A chance friendship, formed while packing orders in a Guildford brewery during the University holidays, would eventually lead Guy Knapton to Cranfield University. His time studying on the Cranfield School of Management MBA course would not only provide important lessons that he would draw upon in his career – it also led to lifelong friendships and connections that are still just as strong 50 years after graduating. Read on to learn more about Guy’s experiences before, during and after life at Cranfield.
Breweries, brick walls and empty bottles: a friendship that would lay the path to Cranfield
December 1960: the end of my first term as an undergraduate. In a bitter wind off the fens, at Cambridge railway station I exchanged the last of my State scholarship funds for the term for a train ticket home. There, the family of seven would gather for Christmas in Guildford. On arrival, I wandered down the picturesque High Street to greet the water birds on the River Wey.
From its banks, I could see the Friary Meux building. Built in the 1890s on a 13th century friary, the brewery was an important employer in the town. With my courage in both hands I walked in and asked: “Any holiday jobs?”
“Tomorrow, bright and early,” came the answer, “and we’ll put you two lads to work.” Two lads?
The second lad, Peter, and I had two tasks. We packed orders for Christmas presents of booze and sent them for dispatch. One was destined to Peter Finch, a successful actor on stage and film. When orders dried up, we had to throw empty beer bottles at a brick wall. The piles of glass fragments at our feet were removed at night. For three weeks work, we were paid £15/week, or about £350 in today’s money. My student finances were looking up, and just in time: brewing ceased in 1969. In 1974 the brewery was razed.
Performing these hilarious tasks, Peter and I could only become close friends. Later, in 1967, we were both living in London. He was a McKinsey consultant; I a product manager with CPC International, a multinational American FMCG company. After going down from Queens’, Peter had been on a year’s course on Industrial Management at Cranfield in 1967. A loyal disciple, he made a persuasive case for me and a colleague to follow in his footsteps. An amiable interview with the gentle pipe-smoking Director, Peter Forrester, was equally persuasive. I was set to follow my friend to Cranfield, in 1968. Sadly, I only saw him again once: he died in 1991.
In a typically generous gesture, CPC sponsored me to take a year off for this then-unusual initiative. They paid half my annual salary, or about £40,000 in today’s money. My wife generously gave up a good job in personnel with an oil major. Together, we embarked on student life, in a Townsend Close semi with classmate Tom and his wife Maggie as neighbours -Tom would become one of the stars of the class of ’69.
Though I never forgot them, the combination of a good friend, wise advice, mountains of empty bottles and a brick wall would not yet change my life. But a year at Cranfield would - in more ways than the obvious one. Our daughter was born in Bedford in June 1969. Man landed on the moon. In October 1969 we left the UK for an international career that has lasted to the present day and gives up clues enough to how much a year at Cranfield has changed my life.
Did Cranfield make a difference? My year at Cranfield taught me to search for the true meaning of the world of work. If I had any success, it was due to my ability to make sense of what was taking place, and to adapt to changing circumstances.
“We don’t understand what we see: we see what we understand.” (Peter Senge)
Looking back on my friend’s advice, I feel he was bravely owning up to how little he had understood about the nature of the world of work before he went to Cranfield. Intuitively, I felt I understood just as little. A year at Cranfield did not make up for all that I lacked in understanding, but it helped immeasurably. For the first time, I was confronted with a series of courses and subjects that would, in time, help me understand throughout my career so much of what had remained so mysterious since I fledged into the world of work in 1963.
It was said by Kierkegaard that we lead our life forwards, but understand it backwards.
The MBA course was punctuated with many magic moments. We spent a week in “T-groups” or sensitivity training; we followed Organisational Behaviour (OB) classes given by the monocle-wearing Dudley Hodson; Economics with Frank Fishwick, a gifted teacher; Accounting and Finance with the redoubtable David Myddelton, who has remained a personal friend; and Management Control Systems with Bob Boland, an energetic founder of the Cranfield MBA programme flown in from South Africa. These courses, with their myriad accompanying case studies, equipped me to cope later with a range of issues and situations that would otherwise have overwhelmed me.
With the advantage of hindsight, I was learning to grasp the true meaning of the world of work. In a career of 47 years, it would prove to be of immeasurable help. Much later, in my teaching career, I was influenced in this respect by Karl Weick’s work on sense-making. Is it really that we can only make sense of such magic moments when “we can see what we’ve done”? I think so.
My career plays in three Acts: corporate America, entrepreneurial small business, and coaching MBAs. An apprenticeship of more than 20 years in three large multinationals brought me close to the intricate political sphere of the corporate world. Running a small business for eight years taught me that my skills in a sphere where I played only my part were not easily transferable to one where I was the main part. The MBA world brought me face-to-face with Senge’s paradox: we overestimate how much we understand. We’re given to believe what we want to believe and not what our current reality is telling us.
