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Interview with Paul Bracken on Midlife Crisis
February 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary
Paul Bracken Prof. Paul Bracken, leading expert in global competition and the strategic application of technology in business and defense. 
Firstly, congratulations for your
illustrious scholastic achievements
(research, teaching and consulting)
and advisory role contributions (for
being a member of many high-powered
committees). How does your experience
of being a part of Council on
Foreign Relations, Chief of Naval Operations
Executive Panel, the Transformation
Advisory Group of the US
Joint Forces Command, etc., influence
you as a business management
professor?
Thanks for the chance to speak to
your readers. The outside groups I
work with are on the front lines of
global change, and this permits me to
see the problems and opportunities
going on in the world.
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I can’t imagine
teaching at a business school and not
actually being part of the changes taking
place today. -
You have been rated as the best
teacher in Yale's executive education
programs. What is the difference in
teaching regular MBA program students
and executive MBA students
(including teaching customized programs
to executives)?
Executives have more experience,
and often more insight. They tend to
be less enamored of academic fads.
Most importantly, they are another
source for cutting edge change ideas
in the world of business. -
What qualities do you think a BSchool
teacher should possess and
hone? Should he be good in teaching?
Should he be good in research
and publications? Should he be good
in consulting? What is the relationship
between these three areas of faculty
expertise? Or are they Businessschool
specific?
Good teaching is a learned skill. I was
pretty badmediocre at first, and nowI
get very high marks. Different academics
will bring a different skill mix
to the table. But I believe passion, enthusiasm,
and being interesting are all
important factors to successfully
transfer knowledge. -
What changes have you observed
in management education in the last
decade – from the standpoint of student
selection, curriculum, faculty
composition, pedagogical methodology,
student assessment, etc? Do you
find that Asian business schools
(CEIBS, Asian Institute of Management,
Indian School of Business, etc.)
are catching up with Ivy League Business
Schools?
The big change I have seen is a trend
toward hyper specialization – and
now a reaction against it. Look at the
financial crisis we are in. Mathematical
models of risk were built with no
understanding of organizational politics
or behavior. As one example of
this, there was little attention given to
strategic risk, as opposed to the standard
risk categories of credit, market,
and operational risk. No general
would go to war based on a model
and without considering the political,
economic and other factors. But the
heads of our leading financial institutions
did just that.
I think Asian business schools are
catching up rapidly. Many of my best
students are from Asia. Asian schools
have a great opportunity in second
mover advantage, that is, to look atUS
Ivy League and other schools, copy
the best, and avoid the worst. -
Scenario planning had been one
of the popular strategi t was in
oblivion for the last decade or so.
Why is it so?
It wasn’t just scenario planning that
was in oblivion. Itwas any integrating
framew ork, such as systems engineering,
operations research, or business
war gaming. If you think about
it, it’s astonishing that systems engineering
hasn’t been emphasized
more, given the tremendous challenges
facing our societies. The trend
in the last decade was toward hyper
specialization, of holding all other factors
constant. New ways to teach
problem framing and integrated
thinking are the biggest trend in management
education today. -
You teach a course on Problem
Framing and your forthcoming book
is about strategic foresight. Are these
two connected with scenario planning?
What is the main focus of your
forthcoming book and whose purpose
can it serve best?
My most recent book is Managing
Strategic Surprise, Lessons from Risk
Management and Risk Assessment
(Cambridge University Press, 2008).
It looks at how risk management is
really done in big sprawling organizations.
Controlling the definition
of risk categories, for example, is
central to organizational control.
Most investment banks in the current
credit crisis failed to make a fundamental
distinction between vigilance
(i.e. warning of what might happen)
and readiness (i.e. consequence management).
Many people would be surprised
to learn that this distinction,
vigilance and readiness, is one of the
central ideas in the military surprise
attack literature.
1.
Crisis Management Case Study
2. ICMR
Case Collection
3.
Case Study Volumes
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