CEO-MAG.COM
/
SUMMER 2017
BREAKING THE ONLINE EDUCATION MOLD CREATING THE ENTREPRENEURS OF THE FUTURE
LESSONS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF BUSINESS
SURPRISING NUMBERS BEHIND START-UP SURVIVAL RATES
2
ceomag.co.uk / Spring 2016
8
WHY A HAPPY CAREER CAN STILL FEEL UNFULFILLING Mark Crowley
10
WHY WISDOM CAN’T BE TAUGHT Manfred Kets de Vries
2017 MBA RANKINGS CEO Magazine 1
12
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
20 16
24 LESSONS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF BUSINESS
WHAT TO DO WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU ‘OPTION B’
Mary Carr
Knowledge@Wharton
BREAKING THE ONLINE EDUCATION MOLD Dean Sippel
22
DEVELOPING LEADERS THROUGH ADVERSITY INSEAD Knowledge 2
26
CREATING THE ENTREPRENEURS OF THE FUTURE EU Business School
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
ceo-mag.com / Autumn 2016
3
28
RESTORING A FOUNDER’S MENTALITY® CULTURE Bain & Company
32
IN ORDER TO SUCCEED... STOP BEING SO LOGICAL! Howard Cooper
34
A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE OF (TECHNOLOGY) IN EDUCATION Alon Rozen
4
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
Like a Diamond, an MBA is Forever Ensure it’s AMBA-accredited.
brilliant
Crafted with
Be in company MBA students on AMBA-accredited programmes are required to have at least 3 years prior management experience, making for quality networks and applied learning.
world-class expertise The high standard of AMBA-accredited MBAs is certified by highly experienced Business School Deans and Directors - Experts assessing Experts.
Invest in education that stands the
Be part of a
test of time
priceless network
AMBA-accredited schools have educated MBAs to AMBA standards for a minimum of 3 years and usually over 10 years.
AMBA-accredited MBA programmes require a minimum of 500 ‘contact’ hours, ensuring face-to-face learning and strong relationship-building. Access the
highest quality experts in academia and industry. Faculty at AMBA-accredited programmes are internationally diverse and at least 75% must have a relevant postgraduate qualification.
AMBA is the world’s only MBA-specific Accreditation Organisation, accrediting just 2% of the world’s Business Schools. www.mbaworld.com
38 SURPRISING NUMBERS BEHIND START-UP SURVIVAL RATES Waverly Deutsch
42
HOW SILENT MEDITATION HELPED ME SUCCEED AT WORK Kowledge@Wharton
46
CAN DO ATTITUDE Chicago: Booth
48 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
6
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
CEO Victor J. Callender Group Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Skinner Design & Illustration pentacreate.com Financial Controller Anthony Gordon
Head Office: Communications House 26 York Street London, W1U 6PZ UK Telephone: +44 (0) 870 067 2077 (UK) Fax: +44 (0) 870 067 2078 (UK) Email: a.skinner@ceo-mag.com Web: www.ceo-mag.com
Head of Production Steven Whitaker Features Writer Amber Callender
@ceo_mag
/CEOMagazineGlobal
Published by CEO Magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the expressed approval of the copyright owner. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this publication, the Publisher accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions. The Publisher disclaims responsibility for the views and opinions expressed herein by the contributors. Furthermore, the Publisher does not give any warranty regarding the accuracy thereof. For further information on annual subscription rates visit: www.ceo-mag.com
The Cambridge Executive MBA
“ Cambridge is an open gateway to an extraordinary wealth of people, knowledge and ideas: there was no better place to put my entrepreneurial skills to the test.� Benoit Gauthier, Head of Finance & Administration, Airbus Helicopters Chile Co-founder of The Cambridge Nano-Manufacturing Alliance Cambridge EMBA 2011
The Cambridge Executive MBA is a 20-month degree programme for senior executives.
See where it takes you
www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/executivemba
Careers
WHY A HAPPY CAREER CAN STILL FEEL UNFULFILLING Author Emily Esfahani Smith explains why the pursuit of happiness backfires–and what we can do about it in the jobs we already have. MARK C. CROWLEY
F
or as long as human beings have existed, they’ve yearned to know what makes life worth living. Plato described man as a “being in search of meaning,” and the first great work of literature, the 4,000 year-old Epic of Gilgamesh, is a hero’s quest to live a meaningful life in the face of mortality. “What the research shows is that this pursuit of happiness tends to make people feel unhappy.” Today many of us are no less interested in creating a life that matters. The question is how, and it’s one that Emily Esfahani Smith takes up in her deeply researched new book, The Power of Meaning, where she finds that many of us may be chasing the wrong thing. So much self-help and career advice is geared
8
toward helping people pursue happiness, but Smith believes our needs go far deeper than that. A meaningful life, she argues, isn’t quite identical to a happy one. But, the good news is that fulfilment and purpose may be closer within reach than perfect happiness is - and ultimately more satisfying anyway. Trying To Be Happier Might Be Making You Miserable Smith traces our happiness obsession to the positive psychology movement begun in the late 1990s. Today, ‘happy’ workplaces are heralded in business, and thousands of studies published annually describe all the ways we can supposedly make our lives happier. All of this, she says, has driven us off course. “What the research shows,” Smith told me recently, ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
“is that this pursuit of happiness tends to make people feel unhappy.” We think career success will make us happy, or that being wealthy or in positions of power will get us there. But when they pursue those things, Smith says, people are “not finding what they expected.” In a study Smith cites, one group of participants was told to spend the next 10 days doing things that made them feel happy (like sleeping in, playing games, and going out to eat). A second group was told to use the same 10 days to do things that felt inherently meaningful (like helping out a friend or colleague or performing small acts of generosity and kindness). But when these same people were brought back three months later, those in the first group admitted to feeling no better off; their feelings of happiness proved ephemeral. Those in the second group found that the things they did in those 10 days produced a sustained “wellbeing boost.” “‘Comfort and ease’ are the words psychologists use to define a happy life,” Smith explains, but a truly meaningful life is going to be hard and stressful at times. “The truth is that it’s life’s struggles that create meaning, so it’s time we acknowledge that a meaningful life is inherently a good life even if we’re not feeling ‘happy’ all the time.” And ironically, enough, when we pursue meaning, true happiness tends to follow. Serving Others Gives Life Meaning “A primary goal of people who’ve found meaning,” Smith says, “is to make life better for others. Their objective is to do good in the world, add value, and adopt a service mind-set.” Nodding to the work of Wharton professor Adam Grant, Smith says that a meaningful life requires being a “giver.” When we reframe our day-to-day tasks as opportunities to contribute to others’ advancement, our own lives feel more significant. In his own book, Give and Take, Grant makes the very same point: “People who consistently rank their jobs as being meaningful have something in common. They see their jobs as a way to help others.” Work Has Become A Major Source Of Meaning Historically in America, most people had a default path to meaning – religion. The goal of connecting to something greater than themselves, and even securing an afterlife in heaven, represented a profound basis for a meaningful life. According to Pew Research, immediately after World War II, 97 per cent of Americans had some religious affiliation. But by 201 4 , ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
that number had fallen to 79 per cent, leaving many more people seeking significance elsewhere. “People now use work to fill this void,” Smith says. “With traditional forms of meaning like community, religion, family, and tradition no longer in many people’s lives, they’ve come to look at work as much more than a place to secure a paycheck.” Indeed, there’s no shortage of research claiming that ‘purpose’ is at a premium these days, with many employers failing to deliver it. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, humans have a fundamental need to grow, contribute to a compelling mission, feel valued, and to know that their work matters. Gallup’s long-running ‘engagement’ research is in many ways an ongoing reiteration of one essential point: These deep needs for meaning need to be met somehow, and people feel great distress when they aren’t. One way to fulfil such cravings in the workplace, Smith points out, is through team affiliations. Smith cites the work of University of Michigan researcher Jane Dutton, who believes this need for community grows more acute the less time we spend with friends and family - and the more time we spend with our devices. “Our connections with colleagues have a significant effect on our experience at work,” Dutton says, “but also in our lives as a whole. If we don’t feel a sense of belonging on the job, both our jobs and our lives will feel meaningless.” Pondering Death Makes Us Evaluate Our Lives When 36-year-old neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi learned that he had stage-four lung cancer, he could have enjoyed his final days in Hawaii with his wife. Instead, Kalanithi chose to maintain a brutal work schedule, father a child, and document his last year of life in what later became the best-selling book When Breath Becomes Air. Fully knowing that he would soon die, Kalanithi wanted to be of service, to leave behind a legacy - and to know that his brief life truly had meaning. And that’s the final lesson worth taking to heart right now. “No matter how far off death may be in our lives,” Dr. William Brietbart, chairman of Psychiatry at Sloan Kettering’s Cancer Center, says in Smith’s book, “thinking about death forces us to revaluate our choices and consider what we would change to make them more meaningful. Reflecting on the life we’ve lived so far, and what we’ve done and not done, we can ask: ‘Am I satisfied?’ ‘Did I live a good and fulfilling life?’ ‘Is there anything I’d do differently?’” The answers to those questions may not be things that make you happy. But when all’s said and done, it might not matter.
“These deep needs for meaning need to be met somehow, and people feel great distress when they aren’t.”
BIOGRAPHY Mark C. Crowley is a speaker, leadership consultant and the author of Lead From The Heart: Transformational Leadership For The 21st Century. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and at his website. 9
The Power of Wisdom
“
WHY WISDOM CAN’T BE TAUGHT MANFRED KETS DE VRIES
I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.” S O C R AT E S
T
“Ironically, what makes wisdom more important than success and riches is that it enables us to live well. Our mental and physical health flourishes when we are congruent with our beliefs and values.”
10
he day after becoming the CEO of a company facing turbulent times, David had a dream. In it, while walking on a beach he discovered a bottle. On opening, a genie appeared offering him a wish in exchange for her freedom. Eschewing riches, fame or a long life, David opted for the one thing he knew he needed to help him guide his people in the best way possible. He chose the gift of wisdom. In today’s hyperactive digital age, attaining wisdom is a challenge. With tablets and phones and their various apps constantly vying for our immediate attention, it is increasingly difficult to find the time and mental space for making meaningful connections or engaging in the deep conversations, reflection, emotional awareness, empathy and compassion, necessary in its pursuit. Indeed, it is an unfortunate fact for many leaders in David’s position, that while wisdom requires education, education does not necessarily make people wise. As Professor Charles Gragg noted in his classic case study “Because Wisdom Can’t Be Told”, the mere act of listening to wise statements and sound advice doesn’t necessarily ensure the transfer of wisdom. What does it mean to be wise? People often equate wisdom with intelligence or being knowledgeable; but all too often, it becomes apparent that being intelligent and being wise are quite different things. The world is full of brilliant people who intellectualise without really
understanding the essence of things. In contrast, wise people try to grasp the deeper meaning of what is known and strive to better understand the limits of their knowledge. Wisdom implies more than merely being able to process information in a logical way. Knowledge becomes wisdom when we have the ability to assimilate and apply this knowledge to make the right decisions. As the saying goes, ‘knowledge speaks but wisdom listens’. Wise people are blessed with good judgement. In addition, they possess the qualities of sincerity and authenticity, the former implying a willingness to say what you mean, the latter to be what you are. Wise people are also humble; their humility deriving from a willingness to recognise the limitations of their knowledge. They accept that there are things they will never know. By accepting their ignorance, they are better prepared to bear their own fallibility. People who are wise know when what they are doing makes sense, but also when it will not be good enough. Ironically, it is exactly this kind of self-knowledge that pushes them to do something about it. Wisdom can be looked at from both a cognitive and emotional perspective. Cognitively, wise people have the ability to see the big picture. They are able to put things in perspective; to rise above their personal viewpoint and observe a situation from many different angles (thus avoiding simplistic black-and-white thinking). From an emotional perspective, people acknowledged for their wisdom are reflective, introspective and tolerant of ambiguity. They know how to manage negative emotions, and possess both empathy and compassion; qualities that differentiate them in an interpersonal context. Ironically, what makes wisdom more ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
important than success and riches is that it enables us to live well. Our mental and physical health flourishes when we are congruent with our beliefs and values. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Wise people are attuned to what constitutes a meaningful life. They know how to plan for and manage such a life. This implies self-concordance, behaving consistently with their values, a journey that requires self-exploration, self-knowledge and self-responsibility. Age doesn’t make us wiser So, how can we acquire wisdom and can we expedite its acquisition? Becoming wise is a very personal quest. It is only through our own experiences, learning how to cope with the major tragedies and dilemmas embedded within life’s journey, that we will discover our own capacities and learn how to create wisdom. Setbacks are memorable growth experiences contributing to a deeper understanding of the vicissitudes of life. Overcoming difficult situations contributes to an increased appreciation of life and the recognition of new possibilities. These experiences enable us to rise above our own perspectives and see things as they are. Unfortunately, wisdom is not something that automatically comes with the passing of years. While older people may be more capable than their younger counterparts, many never put their life experiences to good use. To acquire the required sense of reflectivity may necessitate the help of others. Educators, coaches, psychotherapists and mentors can play a significant role, not only by assisting with the dissemination of knowledge but by helping those searching for wisdom work through challenging experiences and encouraging them to work on emotional awareness, emotional self-regulation,
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
relational skills and mindfulness. A number of specific steps can be taken to expedite the road to wisdom. In my work with executives I have found that creating a learning community in which participants have the opportunity to tell their stories not only has a cathartic effect, but also helps wisdom come to bear. While written case studies can be helpful, life case studies narrated by participants have a much more dramatic, emotional impact. Telling and listening to personal stories is a starting point for a deeper understanding of oneself and others, and helps participants learn to hear what’s not being said. Wisdom and authenticity A learning community is also a great place to practice open-mindedness. Encouraging participants to step out of their comfort zone and to deal with people who are very different from themselves leads to a deeper understanding and acceptance of the ambiguous nature of things. If designed in a holistic manner, these communities are a great exercise in humility, giving participants a better awareness of their limitations as well as a greater ability to integrate their knowledge and experiences when dealing with the challenges ahead. In their pursuit of wisdom, group members will be encouraged to learn from their mistakes, to think before acting and, by taking off their masks, become more authentic in living their values.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge. BIOGRAPHY
Manfred Kets de Vries is the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and the Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus. He is the Founder of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre and the Programme Director of The Challenge of Leadership, one of INSEAD’s top Executive Development Programmes. His most recent books are: You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger: Executive Coaching Challenges; Telling Fairy Tales in the Boardroom: How to Make Sure Your Organization Lives Happily Ever After; and Riding the Leadership Rollercoaster: An Observer’s Guide.