The career changes I made were partly due to shortcomings mostly within my control and partly due to changes in the world of work itself, outside of my control. If I had any success, it was due to my struggle, and subsequent ability, to make sense of what was taking place and to adapt to changing circumstances. No amount of preparation or enthusiasm when we set out on our career can anticipate the consequences for us personally of events that we cannot foresee. It soon becomes obvious that our ability to engage in “bricolage” – to make sense of ourselves in changing circumstances which we poorly understand at the time – and to adapt to what we could never foresee. In life’s outcomes, our capacity and willingness to adapt to change usually prove to be decisive.
My year at Cranfield helped me to make sense of Senge’s wisdom. I was able to make more, and wiser, sense of what I saw. And I could more easily cope with my myopic tendency only to see what I thought I understood - but often didn’t.
There’s nothing like your own command: high points, personal satisfaction – and lots of fun.
My father, a naval officer, used to tell me as a boy that “there’s nothing like your own command”. In my career, I’ve had two “nothing likes”. For five years I was “in command” of a small CPC affiliate in Morocco. Years later, I was to learn from former colleagues just how much we all enjoyed the excitement of growing a small business of about 60 employees into a small business of about 130 employees. I certainly did, and I could not have helped us achieve together as much as we did, if I had not been to Cranfield. The five years called on my every reserve: of understanding; of persistence, of patience; of determination; and, of course, that priceless approach to management practice – “bricolage” or what Charles Lindblom called “the science of muddling through.” My Dad was right, though, there’s nothing like your own command.
To my surprise, my experience of running a small business with someone else’s money was not as easily transferable as I expected to running a business funded with my own money – and neither were my skills. In those eight years I lived for the first time with real risk, that nail-biting combination of the “waiting time” and the “worrying time”, oh so familiar to every banker. Few people I know appreciate just how risky every business is. For every successful business we know of – especially small ones – there are many more that failed, mainly because they underestimated or ignored the risks they faced.
In so many ways, managing a business and teaching are more similar than they seem. Management is coaching in disguise. They both call on similar, finite reserves of human and technical skill. Few of us are born to do either, but most of us can learn to do both. In all, I spent 20 years coaching business management to adult students, in schools and in companies, and all over the EU. My main interest lay in coaching management skills, so OB was a core course. I found that business management was best discovered by students playing business simulations. I developed an effective platform for what I compared to a flight simulator – the sophisticated games were not the “real thing” but, like a flight simulator, they were as close as we could get to it.
The MBA course I composed was enjoyed by hundreds of students and together we learned to understand more of what we saw.
In The Education of Henry Adams the author says of his time teaching at Harvard: “a teacher affects Eternity: he can never tell where his influence stops.” The impact of teaching is handed down from generation to generation. Teaching is a caring profession, poorly rewarded materially, but infinitely so in personal satisfaction. Every week, my inbox groans with kind messages from former students from across the globe recalling the good times we had in class and out. As Director of Academic Affairs, supported by many learned faculty members, I composed our own 16-course MBA. It was enjoyed by hundreds of students for almost eight years: together, we also learned to understand much more of what we saw.
Before I retired in 2007, my first wife reminded me that at Cranfield in 1968, I had said I would like to “teach MBA”. I never “taught” it in that sense, but the students and I discovered an infinite range of helpful lessons which each of us could interpret in our own unique way.
Lifelong connections with Cranfield
From what I write about my time at Cranfield and my subsequent career, I strive to make clear the debt I owe the faculty and staff that the Class of ’69 knew all those years ago and appreciated so much. My own deepest debt is to my family and to my classmates, 41 in all, and though it’s unthinkable now, all male! To both, my debt is so real. In groups and in class, we helped and encouraged each other to believe our reach could and should, as the poet Browning urges, exceed our grasp. In gratitude for this and for other reasons, too, so many of us have mercifully remained in touch and we still celebrate our collective and individual achievements.
I know of no organisations that are more people-dependent than business schools. In my case, I repay my debt to Cranfield as far as I can by responding in person to events held by the School of Management. Like a football fan, I travel willingly from my home in Brussels to Cranfield to support the team and the other fans. Loyalty and friendship are precious currency for institutions like business schools. The 50th anniversary of the Class of ’69 was a memorable occasion and, as long as there’s life in this old dog, he’ll be there for the 55th.
Please follow my example by attending your class reunions and other alumni events at Cranfield as often as you can. If you can offer support to the School in other ways, please do – I know many alumni like to get involved. As well as offering philanthropic support to the School for projects you are passionate about, you can also donate your time and expertise through volunteering.
Advice to the next generation of Cranfield students
In valediction, and in all modesty, I offer current students this advice from the heroes of antiquity. Research the meaning of the Greek word “arete” (ἀρετή). Reflect on it with your friends, then write down on one page what “arete” means for you – both personally, and how it will play out in your career after Cranfield. My life-long struggle to achieve a modest level of “arete” began in a brewery, throwing empty bottles at a brick wall. My year at Cranfield has contributed immeasurably to such achievements as I may claim. If you care to send me what you’ve written, I’d love to read it.
Many thanks to Guy Knapton for sharing his experiences. If you would like to pass on your personal definition of “arete” to Guy, please email the Alumni Communications team and we’ll be more than happy to pass on your message.