Archive for June, 2010

Last week, Thunderbird alum and 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, Bob Dudley, was put in charge of BP’s oil spill response in the Gulf of Mexico, perhaps the most difficult crisis management job in recent business history. This is not the first time he’s been given a complex assignment–among them being the founding CEO of TNK-BP, a 50-50 joint venture of BP in Russia.

Bob received a Masters in International Management degree from Thunderbird in 1979 and started his career working for Amoco in Texas. Next he took on assignments in the United Kingdom, China and  Russia. When BP merged with Amoco in 1998, Dudley, then a general manager of strategy, moved to London to help with the integration.

After the merger he went on to lead the renewable and alternative energy division. Later he worked in exploration and production, a position he described as a “dream job” that led him to the Caspian Sea, Angola, Algeria and Egypt.

“I’ve always had a burning desire to see the world,” Dudley said last year in BP’s company magazine. His global mindset is hard to miss: BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has described him in the past as “the management team’s Secretary of State.”

Thunderbird recognized Dudley in 2009 with the school’s Career Achievement Award, an honor given to an alumnus who has excelled in his or her career.  He is also a member of the Thunderbird Board of Fellows.

For the well-being of the affected ecosystems, the prosperity of all the people affected by the spill, the future of BP itself and its employees, and the safety of the broader oil & gas and extraction industries, I hope that Bob’s job does not end with the effective management of this crisis, but that he and his colleagues succeed at raising the bar in terms of safety and environmental standards.

To read more:

Head of BP’s spill response has survived trials- The Washington Post

BP Executive Prepares to Take Over Spill Response- The New York Times

Who is Bob Dudley? Five things to know about BP’s new point man- The Christian Science Monitor

BP Gulf Spill: Meet Bob Dudley, the New Man in Charge- BNet

By Thunderbird Knowledge Network Editor

LIMA — About 300 Peruvian women with big dreams for their microenterprises crowded into a makeshift auditorium June 21, 2010, for the launch of Proyecto Salta, a three-hour business course developed at Thunderbird School of Global Management in partnership with local training company Aprenda.

“The audience was absolutely captivated,” said Thunderbird Professor Christine Pearson, Ph.D., a curriculum contributor who attended the launch. “The material seems to be just the right level.”

Aprenda instructors repeated the free course twice in different locations on June 22. Overall, the program will reach 100,000 micro-entrepreneurs all over Peru within four years.

Many program participants have microloans from Mibanco and other Peruvian banks, and the goal of Proyecto Salta is to link access to capital with access to education.

Funding partners for the program include the Australian Agency for International Development and the Multilateral Investment Fund of Inter-American Development Bank.

Read more »

Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett are asking the nation’s billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetimes or at death. If their campaign succeeds, it could change the face of philanthropy.

Via: The $600 billion challenge – FORTUNE Features – Fortune on CNNMoney.com.

What if the end game of capitalism, the real trophy for the winners–those who can create the most value, innovate the most, use resources best–were not just the enjoyment of their riches but the opportunity to shape the world for the better, their way?  If after a life-time of hard work and good fortune you were to join the exclusive ten-digit club, what would you do with your wealth?  A small portion of a billionaire’s fortune is sufficient to cover several life-times of expenses and to guarantee a privileged life-style for children and grand-children.  Then what?

Philanthrocapitalism author Matthew Bishop argues that

“today’s launch by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett of the giving pledge is a big step forward for philanthrocapitalism. Indeed, it marks philanthrocapitalism’s coming of age as a movement, with the Gateses and Buffett as its activist leaders. “

Perhaps the biggest luxury a billionaire can indulge him or herself in is the ability to chose what to change in the world and how to change it.  A billionnaire can make unprecedented bets on specific social endeavors that may be out of the reach of governments and for-profit enterprises and that can help create a fairer, safer, more peaceful, more prosperous world.

The Giving Pledge by the Gateses and Buffet is one such bet!  My hat off to the three of them for the example they are setting.

Spain’s biggest short-term problem is not a threat of insolvency but a misguided leadership and communication strategy. [...]

By not fully recognizing the gravity of the situation the administration eroded the investor and consumer confidence it had hoped to build. By killing the messenger it appeared defensive. By acting by surprise it appeared to be unprepared. And by placing blame elsewhere for the decisions, it projected powerlessness. Denying the facts, killing the messenger, acting by surprise and assigning blame elsewhere are classic elements of a leadership default–rather than a debt one–in times of crisis.

The Spanish government is finally on the right track–it is tackling the budget deficit and it has announced labor reforms–but it urgently needs to convince the world that it is in control. To rebuild market confidence, the Spanish administration needs to rethink its messaging. The best way to communicate that the administration has a grip on the situation, to regain market confidence, is to be brutally honest about the challenges, emphatic about the strengths inherent in the economy, transparent with the decision making process and determined in the application of structural reforms.

via On Leadership Panelists: Spain’s leadership default – Angel Cabrera.

