Greed and History - the Lessons

The lessons of greed and history
Schools need to go beyond churning out money-making machines, says Hsuan Owyang
Thursday • December 11, 2008 (thanks to TODAY)
Lin Yanqin
yanqin@mediacorp.com.sg

ASKED what lessons the ongoing economic crisis has thrown up, Mr Hsuan Owyang said without hesitation: "That peoplealways forget."

"Many things in this crisis are not new," said Mr Owyang, :who for 25 years has chaired the National University of Singapore Business School’s (NUS BIZ) Advisory Board, and is being honoured with a dinner tonight.
"If you learnt your lessons well, you can avoid the pitfalls."

Hence, one piece of Mr Owyang’s parting advice to NUS BIZ as he steps down from the board is: "Take history seriously."

"So many of our executives don’t take advantage of what history can teach," he lamented.
The 80-year-old, who is among other things the deputy chairman of the CapitaLand Board, stressed that it was not about finding past solutions to present problems. "It’s about understanding human nature better," he said. "Human traits like greed, fear and inertia have always been there and people always behave a certain way under certain conditions."

Business education, he strongly feels, should rise above a mere focus on making money.
"Business school can’t just be turning out money-making machines," he said with a shake of his head.
One key suggestion he made as NUS BIZ chairman was to introduce humanities electives, such as psychology, political science and business history, into the curriculum.
"Education of any kind should be about making people better human beings and I think business education should give people the tools to not only make a comfortable living for yourself but also make society better," he said.

Mr Oywang — who arrived in Singapore from the United States 43 years ago and served for 15 years as the chairman of the Housing and Development Board — said he was proud to have been part of Singapore’s critical founding years.
In 1983, as Singapore was trying to build up its trading port and develop industries, Mr Owyang saw that it was crucial for the business school to turn out graduates with the ability to managebusinesses.
"But the professors’ approach was academic and some of them have never even worked in the real world, so it was really about making business education more relevant to the practical world," saidMr Owyang, who worked in banking for12 years on Wall Street.

Wanted: Independentthinkers and ethics

Another thing he hopes NUS BIZ can take away from the financial crisis is to encourage independent thought. "You have to be able to separate fact from opinion, and avoid the herd instinct and make sound judgements," he said.

"People saying ‘housing prices always go up’ is an opinion. But too many people don’t do the homework of understanding what are the facts.
"It’s not a question of overhauling business education, it’s the presentation (of the basic skills)," he said. "It’s how you teach people to make something out of it."

But how far can schools go in producing people who think for themselves and learn from the past to make sound decisions?
Mr Owyang acknowledged that "a lot" came down to personal choices in life.
"In America, they call graduation commencement’, because the education is only the beginning," he said.
"I’ll tell you one of my favourite jokes. At the top of this 52-storey bank, you have the top man, who’s supposed to know what to do and what not to do, and in the basement, you have all these trainees learning the basics of finance."
But even as these trainees were learning not to, for instance, give loans to people unqualified to pay them back, the man at the top was doing exactly that. "The power to repay is very basic in banking," he said. "The 52-storey man could have learnt all this in the basement 20 years ago, but over time, he just forgets."

The hardest things to teach in business school are "ethics and enterprise," because much of it relies on the individual. But it needs to be done. "You might not be able to achieve much, but the important thing is to make an impression," he said. "It’s worth trying."

If you’re scouting for an MBA , some tips
There are countless business schools and courses on the market for those seeking a business education, but don’t be "misled" by the variety, said Mr Hsuan Owyang.
For instance, while there has been a proliferation of specialised courses, such as a Master of Business Administration in Statistics, the best business schools are the ones that provide a good general education.

"Once you specialise that way, you are only a specialist. Business is not supposed to be like that, you should be able to do general thinking, to move across fields and solve problems," he said.
"The best schools are well-known for certain subjects, like Wharton is very good for finance, but they are strengths, they don’t narrow down to those aspects ... narrowing down is not a true reflection of a good business school."

A good business education should provide not only strong fundamental skills but also qualitative skills.
"My proudest accomplishment was that I had an education that allowed me to move from the private sector to the public sector with ease ... even though my time in the public sector was nonfinancial," said Mr Owyang.
"What I got out of my years at Harvard was the skills in human relations, business history, policies – that’s what enabled me to contribute to society."

And a reputable school still counts.
"You can’t just go to any school and buy a piece of paper, because when you go into an interview, the interviewer ... when they see you’re from a school that’s not known and they don’t teach you anything, they won’t even take you seriously," he said.

Lin Yanqin