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Four Stages Management Education The of A Managers require different kinds of education as they progress through their careers. As business schools seek to match their offerings with executive needs, they may find they can't be all things to all people. by Kai Peters 20-year-old undergraduate with a marketing major doesn't have much in common with a 60-year-old CEO of a multimillion dol- lar firm. Even so, if business schools had their way, both would find their educational needs served by the same institution—and so would executives at every stage of their careers. The truth is, at different points in their lives, business executives need wholly different types of management education. This fact should have profound consequences for business schools, yet administrators rarely consider it as they design their programs or select their faculty. A lack of alignment between what the market needs and what business schools offer has been the primary cause of the soul searching that has been rife within the business school community for the past several years. I believe that business education should be broken into four categories that correspond to the four different kinds of education executives require as they move through their careers. At the outset of their careers, managers must be functionally competent. As they take on more responsibility, they must have a grasp of context and strategy. As they rise higher in the ranks, they must develop the leadership skills needed to understand and influence people. As they become CEOs and other top executives, they must develop the reflective skills to understand what they wish to accomplish. Schools that cater to these differing needs can position themselves along a continuum of education. Most schools are doing an excellent job in some areas, although they fall down in others. In fact, I do not believe that it's easy for schools to serve all of the needs of all participants across the whole range of career stages. The schools that try to do so must be quite large and must carefully select and allocate faculty. Few succeed. It's better for schools to focus on the areas of business education that work best for them—and their students. One Stage at a Time At different points in their lives, executives must acquire, and business schools can help them hone, four distinct skills: Functional competence. At the most basic level of ability, managers must understand the fields of finance, accounting, marketing, strategy, IT, economics, operations, and human resource management. Business schools are actually quite good at fulfilling these needs at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Business school departments most frequently are organized by functional silos, and academic journals also mirror those disciplines. Many studies acknowledge that graduates at this level are satisfied 36 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2006