Trust the Process (But Not the Students)

Why Snowstorms, Schedules, and Student Autonomy Pose Strategic Risks

There is something touching about the way HBS protects us from ourselves. Other schools gamble on their student’s judgment, trusting adults in their late twenties and early thirties to interpret weather advisories, manage competing obligations, and allocate their own time. But HBS remains vigilant. It understands that if left unsupervised, we would squander our time and fail to fully grasp the value of this MBA experience. We would schedule coffee chats, attend conferences and speaker events, travel on the weekends, or god forbid, even cross register for classes. So HBS does what any steward of future leaders would do and governs with dutiful skepticism.

This is not accidental. The in-person classroom experience is the crown jewel of the HBS value proposition. This is its brand, and its key differentiator amongst competitors. Once constructed, brands vigorously defend themselves against dilution. If students could openly treat the classroom as one among many valuable uses of time, it would become subject to comparison. If it must compete with recruiting, relationships, speaker events, and personal well-being, it may not always come out on top. It is less risky to preserve the supremacy and sanctity of the classroom through strictness and structure than to acknowledge that a modern MBA contains multiple legitimate paths to value. It is less risky to defend the brand as we know it today than to evolve it.

This has become visible during recent meteorological events of biblical proportions. As snow piled up, states of emergency were issued, flights were grounded, and state authorities advised residents to stay off the roads, HBS performed its time honored ritual of waiting to cancel in-person classes. Premature cancellation could signal flexibility, or worse, a clear prioritization of student, professor, and staff safety. Instead, cancellation announcements arrived at dawn, when those commuting from the furthest reaches already had hit the road. We should all feel grateful that HBS is looking out for us. Ensuring we are sat in Aldrich to contemplate the innovations in VC organizational structures is unequivocally worth the risk of two thousand students being blown into the Charles River or fishtailing out on I-90. It is not indecision but commitment to pedagogy. 

This same commitment governs the calendar. For years, students have attempted to raise the heretical notion that schedules could be standardized, perhaps even where the same classes are on the same sets of days at the same times. In such a world, life could be planned with something approaching coherence. Others have proposed a regularly recurring half-day or full day off to accommodate recruiting meetings, interviews, or other activities pertaining to the distinctly non-MBA related pursuit of post-graduation employment. These suggestions are received with bemused confusion and polite pats on the head. 

And I get it, truly. Predictability is dangerous. With predictability comes the ability to plan, increased autonomy, and the destabilizing possibility that students might allocate their time in ways not centrally ordained. A standardized schedule would imply that HBS believes students can prioritize and balance their commitments responsibly. A protected recruiting block would imply that career development is not an extracurricular activity to be shoe-horned in, but a legitimate component of the MBA experience. Once autonomy is legitimized, leverage is forfeited. The system is not designed assuming good faith behavior. Policies are optimized for the hypothetical worst-case student rather than the well-above-average adult professional.

This is ironic because the purpose of this graduate institution is ostensibly to produce leaders. We are taught to design organizations around trust, incentives, and accountability. We do case studies on firms that empower employees and flatten hierarchies. We discuss the cost of misaligned assumptions. And then we collectively refresh our inboxes at 7:32 a.m., awaiting acknowledgement of the first blizzard to hit Boston in ten years and the two feet of snow accumulating outside our windows.

The question is not whether the classroom matters, because it does. Students still schlep to school in the snow despite declared state emergencies. Students deeply appreciate the quality of the education and engage enthusiastically in the classroom. HBS remains the premier business school in the world and a magnet for global talent. The question is rather whether its perception of its own value is so fragile that it cannot accommodate a standardized schedule, a more proactive snow storm policy, or a recurring free afternoon for recruiting. If the case method produces leaders capable of running multinational enterprises, I would hazard it might also produce adults capable of managing their calendars.

The author has requested to remain anonymous.