to be some evidence that the Management gene is passed to the next generation from the MOTHER. If so, this changes everything!
Let’s take your average unmarried, unlovable hedge fund managers (“Please”). Now, you and I think that there should be a bounty on their heads, but look at it from their points of view. In any rational Darwinian world, they would be shunned and never mate, but they do mate and reproduce. Somebody has to build ugly McMansions in Greenwich, CT. But if recent history is right, they are mating with the wrong gene pool: why else would their kids be so dysfunctional? Getting it right with the First Wife is terribly important; much better to get a DNA sample so you can figure out how to have progeny who will not urinate away your inheritance (“I’d like a lock of your hair to remember our first date”).
Remember, it isn’t brains we are after, it’s markers for Management. No longer is it necessary to ask those leading questions (“What was Brooks Robinson’s Lifetime Batting Average?”) to get a read on future Mrs. First Wife. No more worrying that your progeny may wind up Hare Krishnas—plan ahead! Marry someone with the Management gene and you will truly have offspring who can care for you and your money in your old age—where you will still be unloved, but you will be surrounded by the patter of little management tyros.
Think of the advantages for venture capitalists. No more sitting through boring PowerPoint presentations or hearing lies all day (“We have no competition”), or even telling lies all day (“Our money is different”). For the first time, there is a way to separate out the true entrepreneurs from the merely unemployed…And if you could combine both the Entrepreneurial gene and the School Dropout gene, you could get a generation of Steve Jobses, Larry Ellisons, Bill Gateses, and Mark Zuckerbergs.
We have always blamed the financial problems on the economic times. It is time we faced the real issue—incompetent managers. If we could have better managers, would we have had these examples?
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”—Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment, 1977
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”—Jack Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
“The concept is interesting and formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.”—Yale management professor to Fred Smith, founder of FedEx.
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”—President of Western Union to Alexander Graham Bell.
And what did we get when the first MBA became President? George W. Bush, a graduate of the Harvard University School of Management. HBS watched their alumni president so mismanage Katrina that they will be citing this for a 1000 years. Wouldn’t they have been better off returning his tuition money for the promise never to mention where he got that degree? Wouldn’t they have been better off never admitting him in the first place? I, for one, never blamed George. I blamed Barbara.
