Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This debut by a former journalist at the Daily Telegraph of London chronicles the author's love-hate relationship with the Harvard Business School, where he spent two years getting his M.B.A. Beginning with a confessional account of his disillusionment with journalism and conflicted desire to make money, Broughton provides an account of his experiences in and out of the classroom as he struggles to survive the academic rigor and find a suitably principled yet lucrative path. Simultaneously repelled by his aggressive fellow capitalists in training—their stress-fueled partying and obsession with wealth—and dazzled by his classes, visiting professors and the surprising beauty of business concepts, Broughton vacillates between cautious critique and faint praise. Although cleverly narrated and marked by a professional journalist's polish and remarkable attention to detail, this book flounders; it provides neither enough color nor damning dirt on the school to entertain in the manner of true tell-alls. The true heart of the story is less b-school confidential than a memoir of Broughton's quest to understand the business world and find his place in it. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

Reviewed by Bryan Burrough

In 2004, the 31-year-old Paris bureau chief of London's Daily Telegraph newspaper, Philip Delves Broughton, gave up the rigors of daily journalism. Too many long nights in dismal airport lounges and too many silly French press conferences had taken their toll. Casting about for a change in careers, he applied to business schools and, to his surprise, was accepted at Harvard.

Broughton tells what happened next in Ahead of the Curve, a useful primer for anyone considering a similar path, or just curious as to how Harvard churns out all those gleaming little masters of the universe. This book should really be called "Harvard B-School for Dummies," or maybe "I went to Harvard B-School and all I got was this stupid T-shirt," because it assumes the reader, like Broughton, knows precisely nil about the corporate world, and because the author somehow managed to graduate from the world's premier MBA factory without, well, an actual job.

The book doesn't work especially well as a conventional narrative. There's no suspense; Broughton writes that it's almost impossible to flunk out. Rather, Ahead of the Curve offers a good sense of Harvard Business School's day-to-day workings, everything from what the other students are like to the merits of each lecturer to impressions of business titans such as Warren Buffett and Stephen Schwarzman, who revolve through the doors offering pointers on how to get filthy rich.

Broughton makes a delightfully clueless guide. His math skills are crude, and he can't operate Microsoft Excel. When the other students flock off to Wall Street for summer jobs, he can't get one and is forced to spend three hot months in a Harvard library writing a novel that, thankfully, he tells us little about. In fact, from the outset, he is entirely ambivalent about entering Corporate America. He doesn't really want to work that hard, he admits. He wants to spend time with his family.

How on earth, you ask, did such a slacker end up at Harvard? Great story. Broughton, a fan of the finer things, was interviewing a Latin American business magnate and took to admiring the hushed surroundings, the paneled walls, the spiffy MBAs hovering over laptops in conference rooms. "I felt I had been given a glimpse of a better world," he writes. "If this was business, I could get used to it."

And that, it appears, was the sum total of his experience when he arrived in Cambridge. There are no jaw-dropping surprises once classes begin: long hours surrounded by haughty young hedge-fund hotshots on leave from Wall Street, a frat-house social whirl marked by streams of vodka sucked off blocks of ice and an oh-so-gradual grasping of basic business principles. Broughton tells it all with solid, disciplined prose. He wastes no words and gives us just enough personal information to allow us to understand who he is. About the only places the book bogs down are passages in which he feels the need to actually explain some of the things he was trying to learn: the fundamentals of accounting, manufacturing, marketing, etc.

He is especially good at conjuring up the intangible benefits of a Harvard MBA: the network of Fortune 500 CEOs available with a single phone call; the sense that, just by entering the school, he has somehow become a card-carrying member of the Davos set. At one point, he and a buddy, intoxicated by a class on entrepreneurship, scribble out a business plan for an Audible-like Internet site, and -- voila! -- with nothing more than an idea and a few Powerpoint slides, he finds himself taking meetings with the country's top venture capitalists. Eddie Murphy once did a "Saturday Night Live" skit in which, donning the guise of a white businessman, he finds everyone jostling to give him free money and gifts. That was a joke; this is Ivy League reality.

