An Open Letter to Deans of Business Schools

For more than a century, colleges and universities have developed and taught the major disciplines of business — accounting, finance, marketing, management, operations, strategy, business law, leadership, entrepreneurship, and others.

Those disciplines have contributed immeasurably to business education. They have provided generations of graduates with the knowledge, analytical frameworks, and professional capabilities needed to enter, manage, advise, and lead businesses throughout an increasingly complex global economy.

The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ is not being proposed as a replacement for any of them. It begins with respect for what those disciplines teach — and with an additional capability today's graduates need when they enter the operating world of business.

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Businesses Do Not Present Their Problems One Discipline at a Time.

A business can simultaneously face declining revenue, shrinking margins, cash pressure, employee turnover, operating failures, strategic uncertainty, customer losses, and leadership challenges.

Every one of those problems may be real.

But a real problem is not automatically the governing priority.

That raises a question that has occupied much of my professional life:

How are graduates taught to determine which condition is governing business performance, what should receive priority before they begin applying solutions — and why that condition should be addressed first?

For more than five decades as a chief executive, entrepreneur, and advisor, I encountered that question across manufacturing, distribution, construction, land development, franchising, and multi-entity operations.

Again and again, capable people addressed legitimate business problems with reasonable solutions — new people, more marketing, additional capital, reorganizations, new systems, different strategies, leadership changes.

The problem being addressed could be real. The proposed solution could be sound.

But if another condition deserved priority first, the organization could expend substantial time, capital, and management attention without materially improving what was limiting business performance.

That recurring operating problem led to the development of the SAI Business Constraint Discipline™.

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What the SAI Discipline Teaches

The educational purpose can be stated directly:

What graduates also need is a systematic way to determine which condition is governing business performance, which problem deserves priority, what should be addressed first, why it should be addressed first, and whether the corrective action actually worked.

The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ teaches that capability through a systematic sequence:

IDENTIFY → PRIORITIZE → RESOLVE → CONFIRM

That sequence gives graduates a disciplined path from diagnosis to corrective action — and a way to determine whether the action actually improved business performance.

Identifying a problem is not enough. A leader must determine whether it deserves priority and why. Resolving it is not enough. The organization must determine whether corrective action produced the expected improvement and whether that improvement holds.

Then conditions must be reassessed, because improving one condition can change what limits business performance next.

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The Question Between the Disciplines

The established business disciplines provide powerful specialized knowledge and tools.

An accountant may recognize financial evidence. A marketer may recognize a market problem. An operations professional may recognize process failures. A strategist may recognize competitive misalignment. A leadership professional may recognize problems involving people, authority, or accountability.

Each may be seeing something real.

But which condition deserves priority — and why?

The symptom tells a leader where a problem is being experienced. It does not necessarily establish what is causing it or what deserves priority.

That requires diagnosis.

Once the evidence indicates the governing constraint and that condition has been prioritized, the appropriate specialized business knowledge becomes critically important to resolving it.

The established disciplines and the SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ are not competitors. They should be complementary.

The established disciplines provide specialized knowledge and tools for addressing business conditions. The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ provides the systematic diagnostic capability to determine which condition deserves priority, why it deserves priority, and where corrective action should begin.

Who benefits from developing that capability?

Will an accounting graduate benefit from knowing which condition is governing business performance before financial expertise is applied?

Will graduates entering finance, marketing, management, operations, strategy, business law, leadership, entrepreneurship, and other business disciplines benefit from knowing what deserves priority, why it deserves priority, and where corrective action should begin?

YES.

Regardless of the discipline they practice, they will work in, advise, manage, or lead businesses in which multiple legitimate problems compete for attention.

The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ is therefore not an alternative to the established disciplines of business. It is a diagnostic discipline designed to help graduates determine where and why attention should begin before specialized knowledge and solutions are applied.

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Why This Matters to Today's Graduates

Today's graduates enter an increasingly global, interconnected, technologically accelerated, and information-rich business environment.

Markets, competitors, customers, capital, technology, supply chains, talent, and information cross industries and national borders. Technology and artificial intelligence continue to expand both the information available to decision-makers and the number of possible interventions.

More variables create more possible problems. More expertise creates more possible interventions. More solutions make determining where to begin — not less important, but more important.

Graduates need the specialized knowledge provided by the established disciplines of business.

But they also need to confront multiple legitimate problems and determine:

What is governing business performance?

What deserves priority?

What should be addressed first?

Why should it be addressed first?

Did the corrective action actually work?

That capability gives graduates a more disciplined starting point from which to apply the business knowledge they have already worked hard to acquire.

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Why I Am Writing to You

I am not asking business schools to diminish the disciplines they have spent more than a century developing.

I am not asking faculty to accept the SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ simply because I developed it.

And more than five decades of operating experience do not, by themselves, constitute academic validation.

That is precisely why I am writing to academia.

I am stating that this diagnostic capability deserves systematic academic examination in its own right.

Academic examination may strengthen parts of the Discipline, challenge others, identify questions requiring further research, and contribute perspectives that operating experience alone cannot provide.

That is what serious academic examination should do.

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A Discipline Worthy of Academic Examination

For more than a century, business education has evolved as business itself has evolved.

Today's graduates will face multiple problems, competing priorities, limited resources, and consequential decisions.

The established disciplines prepare them with powerful specialized knowledge.

The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ addresses an additional capability they need:

A systematic way to determine which condition is governing business performance, which problem deserves priority, what should be addressed first, why it should be addressed first, and whether the corrective action actually worked.

For that reason:

The SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ Deserves Serious Academic Examination as a Business Discipline.

I respectfully invite you and your faculty to examine it.

Examine the Discipline. Examine its governing proposition. Examine its diagnostic framework. Examine how it distinguishes symptoms from structural causes. Examine how it identifies, prioritizes, resolves, and confirms a governing constraint. Examine the cases and supporting evidence.

Challenge its assumptions. Test its conclusions. Determine what the evidence supports.

I welcome that examination — supportive, skeptical, or critical — because each can contribute to the development of a serious body of knowledge.

The final determination of what the evidence supports belongs to rigorous academic examination.

But the educational proposition is clear:

Graduates should know not only how to apply the disciplines of business. They should also know how to determine which condition deserves priority, why it deserves priority, what should be addressed first, and whether the corrective action actually worked.

That is what the SAI Business Constraint Discipline™ is designed to teach.

And that is why it deserves the serious consideration of the academic community.

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Strengthen the individual.
Strengthen the family.
Strengthen the company.
Strengthen America.