What They Teach You at Harvard Business School: My Two Years Inside the Cauldron of Capitalism
by Philip Delves Broughton
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List Price: ££12.99
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Manufacturer: Viking
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
EAN: 9780670917761
ISBN: 0670917761
Label: Viking
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2008-08-07
Publisher: Viking
Studio: Viking
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: What Mr Broughton should have thought about earlier?
Comment: I believe that this is an interesting read for anybody who is considering an MBA at Harvard Business School and where Mr Broughton describes the teaching and details of the MBA the book is informative and useful.
The main problem I had with the book is the complete lack of Mr Broughton's understanding of his own situation. If you are a journalist and work at the Paris office of a UK newspaper you are definitely on the right career track and the decision to try out something else might be understandable but if you choose Harvard Business School you must be very naive to wait for the professor or tutor to tell you that the most important thing in the world should be your family and a reasonable work-life balance. That is comparable to a legal trainee to go to one of the City law firms and expect a nine to five working day or to a yogi to wait for somebody to say after the class "Who is a up for a quick one then?".
If Mr Broughton wanted to know more about business administration a course at any uni should have done the trick. I believe that he chose to go to Harvard because he was flattered to be accepted. However, it seems clear to me that he was accepted because of his journalistic background which gave Harvard the opportunity to boast about the variety of people who are interested in attending. It is really sad when Mr Broughton describes how he cannot find a job or is not willing to go all the way. It seems to be some sort of midlife crisis and I pity his wife a bit to have wasted well in excess of USD 100,000 for the 2 years of "finding himself" but at least they were able to spend some time with their kids together.
The editor of the book must have been fast asleep or maybe Mr Broughton was not listening but for the last 50 pages one is waiting for the happy end which never comes. It is not really an achievement to get an MBA from Harvard Business School and then to be unable to get a job.
The pinnacle of ignorance is when Mr Broughton decides to right a novel during his 10 weeks vacation between year 1 and year 2. At this stage it should have been clear to him that we was just wasting his time.
Obviously this book is very topical given that Hank Paulson and George W. Bush both went to Harvard Business School. The book is also quite chilling when it talks about people applying to Lehman Brothers.
Maybe Mr Broughton should edit the book and re-publish with the hindsight of the credit crunch minus his personal waterloo.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Journalist's Take on Harvard Business School's MBA Program
Comment:
Philip Delves Broughton was on top of the journalism world as the Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London when he got itchy feet and decided he wanted to go to business school. Setting his sights on Harvard, he was pleased to get in.
I attended Harvard Business School while in law school many years ago. I was surprised to find out how many things are similar to when I attended. The student complaints were similar, too.
I thought that Mr. Broughton did an excellent job of explaining what the case system is all about and what occurs in preparing for and during a class. If you've always wanted to go to HBS, here's a chance to take a peek.
The book's strength is in exposing the values behind HBS, people seeking the highest-paying jobs despite the personal cost to family life and one's own soul. Mr. Broughton made some half-hearted attempts to seek out such opportunities, but ended his two years at Harvard with a large loan to show for the experience . . . and no job.
The book's weakness comes in Mr. Broughton's desire to teach you some of the basic concepts about business management. I doubt if you are interested. He doesn't always get it right, either.
I found myself comparing What They Teach You at Harvard Business School to One L, Scott Turow's brilliant description of the bad old days of being a first-year law student at Harvard. One L is a better book. But both are powerful in explaining what it feels like to be a student in the middle of the gigantic forces moving to shape you like a vise into a new form that will be attractive to employers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A fly-on-the-wall view of American's most prestigious business school
Comment: Speaking as someone who is moving from academia to business, and from the UK to Boston, Philip Broughton's book about his experience as an English journalist also moving out to Boston for the MBA resonated very strongly with me. A cultural outsider by virtue of his background, culture, and has he suggests several times, his age (32 vs average of 27 at HBS), this book gives the kind of insight that a prospectus never could. Compressing two years of education into a paperback is quite a tall order, so Broughton gives a flavour of each of the modules he took there, from financial models to ethics and corporate strategy, as well as touching briefly upon the typical case studies he encountered there.
Where this book was at its most interesting for me were in some of the the narrow-minded, self-serving, and even dangerous beliefs of his fellow peers, who have little time for ethical considerations and firmly believe that a free-market business rationale should be applied to all spheres of life, regardless of little externalities like corporate responsibility. I also particularly enjoyed Broughton's almost comical experiences with the "milk round" recruitment circuit, with students all repeating the same rote-learnt mantras to get through rounds of interview. The author, being typically British about it, tries to be honest and open, and doesn't get invited back.
Where I do reserve some judgement, though, is the fact that if I had been in his class, I'd feel a little like the author hadn't fully committed to the process. He came to HBS ostensibly to get away from journalism, and two years later here he is publishing books, hardly a massive change in direction for two years and some £90k in forgone earnings and fees. Of course, this seems to be quite typical for HBS grads; all the bankers, consultants, and hedge-fund managers who came for a career-changing experience all obediently trotted right back to where they'd come from once the mortgage needed paying.
All in all this is an entertaining and engaging read if you have even a remote interest in business, the MBA, or Harvard Business School. Maybe it'll teach you that HBS isn't for you, maybe it'll have you submitting an application when you didn't think you were interested at all. Maybe now I should read "What they DON'T teach you at HBS" just to be thorough!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Doesn't know what it want's to be
Comment: [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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Takes you inside a top MBA
Comment: Having just finished an MBA myself from London Business School, I saw this book at Heathrow on my way out of the UK and bought it with curiosity. I wanted to see whether my experience at London Business School would have been significantly different from that at a top American school; Harvard, of course, as far as MBA brands go, being number one in my opinion regardless of what competitors or any rankings say.
This book can be recommended to those interested in applying to Harvard or a comparable top MBA program to see if they have the right expectations of an MBA program; as well as to graduates of other programs to see how the experience at their schools compare against the holy grail of MBAs. It really goes inside what the MBA culture is about in general, especially at elitist schools, and at Harvard in particular. Broughton is not the only MBA who feels like this. The unreal world, the pressures, the tendency to go with the herd... despite having studied at a school across the atlantic, I continuously kept on smiling at the commonalities.
I disagree with the notion that this book disses the school, or the MBA in general. It just points out very well some of the absurdities of the program for all those who are not financial crackheads.
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