I expect the better MBA programs like HBS point this out and treat it more as a way to “install” theory and do some drilling of conversational tactics and build a live cache of useful problem-solving data and code fragments. But in case the case method/practice gap isn’t clear...
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In practice, you move 10 problems along 1-2 steps at a time with 1-2 people, and multiplex them while waiting for data or right insight or theory wedge. And you don’t debate or persuade as much as you might think. Instead you gather political capital via wins elsewhere to prevail
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Businesses aren’t democracies. The ongoing debate is for thinking and putting the design elements for positive action on the table, not a prelude to a vote. Then a core 1-3 people with enough political capital to stake on it simply decide to move/not move on something.
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There’s something like a background of 100 equilibrium, non-crisis problems, and an Overton window of possibility where enough people with political capital are in mood to move things. Containing maybe 10. Picking an activated case to work matters more than thinking excellently
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Problems are rarely “solved” if they are pure management problems (if an engineering or financial fix disappears the problem it wasn’t a management problem to begin with). Instead 30% are repeatedly reconfigured/refactored around 10% “fixed point” problems until they resolve.
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Not a math error. About 60% of “problems” are optical illusions that never need to be solved at all. Just muddled through until they kinda vanish in a puff of shifted perspective and movement elsewhere. Premature case studying is the root of all evil.
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I get the sense that the case method was possibly more meaningful about 20-30 years ago. I get a genteel old-fashioned whiff of management by Organization Man collegiality and a simpler life. Or maybe it never existed.
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I don’t know if MBAs are sensing the growing mismatch too. But feels like the pedagogical model needs some evolution to reflect what might be called a cultural shift from more single threaded to more distributed problem solving.
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