11
2017 GLOBAL MBA RANKINGS
MBA Rankings
T
he benefits attached to an MBA are well documented: career progression, networking opportunities, personal development, salary... and the list goes on. However, in an increasingly congested market, selecting the right business school can be difficult, which is far from ideal given the time and investment involved. Using a ranking system entirely geared and weighted to fact-based criteria, CEO Magazine aims to cut through the noise and provide potential students with a performance benchmark for those schools under review.
Weighting of Data Points (full-time and part-time MBA) Quality of Faculty:
34.95 %
International Diversity:
9.71%
Class Size:
9.71%
Accreditation:
8.74%
Faculty to Student Ratio: Price:
7.76% 5.83%
International Exposure:
4.85%
Work Experience:
4.85%
Professional Development:
4.85%
Gender Parity:
4.85%
Delivery methods:
*EMBA Weighting: Work experience and international diversity are adjusted accordingly.
3.8% 0%
5%
10 %
15 %
NORTH AMERICAN MBA RANKINGS American University: Kogod Appalachian State University Auburn University: Harbert Bentley University: McCallum* Boston University: Questrom Bryant University California State University-Long Beach California State University-East Bay California State University-San Bernardino Case Western Reserve University: Weatherhead Chapman University: Argyros Cleveland State University: Monte Ahuja College of William and Mary: Mason* Colorado Technical University Concordia University: John Molson DePaul University: Kellstadt Drexel University: LeBow* Fairfield University Florida International University Fordham University Georgia Institute of Technology: Scheller Georgia State University: Robinson Gonzaga University HEC Montreal Hult Internatonal Business School Kent State University Loyola Marymount University Lynchburg College Mercer University-Atlanta: Stetson Millsaps College Niagara University Northern Illinois University Oakland University Pepperdine University: Graziadio Queens University of Charlotte Rochester Institute of Technology: Saunders 12
20 %
25 %
30 %
35 %
**Online MBA Weighting: Delivery mode and class size are removed.
TIER ONE
Saint Joseph’s University: Haub Saint Mary’s College of California Suffolk University Temple University: Fox Texas A&M University-College Station: Mays University of Akron University of Alberta University of Baltimore University of California, Davis University of California-San Diego: Rady University of Delaware: Lerner University of Louisiana-Lafayette: Moody University of Massachusetts-Boston University of Massachusetts-Lowell* University of Nebraska -Lincoln University of Nebraska-Omaha University of New Mexico: Anderson University of North Carolina-Charlotte: Belk* University of Oklahoma: Price University of Oregon: Lundquist University of Pittsburgh: Katz University of Portland: Pamplin University of Richmond: Robins University of South Florida: Muma University of Tampa: Sykes University of Texas at Arlington University of Texas-Dallas: Jindal University of the Sciences University of Utah: Eccles University of Vermont: Grossman University of Washington: Foster* University of West Georgia* Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Tech: Pamplin Willamette University: Atkinson
*Some data unavailable
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
TIER TWO Baylor University: Hankamer* Bowling Green State University California State University-Chico California State University-Northridge Hofstra University: Zarb* Kennesaw State University Loyola University Chicago: Quinlan Marquette University Northwest Missouri State University Purdue University-West Lafayette: Krannert*
Seattle University: Albers University of Cincinnati: Lindner University of Connecticut University of Florida, Hough University of Hawaii-Manoa: Shidler University of Kentucky: Gatton University of Memphis* University of Michigan-Flint University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Lubar
EUROPEAN MBA RANKINGS Country Aston Business School* UK Audencia Business school France Birmingham Business School UK Bradford University School of Management UK Brunel Business School UK Business School Netherlands Netherlands Carlos III University of Madrid Spain Copenhagen Business School Denmark Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences Germany Durham University Business School* UK EBS Business School Germany Ecole des Ponts MBA with Solvay France and Belgium ESADE Business School Spain EU Business School Spain, Germany and Switzerland HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management Germany IE Business School Spain
TIER ONE
Country IESE Business School Spain ISEG Portugal Leeds University Business School UK Maastricht School of Management Netherlands Mannheim Business School Germany MIP Politecnico di Milano Italy Nebrija Business School Spain Porto Business School Portugal SBS Swiss Business School Switzerland The Lisbon MBA Catolica | Nova Portugal Toulouse Business School France Trinity College Dublin School of Business Republic of Ireland University of Amsterdam Netherlands University of Exeter UK University of Liverpool Management School UK University of Nottingham UK University of Sheffield Management School UK
MBA RANKINGS-THE REST OF THE WORLD Country Central Queensland University Australia Griffith University Australia HKUST Business School China IAE Business School Argentina INCAE Business School Costa Rica La Trobe University Australia RMIT University Australia Swinburne University of Technology Australia The University of Adelaide Australia Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Chile Universidad de Chile Chile ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
TIER ONE
Country University of Otago Business School New Zealand University of South Australia Australia University of Southern Queensland Australia University of the Witwatersrand, Wits Business School South Africa University of Waikato, Waikato Management School New Zealand University of Wollongong Sydney Business School Australia Victoria Graduate School of Business Australia
*Some data unavailable
13
GLOBAL EXECUTIVE MBA RANKINGS Rank Country 1 University of Ottawa: Telfer Canada 2 Ponts-Fox Global Executive MBA France and (École des Ponts Business School and Temple University) North America Spain, Germany 3 EU Business School and Switzerland 4 Copenhagen Business School Denmark 5 Global OneMBA Mexico, Brazil,
(EGADE, FGV-EAESP, Rotterdam School of Management, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Xiamen University School of Management)
6
Netherlands, North America and China Switzerland
SBS Swiss Business School Purdue University-West Lafayette: Krannert - Global EMBA North America 8 Temple University: Fox North America =9 Kennesaw State University North America =9 Loyola Marymount University North America =9 Virginia Commonwealth University North America =9 INCAE Business School Costa Rica 10 CEIBS Zurich institute of Business Education China and Switzerland 11 McGill-HEC Montréal EMBA Canada 12 Purdue University-West Lafayette: Krannert North America =13 Hult Internatonal Business School North America =13 IfM Institut für Management Austria =13 Maastricht University Netherlands =13 Trinity College Dublin School of Business Republic of Ireland 14 Leeds University Business School UK =15 Rutgers Business School North America =15 IE Business School Spain =15 IESE Business School Spain =15 The Lisbon MBA Catolica|Nova Portugal =16 Florida International University North America =16 AIX Marseille Graduate School of Management France =17 Kent State University North America =17 Business School Netherlands Netherlands =17 University of Nottingham UK =18 Fordham University North America =18 University of Utah: Eccles North America 19 Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Chile =20 Case Western Reserve University: Weatherhead North America =20 Rochester Institute of Technology: Saunders North America =20 Mannheim Business School Germany =20 IAE Business School Argentina =20 Maastricht School of Management Netherlands =21 University of Oklahoma: Price North America =21 University of Texas at Arlington North America =21 University of Exeter UK =21 Concordia University: John Molson Canada =22 Georgia State University: Robinson North America =22 Mercer University-Atlanta: Stetson North America =22 Oakland University North America =22 Audencia Business school France 7
14
TIER ONE
Rank Country =22 Stockholm School of Economics Sweden =23 University of California-San Diego: Rady North America =23 The Durham EBS Business School Executive MBA UK and Germany 24 Pepperdine University: Graziadio North America 25 Boston University: Questrom North America =26 Baylor University: Hankamer North America =26 Millsaps College North America =26 RMIT University Australia 27 Bradford School of Management Executive MBA in Dubai Dubai =28 Northern Illinois University North America =28 University of Kentucky: Gatton North America =28 Villanova University North America =29 California State University-Long Beach North America =29 HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management Germany =29 Porto Business School Portugal =29 University of Wollongong Sydney Business School Australia 30 Washington State University: Carson North America 31 Bradford University School of Management UK 32 University of Tampa: Sykes North America 33 Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management Belgium 34 University of Oregon: Lundquist North America =35 California State University-East Bay North America =35 University of Texas-Dallas: Jindal North America =35 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Lubar North America =36 Marquette University North America =36 Saint Mary’s College of California Trans-Global EMBA North America =36 University of Alberta Canada =36 University of Washington: Foster North America =36 College of William and Mary: Mason* North America =36 Aston Business School* UK =37 Georgia Institute of Technology: Scheller North America =37 ESADE-Georgetown Global Executive MBA Spain and North America =38 Auburn University: Harbert North America =38 University of Connecticut North America =38 University of Pittsburgh: Katz North America 39 MIP Politecnico di Milano Italy =40 Loyola University Chicago: Quinlan North America =40 Seattle University: Albers North America =40 Suffolk University North America =41 Saint Mary’s College of California North America =41 Texas A&M University- College Station: Mays North America =42 Saint Joseph’s University: Haub North America =42 ESADE Business School* Spain 43 University of Hawaii-Manoa: Shidler North America =44 Chapman University: Argyros North America =44 University of South Florida: Muma North America =45 Hofstra University: Zarb* North America =45 University of New Mexico: Anderson* North America =45 Universidad de Chile Chile
*Some data unavailable
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
TIER TWO Rank Country =1 Bowling Green State University North America =1 University of Florida: Hough North America 2 Drexel University: LeBow* North America 3 Cleveland State University: Monte Ahuja North America
Rank Country 4 University of North Alabama North America 5 Birmingham Business School UK 6 University of Louisiana-Lafayette: Moody North America 7 University of Memphis* North America
GLOBAL ONLINE MBA RANKINGS Rank Country 1 EU Business School Spain, Germany and Switzerland 2 SBS Swiss Business School Switzerland 3 IE Business School Spain 4 University of Otago Business School New Zealand =5 University of Utah: Eccles North America =5 Nebrija Business School 6 =7 =7
=7 8 =9 =9 =10
=10 =10 11 12 13
14 =15 =15 =15 =16 =16
Spain
Temple University: Fox North America The Open University UK Rochester Institute of Technology: Saunders North America MIP Politecnico di Milano Italy Bradford University School of Management UK La Trobe University Australia American University: Kogod North America The EuroMBA France, Spain, (Aix-Marseille, Audencia Nantes, EADA, HHL Leipzig, Kozminski University and Germany, Poland, Maastrict University) and the Netherlands Colorado Technical University North America Maastricht School of Management Netherlands University of Massachusetts-Lowell* North America Jack Welch Management Institute North America Washington State University: Carson - EMBA North America RMIT University Australia University of Southern Queensland Australia University of Liverpool Management School UK Durham University Business School* UK Griffith University Australia California State UniversitySan Bernardino North America
GLOBAL DBA LISTING Aston Business School Baruch College, City University of New York: Zicklin Case Western Reserve: Weatherhead Cranfield School of Management DePaul: Kellstadt Drexel University: LeBow Durham University Business School École des Ponts Business School EU Business School Georgia State University: Robinson ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
Rank Country =17 Washington State University: Carson North America =17 Queens University of Charlotte North America =18 Saint Mary’s College of California North America =18 Pepperdine University: Graziadio North America =19 University of Texas-Dallas: Jindal North America =19 Suffolk University North America =19 Mercer University-Atlanta: Stetson North America =20 University of the Sciences North America =20 University of Baltimore North America =20 Saint Joseph’s University: Haub North America =20 Florida International University North America =20 Central Queensland University Australia =20 Birmingham Business School UK =21 University of Delaware: Lerner North America =21 Swinburne University of Technology Australia 22 Georgia WebMBA (Columbus State, Georgia College,
Georgia Southern, Kennesaw State, University of West Georgia, Valdosta State)
23
Hofstra University: Zarb* Aston Business School* Baylor University: Hankamer University of Hawaii-Manoa: Shidler University of Cincinnati: Lindner Drexel University: LeBow* College of William and Mary: Mason* University of Florida: Hough University of Nebraska-Lincoln University of North Alabama Auburn University: Harbert Cleveland State University: Monte Ahuja University of Memphis* Northwest Missouri State University
24 25 =26 =26 =27 =27 28 29 =30 =30 31
=32 =32
North America North America UK North America North America North America North America North America North America North America North America North America North America North America North America
Based upon accreditation, quality of faculty, geography, and international standing, this year’s Global DBA Listing is designed to showcase the market’s premier DBA providers.
