Tuesday, January 2, 2018

B-School Deans Share Their New Year’s Resolutions - Poets&Quants

New Year’s resolutions — we all make them. Most of us quickly break them — look at the crowds in the gym in January compared to February. Our resolutions are a reflection of who we want to be, self-challenges that too often are broken by the reality of who we are.

In business education, however, resolutions are a more serious undertaking, particularly when they come from the person at the top. After all, they aren’t likely to set targets for  exercise or weight and more often are directed at how a school can better achieve and serve its core mission.

Poets&Quants asked dozens of deans at elite U.S. business schools for their 2018 resolutions. The email responses we received included thoughtful views of the business education landscape, of schools’ direction and mission, and of the risks all schools face in a volatile political and educational climate. Some used humor; some quoted famous artists and philosophers. While most confined their resolutions to their own schools, a few cast their gaze wider and offered hopeful forecasts for the state of business education in general. All who responded did so thoughtfully and with the benefits of experience, exemplified by Michigan Ross Dean Scott DeRue, who wrote that “The turn of the calendar prompts us to reflect back at the prior year, look forward to the future, and take stock of our life’s direction. Personally, I use three questions every year to reset and make sure I’m heading in the right direction.”

‘WE MUST LEARN FROM THE PAST BUT NOT ENSLAVE OURSELVES TO WHAT’S BEEN DONE BEFORE’

Scott DeRue

DeRue’s three questions: Am I stretching myself and taking enough risks? Am I having fun and sharing that joy with others? And: Am I taking care of my relationships?

In answer to the first question, DeRue says it’s vital to reach for ever-higher standards of excellence. He quotes Renaissance painter Michelangelo: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Adds DeRue: “We must learn from the past but not enslave ourselves to what’s been done before, and we must embrace risk in the pursuit of a higher standard of excellence.”

DeRue answers his second question by citing a personal philosophy that he calls “the fun factor.” Each year, he says, he reminds himself of a basic principle: If it’s fun, it’s worth doing. If it’s not, it’s not. “Life is too short and, when we’re having fun, the joy we feel is contagious with others and lifts up everyone.”

DeRue, who became Ross’s dean in July 2016, says he may have left the most important question for last. “Whether it’s in my personal life or as dean of Michigan Ross, it’s the people I have the privilege of being around that make the difference,” he writes. “At Michigan Ross, I often tell our community that the people make the place, and our place is special because our people are special. Our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and corporate partners all contribute to a special place that has the power to transform lives, launch rewarding careers, and make a positive and meaningful difference in society.

“To answer this question, each new year, I make a list of the 10 most important people in my life. First I ask how much time and energy am I investing in each of these relationships. Then I ask myself, ‘Whose list of 10 am I on, and how am I investing in those relationships?’ Every year, it’s a powerful moment that helps me re-center and focus on what — and who — is important.”

AT STANFORD, A CONTINUED FOCUS ON THE GLOBAL

Jonathan Levin had a tough 2017. This year he wants the focus to be on students

Jonathan Levin of the Stanford Graduate School of Business had perhaps the toughest 2017 of any dean at a major business school. Now, after a scandal involving the exposure of the financial information of MBA students and staff, which included calls for him to resign, Levin understandably wants to use 2018 to put the focus back on the student experience, in particular Stanford GSB’s global offerings.

In 2018, Levin resolves “to continue advancing the Stanford Graduate School of Business mission to ‘change lives, change organizations, change the world’ by finding new opportunities for our students to develop a broader global perspective.” Noting that September 2017 marked his one-year anniversary as dean, Levin writes that he spent the year witnessing the impact Stanford students, faculty, and alumni make around the world, including a fall visit to India to launch the Stanford Seed program that trains business leaders in developing economies while supporting research and innovation related to global development. He also recently toured Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and China, “and was inspired to meet our growing alumni population, including many younger alumni building exciting companies.”

Levin says his and GSB’s resolution for 2018 is that every student in the MBA program continue to have a global experience during their time at the school, and that faculty and students continue to participate in Global Study Seminars before their first year begins — “as a way to build community and develop a richer perspective on business even before the program starts. At a time when we as a country are debating our role in the world, we want GSB students to appreciate how interconnected the world has become, to be thoughtful about different perspectives, and to leave the school prepared to be leaders who play a positive role in society, wherever they choose to live.”

Not everyone takes the turning of a Gregorian calendar page so seriously. Dean Amy Hillman of Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business says her B-school has so many ways to earn degrees that its plan for the new year revolves around “always thinking of what’s next — so our resolution for 2018 is to become the leading school for intergalactic commerce studies.”

