Archive for March, 2010

My colleagues Mansour Javidan, David Bowen and Mary Teagarden publish this month an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review decoding the concept of “global mindset” and explaining what it takes to successfully lead a global enterprise.

When Alan, a rising star at a U.S.-based manufacturer, arrived in Beijing to take a position as the general manager for consumer products in China, he was energized and excited. He’d been charged with leading the firm’s expansion in what his bosses kept telling him was the fastest-growing market in the world. Though his predecessor had warned him that some internal tensions were interfering with the company’s growth efforts in the country—in particular, that marketing and sales were making promises that the operations and distribution groups couldn’t meet—it seemed like a relatively easy problem to resolve. All Alan had to do, he figured, was to better integrate the different parts of the organization in China.

Read the HBR blog summary at: Managing Yourself: Making It Overseas – Harvard Business Review or listen to the short podcast interview with Mansour Javidan.

Interview with Handelsblatt (Karriere) on business education and values, and the oath project (in German).

Nach der Kritik, die Business Schools hätten durch ihre Ausbildungsinhalte die Verwerfungen der Finanzkrise mit verursacht: Wo stehen die Schulen heute?
An den Business Schools läuft eine Debatte und die geht in die richtige Richtung. Die Diskussion konzentriert sich auf die Verantwortung, die Business Schools in der Gesellschaft haben.

Haben die Schulen denn wirklich herausgearbeitet, inwieweit sie eine Mitschuld an der Krise tragen?
Einige Deans, darunter auch ich, haben die Schulen schon länger kritisch gesehen. Wir haben einen großen Teil der Verantwortung, wenn wir auch nicht die einzigen sind. Einige unserer Kollegen sagen zwar immer noch, die Schulen hätten keine Rolle gespielt. Aber immerhin wird unter den Professoren überhaupt diskutiert.

(Read the full interview at Ángel Cabrera: “Ich sehe Menschen, die die Welt verändern wollen” – Karriere.de).

Google automatic English translation available here.

The financial meltdown of 2008 will be remembered as a crisis not only of regulation, but of values; a painful reminder that good markets run on trust, and not only self-interest. Even Adam Smith’s butcher understood that selling unsafe meat, no matter how profitably, was a terribly bad idea, both for his clients and himself. In “The Road from Ruin,” Matthew Bishop and Michael Green argue that business leaders need to put values at the heart of capitalism and suggest that asking managers to commit to a professional code of conduct may be a good start.

The medical and legal professions have long adopted codes of conduct that explicitly recognize a commitment to serving the greater good and doing no harm. Admittedly, the codes have not eliminated abuses, but they have helped shape the attitudes and values of those who practice these professions and have increased the trust of those who use their services. Most of us, for example, trust that our physician will not intentionally prolong our ailments to charge more fees.

Managers, on the contrary, have remained reluctant to put their values in writing and pledge compliance. And business schools have done little to encourage them to do otherwise. Read the rest of my post in the Huffington Post.

The Barton Kyle Yount Award (named after the School’s founder) is the highest distinction given by Thunderbird to the graduating student who best represents the values of the School.  A few of the award recipients met today during Homecoming 2010, to discuss how they can continue to play a leadership role in shaping the future of the School.

The three BKY winners in the picture represent in many ways what Thunderbird is about: they were born and raised in Korea, Nigeria, the UK, the US and Mexico, they have worked in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, in large businesses and small start-ups, in multilateral organizations and non-profits.  Each in their own way is delivering on the ultimate mission of the School, to create sustainable prosperity worldwide.

The Thunderbird Global Council last week made great progress in shaping the new Vision 2020.  One of their core ideas, which is being enthusiastically supported by the BKY group is to view Thunderbird as a more than a “graduate school”,  as a community of practice, beliefs and purpose, grounded on solid academic values, but spanning a global membership of individuals who are creating value through global enterprises around the world and who share a commitment to building a sustainable and inclusive global economy.

The idea is more profound than it may appear, and it can have meaningful implications in the initiatives that we embark on in the next decade.  More on this later. Now I need to run to the reception with the members of the Global Leadership Society, our most generous donors who make our work possible.

Great Thunder-Energy on campus today!!!

The Spanish edition of Foreign Policy publishes this month a special issue on the Spanish Depression and the pathways to recovery.  My own contribution to that issue (INNOVACIÓN + EMPRESA = CRECIMIENTO ECONÓMICO | Foreign Policy Edición Española), argues that a developed economy like Spain’s can only grow and compete through a combination of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Spain has experienced an enviable economic journey in the last three decades.  Today it is one of the 10 largest eonomies in the world and one of the top 25 in terms of per capita income (top 12 if we exclude small nations of less than 10 million people).  The average Spaniard generates economic resources of the order of magnitude of an American or a Dutch (about a third less), almost 10 times the output of a Chinese and 30 times that of an Indian. And the UN Development Index places Spain as on of the most prosperous countries on Earth.

