Educational ATMs or Wicki-Schools?
DEVELOPING LEADERS FOR THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY[1]
Jonathan Gosling*
The solution to today's real management problems cannot be found in business school courses. Business education is typically good at taking complex problems and chunking them down into bite-sized pieces. We do this by applying the analytical methods of our various disciplines, and our academic skills of abstraction. These allow us to get away from the apparent messiness of daily managerial work, to describe it in terms of general models, and thus, in short, to appear to ‘make work manageable’. But this is only half the problem, and by far the least important: the real challenge is to ‘make management workable’. You can take a course and acquire a lot of knowledge, but how do you use it in the practice?
So let’s consider how to do this. The first question is: where is the relevant knowledge; the second question is: who has the power to implement it? The second question is easier than the first – managers themselves are the only people able to improve their own practice. So whatever else business education does, it should encourage, support and guide practicing managers facing their daily challenges. The first question has more angles to it: some relevant knowledge resides in the findings of researchers and their generalized models; but most of the really significant knowledge is widely distributed, and includes a puzzling range of the particular and the general. For example, we may know general rules about intercultural behavior, but only the manager and his or her colleagues know about the particular difficulties of the partnerships and joint ventures they are running.
The question is sometimes put the other way around: How can we make sure that our business school material is relevant to our students. Well, it will only become relevant when they combine it with their own knowledge of the circumstance they face. This requires them, the students, to be active in framing the problems and contributing their knowledge and experience to the learning mix. It is no longer enough to run a business school like a warehouse of deposited knowledge; instead, we need to make use of all the knowledge that exists (and is constantly created) throughout a wide system. The managers of a retail company may know they need to improve their customer service, but the knowledge of what really matters, and which solutions might work, could well be with front-line staff, suppliers and customers themselves. Business school professors can contribute too – by helping to focus attention on the right questions to ask, and showing how to analyze the information. But in the end it will come down to the practicing managers themselves to pull all this together; only by actively, intelligently and sensitively bringing together all these kinds of knowledge can they create relevance – perhaps to relevate would be a helpful new verb to describe this mix of learning, teaching and applying. So, our key question is how we can make sure that business education contributes positively to this co-creation of knowledge: a kind of knowledge that is created as it is used, and in being used, creates new insights and capabilities. Clearly this would be far from the classic business school to which docile students come to sit at the feet of the professors. Perhaps we are describing something more like a Wikischool, based on the Wikipedia[2] model. In the remainder of this article I will explore what this might mean.
First, we have to get rid of the idea that wisdom and knowledge are in the ownership of the professors only, because they are actually in the ownership of the professors and the students who are at the same time practicing managers who have invaluable knowledge and experience. In the old world, business schools are centralized knowledge banks. You do not need to go directly to the bank because there are educational ATMs: you can download your distance education package over the internet. But this metaphor simply configures the problem as one of distribution: the knowledge is still seen as disconnected from practice, packaged in discrete parcels, posted, e-mailed or uploaded for later consumption. We have to realize that the really relevant knowledge is out there, it is something that is created as we go along.
Since 1994, Henry Mintzberg, myself and a bunch of other business school malcontents organized a program called IMPM: International Masters for Practicing Management. Its philosophy is described in his book "Managers, not MBAs”[3]. The aim is to address the issues of management, not through the separate disciplines that tend to define the organizational structure of our business schools, but according to a) the work that managers do (managing the organization, its context, relationships, change and continuity – and managing management itself), and b) the mindsets in which these various kinds of work are best accomplished (analytical, worldly, collaborative, catalytic and reflective). This simple but radical re-structuring of the program design brought about equally radical reo-orientation of the educational process. The classroom became a genuine workshop for collectively crafting new and appropriate managerial responses to the current and upcoming challenges faced by the participants (no longer merely ‘students’).
That is the first stage of making management workable, rather than making work manageable.
One interesting thing that came out of this experience was a difference between what we call global and worldly. The idea of "global” is the idea of the flat world. We get cleverer if we manage to make more generalizations. If we can make big, brave generalizations that cover every situation, that is somehow accepted as better science.