Harvard Business School IE Business School Kennesaw State University: Coles Maastricht School of Management Rollins College: Crumer SBS Swiss Business School Temple University: Fox University of Dallas: Gupta University of Manchester: Alliance Washington University in St. Louis: Olin *Some data unavailable
15
Jack Welch Management Institute
BREAKING THE ONLINE EDUCATION MOLD Jack Welch Management Institute’s CEO, Dean Sippel, speaks to CEO Magazine about how the student-centric, online MBA program continues to be as relevant and rigorous as ever, seven years on.
J
ack Welch Management Institute (JWMI) is one of the fastest-growing online MBA programs in the world, and has been for almost seven years, launching from zero students in 2010 to more than 1,500 students and 800 alumni today. Our students and alumni are located in 47 states and 56 countries. They span from Fortune 500 companies to technology start-ups. I’ve had a front row seat since the beginning and am humbled to see the great success of our students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Our diversity and growth is and will be, driven by our mission. We are committed to transforming the lives of our students by providing them with the tools to become better leaders, build great teams, and help their organizations win. Our mission, and the behaviors needed to fulfill it, was created by our faculty and staff, and they re-commit to it every day. As a leader, I look for great people that align with our mission and behaviors and give them the support and tools to do their jobs. The strategy is working. We run JWMI like a business. Great businesses focus on their customers, and Jack Welch Management Institute is no different. The entire organization - faculty, staff, and leadership - is committed to changing the lives of our students. JWMI students are successful, busy, working professionals juggling careers and families. They don’t have the luxury of time. They need a flexible format that delivers an immediate return 16
on their investment. So, we relentlessly measure student satisfaction through the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Our most recent NPS score is 81, the highest in school history. Other top schools like Duke, Wharton, and Harvard have reported NPS scores of 67, 51 and 41 respectively. We see our students as the customer, and every decision we make needs to deliver the highest value for them. We place great emphasis on our curriculum and faculty. Students receive a rigorous, relevant, real-world education that can be applied on the job the next day under our “Learn it on Monday. Apply it on Tuesday.” philosophy. They bring actual problems facing their organization into the classroom, and we deliver the proven business tools and practices to help them solve those problems, which provides immediate returns on the job. JWMI is not a research institute. We hire and reward faculty based on their ability to engage and coach, remaining true to our student-centric model. While our faculty members hold the same credentials as those at other top business schools, they will not succeed unless their student satisfaction scores are high. We practice differentiation, not tenure. In the end, JWMI delivers a practical business education based on proven practices from the front lines of business and guided by the greatest CEOs in history, taught by a faculty hired to serve our students. Tuition is affordable - less than $45,000. The cost differential is a huge deciding factor for many students. We deliver results at less than half ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
the price of some other top-ranked online MBA programs, some of which cost as much as $100,000 and more. The JWMI model is working - approximately 68 percent* of students receive a promotion or raise while in the program. I can’t discount the impact that Jack Welch has on the Institute. From the curriculum to the operations, Jack Welch is in the DNA of the program, bringing over 50 years of leadership expertise and a passion for education. His pragmatic approach to business and management is unparalleled and serves as the foundation for the way we operate JWMI. So, while other business schools study great leaders - our school is led by one. Jack’s influence spans the curriculum, the faculty, ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
BIOGRAPHY As Jack Welch Management Institute’s strategic business and operations leader, Dean Sippel has transformed JWMI into one of the fastestgrowing and most innovative business education programs in the world, growing its student population over 40 percent a year since inception, to more than 1500 students and 800 alumni and certificate participants.
*SOURCE: Based on 476 survey respondents among 500 JWMI students surveyed during the final quarter of their program between March 2015 and March 2017.
17
Jack Welch Management Institute
“We are committed to transforming the lives of our students.”
18
the students, and the administration. As our executive chairman, Jack remains deeply engaged in every aspect of the program. Updated daily on our performance, Jack also speaks to the leadership team weekly and continuously provides direct coaching and mentoring to that team as well. Most importantly, as Jack is currently an advisor to many top CEOs and manages many businesses within his private equity group, he is constantly evaluating how business education can improve those companies and brings those learnings to JWMI. His leadership is and has been a tremendous asset to our brand, students, faculty, and staff. In addition to his active involvement, Jack’s brand recognition has been an asset for JWMI, particularly in the early days of the school. Business leaders are drawn to Jack. Now, these leaders are also excited by the results we are delivering. They are impressed by the caliber of our faculty, students, and alumni, and want to work with the JWMI brand. I’ve always been driven by the belief that students should not have to sacrifice quality by learning online. Technology is the true democratizer of education. Thus, our curriculum must be delivered anytime, anywhere with the most engaging content and instructors. Prior to JWMI, I helped create some of the first online high schools in the United States. The feedback from parents, students, school administrators and state regulators was invaluable. I saw first-hand the power of putting the student at the center of the learning experience. Technology allows you to hyperfocus on individual experiences to ensure learners obtain the outcomes that each course and program is designed to accomplish. From there I spent many years working for Strayer University, the home of Jack Welch Management Institute. Strayer has
125 years of experience in educating working adults, and was one of the first to offer online programs at a university level. Combining my background with the vision of our founder, we designed JWMI to be an online offering from the beginning, which is very different from adapting a brick and mortar model to an online program. We have a unique understanding of the advantages and challenges of delivering a program virtually and have designed our operations and services accordingly. For example, our faculty must pass a 10-week training course designed specifically for the online environment. And through technology, students can receive support from faculty and staff every hour and every day of the year. At JWMI we are passionate about evolving our programs to maintain market relevance. Happy students are critical to the success and longevity of JWMI. Looking ahead, we will continue to obsess and execute our current student-centric strategy and deliver relevant and rigorous curriculum. The online, global MBA market is large - estimated to be approximately 1 million potential students. Thus, our current focus is on the execution of our plan to capture more of the global MBA market. We know our program works; now we need to make more potential students aware of its value. This summer, we are launching our first concentration in healthcare. Global healthcare systems face unprecedented complexity - rising costs, economic inefficiencies, technologies, and increased regulation. These factors forced a change in current models and created a demand for leaders who can navigate highly ambiguous and rapidly changing economic and regulatory landscapes. JWMI is perfectly positioned to help fill this void. We have a great roster of leaders from the Cleveland Clinic, Medtronic, and other organizations who are lending their expertise to our curriculum design. We are also enhancing our content through a series we have branded ‘Experts of Practice.’ We have over 30 business leaders providing insights and practices for our students. These include such names as Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath, a Verizon Company, Carlos Brito, CEO of AnheuserBusch InBev, and most recently, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. On the technology front, we are adding features and enhancing the user experience through both our desktop and mobile experience. As content delivery continues to evolve across platforms, we will organize and deliver our curriculum with a “your time, your way” mentality. ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
Leadership
WHAT TO DO WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU ‘OPTION B’
T
wo years ago, Sheryl Sandberg was leading a good life. She was the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of the legendary New York Times bestseller Lean In. She was a renowned business leader and a role model for women around the world. She was happily married to Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, and they had two young children. Then the unthinkable happened. On a family vacation in Mexico, Goldberg died suddenly and unexpectedly of heart failure while using an exercise machine. He was 48. “I was lucky for a long time. And then I wasn’t,” Sandberg said simply and poignantly in a recent talk at Wharton as part of the Authors@Whartonspeakers series. Sandberg was joined by Adam Grant, Wharton professor of management and psychology and the author of Originals and Give and Take. Sandberg and Grant have co-authored a new book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, published in April, which chronicles Sandberg’s progress from a state of overwhelming, paralyzing grief to being able to appreciate life in a new way. Stories of others who have faced adversity are included as well. At Wharton she spoke about the book and described how Grant has been a partner on the journey. Grant was already an acquaintance of Sandberg and her family, and attended the shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, at Sandberg’s home. As the guests were leaving, Sandberg asked Grant to stay. “I was thinking, OK, he’s a psychologist…. I looked at him, I’m sure hysterical, I was like, ‘What do I do? How am I going to get my kids through this? Tell me what to do.’” His response was something that might not have worked for everyone, she said, but for her was “incredibly comforting…. He started summarizing research.” (Sandberg is a self-described “geek” who holds a B.A. in economics, summa cum laude from Harvard.) She said, “When anyone gives you any steps you can take — particularly for me, ones that social scientists had studied that they knew worked — that was a lifeline.” To her worry about whether or not she and her children were strong enough to get ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
through the grief, Grant answered, according to Sandberg, “Resilience is a muscle and you build it…. Don’t ask me how much you have; ask me how to build it.”
“Resilience is a muscle and you build it…. Don’t ask me how much you have; ask me how to build it.”
The Three P’s That Hold Back Healing Sandberg said Grant told her about the three P’s: traps that people fall into when facing adversity ranging from the death of a loved one to getting fired from a job to not getting into the college you wanted. (Grant joked with Sandberg, “I remember when I first brought them up, you said, ‘Why do you psychologists need three of everything, and why do they have to start with the same letter?’”) The first P is personalization: the idea that what happened is your fault. “I blamed myself for Dave dying,” said Sandberg. She explained that at first Goldberg’s death was thought to have been caused by head trauma from falling off the exercise machine. But an autopsy revealed that he had coronary artery disease, which had led to a cardiac arrhythmia. Sandberg, the only non-doctor in her family, felt guilty that she had not gone to medical school, “as everyone had told me to do all along,” personally diagnosed her husband’s condition and saved his life. She also felt guilty, she said, about the people she was “burdening” with her grief: “all the people at Facebook who were taking meetings for me; my mom who gave up her life to live with me for a while.” She apologized constantly, until “Adam told me I wasn’t allowed to say ‘sorry’ anymore.” Grant sent her research on resilience showing her that self-compassion is a key factor in recovery. Sandberg spoke about how unkindly people can sometimes talk to themselves. She told the story of a woman who was excited to finally be going on her first date after a divorce. A voice inside her head told her, “You’re
19
Leadership
“When I fell asleep in the first meeting of the first day back, he said, ‘A lot of people fall asleep in meetings… But you made two good points today. And here’s what they were.’”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Republished with permission from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge. wharton.upenn. edu), the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 20
unattractive and boring:” a statement that no friend would ever utter. After adversity, people must achieve self-forgiveness in order to heal. The second P is pervasiveness: the belief that the traumatic event will turn every area of one’s life into a disaster. Sandberg shared an experience from her first job after college in which she was asked to enter data into a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3. She didn’t know how, and her boss, a professor, said “I can’t believe you got this job not knowing how to do this.” She said she felt like a complete failure and was convinced she would be fired. The sense of pervasiveness, she writes in Option B, was telling her she was terrible at everything. “It turns out I was only terrible at spreadsheets,” she goes on in the book. “Understanding pervasiveness would have saved me a lot of anxiety that week.” One aspect of experiencing trauma that Sandberg said “shocked” her was how “Dave’s death trashed my self-confidence… And I’ve thought a lot about self-confidence. I wrote Lean In,” she said. This, too, was linked to pervasiveness. She found herself thinking, “I’ve lost Dave, now I’m going to lose my job [at Facebook], I’m going to lose everything.” She imagined herself sitting at home while her children were in school, with nothing to do all day but grieve. She said her boss Mark Zuckerberg was incredibly helpful in “building her back up.” Once she was back at work, he focused not on how she still had some trouble functioning, but on how good she was at her job. “When I fell asleep in the first meeting of the first day back, he said, ‘A lot of people fall asleep in meetings… But you made two good points today. And here’s what they were.’” When she made a mistake, he said lightly, “Oh, you would have made that mistake before.” Although it sounds kind of funny, she said, it was actually very comforting. Zuckerberg’s reaction to Sandberg’s adversity has changed her own attitude toward helping co-workers going through difficult times, she said. Of course it is critical to offer time off, or to ask if the person suffering would appreciate having a big project taken off their shoulders. “But if they don’t, and they’re back, I say, ‘Do you want to do this? You’re great at this.’ Or I take the time to compliment the little things they might not have needed [to be] complimented on before.” It’s important, she said, to reassure them they can do their job. The third of the three P’s is permanence, said Sandberg: believing that the allencompassing grief felt initially will be there forever. “Adam and others said it would feel better. And I did not believe it.” But, she said
while the grief remains, “it does not feel the way it did two years ago. I can breathe.” Sandberg said an awareness of the three P’s and the traps they pose can help people in many tragic situations recover more quickly, and even find joy in their lives again. Building Collective Resilience Grant noted that academic research on personal resilience began with extremely disadvantaged groups, such as children in severe poverty who had suffered violent abuse, and talked about the “idea of privilege.” Sandberg, despite the tragedy, has had a lot to be grateful for. “There are very few people who have the resources that you do, and also have such great supportive friends who benefitted from your generosity for years and had a chance, then, to pay back.” Sandberg agreed and said she knows how lucky she and her children are in many ways: “Even in the face of trauma, resources matter.” What if losing her husband had meant also losing her house or apartment, for example? She noted that in America “public policy is just abysmal” and cited as an example the situation of a low-income single mother who has to choose between staying home to care for a sick child and keeping the job she desperately needs. She discussed some of the existing interventional programs described in Option B, such as the Nurse-Family Partnership, which provides disadvantaged families with home visits and counseling from pregnancy to two years old. By the time these children turn 15, they experience police arrests half as often as their peers. Programs like these help build resilience within families, said Sandberg. Sandberg has publicly stated that she is donating her income from Option B to Option B.Org. The organization is a nonprofit initiative of the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation, the same foundation that runs LeanIn.Org, which is dedicated to helping women achieve their ambitions. Option B.Org’s mission is to “help people build resilience and find meaning in the face of adversity,” according to the website. People can read and share personal stories, join support groups, and research information from experts. Areas covered include grief and loss, abuse and sexual assault, divorce, incarceration and serious illness. “We have a deep responsibility to prevent hardship [in this country], because hardship is not evenly distributed,” said Sandberg. She stated that racism, disadvantage and poverty lead to more violence, more death, and more job loss. Through the Option B book and organization, she said, she aims to “talk about and teach how to build collective resilience.” ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
EU Business School
CREATING THE ENTREPRENEURS OF THE FUTURE EU BUSINESS SCHOOL
S
mall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of the European economy. According to the European Commission, within the last five years they have created around 85 per cent of new jobs and provided two-thirds of private sector employment in the EU. In the UK in 2016, for example, companies with fewer than 250 employees accounted for 60 per cent of private sector employment and generated 47 per cent of all private sector turnover. With such a dependence on SMEs as the driving force behind international economic growth, innovation and job creation, the world is looking for ways to promote entrepreneurship and to provide the support networks and access to funding that enable start-ups to thrive. ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
So how exactly does a budding entrepreneur go about establishing a new business? There is a romanticised belief that having a great idea and a passion for your product is enough to bring success, and high-profile rags-to-riches stories certainly help to perpetuate this idealistic notion. However, in reality, the business world is incredibly tough to navigate for start-ups: around 50 per cent of new businesses don’t survive for longer than five years. Government policy is crucial in creating environments in which start-ups can succeed, but only those with a solid academic background and a thorough understanding of real-world business practice will be able to drive forward global economic prosperity as the entrepreneurs of the future. 21
politicians, business leaders and educational institutions look towards establishing a mutually supportive relationship between the two. An increasing number of universities and business schools across the world are now offering courses in entrepreneurship at both bachelor’s and master’s level, while schools and non-governmental organisations focus on inspiring the entrepreneurs of the future at an even younger age. The challenge lies with educational institutions to establish how best to ‘teach’ what is often seen as an innate flair for business. With its pioneering MBA in Entrepreneurship, EU Business School (EU) is spearheading the change in this area.
