This
article is typical of what the writer of the Schumpeter column does best; it is
concise, insightful and topical. It uses
the annual talking shop of the world’s leading politicians and business people
- the World Economic Forum at Davos - to make some penetrating points about
global leadership and business education.
He (or she?) starts by quoting the standard cliché of this year’s forum,
the need to provide ‘Global Leadership’ which must be ‘mission led and
principle driven’.
There
are examples of the way in which Business Schools from various countries in the
world are climbing over each other to jump on the global leadership bandwagon,
each claiming to be the most international. INSEAD – based in France -
pretentiously calls itself the ‘Business School of the World’ and proves it by
having schools in the Middle East and Asia.
The Business School at Duke University in North Carolina - hardly the
place you would expect to see global perspectives – can make a similar claim
because it has six overseas campuses, though the size and quality are not
specified.
It is
interesting that these schools seem to believe that the number of overseas
locations is a key factor in globalisation when the development of virtual learning methods makes this less relevant by the year. One also wonders about the nationalities of
the faculty, which is usually a better guide to global perspectives. French or American professors will say much
the same things wherever they are based.
The
article then moves on to suggest that lack of global talent is a major factor
preventing top companies from growing, particularly if that growth is sought in
emerging markets. It also makes the
point that business schools have not been producing high quality executives, as
measured by the incompetent and sometimes dishonest examples of performance
during the financial crisis. This has
led to business leaders being seen as untrustworthy; a recent survey indicated that
only 18% are trusted by the general population.
This
leads Schumpeter to the conclusion that the ‘industry’ that teaches global
leadership needs to be shaken up. There
is too much superficial coverage of international management that overestimates
the importance of global thinking and leads to managers knowing a little about
a lot of places. The reality is that most
managers need to have in-depth knowledge of the cultures they work in one at a time;
otherwise they are not credible and are unaware of risks and opportunities.
Harvard
Business School is tackling the problem in a different way from INSEAD and
Duke. It is adopting the more realistic
and cost effective route of insisting that students spend time in different
countries as part of their MBA course.
The best run companies are adopting a similar philosophy by insisting
that those in senior positions have worked in several countries before
appointment. Another sign of a truly
international company is that it has a number of different nationalities in the
top team; this is a much more effective way of making a company truly
international than sending individuals on Global Leadership courses.
The
article closes with the warning that there can be too many leaders who think
they are superior because they have attended such courses or have been to
places like Davos. This breeds arrogance
and causes the sort of mistakes that were made during the global financial
crisis. Schumpeter closes the article by
suggesting that the CEOs at Davos might be better employed listening to their
customers, rather than each other.
Read the article in full;
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