As his two years draw to a close, Broughton wrestles with his next move. His classmates are all taking new jobs at McKinsey and Bain and Yahoo, but despite myriad interviews, he has yet to field an offer. Part of the problem is what he wants, as he writes in a "Help Wanted Ad I Sought But Never Found" : "Absurdly profitable company seeks journalist with ten years' experience and a Harvard MBA for extremely highly paid, low-stress job in which he can wear nice suits and loaf around in air-conditioned splendor making the very occasional executive decision. Requirements: acute discomfort in the presence of spreadsheets, inability to play golf, poorly concealed loathing of corporate life, knowledge of ancient Greek." Broughton eventually draws interest from Google, but after 14 separate interviews, including an eight-hour marathon in a tiny conference room, he backs out, unable to reconcile his ambitions with life in a Dilbert cubicle.

Luckily, Broughton makes a better writer than corporate drone. If you're thinking of following in his footsteps, I'd invest in this book first.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (July 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201757
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201752
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #58,330 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Thoughtful and Introspective Memoir That Should Be Required Reading for HBS Applicants, September 2, 2008

By	A. Kruglov - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, some disclosure: Philip and I were classmates at HBS, did a project together (which he doesn't directly mention in the book), I've had dinner at his house, and I consider him a friend. If you choose to ignore my perspective because of the above bias, I wouldn't blame you, but I want to make sure that myths (generated by some press coverage) of what this book is about are dispelled: by no means is Ahead of the Curve a tell-all insider-guide bashing of the HBS experience. In fact, I suspect that some of the negative reviews are written by folks who either didn't read the book or didn't read it all the way through.

What the book is instead is a rather touching introspective memoir on Philip's personal experience at HBS as an outsider - someone who, because of his age, career background, nationality, but most of all personality did not fit into the traditional HBS mold. Despite that, the reader comes away clear on the fact that Philip learned a great deal from HBS, respects its educational method tremendously, made some very good friends, and overall came away a bigger person after it. I want to elaborate on that last point - Philip was already a fully formed individual before coming to HBS: a father, a husband, a successful journalist, a well-traveled man. To feel growth after HBS, where the average age is ~5 years younger and the average experience is much more junior is a BIG DEAL.

The book really has two elements to it. One is a witty description of the HBS stereotypes, fun stories about interactions, and, ultimately, a fascinating tale of what it's like to be immersed into the HBS experience. The second (one that I didn't find as exciting having gone there) is a reasonably in-depth description of the cases and educational method. The first element is a joy to read and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Moreover, it's quite an experience to observe Philip's thought process and see how life touches him. Highlights include getting stuck in a white wedding limo in the parking lot at the Google headquarters and frantically taking notes on a loose-leaf sheet of paper during a McKinsey interview. The second element is geared to the book's main target audience: potential b-school applicants. To be honest, I was shocked by how well Philip recollects the cases and formulae from HBS. I certainly got quite a refresher!

In the end, Philip chooses to opt out of the post-HBS grind, having fully opted into the experience while there. Funnily enough, too many people do the opposite. They float through HBS, barely read cases, sign up for courses on Tue-Thu so they can travel all second year, and then opt into a grueling i-banking or hedge fund job. Personally, I think Philip has come out a better person having learned much from what HBS has to offer and still chosen to pursue life in his own manner. He's the type of graduate HBS should be proud of - I certainly am proud to have gotten to know him while there!

Despite everything I wrote above, I must point out that PDB is a writer and as such, he left plenty out that didn't fit his theses. For example, I was a part of a team of three with him on a first-semester project in our second year. Of the three of us, exactly zero has jobs we accepted after graduation. Of course, all of us has unusual ambitions, but comparisons are driven by one's choice of peer groups. Philip stands out dramatically when compared to i-banker types, but he may not be so unusual amongst others, albeit smaller, HBS groups. One of his section-mates, for example, joined a record label in a creative role after school for a salary of at most 1/4 of what he would have gotten had he gone back to his investment banking career.

Overall, Philip gives a balanced perspective on HBS. He gives an even more balanced perspective on himself and it was a joy to follow his personal travails. Yes, he does omit descriptions of some of the more "out there" folks from HBS, but no, he doesn't break any sacred bonds of the HBS classrooms. If you went to HBS and are fuming based on the press coverage of this book, please read it first before forming an opinion. And if you think about going there, PLEASE READ IT!