However, when it comes to doing something and making a difference, it is skills in a particular situation that really count. Therefore, we need to think about local improvement and building local competences. That is where a well-rooted, sound, and ethically defensible practice comes from. In the globalized, world we spend a lot of time dashing around, often from one corporate meeting room to another much the same, and if we are lucky, find ourselves each night in just another five-star hotel (when not in an airport lounge!). More insidiously, we may find ourselves recommending, applying (or trying to fix) the same models the world over, because we are all too ready to see the amazing variety of organizational phenomena as symptoms of a very few basic problems – the ones that match our techniques. So, to take just one example, we might find the same balanced scorecard instrument used in businesses in rural China and metropolitan New York, and managers in both using the same rhetoric to describe their ‘human resources’. But is it any wonder that these systems so seldom deliver what they promise, if they ignore the real and diverse reasons for coming to work, collaborating with others, or trying that little bit harder. It is insulting to any of us to be treated as all the same; yet many of us lead the kind of life that makes it increasingly difficult to appreciate the local differences: but it is these differences that make a difference, because they characterize the worlds in which we each live. How much better, then, to develop managers able to appreciate and operate in different worlds, rather than treating all worlds as if they are (or ought to be) the same? This is something we need to address in our business education. We need worldliness, not only globalism.
The IMPM succeeds in bringing real managerial issues into the classroom, making them the focus of collaborative work amongst participants andprofessors, and optimizing the learning between managers from different parts of the world and various businesses. Now in its 14th year, it has become the model for a new generation of executive MBAs. But it still falls short of the wikischool in some ways.
Usually, when business graduates come back from their program and suggest something new, they get told off for coming up with crazy ideas from business school. And pretty soon they adopt the normal behavior of their environment. One way around this – our ideal in the IMPM – is to insist on several people from the same company attending the program together, so they can support each other in making changes. When learning happens individually, it remains in the individual's ownership, while in the world that we are really concerned about, we are interested to know how that atomized individual knowledge can be embedded into the locality where you actually work.
So we invented our Advanced Leadership Program (ALP). Companies send a table-full of people (we sell places by the table, not the chair) to work together on critical issues for the company. In a sense, the program becomes an executive ‘retreat’, further enhanced by the input from professors and professional facilitators, and most importantly of all, the presence of similar groups from other organizations. That is, the ALP brings together several – 3, 4 or sometimes up to 6 separate executive teams. Each works on their own issues, and acts as advisors to the others. This is where we see the real benefit of generalized knowledge – as the teams from each organization discover that they recognize patterns in the challenges facing the other teams, and are able to offer and receive valuable input; but note that the ‘generalizations’ include theoretical constructs and the wisdom and insight of experienced managers combined. Overall, we call this interaction ‘friendly consulting’, and it is a great way to discover and apply knowledge distributed in a specially-created learning system.
We have learnt how to do two of the key requirements for a new generation management education: focus the classroom on the practice of managing; and draw on the practical wisdom of experienced managers together with the concepts offered by academics. We believe all executive MBA programs can do the same, and to demonstrate how, we run an annual one-week workshop called ‘RoundTables for Practicing Managers’[4]. We invite innovative business schools around the world, one from each country, to send their EMBA students (i.e. those on a so-called ‘executive’ MBA – one designed for practicing managers) to work with us and each other on the nature of managing itself. Henry Mintzberg, myself and the other faculty bring both concepts and design; the participants bring their experience and their current managerial issues, and thus the classroom is immediately filled with the real and contemporary concerns of managers, in all their complicated and multi-cultural splendor! During the week we engage in plenty of discussion, comparison, some field visits and finally each individual gets focused attention on his or her main managerial challenge. Most of the schools that have been partners for the past two years are now building the RoundTables for Practicing Managers into the core of their EMBA programs, and we hope that in the medium term this partnership will become the model for a new kind of business education.
So far I have talked about changes to education. How does this idea work out in big corporations? Business is usually seen as a social mechanism for the concentration of wealth. Of course, we have various means for distributing that wealth but business is about concentrating the surplus value from labor and capital into sizeable chunks. Universities have traditionally mirrored this process by abstracting knowledge from its localized and particular contexts, concentrating it in data, analyses and theoretical models. Business schools have generally built their activities around the subsequent sale of this stored knowledge. But if we step back from this image to see where knowledge and wisdom actually reside, we must admit they are widely distributed, and created largely by free flow and interchange. (Of course there are still concentrations in intellectual and scientific elites, but these are not limited to universities, and business knowledge is even less concentrated in business schools). So let’s consider another attempt to locate education closer to the places where knowledge – in this case about leadership – is located.