EU Business School
Education vs. Entrepreneurship A small number of well-known stories are often used to show that academic achievement is not a prerequisite for a successful career in business. Sir Alan Sugar left school at 16 and started selling car aerials, Richard Branson also quit school at 16 and started a student magazine, and Steve Jobs dropped out of college and lived on free meals from his local Hare Krishna temple. Rags-to-riches tales such as these serve as inspiration for millions of aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world, feeding the claim that real business acumen can’t be taught in the classroom. While this is perhaps true in some prominent cases, a strong academic background and solid practical knowledge can help to ensure a greater chance of success for many SMEs. Indeed, there are just as many examples of global business icons with degrees as there are those who turned their back on conventional education. For every Sir Alan Sugar, there is an Elon Musk, who has two bachelor’s degrees - in physics and economics, respectively. For every Richard Branson, there is a Michael Bloomberg, who has an MBA from Harvard Business School. And, conversely, for every Steve Jobs, there are plenty of young people who drift aimlessly through their early adult years, searching in vain for a vocation that inspires them. A shift away from the ‘education vs. entrepreneurship’ debate can now be seen as 22
Innovation in Education Acknowledging that business schools and universities play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs demonstrates the crucial importance that they have in future economic development. Providing proper training and support for potential business leaders will therefore be essential in stabilising an international economy in which growth is so dependent on the performance of SMEs. To ensure that graduates are equipped to step forward and start their own businesses, those in higher education need to rethink traditional teaching methods to provide students with both a practical understanding of business operations and a sound theoretical knowledge. An in-depth awareness of real-world business practice is the cornerstone of any degree earned at EU Business School. Through corporate partnerships with organisations of all sizes, local and international, students have the opportunity to gain a thorough practical understanding of how a business works before going it alone. Guest speaker events with the likes of Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chariman emeritus of Nestlé, and industrial visits to companies such as BMW, FC Barcelona and Garmin allow EU students to witness the inner workings of global corporate giants first hand. The invaluable lessons that are passed on in these circumstances often go far beyond what can be learned in any textbook. International exposure is another key aspect of education for young entrepreneurs. In 2016, European Union member states traded almost €3.5 trillion worth of goods and services with non-EU countries. This rate of globalisation in trade shows no sign of slowing, meaning that the founder of a startup with overseas connections will therefore have an enormous competitive advantage over the founder who has none. With over 100 different nationalities ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
represented on campus and a global network of academic partners, EU Business School is leading the way in preparing its students for careers in today’s rapidly evolving and globalised business world. EU encourages students to transfer between its four campuses in Barcelona, Geneva, Montreux and Munich, while they also have the opportunity to study with leading universities in the USA, China, UK, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Russia and beyond. As a result, EU Business School students graduate not only with a world-class education, but also with the global network of contacts that is vital when founding a business. Learning from Leaders Educational establishments across the world have now acknowledged that a shift in mentality is needed regarding education in entrepreneurship. It is no coincidence that the founders of Apple, Microsoft and Facebook all dropped out of college; the traditional educational system did not satisfy their curiosity and could not provide the environment they needed to exercise their creativity in business. Only by reimagining the format of classroom-based learning will business schools and universities be able to tap into the nascent entrepreneurial spirit that lies within today’s students. Employing lecturers with real-world business experience gives them a platform to pass on their practical knowledge to students. As entrepreneurs, consultants and business leaders, EU Business School’s faculty brings to the classroom a priceless blend of the academic and business worlds. Each individual lecturer is an expert in their respective field and utilises an innovative combination of case studies, class discussions, guest speaker sessions and industrial visits to pass on their extensive first-hand knowledge to EU’s students. Though hailing from all over the world, EU lecturers make the most of the business school’s local partnerships. With campuses in some of Europe’s most forward-thinking cities, they are perfectly placed to tap into the expertise of global corporate giants in sports, banking, finance and technology. Additionally, in Barcelona, a city of over 1,100 start-ups which has famously been named ‘the new Silicon Valley’, regular networking events give students the chance to meet and learn from the city’s most successful entrepreneurs - a number of whom happen to be EU alumni. At the business school’s annual career fair in Barcelona in 2017, EU alumnus Ricardo Gómez, co-founder and sales director of BeMobile Client, spoke to bachelor’s and ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
master’s students as part of a panel discussion on the challenges of founding a start-up. Gómez, 27, now manages a team of 48 people in the start-up accelerator that he founded in 2013. He waded into the ‘education vs. entrepreneurship’ debate in saying that: “The MBA helped, but as an entrepreneur I was also getting myself into something completely unknown. The steepest learning curve for me has been in the actual field, every day.” This is the key to EU Business School’s experiential education model. EU’s pragmatic approach to learning ensures that each student has the practical knowledge that they need to start their own business. Combining this with a rigorous academic programme and a truly global student body creates an environment in which the relationships built during the course can develop into business opportunities themselves. EU Munich MBA in Entrepreneurship graduate Rodrigo Crespo, co-founder of BitShares Munich, is effusive in his praise for the collaborative environment he enjoyed during his studies: “Networking opportunities at EU are fantastic. You meet such good people – people that are extremely intelligent and have great potential in the business world. We now do business with our former classmates and our professors have gone on to become consultants for us.” Having access to this international network of business contacts can make the first steps for a start-up seem so much less daunting, and the speed of their growth so much more impressive. Since being founded in 2016, Crespo’s digital currency platform has chosen to hire a raft of EU Business School alumni and they have expanded their operations into a number of Latin American markets. The Future of Entrepreneurship Programmes such as EU Business School’s MBA in Entrepreneurship give students the knowledge, experience and support network to make a smooth transition into business ownership. Educational institutions like EU are now taking the lead in creating environments in which novel business ideas are encouraged and cultivated, better equipping graduates and school leavers with the tools they need to thrive as the owners of SMEs. Beyond this, the responsibility falls on those in the corridors of power to create the financial and economic conditions in which start-ups can flourish. It takes a combination of innovative education, innate business flair and governmental support to create the entrepreneurs of the future.
“Universities play a pivotal role in educating the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
BIOGRAPHY EU Business School is a triple-accredited, multi-campus, international business school. EU offers programmes at bachelor’s (BBA/BA/ BS), master’s (MBA/ MSc) and doctoral (DBA) levels, all taught in English. 23
Jack Welch Management Institute
LESSONS FROM THE FRONTLINE OF BUSINESS
ALEXANDRA SKINNER SPEAKS TO JACK W E L C H M A N A G E M E N T I N S T I T U T E’S D E A N O F C U R R I C U L U M, M A R Y C A R R.
Q. To what extent do you work with local, national and international businesses, and how much do they influence your curriculum? Our curriculum is heavily influenced by what is happening in the marketplace today. We use subject matter experts from all areas of business to augment our teachings as we apply relevant and proven Jack Welch principles to it. We integrate case studies featuring global companies such as Medtronic and FedEx. Every student receives a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, which allows us to create real-time discussions centering on today’s issues. Finally, our faculty has led at global organisations such as Procter & Gamble, and they bring a diverse perspective to the classroom. Many of the issues we cover are internationally-focused. For example, value-based healthcare is a global concept, so we recently interviewed Toby Cosgrove, president and chief executive officer of the Cleveland Clinic, an organisation that embraced lower healthcare costs and improved quality and outcomes for patients. Through Cosgrove’s insights, students will 24
study both the integrated healthcare business model and the commitment to service at the Cleveland Clinic, gaining both technical and leadership training. In addition to our curriculum offerings, we host a Leadership Live education series. International business experts are invited to lecture on current topics from winning in China to building your brand in the digital age to leadership. Our speakers are from leading companies such as LinkedIn and PenFed, as well as start-ups. Q. How involved is Jack Welch in the development and review of your curriculum? Jack is passionate about the curriculum at Jack Welch Management Institute and is extremely involved in its development. Frequently featured as an Expert of Practice (EOP), he brings valuable insights from the companies and business leaders he consults with around the world to JWMI students. In this way, Jack helps us bridge the gap between what companies want in the workplace and the education students receive. His feedback, along with that of our other EOPs, ensures that we deliver courses that are rigorous but also relevant. As the Dean of Curriculum, Jack relies on me to be both an expert in the science of accreditation as well as the architect who ensures our learning outcomes align with our assessments. Jack’s influence ensures that those assessments are real and practical. We don’t just talk about an executive presence in the classroom - our students have to practice ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
it via video presentations. We don’t just talk about measuring performance - our students must prepare a talent scorecard. In that way, Jack’s vision and continued involvement in the curriculum ensure that students are learning and applying every day. In addition, Jack’s video lectures are in every course, and students have the opportunity to interact with him each term. He meets with students multiple times per quarter, sharing his insights on current business topics and coaching them on career development. Q. What are the key traits potential Jack Welch Management Institute MBA students need to possess? Whether they are first-time managers or experienced executives, all our students share one common desire - they want to be better leaders and advance in their careers. JWMI students need to be dedicated to investing in themselves to reap the benefits of this programme. As working adults with busy lives, students need to commit each week to learn and apply the material. They need to have the desire to advance and the willingness to take, at times, tough feedback that is geared towards transforming them into better leaders. Q. Your students are exposed to industry titans such as Jeff Immelt, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Warren Buffett. What impact do these leaders have on the JWMI experience? Through our EOP programme, our students have the opportunity to learn both leadership practices and technical skills across all business disciplines from today’s top CEOs and executives. Our EOPs provide video keynotes, guest lectures and other exclusive content highlighting their leadership journeys. Through exposure to these executives, our students are gaining real-world insights directly from the leaders of industries that they are studying and ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
working in. They take these lessons directly back to their workplace and apply them to their career development. Over the past year alone we’ve welcomed the CEOs of Under Armour, AOL, Cleveland Clinic, Medtronic and most recently, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway, to our EOP programme. We currently have over three dozen executives sharing over 300 stories and lessons within our curriculum. For example, through Warren Buffett, our students learn the practical and tested financial principles leaders need to manage a business. And through Warren’s candid storytelling, they gain soft skills such as the importance of communication as a leader. Exposure to today’s top executives allows students to compare and contrast the various styles of leadership. For example, while Jack and Warren may seem very different in their approaches, they share many of the same principles when it comes to managing people. Students will see leaders who are introverts, extroverts and some who are hands-on and others who trust but verify. All of this helps them to grow and develop their own style of leadership. Q. Which skills do you expect your MBA graduates to leave the programme with? A manager’s development typically takes years, and it is hard to accelerate, largely because their focus can be relatively narrow. JWMI exposes managers to a much wider range of experiences and actionable and effective management approaches in a very short period. Our graduates leave JWMI with a strong academic grounding and confidence in fundamental areas such as economics, finance, and operations. They learn how to build marketing plans and evaluate mergers and acquisitions. They learn concrete operating strategies such as Six Sigma. And they learn advanced communications skills often reserved for the C-suite to improve their executive presence. More importantly, our students live and breathe Jack’s principles of leadership development and people management. They become experts in his business canon - how to hire the right people, how to build great teams, how to practice differentiation, and how to communicate with candour. They learn the tough stuff often overlooked in traditional business education such as leading change, aligning teams, and managing conflict. Students leave JWMI with a true understanding of how to win in business and in life.
