Archive for the ‘Thunderbird’ Category

Worse than having a problem is not knowing it.  Even worse: being proud of it. A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (Evan Glodstein: What if English Only Isn’t Wrong? Do Americans Need To Be Bilingual, and Will Technology Smash the Language Barrier For Good? – WSJ.com) toys with the idea that English dominance, the efforts by others to learn English plus the availability of translation technology makes it just fine for Americans to remain mono-lingual.

To learn a new language is to open a window into a new culture, to acquire a new prism through which interpret the world around us.  When the Chinese learn English (there may be more English speakers in China already than in the U.S.) they are also learning English culture, they are reading American media, becoming more familiar with American life-style, understanding the preferences of their largest customer.  When Chinese executives negotiate a deal in English with an American counterpart, they are likely to understand the other party much better than the other way around.  If it were a poker game, it is clear where I would place my bet!

It has always intrigued me how the very same political leaders who defend “English Only” policies are also the most concerned that China is eating America’s lunch.  America’s education policies often seem more focused on “curing” immigrant children from their “bilingual problem” than on exposing all children to at least one foreign language at an early age.  My 8th and 6th graders attending public schools in Arizona are yet to take a single foreign language class.  If it weren’t for our efforts to preserve their Spanish (sorry authorities, we are hoping they will remain “contaminated”) and expose them to other languages in our family travels they would reach high-school without having ever had to learn a word of anything other than English.

Thunderbird has been educating global business leaders for the last 64 years and learning a second language has been a critical foundation of our educational approach.  We are fully aware that most international business transactions will be conducted in English, but we are more concerned that without an understanding of the cultural framework shaping the thinking of the person across the table, a mono-cultural executive would be doomed to making a bad deal.  “English-only” is in fact a terrible deal for America.

Through Imagining the Future of Leadership, a symposium at the Harvard Business School and accompanying blog series organized by Profs. Snook, Nohria and Khurana, an eclectic group of  thinkers gathered to investigate what is necessary today to develop the leaders we need for tomorrow.

This video (a The Crucial Skill for Tomorrow’s Leaders – Video – Harvard Business Review) provides a nice sample of the discussions that took place, featuring (in order of appearance):

Myself, Bill George (Harvard Business School and former CEO of Medtronic), Daisy Wademan Dowling (Leadership Development at Morgan Stanley), Andy Zelleke (Harvard Kennedy School), Batia Mishan Wiesenfeld (NYU), Evan Wittenberg (Global Leadership Development, Google, Inc.), Ellen Langer (Harvard), Scott Snook (HBS and retired Colonel, US Army Corps of Engineers).

My own contribution dealt with “The Soul of Leadership“, the notion that leadership builds on trust, and trust builds on values.

Research by my colleagues Mary Sully de Luque and Nathan Washburn shows that CEOs who frame decisions in pure economic terms tend to be perceived as more autocratic and less visionary than leaders who express concern for a broader set of stakeholders through, for example, a commitment to public good. And the more visionary a leader is perceived to be, the more willing employees are to go the extra mile and consequently deliver higher performance. [...]

Corporations may have “no body to kick and no soul to damn” as the old adage goes. But their leaders do. In fact, it is followers’ perceptions of a leader’s “soul” that can make or break the deal. One of the greatest challenges of any corporate leader is to convince everyone else that they will not compromise the interest of the corporation, if not society, for their own benefit.

My colleague Mansour Javidan, also in attendance, discussed how crucial Global Mindset will be in the future of leadership.

Leaders with a strong stock of Global Mindset know about cultures and political and economic systems in other countries and understand how their global industry works. They are passionate about diversity and are willing to push themselves. They are comfortable with being uncomfortable in uncomfortable environments. They are also better able to build trusting relationships with people who are different from them by showing respect and empathy and by being good listeners.

By Will McDonald, Director EMBA Europe

Bonjour de Geneve!  I wanted to share a “truly Thunderbird” moment  during Dr. Nelson’s Contemporary Business in Latin America course to our Executive MBA-Europe students.  As you know, Roy Nelson’s case study on Intel’s Site Selection in Latin America (Costa Rica) and his recently published book feature President José María Figueres prominently.  Roy was scheduled to teach his Intel case in his final course session tomorrow.