At the Centre for Leadership Studies at Exeter we have moved all our advanced courses into a ‘close learning’ format. This is the opposite to ‘distance learning’ (where the student is a long distance from the supposed source of learning – the university). Instead, we design the programs around the current leadership challenges that our students are facing. Each week they have a conversation with a tutor, acting pretty much like an executive coach, who guides them through a developmental process. Commencing with reflective work on their own leadership personality and leadership styles, they go on to consider the ‘theories in use’ in their own and related organizations, and in so doing they begin to explore the relevant leadership literature. But this is always in the context of real-time work on improving their personal leadership practice, and their understanding of how it is accomplished. In later phases of the programs the participants study processes of change and continuity, the exercise of power, and so forth – all by examining their own experience. How can we do this? A deceptively simple answer would be to point to our use of modern communications technology. ‘Stored’ knowledge is organized and made available on-line; the tutoring happens by phone and e-mail as well as face-to-face; and participants are networked so they can learn from each other as much as from the faculty or the written resources. But these are relatively insignificant aspects of ‘close learning’; the real key is the quality of conversation between the participants and tutors, and for this reason we employ highly qualified, very experienced executive coaches to act as tutors. Their professional orientation is to their coachee or client, and thus we are able to work with the participants to co-create insights, knowledge and skills that are timely and value-adding to their leadership practice, while at the same time conducting them through a demanding intellectual course. The tutor/coaches are a crucial element, and maintaining their commitment is essential to this model. Personally, I have found this to be one of the most interesting and rewarding aspects of my job as Director of the Centre for Leadership Studies, because these tutor/coaches approach teaching as an opportunity for learning about the contemporary and emerging practice of leadership. Paradoxically, this is an opportunity that too often escapes research-oriented academics (though admittedly it’s much easier to learn from practicing managers than from full-time students).
‘Close Learning’ represents another, even more significant challenge to traditional business school models, and a possible parallel to contemporary businesses. ‘Service’ is becoming the watchword for value-creation: even firms that are obviously manufacturing-based are finding they derive ever-increasing proportions of their revenues from services rather than the sale of products. For example, Rolls Royce Engines, the manufacturers of aircraft engines, earn 54% of their revenues from service contracts, all of which are designed to give the customer value-in-use, rather than simply an ‘input’ to their supply chain. Airlines want safe, reliable flying airplanes – and an engine manufacturer who can provide that outcome is far more helpful than one which simply delivers an engine to the assembly plant. Yet business schools are often managed as if they are simply selling products – courses and programs. The ‘Close Learning’ methodology is a means to reconstruct business education as a co-created service.
As an example of how useful this can be for companies, think of the standard mode of delivering company-specific executive education. At its worst, company-oriented courses consist simply of a collection of lectures, hopefully somewhat entertaining, delivered over a few days at a pleasant hotel. Shamefully, this is also the product offered by some of the most prestigious business schools, who rely on the fact that it is at least safe for both participants and faculty – neither is likely to discover anything shocking, new or disturbing- and therefore safe for the HR department responsible for sending them on the course. If these courses have any beneficial effect at all, it is due to the quality of the bonding in the coffee-breaks and bar; managerial networks are one of the most important resources for actually running an enterprise of any size.
But it need not be like this: consider the ‘3 Ps of leadership development’: Perspectives, Person and Practice. Residential workshops can be valuable if, instead of focusing only on cognitive input, they help managers to new perspectiveson their businesses. These events provide an opportunity to hear about new concepts (a useful contribution from faculty and other experts), to compare experience of different parts of the business, or even across different organizations. An especially valuable opportunity can be created if, instead of being treated to a series of performing lecturers, participants are enabled to notice and learn from the way they approach problems, think about their work and relate to each other. So-called experiential learning can be great if it enables people to notice and discuss how they really work together; this requires a slow unfolding of trust and confidence, so too much time and excitement given over to extraordinary experiences can get in the way: outdoor activities and simulated games have a place, but a limited one. In fact, the purest form of experiential learning is that which focuses on ‘the here and now’ of group dynamics, but not all action-oriented managers are willing or able to be this reflexive. In constant search of the quick fix, they might not notice that a slow fix could be more effective. (We open some of our courses with a banner proclaiming “WELCOME TO THE SLOW FIX”). If speed often gets in the way of learning, immobility can be worse. Sitting in a lecture theatre, or repeating a well-rehearsed process of case study and review, simply reinforces established ways of learning and therefore established mindsets. If we really want to offer new perspectives to our students, we should get them to look at things from different points of view – literally. Instead of peering over their peers in a tiered amphitheatre, they could be using disciplined techniques of attentive observation, active listening, and seating arrangements that enable them to maximize the number of angles on their discussions. We have discovered an amazing variety of seating arrangements, which combined with carefully defined ‘roles’ for members of a discussion, can open up incredible insight from within a group. For example, someone who has presented his or her managerial challenges to a group can glean so much more from the subsequent discussion by eavesdropping (listening without eye-contact), rather than continuing to explain and defend their own position. In this and countless other ways, a focus on perspectives rather than content can bring out the best of the interaction between practicing managers, business school faculty and professional facilitators.