“Our students are gaining real-world insights directly from the leaders of industries.”
BIOGRAPHY
Mary Carr is Dean of Curriculum at Jack Welch Management Institute. 25
Leadership
DEVELOPING LEADERS THROUGH ADVERSITY
MANFRED KETS DE VRIES
“
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperou s circum stances would have lain dormant”
“The tale of Job is one of endurance, courage and character. It also demonstrates that adversity can be a great educator. Without adversity, we do not really know what we are all about, nor do we appreciate the limits of our character.” 26
I
HORACE
n the perfect storm our world is currently experiencing, we need to develop leaders with character, people who can deal with complex and difficult situations and act as forces for good. Take the United Kingdom for example. The responses from Prime Minister Theresa May following the horrific attacks in London and Manchester were inadequate and short-sighted while her off-sider, Boris Johnson, again showed himself to be big on bluster but with very little credibility. Both fell well short of the strong, uniting, calm leadership Winston Churchill displayed when rallying a panicked Britain under siege from German bombers in the 1940s. Endurance, courage and character The French novelist Victor Hugo once said that if all the world’s literary works were to be destroyed, and he could save but one, it would be The Book of Job. Job’s tale is a narrative on how to deal with adversity, of courage, and of leadership as a force for good. A prosperous man, Job’s wealth was coupled with wisdom
and integrity. He remained humble in showing concern about the plight of the poor, weak and helpless, and worked to serve others. Satan, believing Man was driven solely by materialism and self-interest, insisted that Job kept his faith because so many good things had happened to him. Take everything away from him and his real character would emerge. Satan’s challenge to God was that if Job were to lose everything he had, he would curse the Lord. To demonstrate his faith in Job, God gave Satan permission to strip him of all possessions, steal his cattle, kill his servants and children and smite him with leprosy. Throughout these disastrous experiences Job did not complain. He persevered, and remained steadfast in his belief in himself and in God. Despite friends’ attempts to sway him, attributing his suffering to God’s displeasure with him, Job refused to concede, knowing that, as a virtuous man, he would prevail. And that was exactly what happened. All of Job’s losses were restored twofold. He had seven more sons and three daughters; gained back twice as much cattle as he had before; and lived to be a very old man, quietly, piously and happily. The tale of Job is one of endurance, courage and character. It also demonstrates that ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
adversity can be a great educator. Without adversity, we do not really know what we are all about, nor do we appreciate the limits of our character. The power of internal control Characters like Job are role models. Their deep-rooted faith in systems of meaning gives them strength. There are people possessed with a belief in their own abilities, a positive attitude, the ability to regulate emotions and a capacity to reframe failure as an opportunity for development and growth. These attributes help them to overcome whatever obstacle comes their way. This “internal locus of control” enables them to “hang tough” when times are difficult. Churchill demonstrated this ability. He was a truly extraordinary leader who, when delivering a speech at his old school in October 1941, urged students to “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” It was a simple message taking on historical significance and retains its power today. Remain the master of your faith Nelson Mandela is another great example of a leader who knew how to deal with adversity. He was imprisoned for 27 years; most of that time on Robben Island, spending his nights in a tiny, Spartan cell, and his days chipping rocks in limestone quarries. In spite of the indignities inflicted on him, he used his years of imprisonment to further develop his character, and to persist in his belief in human dignity and equality. Like Job and Churchill, he didn’t give up. Inspired by the 19th century poem, Invictus, which urges us to remain the master of our faith, stay unconquered, and look for solutions, Mandela relentlessly kept pressing for social change. If adversity and challenge boosts leaders’ effectiveness, as it did for Job, Churchill and Mandela, how can we simulate life-changing learning experiences to create courageous leaders? Character is developed from an early age, but experiences in later life do matter. Negative work experiences, such as receiving unpleasant feedback, being fired, demoted or passed over for a promotion, can strengthen a person’s resilience and ability to manage setbacks. Positive experiences can also influence character development. By placing budding leaders in certain situations, we can give them experiences that mould character and help them develop the internal qualities needed to do an effective job. Some attributes ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
could be self-awareness, self-regulation, a belief in fair process, a sense of justice, humanity and humility, and, not to forget, as Job, Churchill, and Mandela demonstrate, courage. In my work with executives, there are a number of interventions I use to accelerate character development. High-potential executives are often given tasks that require them to make difficult choices, particularly assignments that have profit and loss (P&L) responsibility. People really learn when they have skin in the game. Understandably, in these roles they will make mistakes, but mistakes are crucial steps when learning, growing and improving. Dealing with these experiences provides them with insight into their own character’s strengths and weaknesses. Another great learning experience in the character formation of future leaders is to expose them to multi-party feedback processes from the people who work most closely with them – bosses, colleagues, direct reports, as well as friends and family members – to create tipping points towards behavioural change. This feedback helps give them a better understanding of self and encourages reflection, self-awareness and character development. Honourable role models Character-building can also take place by having high potentials work with exemplary executives; accompanying, observing and collaborating with them as they deal with difficult situations. By watching and talking with leaders who do the right thing, budding executives can improve their own skills and knowledge and (hopefully) aspire to develop a similar character. Finally, leadership and character development can be accelerated through the help of executive coaches and mentors. They provide knowledge, opinions and judgment in critical areas. Coaches can help their clients become more attuned to the communication and relationship skills required to influence and energise employees, obtain greater self-awareness about their strengths and weaknesses and learn how to deal with adversity. In this day-and-age, leaders with the qualities of a Job, Churchill or Mandela are needed more than ever. Many of today’s business and political leaders resort to magical thinking and are caught up in delusions of grandeur. They engage in angry scapegoating or spin wild superstitions. All too often, instead of observing moral, valuedriven, exemplary leadership, we’re watching a sad reality show where only clowns are making appearances.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge. BIOGRAPHY Manfred Kets De Vries is the Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership Development & Organisational Change at INSEAD and The Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus. He is the Founder of INSEAD’s Global Leadership Centre and the Programme Director of The Challenge of Leadership, one of INSEAD’s top Executive Development Programmes. His most recent books are: You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger: Executive Coaching Challenges; How to Make Sure Your Organization Lives Happily Ever After; and Riding the Leadership Rollercoaster: An Observer’s Guide. 27
Company Culture
Y
RESTORING A FOUNDER’S MENTALITY® CULTURE
J U L I E C O F F M A N , AT U L A G G A R WA L A N D S H I H -Y U WA N G
ou can feel it when you walk in the door. People are bustling through the halls. Knots of employees are engaged in animated conversation. Office doors are open. You hear laughter. The business could be 100 years old, with thousands of employees, but it still feels like a start-up. Why? Because this company has a Founder’s Mentality® culture - a high-energy, high-performance culture. Walk into a company that has lost the Founder’s Mentality and you can feel the difference. It’s quiet - too quiet. Employees are trapped in meeting rooms. The halls are empty and doors are closed. There is no buzz, no spark. Workers are going through the motions. The energy of the Founder’s Mentality culture stems from a fundamental sense of mission and an urgency that many large organizations lack. Most companies that survive long enough to become large corporations had a Founder’s Mentality culture at one time, but most companies lose it along the way. People who launch successful companies start with a mission, usually to fill unmet needs - a
new technology or a better way of serving customers. Everyone is deeply invested in seeing the company win and, because they are, sustained success is far more likely. The proof is in the differentiated performance data: Total returns to investors by S&P 500 companies led by their founders were three times higher than at other S&P 500 companies from 1990 to 2014 (Figure 1). The Founder’s Mentality culture is easy to lose and difficult - but not impossible - to regain. When a company has the Founder’s Mentality, you see three things that drive growth. First, employees have an ownership mindset; they act like they own the place and they care what happens. Second, no matter how big and powerful the company is, employees still feel a sense of insurgency. They are out to upset the status quo because they are determined to fill a need in the market that competitors are not addressing. Finally, a Founder’s Mentality culture focuses everyone’s attention on the front line. Whatever they do, they think about how it can help the front line succeed in serving customers.
“The business could be 100 years old, with thousands of employees, but it still feels like a start-up.”
28
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
If a company wants to create a Founder’s Mentality culture, the first priority is to define (or redefine) the noble mission with which everyone aligns. For DaVita Inc., it took a near-death experience to redefine the mission and reclaim the Founder’s Mentality culture. In 1999, the company, then known as Total Renal Care, was on the path to bankruptcy. It had grown quickly into a chain of 460 kidney dialysis centers across the US, but by 1999, it was losing $60 million a year and was in danger of missing payroll. Employee turnover was about 40% a year, and patient outcomes were worse than at other centers. Total Renal Care was being investigated for Medicare and Medicaid fraud, and its share price, at $1.71, was 95% below the peak. Shareholders were suing. Amazingly, Total Renal Care pulled out of its death spiral under turnaround CEO Kent Thiry. The turnaround involved all sorts of initiatives, but company insiders say it was the reinvention of the culture that enabled the changes that saved the company. Even as the company triaged the business, closing centers and making emergency repairs to stop the bleeding, the new management put a lot of energy into fixing the culture. After a series of town hall meetings to get employee suggestions, the company changed its name ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
to DaVita (“giver of life”) to reaffirm its core mission. Centers were given autonomy, but with accountability and total transparency; each center’s DQI (DaVita Quality Index) scores were posted, making it clear that the top priority was excellent patient care. A decade later, its revenues had quadrupled to more than $6 billion in 2010, and they more than doubled again, to nearly $14 billion, in 2015. Getting back on track To embed and sustain a Founder’s Mentality culture, leaders often have to rewire the organization, as Thiry did at DaVita. Restoring a sense of mission is an essential first step. This gives everyone in the organization a shared ambition and purpose, providing an “internal compass” that guides employees to the needed behaviors. When Total Renal Care was on the brink of bankruptcy, the CEO flew some 700 leaders 29
Leadership
to an off-site where they defined a culture to support the new customer-centric mission. They identified seven core values: service excellence, integrity, team, continuous improvement, accountability, fulfillment and fun. The overarching theme became community - DaVita would be a community that also happened to be a company. AB InBev, a global beer conglomerate, has a repeatable formula to infuse its aggressive Founder’s Mentality in the companies it acquires. The culture reflects the ambitions of InBev’s founders when they started building the company in 1989. Among the “10 Principles” that AB InBev brings to its acquisitions are “zero complacency” and “we are never completely satisfied.” The AB InBev philosophy often stands in stark contrast to the culture of the acquired company. When InBev bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008, for example, the 150-year-old company still had the founder’s legendary paternalistic culture. 30
But the culture was also formal and there was little sense of urgency. One of the first steps InBev took was to gut the inner sanctum of top executives at the headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, sending a powerful signal that the old culture was a thing of the past. To make the Founder’s Mentality more than an attitude, companies need to take a systematic approach to renew and reinforce a high-performance culture. This includes following through with changes in the operating model: the talent systems, organizational structures, accountabilities, governance and ways of working that reinforce the desired mindsets and behaviors. The cultural transformation also requires the visible commitment of top leaders, who “walk the talk.” Talent systems. Any effort to change a culture has to start with a talent system that hires, develops and rewards players with the right cultural DNA. Companies that have a Founder’s Mentality culture openly celebrate winning behaviors - and make the tough calls when needed. Founder’s Mentality companies ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
recruit people who fit into the culture and contribute to it. And they provide the training and development to reinforce the culture and desired behaviors. Compensation and career advancement practices also align with core values. At DaVita, for example, HR looks for people who will be a good fit in the communityoriented culture, and managers reinforce DaVita values by rating employees on the DQI scores of their centers and on how they demonstrate company values in their work. Netflix, which maintains a strong Founder’s Mentality culture, pays extremely close attention to talent issues. From the outset, the company has consciously sought hires with strong spikes in analytics. These workers helped Netflix create a data-driven business model for DVD rentals that could be adapted to video streaming, enabling Netflix to survive the passing of DVDs. Like other companies that retain their Founder’s Mentality, Netflix is a demanding culture. Its philosophy is to hire only “A” players; Netflix believes it’s a waste of time for A players to work with B players or to try to turn Bs into As. The company pays its hires top-of-market compensation and gives them lots of latitude in how they do their jobs, while holding them to very high performance standards. Employees who can’t meet those standards are let go - with generous severance. Organization design. Complexity is antithetical to maintaining a Founder’s Mentality culture. Founders hate bureaucracy, largely because it keeps them from maintaining close links to the front line and customers. As companies become larger and there are more operations, divisions and locations, organizations grow in complexity. Leaders lose the direct connection with the front line, and the focus of employees shifts from the noble mission to meeting the needs of the bureaucracy. Even very large companies can avoid this trap. Leaders should simplify structures, eliminate layers and reduce unnecessary decision-making “nodes.” Netflix, for example, has kept its focus by using a highly aligned/loosely coupled structure, which has few formal connections among different groups. Instead, Netflix leaves it up to managers to coordinate as needed with other parts of the company. The assumption is that everyone is on the same page, so an executive in one part of the organization can trust that an executive in another function will do the right thing. No formal coordination is needed, and cooperation is a given. DaVita’s brush with death gave management the opportunity to adjust the organization in ways that embed the new values and culture. The philosophy since the ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
turnaround is to “own your center” or region. The organization has been flattened to bring the front line and leadership closer together. On the front line, caregivers are empowered to do what it takes to help their patients, and are responsible for maintaining high customer satisfaction. Ways of working. The ultimate measure of how successfully an organization has embraced a Founder’s Mentality culture is the difference in how employees, managers and executives go about their work every day. What counts is what these people do when nobody is looking. Do employees tackle assignments, participate, share ideas, collaborate and interact with coworkers and customers in ways that are consistent with the desired culture? Are they thinking like founders? At AB InBev, workers are told to be frugal - to treat every dollar as if it were their own. Ripping out the ornate offices of the top executives at Anheuser-Busch was more than symbolic. InBev had taken on $45 billion in debt to finance the takeover, just as the global financial crisis was unfolding. Rather than spend a modest amount of money to remodel the space, InBev executives left it unfinished and moved in, working in the gutted space with their desks jammed together. AB InBev also sold off corporate planes and furloughed pilots. The Anheuser-Busch dress code was scrapped, and headquarters workers started coming to the office in jeans - because, as the InBev people pointed out, the customers don’t wear suits. As important, people are working smarter. For the first time, they have easy access to the data they need to make decisions. And instead of memos and formal presentations, the AB InBev culture encourages informal face-to-face communication. At Netflix, after going to such lengths to get the right people in place, the company leaves it to employees to act in the company’s best interest. Management assumes employees will exhibit “adult behavior,” and has eliminated a lot of traditional HR rules. There are no performance reviews and there is no set vacation policy; employees are free to take time off as needed. The Founder’s Mentality engenders a specific type of corporate culture, which can benefit companies of all sizes and ages. Companies that retain - or regain - the Founder’s Mentality are stronger competitors, better innovators and faster to respond to changes in the market. At a time when traditional business models are being upended and insurgents are coming at large organizations from all directions, it takes a Founder’s Mentality to stay on top.
