Elias the locksmith works in a small shop on a street with many trees and he understands the nature of friction. He takes a blank key and he puts it into a machine and the machine cuts the metal and the sparks fly and they are bright.

He measures the depth of the cuts with a silver tool. If the cut is too deep the lock will not turn and if the cut is too shallow the lock will not turn. There is a precise mechanical truth in the work and Elias respects the truth.

He does not have to check a portal to see if the key works. He puts the key in the lock and he turns his wrist and the bolt moves or it does not move. When the work is done the customer pays and the transaction is finished. There is no hidden drag on the afternoon.

The Weight of Sunday Afternoon

Theo sits at a desk and he is not a locksmith but he is a student and he is trying to find the truth of a different machine. It is a Sunday afternoon and the sun is high and the room is quiet. He has a textbook on his left and a laptop in front of him and a notebook on his right.

He wants to read about the way an organization moves and the way a leader decides things but he cannot start the reading yet. He has to find out when the paper is due.

The syllabus is a document that he downloaded three weeks ago and it says the paper is due on Sunday at midnight. He opens the learning management system and the system says the paper was due on Friday. He opens an email from the teaching assistant and the email says the deadline has been moved to Monday because of a holiday.

Theo looks at the three dates and he feels a small heat behind his eyes. This is the friction. It is not the management of a company and it is not the ethics of leadership and it is not the data of the market. It is the machinery of the school and the machinery is grinding.

For many years I thought the word epitome was pronounced epi-tome. I read it in books and I thought it meant a heavy volume of work and I said it out loud in a room full of people. They looked at me and the silence was long and I felt the gap between what I thought I knew and the way the world actually worked.

Learning is often like that. You walk into a room thinking you understand the shape of the floor and you trip over a rug you did not see. But in a graduate program the rug should not be the software. The rug should be the ideas.

The Administrative Choice

The administrative friction of a master’s program is not an accident and it is not a temporary glitch. It is a choice made by the institution. To make a system smooth costs money and it requires staff and it requires someone to care about the user experience.

It is easier to let the student absorb the cost. If Theo spends two hours every Sunday cross-referencing three different systems then the school saves the money it would have spent on a better system. Theo’s time is free to the school and so the school spends it. His energy is a resource and the school burns it like fuel to keep its old engines turning.

Atlas K. is a museum lighting designer and he understands how energy is wasted. He stands in a dark gallery and he aims a beam of light at a painting by a dead man. “Light is only good if it hits the subject and does not spill on the wall,” Atlas says.

“Light is only good if it hits the subject and does not spill on the wall.”

– Atlas K., Lighting Designer

He is a man who knows that spill is waste and waste is a failure of design. In the world of the graduate student the subject is the knowledge and the wall is the administration. When the student spends his best hours clicking through broken links and hunting for login credentials the light is spilling on the wall. The painting remains in the dark.

Theo clicks a button and the page refreshes and the screen goes white. He waits. The fan in his laptop begins to spin and it makes a thin sound like a distant jet. He thinks about the assignment. He is supposed to write about the way Peter Drucker viewed the worker as a human being and not as a tool.

It is a good topic and it is a deep topic but Theo is currently a tool of the system. He is the bridge between the broken syllabus and the faulty portal. He is the one who must reconcile the contradictions.

The curriculum is supposed to be the hard part. A student should struggle with the concept of strategic intent or the complexity of ethical decision-making in a global market. That is a productive struggle. It is the struggle that builds the muscle of the mind.

But struggling with a password reset or a confusing navigation menu is a parasitic struggle. It takes away and it gives nothing back. It is a tax on the soul of the learner.

We are told that graduate school is a test of endurance and we accept this. We think that the exhaustion is a sign of rigor. But we must ask what is causing the exhaustion. If a man runs a race in the sand he will be tired but he will have stronger legs. If a man runs a race with a stone in his shoe he will be tired but he will only have a wounded foot. Most graduate programs put a stone in the student’s shoe and they call it discipline.

The California Institute of Advanced Management was built by people who looked at the stone and decided to remove it. They understood the Drucker philosophy and they knew that management is a liberal art and they knew that a student’s time is the only thing that cannot be replaced.

They designed a program where the textbooks are included and the terms are seven weeks long and the classes are small. They took the friction and they put it in the trash. When a student does not have to worry about the logistics of the bookstore or the gatekeeping of the GMAT he can focus on the light.

The Well-Cut Key

If you are a working professional you already have a job and you already have a family and you already have a life that is full of friction. You do not need a degree that adds to the drag. You need a program that acts like a well-cut key.

You put it in the lock and it turns and the door opens. You want to study the way a leader shapes the future and you do not want to study the way a portal hides the link to the submission box.

Theo finally finds a note in the announcements section. The note says the deadline is Sunday. He has lost ninety minutes of his afternoon and he is tired. He looks at the textbook and the words are there but his mind is still stuck in the navigation menu.

He reads a sentence about organizational culture and he has to read it three times because he is thinking about the PDF that would not open. The friction has a half-life. It stays in the blood long after the click is over.

The institutional indifference to this friction is a quiet tragedy. It suggests that the student is a customer who should be grateful for the chance to suffer. But the best leaders are those who look at a process and ask how it can be made more human. If a school teaches leadership but practices bureaucracy it is teaching a lie. It is saying that the system is more important than the person.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about that word epitome. I realize now that the word itself is an epitome of my own pride. I wanted to sound smart and I failed to do the basic work of checking the sound. But a university has no such excuse.

A university is a collection of experts and it should be the place that sets the standard for how a system should serve a human being. It should be the place where the light hits the painting and the wall is ignored.

When you look for a place to learn you should look at the machinery. Look at the way they treat your time. If the enrollment process is a maze and the scheduling is a riddle then the learning will be a chore. If the school treats your schedule like a precious resource then they will treat your mind like one too.

Elias the locksmith finishes his day and he hangs his apron on a hook. The shop is clean and the keys are in their rows and the work is done. He knows that every key he made today will open a door. He did not waste anyone’s time.

Theo is still at his desk and he is finally writing his paper but the sun has gone down and the room is cold. He will finish the work because he is a man of discipline but he will be more tired than he needs to be. He will have learned about Drucker but he will also have learned that the system does not care about him. That is the lesson he will remember the longest and it is the lesson that should never have been taught.

The cost of a degree is often measured in dollars but the real price is paid in the hours you spend fighting the ghost of a dead calendar. We must demand better machines or we must find the people who have already built them. Leadership is the act of making the path clear for others. It is time the schools began to lead.