Long-time Duke Fuqua Dean Bill Boulding has more earthbound aspirations: to see the word “phygital” become mainstream. (It’s a resolution, he acknowledges, that’s likely to make the Duke Fuqua marketing team wince, “as they’ve told me repeatedly to stop saying ‘phygital’.”) fWhat does “phygital” mean? Turns out Boulding isn’t being facetious. He explains that phygital is a blend of physical and digital and “an important trend in business education, particularly as we think about ways to blend delivery in the physical classroom and online. Lessening face-to-face requirements provides greater accessibility for lots of folks, in particular (for) working families. It’s also the case that companies are increasingly operating in phygital space and we need to help them learn how to more effectively utilize phygital environments.

“At Duke, we are continually working to finding the best ways to blend online and face-to-face, particularly in our EMBA programs. So despite the advice of my dearly respected colleagues in marketing, I want to hear more people saying ‘phygital’ this year!”

LOOKING OUTWARD TO CELEBRATE ‘THE DYNAMISM AND INNOVATION OF THE WORLD’

Tuck Dean Matthew Slaughter

On a more sober note, Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Dean Matthew Slaughter vows that his school will spend more time “reflecting inward and looking outward,” which he says is essential to realizing the promise of the Tuck orientation to both do well and do good. Even during their busiest days, Slaughter says, successful business leaders find time to reflect.

“That’s one resolution for the Tuck community: to be intentional in making the time to periodically reflect and recharge,” Slaughter tells Poets&Quants. “Reflection today empowers all of us to take wiser actions tomorrow.”

Equally important, he adds, is the ability to look outward and be attentive to the “dynamism and innovation of the world.” Answers or business solutions companies seek are no longer confined to a specific area — more and more, Slaughter says, they are found in unexpected places. “We see this, for example, with research breakthroughs that first take root in other disciplines and in industry-shaping actions that originate in different and unrelated industries,” he says. “By looking outward, by asking questions, by collaborating across disciplines and industries, we see — and thus learn — more.

“Thus, a second Tuck resolution: to encourage even more looking outward.”

THREE WAYS ALL SCHOOLS MUST CHANGE IN 2018

Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, says that like individual vows to lose weight, quit smoking, or eat well, business schools’ vows “are about being better in the future.” The beginning of a new year is a time “to reflect a bit on our past and on the opportunities of the future,” he adds. And he’s come up with three ways schools will have to change.

First, “every business school is going to have to behave more like a business” in the future, Almeida says, which means being financially smart, being organized efficiently, and “making strategic choices that are suitable for a dynamic environment.” Next, B-schools are going to have to embrace technology, but in a way that goes beyond online and blended learning. “We must apply new technologies like machine learning, augmented reality, and big data to the student experience so our students can be prepared to embrace the changes in the real world after they graduate,” Almeida says.

Finally, he says, business schools also must try to create the future, not just prepare themselves for the future. “For instance, we will have an opportunity to both apply artificial intelligence for ourselves, but also to frame and inform the world about the consequences of the rise of artificial intelligence — what it means for employment, organizations, social communities, and the individual. Business schools can contribute even more to society by educating society about the future trends and possibilities.”

EXCELLENCE — NOT AN ACT, BUT A HABIT

Yale SOM Acting Dean Anjani Jain

Mark Nelson, Anne and Elmer Lindseth dean and professor of accounting at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, has a simple resolution: Keep the focus on student success. He points to new facilities (the Breazzano Family Center in Ithaca and the Tata Center for Innovation at the Cornell Tech Campus in NYC) and new faculty hires as evidence that Johnson will keep offering exciting curriculum “like our first-year immersion program and our seven-week intensives it Fintech and Digital Marketing.”

“We’ll continue to emphasize various types of experiential learning that we have seen lead our students to perform extremely well in internships and careers,” Nelson says.

At Yale School of Management, Acting Dean and Professor in the Practice of Management Anjani Jain demurs on the subject of resolutions, saying he doesn’t “put much stock in arbitrary markers of time like the start of the Gregorian calendar.” However, he adds, in observance of “an event of true celestial significance — the winter solstice and the light it propitiously restores to the northern hemisphere,” he offers an ancient pearl of wisdom from Aristotle:

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

DON’T MISS B-SCHOOL DEANS SHARE 2017 RESOLUTIONS and B-SCHOOL DEANS AND PROFS ON THE IMPACT OF BREXIT

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