From Second Tier to Top Tier

Fred's a crack plumber, but his plumbing company is second tier. Yet, he aspires for the recognition that comes with tier one status, and so do six of his competitors.

The local paper considers Fred's chance to join one of the tier one companies slim at best. "Imagine Pop Warner football players trying to move up to the NFL," wrote the plumbing beat reporter about the prospects for Fred and the other six second tier plumbing companies to join the tier one companies.

While Fred works towards tier one status, it doesn't dominate his life. After all, he's still got a business to run. He's got to recruit and train plumbers to help elevate his game. He's got to attract customers.

Among other duties, Fred's service manager, George is tasked with training. George is an innovative guy. He came up with an innovative way to provide training with less effort and little or no cost.

George's idea? Let Cheap Depot do the training. Since Cheap Depot holds regular DIY classes for homeowners, George'll just slip a few of his crack crew in the classes. Not only that, Cheap Depot sells a few plumbing items at prices below the supply house (as long as quality's not a huge issue and internal plastic components will do instead of brass).

Being a self-starter, George launch's his Cheap Depot training program. Fred finds out what's going on and catches George just before he calls the local Business Journal to brag out his training innovation.

If you were Fred would you Tell George...

Wow, what a great job. Boy-oh-boy will this help our image. We'll be seen as a conservative, prudent company. They'll have to elevate us to the top tier now.

Or...

What? Are you insane? Even if you're set on trying something this lamebrained, don't tell anyone. Do you think this is how a top tier plumbing company performs? Do you think the top tier plumbers use Cheap Depot training?

My guess is Fred chooses the second option. It's what anyone would do, right? Maybe a top tier company could try sliding people into a Cheap Depot class and people would applaud, calling it guerrila training. A second tier company with top tier aspirations, however, cannot appear to be pulling a second tier stunt.

Using Cheap Depot for the company's training program would make the company the laughingstock of its peers. It would hamper the company's ability to recruit qualified plumbing apprentices, journeymen, and licensed master plumbers to its ranks. If that's not enough, it would also cause consumers to doubt the company's quality and skill level. Does the average consumer really want a plumber who's training comes from Cheap Depot?

No one in their right mind would do something that stupid, right? Make that, no one other than a college professor.

You see, this is exactly what a business professor at Texas Tech University did. Instead of keeping it quiet, the university's trumpeting its innovation.

For non-Texans, Tech is one of seven tier two public universities in the Lone Star state. Texas has two tier one schools: Texas A&M and the University of Texas. Tech wants tier one status, but is like a Pop Warner player seeking to make an NFL roster according to the Dallas Morning News.

So what did the professor do? He published "the first-ever graphic novel textbook on management." Think "comic book." That's right, he's teaching business students from a comic book.

According to the university's website, "Students used to get detention for reading comic books in class. Now a similar format is being used as a way to engage them in learning."

This may truly be an innovative approach to education, but promoting the use of comic books as the textbook for a business management course is stupid marketing. It makes the university sound like a joke, which is not the right positioning one should seek when trying to become a tier one university.

The prof admits others look askance at the comic as a collegiate teaching method...

“Some colleagues initially find the idea of a comic as an educational tool to be strange, but after I tell them that the Federal Reserve has been putting out comics on topics such as monetary policy for years, the 9/11 commission report was in graphic novel format, that the graphic novel 'Maus' won the Pulitzer Prize, and that many movies were originally graphic novels, they are generally won over and quickly embrace the idea once they see the finished work.”

Of course, the Fed's comic books are designed for kids, not college students and the 9/11 Commission Report is not in comic book form. It's a 600 page report.

A couple of comic book creators, with credits "Richie Rich" and "Casper The Friendly Ghost" as credits, produced a comic book version of the 9/11 Commission Report. According to the Washington Post, "The creators say they hope their book will help attract young readers and others who might be overwhelmed by the original document."

Is the Tech professor implying that Tech business students would be overwhelmed by a management textbook? I hope not, but it appears so.

Certainly, Maus is an outstanding work. It helps bring home the horrors of the holocaust in a similar way that Orwell's Animal Farm taught about totalitarianism. However, it's Pulitzer was a special citation of "Letters," which is the form of Pulitzer given to Dr. Seuss. "Oh the places you'll go" with a children's book/comic book education?

And is the professor really making the case that comics are suitable replacements to academic textbooks because movies were made from the Spiderman, Superman, Fantastic 4, X-Men, Captain America, DareDevil, and who knows how many other comic books?

Look, Tech is a good school. I know a lot of very bright and capable graduates of Tech, but the school isn't doing past or future graduates any favors by trumpeting a comic book curriculum. Hiring authorities will have to wonder about the quality of education degreed students received from a comic book and worse, the quality and capability of students who require a comic book to learn.

Maybe Harvard or Yale could pull off a comic book approach to an academic education and we would all be amazed by their innovations in matriculation. Tech cannot.