or history classes... Don't bring your cynicism. Do bring all the diverse rest of you." Interesting notion of diversity, right? The idea that future business leaders are being trained to dismiss history and cynical judgments is telling, and Broughton, a former journalist with the Telegraph, is never able to buy in to this culture. Instead of getting a high-flying job like his coursemates, he remains a writer - but the strength of this book is that he's not bitter about this. It's not a rant, not really an expose (no truly horrific secrets are uncovered) - just an insider's look into a world most of us won't enter.
The compelling narrative is Broughton's own decision-making about his future career: Harvard forces him to confront the values that really matter to him, makes him question deeply what it is that he really wants out of life. This is something a lot of university graduates and prospective MBAs could benefit from reading - I know I was fascinated.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterly, 4 Aug 2008
For those interested in business, this is a marvellous, easy-going guide to all those things you thought you vaguely understood but couldn't really define - price/earnings ratios, balance sheets, profit and loss.
But the wit and fine writing will appeal to those who couldn't care less about this sort of thing. Delves Broughton nails the idiocy of managementese; he skewers his dons and fellow graduates of Harvard Business School with beautifully chosen direct quotations and very funny analysis. He also manages to get in quite a lot on the point of life - don't kill yourself doing something you don't like; don't kill yourself making a fortune you don't really need.
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