Consider the plight of today’s economists. Only a few short years ago their profession was at new heights of respect and consensus. Now, “economist” is a curse word on the lips of every unemployed person in America.

Prior to the onset of the financial crisis and the “Great Recession” of today, Alan Greenspan once famously stated that he believed “systemic financial risk had largely been eliminated,” in part through the advent and spread of various new financial innovations. Most everyone who cares to has heard about this enough times to have this line practically memorized by now.

However, what isn’t heard very often is consideration of what Greenspan said shortly after the crisis had really set in. In October 2008 testimony to angry members of Congress, Greenspan testified that his prior assessments stemmed from an ideological belief that financial system participants would regulate their own activities out of a sense of professionalism and risk-aversion. In short, he failed to consider that actors in the financial and credit industries were motivated by other factors, such as a systemic preoccupation with short-term returns – e.g., participants taking a herd mentality toward activities that pushed to the very edge of legality and beyond, and with no consideration for risk – everyone was doing it, so how could it be risky? The irony of this seems to have been lost on the media, and maybe on us as well.

The significance of this is hard to overstate. The Fed Chairman – by way of providing an excuse to the American people – essentially blamed the people in the system for the financial meltdown we are still enduring today. I would’ve asked, but Mr. Chairman, hadn’t these people always acted in a quintessentially predictable way? E.g., in what they believed to be their own self-interest? What was hard to predict about that? Wasn’t it obvious by early 2008 that participants had, out of competitive necessity if not pure greed, stopped critically assessing risk in their decision-making out of self-interest?

As someone who has at times been tasked in the past to drive change in large organizations through introduction of new or redesigned systems, I am trying to take away a few key learnings from this collapse:

1. To build or manage a system well, the “people” variable must be understood. Strive to consistently understand motivations and create incentives to ensure desired behavior.
2. There’s no monopoly on poor judgment when building and managing systems in which people are a critical variable. It will surely continue to occur at the highest levels of politics, government, and business management.
3. Group-think kills. Taking conventional wisdom at face-value, being overconfident, over-focus on executives in attributing success or failure, etc. are lazy and dangerous modes of thinking. Constant critical assessment and independent thinking are still required.

What else? I’m sure there are other considerations. Let me know.

Check out this great SlideShare presentation on LinkedIn titled SMAWG – Social Media Overview. Andrew Eklund is a friend and former colleague of mine who owns a local web marketing consultancy. The last several slides in particular demonstrate an unusually deep understanding of how Social Media is changing the online marketing landscape, as well as where it “fits” contextually relative to user behavior and marketing philosophy. When it comes to putting Social Media to work for business, Andrew sure knows his stuff.

Apparently my family is not alone in spending much of their morning time on a laptop: (see 8/9 NY Times article “Breakfast Can Wait. The Day’s First Stop Is Online“).

At Cafe McLaren, typically Mom rises first, makes coffee, and jumps online to check out Facebook. About 30 minutes, later, Dad stumbles downstairs and waits for an opportunity to, well, blog about things like this, check email, and fire up the TweetDeck.

What to make of all this? Well, for one thing, Gen X seems to find itself in the Boomers’ former position with Web 1.0: Web 2.0 has found its legs, and it is acknowledged because segments other than Gen Y have fallen in love with it – particularly Gen X.

I’ll just come right out and say it: the perceived value of an MBA is probably lower today than it has been at any time since universities starting offering the degree in the late 1800s.

I was catching up with an B-school professor friend of mine I’d met in school a few months ago. He was telling me about the newly-concluded summer session of classes and mentioned that he’d seen a major uptick in the number of student protesting when they got any grade other than “A”.

We discussed this for a time, considering the possible causes. Could it be a Gen Y/Millenial thing? Could it simply be the fact that the economy is bad and they don’t want to “slip up” by getting less than perfect grades, thus jeopardizing their ability to get quality employment? We supposed it could be both, plus maybe a few other factors unknown to us, and left it at that.

But a few weeks later, the conversation resurfaced in my mind, and I realized that these students are probably just naive. They actually think it’s worthwhile to protest getting a B in B-school. More significantly, they actually consider getting a grade to be an end rather than merely a means to an end.

Grades are little more than an imperfect measure of a student’s ability to go through the motions of learning – i.e., read articles, take tests, write papers, etc. [full disclosure: I got mostly A's, but I know a lot of people more successful than me who didn't.] Actual learning is something that typically requires doing these things, but is in fact a separate outcome.

So who does care about grades? Well, in an abstract, impersonal way, the school does – they have to measure you somehow, after all. Who else? Hopefully, the student. That’s it. No one else.

Why should the student care? Because their future success depends on it? No. They should care because getting to the real value of an MBA starts with handling the material, and that’s measured by grades. But that’s not the endgame; it’s only the first step. The whole value proposition might look something like this:

H + A + R + D = Real Value

Where:

H = Handling the material
Attending class, reading the assignments, taking tests, writing papers, etc. – in other words, the stuff that affects your grade.

A = Absorbing it
Thinking, discussing, making connections with content from other classes, comparing and contrasting learnings with real-world experience, etc.

R = Retaining it
Holding enough of the material near enough to your consciousness to retrieve it when it’s needed.

D = Doing/using it
Applying what you’re learned in school to real-life work challenges in an appropriate and effective way.

The only reason to care about grades is they measure your ability to do H in the equation above. To get to D, the endgame, you also have to do A and R, which are difficult. A lot of students don’t get to D, because getting there is HARD. Thus the acronym.

So grades should really only matter to the students and the school. If you got a B, you should only care because of what getting a B says about your likely ability to also do A, R, and D down the road.

Your thoughts?

Me: Hi. My name is Chris. I’ve been working in Marketing IT, Online Marketing, Product Development and eCommerce for 11 years. And I’ve never built my own blog.

(Voices of other Online Marketing professionals who’ve never built their own blogs): Hi, Chris.

Me: So, I guess it all started back in 2001. I was working as a creative director for a web dev shop in Minneapolis called Ciceron (they’re still around!) and they had a company blog, which I contributed to once or twice, but never built my own. I actually tried once. Used an early version of Movable Type. It sucked. I gave up after a few hours… (sob!)

Moderator: It’s OK. Go ahead, you’re among friends.

Me: (Pulls self together) Thanks. So I’ve doing ebusiness consulting lately and realized I really ought to build a blog to share and learn from others as a passionate practitioner of marketing, innovation, and product development. After all, I’ve been working in roles that require varying degrees of knowledge in these areas for most of the last decade.

(Voices of other Online Marketing professionals who’ve never built their own blogs): (Fearful Moan…)

Moderator: So, Chris, what did you do?

Me: I discussed the issue with a few colleagues to confirm what the best platform might be for my particular purpose. They suggested WordPress. I set up my own domain, and installed the software on my web server. I set up the database using cPanel. It was actually pretty easy!

(Voices of other Online Marketing professionals who’ve never built their own blogs): Oooooo!

Me: Yeah, I was surprised. As a design guy, I ended up doing a lot of futzing around with php to get everything looking and working the way I wanted it to, but it took me back to my old coding days a bit. The main differences between now and 2001 is the software is way easier to use and there are resources everywhere online to help with every aspect. Nice to see things have evolved.

Moderator: Well! Sounds like you’ve had quite a breakthrough. Let’s give Chris a hand. (Applause)

Me: Thank you… thanks… I’m glad I got that off my chest (takes a deep breath). Whoooo-yah!