Yet, Spain’s ability to continue this trajectory will depend on its capacity to innovate and to translate new ideas into competitive businesses.  While there are great examples of innovation and business success in Spain, they have so far been insufficient to drive the Spanish economy.  Independent indicators show that Spanish universities are not up to the task, and Spain’s entrepreneurial climate lags behind other developed nations.

Spain needs a concerted, coordinated, multi-stakeholder strategic plan to build a new platform of competitiveness.  It needs a serious reform of its system of higher education (the goal is not to be good but to be competitive) and a critical review of some of the existing regulatory, institutional and cultural factors that hamper entrepreneurial vocations, business creation and growth.

(Read my article and other views at Foreign Policy Edición Española)

By Cindy Mehallow | March 23rd, 2010

Can taking an oath make corporate executives more ethical? Yes, according to some speakers at the Economist’s recent Corporate Citizenship Conference “Doing Well by Doing Good.” They hold that responsible citizenship at the corporate level starts with strong personal values.

via Corporate Oaths: “I’ll Be Good, I Swear” |Triple Pundit.

The Financial Times runs a story on a program we ran a few weeks ago for a group of Iraqi Minister of Interior officials, covering logistics, management and anti-corruption (FT.com / Business education – Baghdad gets a helping hand in business).  It was encouraging to see the notion of re-construction include leadership education, and not just buildings and infrastructure.

Also I found a nice blog recap of the Corporate Citizenship conference organized by The Economist last week in NY, where Dina Powell and I presented the work we’re doing in Afghanistan with Goldman Sachs.

One of the most interesting things I learned at the conference, from Thunderbird alumna Allyson Burns, was the work of the Case Foundation (as in AOL’s Steve Case) on helping non-for-profits take advantage of social media.  They in fact have a portal with lost of great resources and tutorials.

Why do some countries do a better job attracting foreign direct investment than others? Thunderbird Prof. Nelson’s latest book argues that political leaders who are secure and do not fear for their survival are more likely to appoint independent capable people to run their investment promotion agencies.  Independent technocrats are in turn more likely to build competent agencies.

Among the critical competencies of successful agencies, transnational learning capacity seems to be the most important one.  Successful agencies are populated by executives with extensive experience in working with international business and are therefore better equipped for understanding the needs of investors.

A global mindset in other words maybe a key factor in attracting foreign direct investment and therefore driving economic growth in less developed markets.

See: Roy C. Nelson: Harnessing Globalization: The Promotion of Nontraditional Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America.

Serve to Lead® by James M. Strock (Serve to Lead®: Your Transformational 21st Century Leadership System).

Foreword by Ángel Cabrera

It may seem obvious now, but it took us several decades of observation, analysis and intellectual debate to come to the conclusion that there is no leader without followers, and that leadership only exists, after all, in the eye of the beholder, that is, the follower.

Initial accounts of leadership asked whether leaders are endowed with special attributes, likely innate, that make them particularly magnetic and charismatic.  We owe this line of thinking to 19^th century historians and philosophers like Thomas Carlyle, who argued that “the history of the world is but the biography of great men”.  These “great man” theories of leadership finally fell out of grace as it became clear that the very notion of “greatness” can vary significantly depending on circumstances.

Research conducted after World War II began to distinguish different leadership styles, recognizing that not all leaders are the same and that successful leaders may achieve extraordinary results in radically different ways.  These theories later led to more sophisticated contingency models that prescribed specific leadership approaches depending on the circumstances: how well structured is the task at hand, how mature is the team one is leading, how favorable are the relations between leader and followers, how much power can the leader exercise, etc.  Like the “great man” theories, these frameworks kept the focus on the leader, not the follower.

Ironically, it took a true great man to turn the “great man” theory over its head.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., argued that “everyone can be great, because everyone can serve”.  And it is this simple but profound idea that underlies James Strock’s powerful serve-to-lead concept.  Greatness is not an innate ability of a leader, but a consideration bestowed on the leader by those he or she serves.

Dr. King taught us that “you don’t have to have a college degree to serve, You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love”.  Strock extends this basic idea to leadership in the 21^st century.  The Internet has afforded everyone the capacity to reach out to others, to create communities and mobilize action.  That makes each one of us a potential leader.  You don’t need to have a position of authority to lead.  You don’t need a fortune to lead.  You only need a commitment to serve others.

There is no such thing as an innate leader.  Or a universal leadership style.  There are as many leaders, as many effective leadership styles, as there are needs to be served and forms to serve those needs.

By Gregory Unruh @ the Huffington Post

The United Nations Global Compact was launched in 2000 by Kofi Anan as a platform to promote greater corporate responsibility around the world — ten guiding principles for corporations covering human rights, the environment and corruption. The Compact now includes over 7,000 companies from 130 countries. U.S. businesses have been slower to get on-board than most countries as many U.S. executives see the UN Global Compact as just another set of sustainability guidelines crafted by governments or activists to induce greater “corporate social responsibility.” This view, however, misreads the real significance of the UN Global Compact.

Read the full article at Gregory Unruh: The Real Significance of the UN Global Compact.