BIOGRAPHY Julie Coffman is a partner in Bain & Company’s Chicago office. She is a leader in the Global Healthcare and Organization practices. Atul Aggarwal is a New York–based partner in Bain’s Results Delivery practice. Shih-Yu Wang is a manager for Bain’s Organization practice and is based in San Francisco. Founder’s Mentality® is a registered trademark of Bain & Company, Inc. Copyright© Bain & Company, June 19, 2017. 31
Communication Skills
STOP BEING SO LOGICAL! HOWARD COOPER
I
am about to start speaking at another sales training day and, as I nurse my black coffee (hoping for the caffeine to kick in - I have two young kids who wake me up at ‘stupid o'clock’ every day), I look out at a room full of eager participants? NO... they are mostly NOT eager at all - they have simply been told to be there! And then to top it off, I proudly announce that “today is NOT a logical training!” You should see looks I get! In fact, I'm inordinately proud of the fact that my training is rarely logical and I'd like to tell you why. Is it not the case that more traditional sales training starts out by getting you to consider the following kind of questions? n What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)? n What is your value proposition? n Why should someone choose you and not one of your competitors? And yes, the traditional sales training model is... they split you up into teams and ask you to generate answers to these questions, and then in your groups you finish the ‘sales training’ by presenting your group's ‘findings’ back to the room. All because, if you know the reasons (the logic) behind where and why
32
your product/company comes out on top then you’ll be better equipped to win more work… right? Well here's the thing... Whilst these are all great questions and I'm genuinely very pleased to hear that many organisations, start-ups and entrepreneurs spend a huge amount of time and energy considering these important areas, too often all that is yielded from this exercise is a list of marketing platitudes... and/or logical reasons why someone should buy from them. What is missing is the emotional aspect to all of this. And guess what? Emotions are more powerful than logic. Or to put more succinctly, emotion drives behaviour... NOT logic. Take a moment to consider this fully. Whilst a large proportion of my time is training businesses in sales, communication skills and the secrets of customer service excellence, the other half of my time is spent as a hypnotist and rapid change consultant helping people with all sorts of personal issues. So, let's look at phobic flyers as an example. They can know logically that flying is the safest form of transport but still feel terrified! ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
And by the way, this is no different really than logically knowing that smoking is bad for you as you continue to do it, or knowing logically that you shouldn't have that second helping of cake... as you are spooning it into your mouth! So, someone knowing the logical reasons why they should use you is all well and good, but NOT if they don't feel it! Now consider how much time, energy and discussion has gone into setting up the mechanisms that enable customers and potential customers to feel your ‘USPs’ emotionally? (And, on a side-note, what if your USP was the way you made people feel?) Often this issue is either overlooked or given nothing more than a cursory ‘once over’. A Personal Example... Have you ever had the experience of having a disagreement with a loved one or family member, where you categorically KNOW that you are right and have all the logical reasons to back it up with? And... despite repeatedly telling them the reasons which prove why you are right, it's almost like they can't hear you. They refuse to listen or it's as though your logic simply bounces right off them. Why does this happen? Well... their emotional state is in the way... and emotion trumps logic! It's literally clouding their ability to hear what you have to say. And don't you intuitively know that in three weeks, when things have cooled off a little - you could be out somewhere having coffee - and their emotional state is more open that you could bring up the same logical points and they would concede that perhaps you had at least been a ‘little’ correct? Their emotional state literally gets in the way of them being able to process those very valid logical reasons. So, here's the rub... delivering your very valid USPs to someone who is in the wrong emotional state is ineffective! Emotion needs to come first! How often have you heard people say, “On paper product X was better... BUT I just had a feeling about product Y”? Or perhaps you’ve heard the converse, “I bought this thing because it made logical sense... but I wish I had gone with my gut and bought the other one.” (This is where you get ‘buyer’s remorse’, which doesn’t make for a long-term partnership.) Think about those designer labels, where people will part with £1,000s on a belt that will keep their trousers up just as efficiently as a belt that could be purchased for £2.50 from a cheaper store. Certainly not a logical decision. But the brand associations change their emotional state. They didn't spend £1,000 on ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
a belt, they spent £1,000 on a belt AND a good feeling! So, what can you do right now to embrace the emotional side of your business? When I start out doing any form of sales training (regardless of the area or industry), I often take people through an exercise where we play around with the following questions? n How do you think people feel, emotionally, when they first pick up the phone to speak to you? n How do you think people feel, emotionally, when they visit your website? n How do you think people feel, emotionally, when they meet you for the first time?
“They didn’t spend £1,000 on a belt, they spent £1,000 on a belt AND a good feeling!”
AND FINALLY... n How do you think people feel, emotionally, when they realise that they have a problem? (A problem that your business helps people solve?) Doing an exercise like this helps you identify what we could call the ENCOUNTER state. (The emotional state of your prospect when you first encounter them.) Now stop and consider this... Is their encounter state one that helps them hear, understand and connect with the logical reasons of why someone should use you? Now ask yourself... n How would you like people to feel, emotionally, when they are using you? (Confident? Trust? In safe hands? Protected? Reassured? Etc.). This line of questioning gives you a DESIRED state. (The state you want your clients and prospects to go into when doing business with you.) Now look at your processes for winning business and ask yourself, "are these processes currently designed to take prospects from that ENCOUNTER state... to the DESIRED state?" A lot of sales training typically focuses too heavily on logic (here are five reasons why you should use us) followed by ‘going in for the close’, and having some rebuttal if the prospect raises an objection. And this will work when you happen to chance upon those people for whom their encounter state is already where you want it to be. But the power of going through the questions above, and then really factoring in the emotional states of your prospects and customers, will not only help you to sell yourself better, but will help create customer service excellence that keeps people not just using you, but recommending you to others. I sincerely hope that you have found these thoughts totally ‘illogical’!
BIOGRAPHY Howard Cooper is a Rapid Change Consultant, Hypnotist, and Business Trainer specialising in helping businesses massively increase their successes by paying attention to a better and more precise use of language and communication. For more information you can visit http://www. creatingmore.co.uk 33
Ed Tech
A PEEP INTO THE FUTURE OF (TECHNOLOGY) IN EDUCATION ALON ROZEN
The present is NOT a clue to the future
A
HUMAN PROGRESS
s we try to attempt the very humbling task of thinking about what the future might hold for technology (and innovation) in education, it is important to remember that the future can rarely be extrapolated from the past. Tim Urban has a great post on artificial intelligence where he introduces a timeline of human progress. What he points out is that when we are just left of any disruption the world seems pretty flat and you can’t see, let alone predict, the radical change in the horizon that is just a step away. This reminds us that the present and the past are not very good predictors of the future. A little ‘food for thought’ and a hint that what follows should be taken with a grain of salt…
Figure 1 - Tim Urban on the future (source: WaitbutWhy.com - The AI Revolution)
TIME
THREE THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
S
o, before we (intelligently) attempt to discuss the future of education, and technology’s potential role in education, we need a bit of context. And here are three key dimensions we need to take into consideration in order to set the stage for some of the ideas that follow. 1. Disruption: in any sector, evolution seems
34
quite peaceful until it’s not. As the hockey stick diagram above illustrates quite effectively, education continues to look today much like it has for, more or less, the last hundred years. Make that fifty years for business education. But when disruption strikes, and we all know that the winds of disruption are gathering, things change very quickly. Facebook didn’t ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
exist fifteen years ago and it is now one of the main sources of information on the planet that influences what we read, what we see and, ultimately, what we think. It doesn’t feel like ‘education’ but it definitely influences what people think and even how people think - which, for many, is a working definition of education. What the ‘uberisation’ of education will look like is a tough question to answer today. If we think in uberistic terms – underused assets (professors and classrooms versus drivers and cars) that can be harnessed to educate (versus transport) - it is clear that, paraphrasing Kurzweil, the singularity is potentially near… 2. Employment: education has always been driven by ‘employability’. As we have moved, as a society, from agrarian to industrial to service-based to knowledge-based to network-based economies, our educational system has adapted to fill the needs of employers and to ensure the employability (to the extent that is possible) of graduates. But what happens in the not-so-distant future when robots or computers start replacing a significant swathe of modern jobs? With jobs at all levels of
the economy now threatened, from trading rooms to factory lines, what will the role of education be in what some are calling a post-work future? Should the link between employment and education be broken, or should education radically change, as some suggest, to teach things that seem to be out of the reach of computers and robots - creativity, socialisation, rebelliousness, character, ethics, free will and values? Or should everyone just learn to code? No easy answers to these questions. 3. Artificial intelligence: AI is a total game changer. For the time being AI is ‘cute’ – from Watson to Siri to chatbots - most of us don’t really see the disruptive potential of AI yet. Those that do, from Stephen Hawkings to Elon Musk, seem quite scared of it. If today a robot seems to have the intelligence of a well-behaved child, the road from a simpleton robot to what AI specialists would call a ‘super-intelligent’ robot (i.e. smarter than all of humanity put together) is probably only years away. What role education plays when information and intelligence are no longer relevant skills for humans is not clear.
TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT & INTEGRATION
N
ow that we have a bit of a backdrop to some of the aspects that could radically change education as we know it, in the medium or long(er) terms, here are my best guesses to how education will evolve in the near future. Integration of technology into the learning experience Even if we do not know all of the technologies that will affect the learning experience we can already see the rise of technology in the learning process. From online learning to real-time fact-checking to in-class smartphone polls to smart boards, the beat goes on as they say. Recently I met with a Paris-based start-up, Sensorit, which has developed Yellow – an interactive whiteboard that allows you to do everything you could do with whiteboards, paperboards, post-its and more on a tactile screen. What’s more, multiple people can interact with the screen physically on-site, while a potentially unlimited number of people can interact with the screen from around the world via tablets, computers or smartphones. Available today, already appearing in both boardrooms and classrooms, this is not something we need to wait years for. Artificial intelligence and adaptive learning ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
We mentioned bots, or chatbots, earlier. These are basic programmes (algorithms) that interact with humans in a human-like way. ELIZA, a virtual psychologist, was the first ‘chatterbot’ (created by Joseph Wiezenbaum), and has been joined by a long list of chatbots that can inform you about the weather, sports, news, recipes, shopping, fashion and a growing list of subjects. None other than Bill Gates himself, in an interview with The Verge in April 2016, declared that thanks to “dialogue richness,” a chatbot can become a virtual “tutor that can walk [students] through even the toughest, most subjective topics.” Already programmes like myBlee, developed by friends of mine, are teaching kids around the world mathematics at their own speed. Using AI and applying the pedagogical approach called ‘adaptive learning’, the software speeds up or slows down and offers different content to different kids based on their own style and speed of learning. The learning process literally adapts to the learner. Several schools and school systems around the US are adding myBlee to their curricula or considering doing so. It is easy to imagine how today myBlee teaches mathematics, tomorrow calculus and in the 35
Ed Tech
future big data... and it is easy to imagine hundreds of other start-ups around the world trying to do the same with other subjects. Augmented reality Think Pokemon Go in the Louvre. Enough said.