Thanks to the invitation by one of the EMBA students in Geneva, Farid Saffar, and Pres. Figueres relationship with Thunderbird as a Board Fellow, President Figueres joined us at the Graduate Institute today to address the EMBA cohort, sharing his insights, wisdom and personal anecdotes about the Intel story.  Roy Nelson prepared the group with a case discussion and  debrief in the preceding class session, and President Figueres gave an informal yet riveting talk, town-hall style, spending over an hour with the group (on a range of topics), just hours before he had a scheduled flight to Singapore.

President Figueres could not have been more gracious–nor more effusive in supporting and validating Thunderbird’s mission–coincidentally on a day when we also had a few prospective EMBA students in attendance.

We thanked President Figueres with a copy of Dr. Nelson’s book and a hand-made Thunderbird soccer ball (from Afghan Project Artemis).  We did not have time to arrange for a professional photographer, but a few pictures (thanks again to Farid!), are attached.

Bon weekend a tous & regards from the EU team!

Needed: SuperHUMANS not superheroes

Q: Tony Hayward, once credited for BP’s “green” turnaround, is forced to resign in disgrace. Michael Dell, the revolutionary high-tech entrepreneur, is sanctioned for misleading investors. Wall Street titans, once lionized, are now reviled. Where have all the CEO heroes gone?

Taking BP out of the whole it dug itself into will require a leader who’s part experienced oil & gas executive, part government relations specialist, part statesman, part crisis manager, part credible spokesperson, part cheerleader, part trusted coach. On top of that, whomever replaces Hayward will have to perform these tasks while being subjected to an unprecedented level of public scrutiny. This will be, without a doubt, one of the toughest management jobs of our era.

via On Leadership Panelists: Needed: SuperHUMANS not superheroes – Angel Cabrera.

Thunderbird alum and board fellow Bob Dudley has been floated as likely successor of Tony Hayward at the helm of BP (Dudley Pick Underscores Importance of U.S – WSJ.com).  Bob has demonstrated a unique capacity to deal with very complex business situations, including a difficult joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, and leading BP’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf.  Having had the opportunity to know him and work with him, and considering how much is at stake, I can only hope BP’s board will confirm Bob’s appointment.

While the press has highlighted his citizenship (he is American) and personal connections with the Gulf (he grew up in Mississippi), those are probably the least important of the assets he will need.  The oil-spill crisis has highlighted the evolving and growing expectations society deposits on CEOs.  Running an efficient operation and delivering financial results are but a small part of the job description.  Understanding and responding to the often conflicting demands and needs of different stakeholders, shaping cultures, creating meaning (in addition to money), embodying and enforcing values or responsibility as much as competitiveness, managing crises, cultivating an emotional rapport with individuals inside and outside the organization, managing relationships with multiple levels of government in multiple geographies, make for a much longer to-do list.

Whomever is ultimately chosen, he or she will not only have to perform these tasks but do so while being subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny.  This will be, without a doubt, one of the toughest management jobs of our era.

(Photo: Bob Dudley with Dr. Cabrera at Thunderbird Homecoming, March 2009.)

Richard Barker argues in HBR that management is not a profession.

I will argue that management is not a profession at all and can never be one. Therefore, business schools are not professional schools. Moreover, laudable and beguiling though professional standards and ethics may be, and however appealing professional status is, hanging the mantle “professional” on business education fosters inappropriate analysis and misguided prescriptions. (The Big Idea: No, Management Is Not a Profession – Harvard Business Review.)

While the arguments provide for a healthy debate, they are, as Rakesh Khurana aptly puts it, wrong:

We have to recognize that many business school graduates attain positions of social power and influence. Wherever the issue of power arises, we need to ask questions around responsibility and accountability. Business education has the potential to be a powerful influence in making business managers more accountable to the society they shape. Whether they went to business school or not, most managers in large organizations are impacted by individuals trained by business schools, the ideas that are diffused through business school publications, the cases taught in executive education programs, and the general tone set business schools set about the purpose of management and the relationship between corporations and society. For all these reasons, business schools themselves have the responsibility to make management a profession. (Why Management must be a profession – Harvard Business Review)

Business schools are finally asking themselves the key questions about their purpose and obligations towards society.  The notion of professionalism provides a very useful framework to address the question.  Professions exist to serve the greater good by applying specialized knowledge to solving complex problems.  They are built on a combination of training and institutionalized responsible conduct.  I’m yet to hear a better alternative to describe the purpose of management and drive decisions about management education. (Barker proposal does not do it in my view).

Read more »

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

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.