From today’s Financial Times:

Two concerns about the oath are that there is no sanction for those who break the pledge and that some of the commitments – to the environment for example – have left-leaning tendencies. Peter Escher, one of the founders of the oath at Harvard, defends the wording. “This was not intended to be a political oath. The environment has a legitimate claim on any organisation,” he says.

To try to kickstart discussions around ethics and sustainability, Angel Cabrera, president of Thunderbird in Arizona, instigated the concept of an oath at the school in 2005. Prof Cabrera describes himself as an “activist” in the MBA oath field and with Harvard’s Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria – Prof Nohria will be Harvard’s next dean – was instrumental in developing the oath project.

“We need to treat management as a profession. This is one way, but only one way, to do this. It’s not a panacea or complete solution.” He sees it as having real value within the business school community. “It changes the conversation. It puts pressure on us to rethink the curriculum.” Otherwise, he says, “You can go through an entire MBA programme without being told that corruption or bribing is not acceptable.”

Prof Cabrera argues that managers who sign the oath will still be fallible. “It does not mean these people are going out to get a 100 per cent score.” Mr Cooper agrees. “I think a lot of people see the oath as something in black and white. For me it is a set of principles to work towards.”

via FT.com / Business education – A pledge of good behaviour.

After a year-long process of consultation with our multiple constituencies around the world and the invaluable help of faculty and senior administration in integrating the rich set of inputs we received, I am happy to report that the board last week expressed its enthusiastic support for our new vision.

Vision 2020 articulates how we, as a community, intend to serve the world over the next decade.  The two key words in this vision are “Global Impact“.  Our promise is that “we will dramatically grow our positive impact in a world economy that is in dire need of the global leadership talent we were founded to provide”.  This vision is supported by four complementary strategic priorities:

1. A commitment to strengthening our unique approach to educating global leaders, which includes our multidisciplinary curriculum, our definition of global leadership as a combination of global mindset, entrepreneurship and citizenship, and a learning method that is collaborative, multi-cultural, practically relevant and more and more technologically sophisticated.
2. A commitment to innovating to reach greater scale and impact.  Innovation will require both leveraging educational technologies but also applying new business models and sources of capital as required, with the objective of touching more lives, and reaching greater critical mass of resources.
3. A strategic focus on business and development in emerging economies which will involve both acquiring new expertise as well as offering programs in and for emerging markets.
4. The construction of a global community of learning and practice that will help inspire, inform and interconnect global leaders as they advance through their careers.

Over the next year we will need to translate this vision into concrete plans.  We need to ask ourselves what the new vision implies in terms of faculty and staff requirements, how we work internally and how we project ourselves to the world, how we invest our resources and what additional resources we will need, what needs to stay the same and what needs to change, and what initiatives should attract the most attention.

On behalf of the board I want to thank you and congratulate the entire Thunderbird family for a successful 2009-2010 academic year.  Our faculty have delivered degree and non-degree programs all over the world with extraordinary evaluations and results.  Our faculty has continued to produce influential pieces of thought leadership, including several books and hits in impressive academic journals, dozens of conference presentations and media interviews.  Amid a global recession of unprecedented proportions, our students are finding a tough job market, but our CMC is fully dedicated to helping them achieve their goals and we are seeing some signs of hope in the market.  Very importantly, we were able to navigate the “great recession” and manage to complete a year with a meaningful surplus.

Congratulations Thunderbird!

Thunderbird alum, Hon. Doctorate recipient and Fellow, Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter American Development Bank, is featured today in the Washington Post “On Leadership” section, for his efforts to apply business solutions to fight poverty.

Moreno’s perspective is worth taking seriously, since he is the most influential development banker in the Western Hemisphere. Trained in media and management sciences, Moreno has held positions in the Colombian cabinet and as Ambassador to the United States. These were grueling apprenticeships that prepared him to be president of the IDB in Washington.[...]

I first came to work for Moreno when he introduced the concept of competitiveness to Colombian firms, created a broad consultative process between the public and private sectors, and made an agenda for legislative reform, which included privatization. Moreno reasoned that Colombian firms were not succeeding beyond domestic markets, and only an in-depth understanding of their challenges would allow the government to play a meaningful role in building competitiveness.[...]

Through this experience, Moreno realized that strategy for creating prosperity for all citizens of any nation had to include the private sector. “Enterprise solutions to poverty” was a paradigm shift. Until then, most other decision makers in Latin America believed that government officials should set competitive strategy. Moreno was one of the first leaders in the world to observe that it wasn’t working. Poverty rates were increasing. Traditional positive values were under assault. Social cohesion, itself, was threatened.

via On Leadership Panelists: Luis Alberto Moreno: Business solutions to poverty – Michael Fairbanks.