Quote:
Originally posted by sycamore
But how can it be MBA style? Ridge has a JD, not an MBA. 
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Lee Iacocca had an engineering degree from Lehigh and an MBA from Princeton. Which was he? His decision making process was product oriented - at least until his last days in Chrysler when he tried to kill the Neon. He was called a car guy - not a bean counter.
Don Petersen replaced Henry Ford in Ford Motor. Petersen was MBA trained. But he was clearly a car guy - more concerned with the product than with finance. Therefore he saved Ford Motor from bankruptcy.
Henry Ford was MBA educated. He could not drive a car nor understood why he should drive. He had an MBA degree and made decisions accordingly. He was a classic MBA type made even worse because of his MBA degree.
Ridge did not create Office of Homeland Security. Geroge Jr and his advisors created the office. George Jr is MBA trained meaning that the only company he could run without bankruptcy was a baseball team - protected from free market forces by a Supreme Court ruling. Vice President Cheney is an MBA who reigned over Haliburton as they (now alleged from an ongoing investigation) cooked the books.
Today and again, we know the FBI was told names of two terrorists who planned to hijack airplanes three weeks in advance. For six months, FBI director denied that this and many other information was available even to the Director. These actions in combination with field office memos from AZ and MN make top management intent over the past 6 months disturbingly obvious.
In hindsight, a good, product oriented manager would have addressed bureaucracy problems, immediately, in the FBI. Mueller and the White House did not. Instead those problems were ignored, publically and repeatedly denied, and instead, another layer of bureacracy was created - Office of Homeland Security.
When Ford was run by an MBA named Henry, Ford engineers had 48 levels of bosses. When Petersen, a car guy, fixed Ford Motor, the levels of management were reduced to 6. Product people solve problems by addressing management problems - including less bureaucracy. Ross Perot called it using money as a scapel to solve problems.
MBA type can only create more levels of bureaucracy. They throw more money, like a grenade, at those problems. That is the George Jr administration's solution to severe management problems especially at the FBI. More bureacracy and more money - like the classic MBA type - while denying for 6 months the real reason for problems.
One need not have an MBA degree to think like one. In the USSR, it was called communism. "We are the key decision makers and we will tell you when your house needs a new roof". Just another example of MBA thinking. Centralized bureaucracy whose ignorance of how work gets done is covered up by creating more bureaucracy - ie Office of Homeland Security.