The Exec-Ed Zone

Three of the world's leading business schools are in search of new deans. Kellogg's Dipak Jain stepped down at the beginning of September after eight years in the position. Last week Harvard Business School's dean, Jay Light, announced he would depart at the end of the academic year, in June 2010 - after five years at the helm of HBS and 40 at Harvard altogether. Now Chicago Booth's dean, Edward Snyder, has also said he will be leaving at the end of June 2010. Snyder's term was to run until June 2011 but he is going early to allow him to get his feet under one more desk - although he claims not to have started looking yet.

So who will replace them? According to the Financial Times's Business Education editor, Della Bradshaw, several names are in the frame:

Harvard has always appointed the dean from within the Harvard faculty and the two front-runners will be two of the most outspoken professors there, Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Chicago will set up a faculty search committee in the next few weeks, according to university president Robert Zimmer. Meanwhile the dean’s search committee at Kellogg is expected to propose candidates to the president and provost early in 2010, with interim dean, Sunil Chopra, the potential frontrunner.

Rakesh Kurana is an American by birth, but the son of Indian parents. Nitin Nohria grew up in India. Sunil Chopra too is an Indian by birth.

All are eminent management professors: Kurana is the HBS Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Nohria is the HBS Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration, and Chopra is the Kellogg IBM Distinguished Professor of Operations Management and Senior Associate Dean. But there must be some reason that those professors hailing from India are the predominant candidates for these prestigious postions in these meritocratic institutions.

Dipak Jain the former Kellogg dean was considered to have been a real success; with the world looking increasingly to the east for economic growth and business schools increasingly seeing internationalisation generally and Asia in particular as one of their drivers, having an able leader who also has strong roots there can only be a bonus.

BusinessWeek launched its twice yearly executive education rankings last week. The BusinessWeek ranking is compiled from a survey of companies, 188 responded this year. Quite what the results really tell the reader is a little hard to gauge.

For anyone with an average knowledge of business schools, and that should be anyone who is responsible for spending budgets on executive education, there ought to be a level of automatic, almost intuitive, recognition of which schools are the global leaders. We don't need a ranking to tell us that Harvard, Wharton, Chicago and Stanford are leaders in N America and that IMD, INSEAD, LBS and IESE are equivalents in Europe.

Rankings in executive education are even more spurious as they do not reflect a single program but a wide variety taught by different faculty to different levels of executives across different subject areas. So while Kellogg might be great at Marketing programs and Chicago at finance what does it tell you about their abilities on strategy or emerging market leadership. Nada.

Then if you compare BusinessWeek's latest list with that of the FT's more globally comprehensive list you have to ask where is HEC (ranked overall third by the FT in May this year) in the BW list? Not listed. Essec, a leading Paris "Grand Ecole" makes it to 13th in the FT's ranking but along with the Brazilian Fundacao Dom Cabral or the UK's Oxford Said doesn't make it to BW's list.

Ultimately the rankings are nice bits of branding but close to useless for anyone actually seeking an appropriate exec-ed program.

In similar vein to the post below, I have come across a number of articles recently that kick-off with discussing the difference between Leaders and Managers. While I will not get into the detail here, you can read the articles on IEDP.info for that, it did strike me that there is a perfect example of the difference between Leaders and Managers just unveiled in Brussels last week.

The Treaty of Lisbon was the controversial latest new set of rules and structures drawn up to allow an expanded European Union of 27 members to operate effectively. One of its most important elements is the replacement of the "rotating president" (where the head of each member state government is President for six months and that country sets the agenda for that period - with a Vice-Presidential role for the six months before and after aswell) with a permanent Persident of the Council of Ministers. This permanent President would be supported by a "High Representative" - essentially an EU Foreign Minister with a staff of 6000+ across the EU missions around the world.

The original proposal was that the occupants of these two roles would be very high-profile. "Able to stop the traffic in Moscow or Beijing" as the UK Foreign Secretary declared. They would very much be "Leaders" - with Tony Blair the highest profile of the candidates. However, when "push came to shove" the headds of government's decided that they did not want to be usurped by a high-profile personality but rather chose two able administrators who no-one outside the EU political village had heard of, the newish Prime Minister of Belgium, Herman von Rompuy, and the UK's current EU Commissioner, Baroness (Cathy) Ashton.

The world knows little of these two currently, we will learn more, but we are told by the press that they are able administrators - but not charismatic leaders. That is Managers not Leaders.

Let's watch and see whether they will transmogrify into Leaders now the spotlight is on them.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Please comment on the new IEDP.info LinkedIn discussion group.

One of the ways people learn, whether young or old, is through understanding new concepts through being exposed to them on a regular basis. This is how we develop all sorts of skills. My children's tennis teacher recently explained that research on childrens' tennis development had shown that the brain and muscles need to learn new physical movements as well as just understand them. Which is why the first hours practice can be unfulfilling, but when you come back next time it works a little better although you have done little to practice in between.

Similarly with new ideas and concepts. You read something in a magazine article or hear of a new development process at a presentation and it strikes you as a good idea, but by the end of the day it is relegated to the dormant thoughts file in your busy brain. Then shortly after, serendipitously, you come across the same idea again - and the seed germinates and action follows. All this, of ocurse, is unstructured - serendipity is not a useful part of a business development plan.

Which brings me to "action learning" which can be a part of incorporating this routine into a more structured yet flexible process. Action Learning Sets (groups of people who "learn together") in a workplace can have longer time horizons than that offered by short, external programs - and they also benefit by not having to be out of the office or take too long at any one time. This allows participants to develop at a more natural rate which ultimately has a more enduring benefit.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Please comment on the new IEDP.info LinkedIn discussion group.

We have been noticing an increasing number of providers acquiring exec-ed business from the public sector - be it the health service, the armed services or local authorities.

This trend has been picked-up by the Wall Street Journal too - and Beth Graham has written an article highlighting the activity in the US.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125745092254031633.html?mod=googlenews_wsj