“Imagine learning with virtual and augmented reality, using software that seamlessly integrates artificial intelligence and adaptivelearning.”
36
Virtual reality Earlier this year I spent a weekend in Madrid and happened upon the IKEA innovation lab there. Without leaving a small room three metres by three metres wide, I went scuba diving, touched a whale, and then redesigned a kitchen. The first part was fun, the second part was a glimpse into the future. Virtually design your kitchen, change materials, change colors, walk around your (future) kitchen, open drawers, cook on your oven, see the kitchen from different perspectives and then, if you are happy with it, click on ok and order. The future of commerce, but possibly also the future of education. Don’t tell me about supply chains or factories or warehouses or data centres or startups, let me experience them directly. Gamification Make acquiring skills fun, create mini experiences, offer incentives and provide immediate gratification – so the thinking goes - and ‘learning’ becomes a desired activity, or even a by-product of play. Immersive experiences Imagine learning with virtual and augmented reality, using software that seamlessly integrates artificial intelligence
and adaptive-learning, and you can easily see where education is heading. Forget about learning the facts of the French Revolution by heart, upload it to your VR goggles and storm the Bastille yourself. This is where Benjamin Franklin’s words take on their full and modern meaning: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Ubiquity and anytime anywhere learning Nearly all of us are connected 24/7 and those that aren’t yet will be able to soon enough if Google and Facebook have their way. And thus learning will be a 24/7 option anywhere on the planet. We’re already pretty darn close. Robots and robotics There is a lot to be said about this subject and just this could be an article on its own. Let me just relate two projects I have been involved in as a mentor at the École des Ponts, one of France’s most famous Grandes Ecoles. As part of the year-long projects that engineers undertake as part of their curriculum, some have a choice to work with a very simple robot called Nao that can be programmed to do things such as a short breakdance choreography, ask and answer questions, etc. Among the projects that were developed in the last couple of years, one group of students showed how Nao could be used to educate autistic children. Another group showed how Nao could do product demonstrations and teach consumers about how to use products. The leap from here to a future in which robots fill the role of (specialised) professors or tutors is not that big.
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
WHERE ARE WE HEADING?
S
o after this rather long preamble, one might wonder where are we heading. What will schools look like and what role will faculty play in this highly technological future? The honest truth is that I don’t know. But I can guess. What will schools look like? I see two new models emerging: The ‘incubator’ school In this ‘model’, I imagine that schools from nursery schools to business schools - start to look more like start-up incubators, complete with FabLabs, maker spaces, creativity spaces, project rooms, etc. The learning will be primarily project-based and the emphasis will be on collaboration, project management, learning to learn, and as-needed skill acquisition and autonomy. The virtual school Using modern technology, like VR goggles, the benefits of physical presence can be
2
n in-Class n CuteTech n Teach
5
replicated to a certain extent virtually without reducing the participatory and collegial aspects of learning that still predicate for the advantages of herding students into a classroom. The result is a future online and distance learning experience that has many of the advantages of the presence-based learning experience of today. In this model, immersive experiences can be the dominant method of learning. Imagine corporate/institutional visits, ‘international’ study trips, meeting with decision- and policy-makers, and the like being offered regularly throughout any curriculum, rather than being a rare occurrence. What role for faculty? As the Dean of a business school and as a professor, the future role of faculty is naturally one that has received some thought. I hate to quote Bill Gates twice in the same article but here goes, “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten years.”
n On-line n RealTech n Facilitate
10
n Virtual n UbiquiTech n Curate
Figure 2 - The Evolution of Education over the next ten years (Source: Alon Rozen) So, using this timeline as a guide, I would suggest that within the next couple of years we will not see too much change. More technology will sneak into the classroom but more as a novelty, ‘cute-tech’, rather than anything disruptive. Professors will still be called as such and will continue to ‘teach’. Within five years, technology will start to impact education, call it ‘real-tech’, and professors will increasingly move to a facilitation role. As an
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
aside, some forward-thinking professors are already taking/advocating for this approach. In ten years I imagine that education will be technology-based, call it ‘ubiqui-tech’, with virtual reality being a key element. Professors, if they are still referred to as such, will probably be relegated to the role of content curators and mentors. So that is my vision of the future of technology in education. What is yours?
BIOGRAPHY Alon Rozen, Dean and Associate Professor of Innovation and Management at École des Ponts, Paris.
37
Start-Ups
SURPRISING NUMBERS BEHIND START-UP SURVIVAL RATES
Every Entrepreneur should consider these statistics WAV E R LY D E U T S C H
38
R
ecently I received an email request from an entrepreneur to help figure out how to drive traffic to his fastcasual Indian restaurant without spending a boatload on marketing. The establishment had received favorable reviews by critics in local papers and by patrons on Yelp. He had drawn his own conclusion that his fundamental problem was the restaurant’s location. I gave him some blunt feedback: One of the hardest problems to solve in the retail space is picking the wrong location. There are so many restaurants people can choose from that it is hard to become a destination that people will make the effort to go out of their way to try. It does happen. Think Urban Belly in Logan Square [a Chicago neighborhood]—somehow it went ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
viral and became the hot spot for a while. But it is rare, and the cuisine has to be unique in some way. All the marketing in the world won’t make people go out of their way for good Indian fast-casual. There is just too much competition. Because restaurants have low barriers to entry and are not too expensive to start, there are way more restaurants that start up than the economy can absorb, so they do tend to fail at a pretty high rate. Most people have heard the conventional wisdom that says restaurants are risky ventures, and only one in 10 survives. Anecdotes would seem to confirm this, as you may have noticed eating establishments come and go in your favorite neighborhood. It makes you wonder why anyone would risk so ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
much to start something so likely to fail. But like so much common wisdom in entrepreneurship, this failure rate is a myth. In doing additional research, prompted by the restaurateur’s email, I found that newrestaurant failure rates are far different than most people think. In fact, it’s dicey to make general statements about the survival or failure rate in any particular industry. Scott Shane, in his excellent book The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors and Policy Makers Live By, examined US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data to identify newbusiness failure rates by industry. He looked at companies started in 2005 and determined that industry does matter in terms of the statistical chances that a new business will survive for five years. However, survival rates 39
Start-Ups
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Courtesy of the Chicago Booth Review. BIOGRAPHY
Waverly Deutsch is clinical professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth. 40
ranged from 36 percent to 51 percent across industries as varied as mining, services, retailing, and construction. No industry— including food services—showed a 90 percent failure rate. In reviewing these data, I was surprised to see that retail and services—sectors with low barriers to entry and relatively low startup costs—fared better in terms of survival rates than industries more difficult to break into, including finance, transportation, and construction. I decided to update Shane’s numbers to verify this counterintuitive observation. The companies Shane looked at started in 2005 and had to endure the worst recession in US history since the Great Depression. But what about companies that started after that economic disaster? Using the BLS Business Employment Dynamics data, I discovered that companies that started in 2011 were in industries that had overall higher survival rates than those Shane looked at, with rates ranging from 45 percent for firms in the mining sector to a whopping 66 percent for agricultural start-ups. Not only were overall survival rates higher, they changed over time—and survival rates for individual industries rose and fell relative to those of others. Mining moved from the industry with the highest survival rates in 2005 (51 percent) to the lowest in 2011 (45 percent). The construction industry bounced back from a 36 percent survival rate in 2005— during a real-estate and market crash that was caused largely by the mortgage and banking crisis, and that so clearly had an impact on the building trades—to 50 percent in 2011. Retail also had a huge surge, from 41 percent to 56 percent—giving retail businesses that started in 2011 a 15 percentage point greater chance of survival. Why was 2011 such a great year to launch a new company? According to the US Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics, from 1977 to 2008 the US economy saw a net addition of companies every year—as more new ones formed than went out of business. But in the three-year span from 2009 to 2011, company deaths exceeded births each year, and the economy lost a total of 211,496 companies. This seems to have left a gap in the market, so entrepreneurs starting their companies from 2009 to 2011 had nearly a 51 percent chance that their firms would still be in business five years later—almost 3 percent higher than the survival average for the previous decade and a half. The only other stretch during that period when survival rates hit 50 percent was in 2002 and 2003, right after the tech crash. So it would seem that right after a market downturn is a good time for
entrepreneurs to start new ventures. But these numbers reflect average survival rates across broad industry sectors. How many entrepreneurs are really starting mining, agriculture, or manufacturing businesses? Those are not exactly the hot sectors that people read about in the press, yet they have more entrepreneurs than one might expect. In 2011, there were more than 20,000 new companies launched in these areas, giving us a large data set to consider. These giant industries collectively contribute 16 percent to the overall US GDP, so there would seem to be a lot of room for new entrants. But they are unpopular for entrepreneurs, accounting for only 4 percent of start-ups. What is going on with the most popular sectors for new start-ups? The top 10 industries, accounting for 86 percent of all new companies in 2011, saw five-year survival rates ranging from 45 percent in the professional, technical, and scientific-services sector to 60 percent in health care and social assistance. I find no correlation between survival rates and the size of the overall market as measured by percent contribution to US GDP. Apparently the economy can absorb new companies in growing markets such as health care as well as shrinking sectors such as retail and construction. What does all this mean for entrepreneurs? Timing in the broader economy and a good value proposition mean more than what industry you choose. A cold industry—be it construction or agriculture—might get hot. Highly competitive markets such as restaurants and retail are just as likely to produce successful new companies as sexier industries such as high tech and finance. Statistics don’t mean much to most entrepreneurs, including the intrepid restaurateur trying to drive traffic to his fastcasual Indian restaurant. Restaurant failure rates may not be 90 percent, but even 50 percent is a high hurdle. He responded to my feedback by saying, I appreciate your honesty and value your views. I do understand the competition in this market as well as the high failure rates but at this juncture I am all in and all I can do is work my hardest and give it my best so that no matter what the outcome, on hindsight I won’t say I could have done more. For entrepreneurs, passion outweighs statistical odds. Even when facing the uphill battles of a bad location and a tough market, this entrepreneur needs to give it his all, so that he will have no regrets—succeed or fail. That resilience characterizes all successful entrepreneurs. And to them I say, keep fighting the good fight. ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
41
Communication Skills
HOW SILENT MEDITATION HELPED ME SUCCEED AT WORK In this opinion piece, Payal Sheth, a global marketing manager at the Boston Consulting Group, explains how an ancient meditation technique helped change the way she thinks and engages with people.
42
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
Y
es, you read that right. Silent meditation. One might ask: Isn’t it obvious that you are almost always silent when you mediate? Yes, but what I mean by silent meditation is the technique referred to as Vipassana (which means to see things the way they are), one of India’s most ancient meditation techniques. I learned it over a 10-day course at Igatpuri in Western India, among the world’s largest meditation centers and the main center of Vipassana’s rapidly growing global community of practitioners. Participants in the course stay silent for 10 days. They do not utter a word (unless there is an emergency); make no gestures or facial expressions; and they commit to spending 10 to 12 hours a day meditating between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. (with a few breaks in between). Imagine a day without your phone or an internet connection; a day when you don’t communicate with another person or say a single word. A day without anyone you know around you. Now multiply that by 10. That is a Vipassana meditation course. It is by far the toughest thing I have done in my life. I believe it is one of my most significant achievements. The effects of Vipassana are life-long, in my opinion. You do not see a change in your personality on the 11th day when you walk out of the center. But over the months and years that follow, the change can be dramatic, depending on your practice. You begin to notice an internal shift, a shift only you can feel at first, and then at some point the world begins to take notice, as more and more scientific evidence now reveals.
“… Effective communication isn’t about the number of words we speak. Instead, it is about the way we articulate our thoughts.”
