by Barry Mitnick
Consider this scenario: There is a terrible automobile accident. While the patient lies groaning and bleeding on a wheeled gurney, the residents engage in a lively debate in a corner of the emergency room, facilitated by the chief resident. Glancing now and then at the victim to check aspects of his injuries, the residents suggest things that could be done to assist the victim, only to have other staff members challenge their proposals. The chief resident "will let members discuss whatever aspects of the case they wish...." His job "isn't to ... help ... reach a consensus; in fact, often the thought process will be far more important than the conclusions." After a while a young doctor asks, "So what's the answer - what are we supposed to do? "
The chief resident replies, "[Medicine] is not, at least not yet, an exact science. There is no single, demonstrably right answer to a [medical] problem. In every [medical] situation, there is always a reasonable possibility that the best answer has not yet been found - even by teachers."* The debates continue, and the chief resident smiles, pleased at the cleverness of his students. At the end, he summarizes and comments on the debates, highlighting the themes and approaches championed by different student doctors, but does not indicate with finality whether any of the suggestions are best for this case. The patient soon expires, and everyone goes home, satisfied that the process they followed made everyone think deeply about the patient's problems.
The case was a success. The patient died.
If teaching like this wouldn't pass in medicine, why is it acceptable in business? Doesn't the caution to do no harm apply there as well, to the corporate person? It's time - indeed, way past time - to cast a close look at a true untouchable: the case method in its pure, classical form.
Charles Gragg's famous article, "Because Wisdom Can't Be Told," argued that business cases promote independent thinking, as students inductively reason through the facts of a "real" case and gain valuable experience with the "real" business world. Rather than being "told" a preferred action alternative by the instructor, students compete to offer the most compelling view of appropriate managerial action. Yet the classical case method suffers from severe limitations, at least as the primary way to deliver a course:
• Cases are not "real" - they are accounts, not the real thing; can grow dated; and ignore actual "real world" experience.
• A course full of cases lacks time to introduce the systematic content of a discipline and the results of modern research on management practice. Indeed, where can students acquire the knowledge tools necessary to properly assess a case? The case method developed in an era in which management research was in its infancy; that era is long past.
• The standard caveat on the first page of every case warns that it was prepared "as the basis of class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation." Yet students need to know what practices are effective and ineffective -- just as they should be encouraged to examine those practices critically.
• The case method makes the instructor a facilitator; students learn from their peers. But they also need to benefit from deep expertise. Professors must sometimes profess, not merely facilitate. Self-training, like self-medication, is best done under professional direction.
• The case method says discussion should be many-voiced and critical. Yet the use of multiple methods of instruction, including the Harvard model, would go far more directly to achieve this aim, than to lock instruction into a pattern decades old.
There is an almost religious fervor attached to the classical case method that inhibits other ways of learning. Remember, the classical case method staunchly rejects any form of what Gragg called telling. But wisdom can be told, and can be analyzed, discussed, and carefully distinguished from alternatives that are not wisdom at all - and there are many ways of telling, as well as learning from simulated experience.
*The quoted excerpts are from HBS notes on business case teaching.
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