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journalist's Take on Harvard Business School's MBA Program, September 22, 2008

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Philip Delves Broughton was on top of the journalism world as the Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London when he got itchy feet and decided he wanted to go to business school. Setting his sights on Harvard, he was pleased to get in. The book's title refers to the grading system at Harvard and alludes to the competition to get a leg up on other MBA students in gaining a lucrative job.

I attended Harvard Business School while in law school many years ago. I was surprised to find out how many things are similar to when I attended. The student complaints were similar, too.

I thought that Mr. Broughton did an excellent job of explaining what the case system is all about and what occurs in preparing for and during a class. If you've always wanted to go to HBS, here's a chance to take a peek.

The book's strength is in exposing the values behind HBS, people seeking the highest-paying jobs despite the personal cost to family life and one's own soul. Mr. Broughton made some half-hearted attempts to seek out such opportunities, but ended his two years at Harvard with a large loan to show for the experience . . . and no job.

The book's weakness comes in Mr. Broughton's desire to teach you some of the basic concepts about business management. I doubt if you are interested. He doesn't always get it right, either.

I found myself comparing Ahead of the Curve to One L, Scott Turow's brilliant description of the bad old days of being a first-year law student at Harvard. One L is a better book. But both are powerful in explaining what it feels like to be a student in the middle of the gigantic forces moving to shape you like a vise into a new form that will be attractive to employers.

46 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Behind the curve? , August 16, 2008

By	M. Skousen "author of 'The Compleated Autobio... (New York, New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was interested right away in this book because I taught at Columbia Business School several years ago, and wondered if the same crazing, hard-driving lifestyle existed at other ivy-league schools. Delves Broughton is brutally honest in this insider's look at Harvard's B school, including his admission that he never got a job offer after his 2 year stint (which may explain his cynicism).

He wrote his book when the school was headed up by devote Mormon economist Kim Clark, who has since left for another challenge -- making Ricks College (now called BYU-Idaho) into a top rated 4-year college.

His main conclusion is that MBA students at Harvard are insecure overachievers and "a factory of unhappy people" who, when they graduate, work too much at their jobs and don't spend enough time with their families and outside interests (p. 268) He said most of the famous CEOs who came to speak at Harvard were successful in business but failures in their home live (multi-divorces). On p. 270, he tells the story of a Goldman Sachs exec who came to Harvard to talk about leadership and values, and then confessed he had four ex-wives. However, he fails to mention that dean Clark has managed to have a successful career and a good family life with seven kids and a loving wife.

I'm citing the page numbers because shockingly this book, published by Penguin, doesn't have an index. Talk about behind the curve!

If you want to know what the author thinks of dean Kim Clark, go to pp. 5-6, 19-20, 28, 85-86, 111, 164, and 208. "Clark has whittled his life down to just four things: work, family, faith, and golf." (p. 85)

As far for his suggestions for improvement at HBS (at the end of the book), I thought he had some good ideas. One was that professors who teach entrepreneurship should not be pure academics but practitioners who have had lots of real world experience. Amen. I found that at Columbia B school, over half the professors had no experience running companies, and the micro they used for microeconomics was a standard micro text, not a managerial econ textbook.

The reason for this strange situation is that years ago top B schools decided they should compete with top academic departments by hiring PhDs who write abstract papers in top journals rather than running successful businesses.

The other major drawback to today's top B schools is that they don't teach hardly any history of finance or business, other than case studies (and those are usually from the recent past). Robert Heinlein wisely said, "He who refuses to study history has no past and no future."

What a sad commentary on today's ivy-league B schools. Fortunately, other B schools, such as Acton and Market-Based Management at Wichita State do teach applied courses by practionioners, not just academics.

The author cites a delightful statement by Jack Welch when he visited HBS: "Government generates no revenues. Government lives off taxes generated by business and people that work in business. Don't ever forget that." (See p. 233)

I could find only one sin of omission: Broughton never discussed the "Biggie" course at HBS, the macroeconomic course on "Business, Government and International Economics."

And one sin of commission: I liked his writing style, but he overdid the use of 4-letter words and vulgarities. Isn't it a sad commentary on the business, finance and academic world that top graduates can't control their tongue?