What Science Shows The advent of MRIs and other brainscanning techniques have allowed neuroscientists to peer directly into meditators’ brains to see the impact. For example, neuroscientists have learned that meditation strengthens the brain by reinforcing the connections between brain cells. A 2012 UCLA study showed that people who meditate exhibit higher levels of gyrification — the so-called folding of the cerebral cortex as a result of growth — which, in turn, may allow the brain to process information faster. Scientists suspect that gyrification is responsible for making the brain better at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and improving attention. Indeed, as much of the research shows, meditation causes the brain to undergo physical changes, many of which are beneficial. Other studies, for example, have shown that meditation is linked to cortical thickness, which can result in decreased sensitivity to pain. Neuroscientists have ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
43
Communication Skills
“Reflecting on some of these traits has made me, I hope, a better people manager and a more rational individual.”
also used MRIs to compare the brains of meditators with non-meditators. The structural differences observed led the scientists to speculate that certain benefits, like improved cognitive, emotional and immune responses, can be tied to this growth and its positive effects on breathing and heart rate. The integrity of gray matter, which is a major player in the central nervous system, certainly appears to benefit. Meditation has been linked to more positive emotions, the retention of emotional stability and more mindful behavior (heightened focus during day-to-day living). In addition to these benefits, which health professionals at several universities continue to study, my experience is that meditation offers personal benefits. I enrolled in the Vipassana course just before I was to start working as head of marketing for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in India. And I can say with conviction that this technique has brought about meaningful change in the way I think, operate and engage with people. Here are some lessons I have learned, which continue to help me succeed at work. The fundamental premise of Vipassana meditation is acceptance. It teaches us to see and accept things as they are, instead of how we want them to be. This means that no matter how magical or miserable a situation may seem, we accept it as it is. We confront it in all honesty. We don’t cling to it, hoping things will never change, nor do we long for a rushed demise. Unlike other forms of meditation that help identify and stop certain thought patterns, or calm the mind using chants and visuals, Vipassana trains practitioners to focus the mind on observing the most subtle physical sensations. It is believed that these sensations are the root cause and the trigger of our thoughts and emotional reactions. By recognizing these sensations at their conception, instead of letting them develop and take us over, we can change our thought patterns to minimize agony and lead a more joyful life. Applying this principle in my work has made life so much more peaceful. I was often in a race to improve work situations or manage people’s egos. Sometimes I would get bogged down by difficult relationships with colleagues. Acknowledging and accepting that nothing lasts forever makes me view life in a different way. I no longer stay grouchy for days. I try to complain less and constantly remind myself of the impermanence of situations. Respond, Don’t React By learning to step back and observe,
44
you learn the art of responding rather than reacting. I had suffered from being reactive all through my life. As someone with a type-A personality, I gave a lot of importance to instant reaction. But that meant not giving myself time to think, reflect, introspect, and then act. I learned the process referred to as “response” only after meditating for more than 100 hours during the course. I remember during my pre-Vipassana days that I would immediately lose my temper if someone in my team did not meet a deadline or something did not go as planned. While sitting cross-legged on the floor in Vipassana for three consecutive hours, I now think about how quick I was to draw conclusions without giving someone an opportunity to explain. Reflecting on some of these traits has made me, I hope, a better people manager and a more rational individual. Being Decisive I once read that one of the key strengths of a successful leader is the ability to be decisive and see things clearly, even when one’s judgment is clouded by multiple concerns. In today’s fast-paced environment, it is essential to make decisions quickly. At BCG, whether you are a newly hired communications manager or an experienced marketing director, you have the creative freedom to introduce new ideas and implement innovations. To apply this creativity, one needs the ability to think clearly, strategize, and execute effectively. Vipassana meditation made me more observant and sharp and has enabled me to see things as they are. Over the years, I have seen a tremendous improvement in the way I make decisions and the clarity with which my mind can think. Effective Communication “Silence can be so powerful,” is something I had only heard. “Less is more,” is something I had only read. Ten days of not speaking a word was unimaginable for an immensely talkative person like me. That’s exactly what made the challenge of maintaining silence more attractive. I was determined to complete this course because I thought it was practically impossible to do so. It is during the silent meditation hours that it dawned on me that effective communication isn’t about the number of words we speak. Instead, it is about the way we articulate our thoughts. As a global marketing professional, I have always needed to be an effective communicator. This skill is especially critical in a leading consulting firm, where I have to communicate with colleagues whom I consider to be among the world’s ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
“Imagine a day without your phone or an internet connection; a day when you don’t communicate with another person or say a single word.”
most intelligent minds and be able to forge strong relationships with people across many cultures and languages. I consider this skill to be my core strength, and meditation has helped me sharpen it. Humility Vipassana meditation, for me, was both an eye-opener and a rude shock. I experienced the most minimalistic form of lifestyle I could have ever imagined for myself, with no soft bed to sleep on; no air conditioning during the scorching summer heat; a room with spiders and webs; a very simple diet comprising fruits and vegetables; and no form of alcohol, artificial sugars, or any such addictions. Vipassana keeps me grounded even when I travel first class to some of the most exotic destinations in the world. It reminds me to count my blessings while dining at Michelin star restaurants or spending a week at the most luxurious hotels around the globe. It is a constant reflection of how nothing in this world is permanent, or anything to get hung up on. It’s just causes and conditions doing what they do, manifesting through the body. Going into Vipassana, I had strong opinions about relationships, morality, routine and personal choices. Walking away ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
on day 11, I felt detached from so many of the preconceptions upon which I had built my identity. But it didn’t feel like a loss. Rather, it felt like a new beginning. Where to Begin For anyone who wants to start taking the first steps along the journey that I have been on, I have a few suggestions. Vipassana can seem intimidating at first and therefore my suggestion is to start small. Devoting one minute a day, every day for a week, could be a good way to begin and you can then gradually progress as you gain more experience. Meditators generally begin their practice by focusing their attention on their breath. I remember the first time I sat to meditate, all my mind did was wander and think of every possible thing in the world, except my breath. That, in fact, is very normal. The basic idea is simple. Every time your mind begins to shift its focus away from your breath and you get lost in thought, you simply — and gently — bring your attention back to your breath. And then you repeat this again and again until your meditation timer rings. All you need to start meditating is a mat to sit on and a timer and you are good to go. Why wait for the right time? Try it now.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Republished with permission from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge. wharton.upenn. edu), the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 45
Start-Ups
CAN Do
Attitude In five years, the UK-based Chicago Angels Network has passed the million-dollar mark and is poised to expand.
46
L
et’s say that you are a smart, driven entrepreneur with a ground-breaking idea to revolutionize food packaging and eliminate all those Styrofoam containers littering the landfill. You’ve got a patent. You’ve got passion. What you don’t have is money. Plus, you are in Europe, where early-stage investing tends toward the risk averse. What to do? If you are startup ValueForm and your CFO is Mandar Kulkarni, ’10 (EXP-15), you put your pitch together and take it to CAN, the Chicago Angels Network in London. Founded in 2012 by Shehreyar Hameed, ’05; Jonathan Weiss, ’00, MD ’01; and Rama Veeraragoo, ’12 (EXP17), the global network of domain experts, mentors, and angel investors gives Booth graduates a chance at early-stage investment opportunities with entrepreneurial startups and extends the school’s commitment to innovation. In early 2012, Hameed had started
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
investing in startups, and developed the idea of CAN to provide access to compelling investment opportunities to the Booth alumni network in London, elsewhere in Europe, and globally. “I wanted to invest and help entrepreneurs harness our strong, global, and diverse network of deep domain expertise to build successful businesses,” said Hameed, a senior financial professional based in London. “Hence the motto, ‘Engage! Mentor! Invest!’ It’s about setting young companies on the right path and opening doors for them. That’s where the real value comes from.” Alumni such as Yesenia Hernandez, ’05, former COO of CAN, didn’t always have time for more conventional alumni networking events. Still, “we want to engage with one another, with the school, and with the entrepreneurial community,” she said. “We have know-how. Equally, for those of us who have money, we can put our money behind those ideas.” CAN allows alumni such as Hernandez to put their passion for innovation to practical use. In its five years of existence, CAN has reviewed more than 750 startups. Out of that pool, the network selected roughly 50 for consideration, and to date investors have backed 17 new ventures, to the tune of $1.2 million. “Passing the million-dollar mark was a big milestone,” said Cornel Chiriac, ’12, part of the group’s management team of five and managing partner at London Venture Factory. As a Chicago Booth affinity group rather than a venture fund, an investment bank, or a broker, CAN operates as an angel network such as those at other leading MBA schools. It accepts no liability for investment decisions but acts as the “dating service” for entrepreneurs and potential investors. When Chiriac came on board in 2015, the group had facilitated only half a million in investments and was struggling with a big idea that threatened to get away from the group of volunteer alumni who are committed but otherwise employed. CAN is made up entirely of volunteers, so it asks a lot of alumni with full-time jobs and personal commitments. “I have weeks when CAN is a full-time job,” Chiriac said. “We have to make sure we source high-quality companies. Origination takes a lot of time. We have alumni who are experts in their field fly in from across Europe to meet with entrepreneurs, prepare them for the pitch events, and do the due diligence.” Volunteer alumni typically devote between 20 and 40 hours during the selection process, while the management team spends five to 20 hours a week on CAN. They rotate after 18 to 24 months, usually moving into advisory or mentor roles. After CAN’s initial success, Hameed ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
realized that it lacked the requisite structure to scale up. That is when Hernandez first got involved, along with Andrew Holmes, ’09; Baris Bayazit, ’06; Eytan Behmoaras, ’06; and Nitin Manoharan, ’14 (EXP-19). The management team set about developing partnerships with London-based incubators and accelerators, a regular calendar of events, and a constant deal flow in order to grow. “Chicago Booth’s alumni team led by Penka Bergmann, AM ’00, was instrumental in helping us build CAN,” Hameed added. “The vision is to have sound fundamentals,” Chiriac said, “in order to scale up and export the idea to other countries and other alumni groups.” India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and New York City have already expressed interest. CAN is currently working with Booth’s Alumni Relations team to develop fundamentals that will ensure that, as CAN takes the Booth brand into entrepreneurial communities around the world, there is a blueprint that can be cloned worldwide. “Our partners are global,” Chiriac said. “That will make it easier for us in a global chapter framework.” From its rather seat-of-the-pants beginnings, CAN now offers well-attended events where Booth alumni meet with entrepreneurs, investors, and other interested parties. More than 500 people have attended its quarterly events, three annual pitches, and one educational event. “As an alum, it is gratifying to continue the Booth experience with application of a clear, structured screening, querying, and testing of assumptions in various business models,” said Andrew Irvine, ’08 (EXP-13), CEO of TUSK Capital Management. “CAN is excellent for increased presence of the Booth brand in an exciting sector.” At the group’s winter pitch event in March at Booth’s campus in London, six technology startups touted their ideas. Potential investors heard about everything from machine learning for data mining legal documents to satellite and drone imagery for naturalresources exploration. CAN’s next step is to prepare for expansion in terms of other locally run chapters as well as partnerships. “We already partner with Microsoft Venture Accelerator, Barclays Accelerator, and Founder Factory, as well as organizations such as Winton Capital, Deloitte Ventures, and Carbon Trust Innovation,” said Chiriac, “and CAN is looking for partnerships with other leading VCs, incubators, accelerators, and universities.” Investors will always be interested in innovation and excited by groundbreaking ideas. In addition, Chiriac added, CAN is a way that alumni can “give back to Booth, which gave us so much.”
“We have know-how. Equally, for those of us who have money, we can put our money behind those ideas.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Courtesy of the Chicago Booth Magazine. 47
Contributors
n Chicago: Booth
n Fordham University: Gabelli
n ISEG: Lisbon
n INSEAD n Jack Welch Management Institute
n Association of MBAs
n Alon Rozen
n Manfred Kets de Vries
48
n University of Exeter
n Bain & Company n Howard Cooper n Mark Crowley
n EU Business School
n University of Pennsylvania: Wharton
ceo-mag.com / Summer 2017
IN T
. . . F O S S E N I S U HE B
H C R A E S E R G L E V E L LEADIN L A N O I T A N R E T N I ON AN
Shawn Rohlin, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Economics, Director of Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation
Bob Hisrich, Ph.D. Associate Dean for Graduate and International Programs, Bridgestone Chair of International Marketing
S R E D A E L L A B O L G E R U G FUT
EDUCATIN
120+ partnerships
with institutions in countries including Brazil, China, France, Italy and Slovenia
$2,500
scholarship awarded to all business students in education abroad programs
ceomag.co.uk / Spring 2016
SEE WHERE WE ARE HEADED WWW.KENT.EDU/BUSINESS/UPWARD3
Viktor Göhlin Founder, Nokadi Alumnus 2006
Emilija Petrova Managing Director, Trade Resource GmbH Alumna 2002
Bart van Straten General Manager, Van Straten Medical Alumnus 1996
YOU!
Roxana Flores Founder, BeCaridad Alumna 2011 Peter von Fortsner Managing Director, Häusler Automobiles Alumnus 2010
Supareak Charlie Chomchan
Managing Director, Pacific Rim Rich Group Co., Ltd. Alumnus 2003
At EU Business School, you don’t just learn from entrepreneurs, you become one! Business school is where you build good habits, learn the theory, pick up practical skills and obtain the knowledge necessary to put your ideas into action. You need a business school
that will help you develop both as a businessperson and an entrepreneur. At EU Business School we make a difference in students’ lives and propel them to success.
BARCELONA | GENEVA | MONTREUX | MUNICH | ONLINE
PEOPLE HAVE IDEAS. ENTREPRENEURS MAKE THEM HAPPEN.
4
ceomag.co.uk / Spring 2016