What does the average manager doing MBA needs to do to become a great manager?

My post “What Does the Average Manager doing an MBA Need to do to become a Great Manager” has been published by my friend, Fernando Tarnogol in his blog. I would like to thank him for taking my writing to his readers in different parts of the world.
Do have a look on:
http://fernandotarnogol.com/2010/04/12/what-does-the-average-manager-doing-mba-needs-to-do-to-become-a-great-manager/#more-1004

It took only a few months, and now the search for culprits behind the current economic mess has arrived on campus. What caused the recession? America's business schools. As the New York Times points out, some of the most prominent poster children for the crisis and bailout are financial sector leaders who learned their management chops at top-ranked MBA programs. Naturally the question arises: just what are these people teaching?

As someone who's seen quite a lot of what business school professors focus on, I'm convinced that the curriculum is part of the solution, not the problem.

It still might be true that an MBA holder is more likely to focus too narrowly on investment returns--to the detriment of the greater good--than a non-MBA would. But it's not what they're learning that causes this, rather it's who they are. I say this in light of a concept that is familiar to educated managers: self-selection bias.

Why is it, after all, that aspiring managers choose to earn an MBA? Sure, they may deplore their current knowledge deficit, having gained skills in only one business function and industry.

But whether that's true or not, they've certainly figured out that the MBA offers an attractive return on investment. That payback can happen in different ways. The low-risk option is to enroll in a relatively inexpensive program on a part-time basis (especially when tuition reimbursement is available from one's employer). A higher risk, higher return option is to enroll in a top-ranked school, quit your job, move your family and pay maximum tuition for a chance to earn an elite degree.

You see where I'm headed. The type of person who has the appetite for this second kind of risk-reward equation--plus the brains to excel in a rigorous academic setting--is the same type that Wall Street firms have been so eager to hire. The financial sector hasn't valued people for what they learned in their top-tier business schools, but for the kind of intestinal fortitude that got them there, their willingness to make huge sacrifices, and the drive they have to attain that MBA, at nearly any cost.

That's suggests a correlation between the MBA and the financial sector meltdown, but not causation. So does that let top MBA programs off the hook? Not at all. As B-schools consider what to teach and how to teach it, they need to keep this self-selection bias in mind.

When building an MBA program, a great B-school used to ask: What does the average manager need to become a great manager? Now the B-school has to ask: What does the average manager who's motivated to enroll in a top-ranked MBA program need to become a great manager?