No. 10, April 2022.
"What was the most important thing you learned during your time in the MBA?" was my favorite question during conversations with graduates about their experiences in the two years of the program when I was academic dean of INCAE with five previous presidents. In their answers they made no reference to techniques or managerial concepts; rather they talked about the skills and qualities they had acquired, such as the self-confidence they now felt in their professional lives when facing complex situations. When asked how they had acquired these skills, there was a common thread: the case method.
"We've had to deal with over 500 different situations in every type of industry and environment," was the typical response from a recent graduate. "Commitment," responded a CEO with decades of building successful companies. These are enduring skills, such as self-confidence, that Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, calls "meta-skills" because they produce other related skills, just as the habit of case preparation reinforces the quality of discipline. Someone who has not gone through the case method may underestimate the power of these meta-skills.
Preparing is, precisely, a meta-skill that the method teaches at the beginning of each class, three times a day, fifteen times a week for two years. The unprepared student suffers while waiting for the possible initialcold call from the teacher, and must live with the consequences if he cannot start the session with his proper analysis of the case.
Other meta-skills cited by Nohria that I have experienced in and out of the classroom are the abilities to discern, to recognize biases, and to collaborate.
Discern. Many of the cases are lengthy, with number-laden appendices, and the method forces the student to discern between the key facts and the "chaff" of lesser relevance to the protagonist. Being able to read quickly is useful, but even more useful is the ability to read actively, formulating hypotheses and looking for evidence to support or discard them.
Recognize biases. The student may have immediate reactions to a case, based on his or her previous experiences or background; he or she may never have met peers as diverse as he or she encounters in an international MBA. Discussion of cases, where different points of view are expressed, can help the student become more aware of his or her own biases and more tolerant of others' points of view.
Collaborate. While there is some competitiveness in case discussion, collaboration is essential, especially in group discussion, sometimes known-misleadingly-as "study groups" (they should have studied the case before; now in groups of 5 to 8 people, they must share their analysis before the plenary session).
The impact of these latter meta-skills was evident in the first meetings of entrepreneurs and ex-guerrillas in INCAE programs in Nicaragua and El Salvador. As always, the discussion groups in each country were heterogeneously organized, with a mix of gender, profession and experience. Within a short time, participants were discussing problems, alternatives and solutions, forgetting ideological positions. They discovered that, when faced with a complex situation, they had a common interest in solving the problem.
