Broadening students’ cultural experience

Josep Franch, Dean of ESADE Business School, Barcelona, discusses current differences between Spanish Business Schools and those in Latin America and the opportunities for Latin American Schools to attract more international students. Interview by Andrew Main Wilson

Considering the landscape of the top Spanish Business Schools compared to Latin America, what are your main observations of the differences and the similarities?

I would say that European Business Schools in general, and Spanish Schools in particular, have made significant improvements over the past 10 to 15 years. 

If you take, for example, the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking, in 2000 it was made up of 80% US Schools and 20% European Schools. If you consider the same ranking today, you’ll find 40% US schools, one third European Schools and 20% Asian Schools. 

This improvement didn’t come overnight. It started in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when European Schools began to internationalise. They started to change their reputation to attract international students and faculty. This happened 25-30 years ago and, as a result, the majority of European Schools today are probably at the forefront of internationalisation. 

When I consider Latin America, I still see it as regionally based, attracting regional talent, whereas at the majority of European Business Schools – and in the case of top Spanish Schools – we’re attracting students from all over the world in our MBA. 

We have 30% of students coming from Latin America, 30% from Asia, 25% from Europe and 15% from North America, so it’s a broad profile.

What do you think Latin American Business Schools need to do to attract more students from Spain and Portugal? 

Spain has, traditionally, been seen as the gateway to Europe for many Latin American Schools and countries. But at the same time [as a Latin American School] you need a focus on quality. 

International accreditations are the first step, but you also need to establish your brand. This can be done through publications of your key faculty who can produce and publish research in top journals. 

You need also to be relevant in the corporate world. Here, I believe Latin America has a great opportunity, with corporates coming from the regions expanding abroad. A number of [global multinationals] are seeing opportunities in Latin America. 

At ESADE, some students from Europe or Asia take our MBA because they see it as a gateway to Latin America. 

In a global world, there are lots of opportunities, but [success] doesn’t come overnight. It’s based on years of investment, publications, visiting companies, attracting people and placing graduates in
those companies. 

At the end of the day, your graduates and alumni are your best ambassadors. 

Do you think blended and online learning this will be the next step for Schools in Latin America, and will it be a struggle, in terms of investment? 

We’re all facing the same huge challenge. But, at the same time, it’s a huge opportunity. You can develop e-learning programmes anytime and anywhere, so the online revolution allows physical boundaries to disappear. I don’t see a difference between Latin American Business Schools and Schools in other parts of the world, in the sense that blended programmes are not a choice. A blended solution is something you need. It’s a percentage of your curriculum, but all programmes have to be blended. Fully-online degrees are a different issue. Schools across the world are discussing the next steps. How fast they’ll be able to go depends on how many resources they have and how fast a School moves. 

It also depends on how many risks they’re willing to take, because those that move first will bear the greatest risk. Other Schools will be playing the safe route of jumping on the bandwagon, but they’ll not be the first mover. In saying that, top Latin American Schools are coping well with, and addressing this challenge. 

You have partnerships with Schools in Chile, Colombia and Peru. What advice would you give Latin American Schools in building partnerships in Europe? 

We have a joint multinational MBA with Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago, Chile, and a double degree with Fundacao Getulio Vargas EAESP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. We are working with Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and Universidad del Pacifico in Peru. In Rio de Janeiro, we’re working with Fundacao Getulio Vargas on some executive education programmes. We’re working with some other universities in the region as well. 

I believe these partnerships are going to grow because they allow Business Schools to combine resources, areas of expertise and the footprint of the different partners in the same programmes. 

Partnerships also allow Schools to launch programmes that maybe they wouldn’t have launched on their own because of [limitations in terms of] size, capability, or lack of influence that they have in a
certain market. 

These partnerships are a good thing, but Business Schools have to be able to find a suitable partner. To me, one of the most important things is that you share the same approach and philosophy. A partnership is like a marriage. When you’re dating, you need to know the person and share
some things. Partnerships based on economic or financial factors are probably not the best partnerships, if you don’t share a vision, values, or if you don’t have the same ideas in terms of the programme and the education proposal for the Business community. 

What would you advise our Schools to do to encourage more Spanish and Portuguese-speaking European students to come and experience a Latin American School? 

Students have different ideas and motivations to go on exchange programmes. I’ve found very often that we might have Spanish students who prioritise going to the US or Asia because they see them as ‘cool’ destinations, rather than opting to go to Latin America. 

Sometimes, students assume – mistakenly in my opinion – that in the majority of Latin American countries, because the same language is spoken there, they cannot improve in a second language, but they can if they go to the US or another destination. 

It’s not just about the language, but also the cultural experience. If we share the same language or similar language, students can still learn different ways of doing business compared to Spain in terms of how international markets are evolving. There are fast-growing markets in Latin America with lots of opportunities. 

Some students want to go to Latin America because they want to pursue an international career and want to spend some years in that region because they will have lots of opportunities to develop themselves. We [as Business School leaders] need to keep insisting that there are plenty of opportunities [in Latin America] that students are failing to identify because they’re looking for the big names of American universities, that are attracting them to a place – rather than what they can learn.  

Josep Franch, Dean of ESADE Business School

Josep Franch has extensive teaching experience in various countries. He is an expert in international marketing and global marketing, and his main area of specialisation is brand management in multinational and global companies. He has also worked on subjects related to digital marketing and relationship marketing. 

From an educational point of view, he is one of the main European experts in the case study method. He has published more than 50 case studies in the fields of marketing and international business, some of which are available through the The Case Centre (formerly the European Case Clearing House). 

He has won the EFMD Case Writing Competition on three occasions (1999, 2001 and 2013) and also has three case writing awards at the North American Case Research Association (NACRA) Annual Conference (2004, 2010 and 2015). He regularly serves as a track chair in several case conferences and as a reviewer for different case journals and case collections, he sits on the Editorial Board of the Case Research Journal and Wine Business Case Research Journal and is one of the Co-Editors of the
Global Jesuit Case Series. He regularly delivers sessions on how to write and teach with case studies, both at
ESADE as well as for other programmes including the International Teachers Programme (ITP).

He has previous experience as marketing manager at Fuji Film and has worked as a consultant for different companies, including FC Barcelona, Interroll, Novartis, Soler & Palau, Sony and Xerox. 

He has also worked in many in-company training programmes with different companies including APM Terminals, Bunge, Desigual, Esteve, Novartis, Roca, Roland DG, Saint-Gobain, Sony, Telefónica and Tenaris.

Why the tortoise can beat the hare in investment strategy

The benefits of low-volatility investing outweigh those of high-risk stocks, argues Pim van Vliet, in an interview with David Woods-Hale

For generations, investors have believed that risk and return are inseparable. Just ask the huge banks who invested billions in sub-prime mortgages prior to 2008. But is it time we accepted the truth: this just isn’t the case anymore? Pim van Vliet, the founder and fund manager of the multi-billion-dollar Conservative Equity funds at Robeco, has set out to rewrite the rule book on investment strategy. 

In his book, High Returns from Low Risk: A Remarkable Stock Market Paradox, van Vliet combines the latest research with stock market data going back to 1929 to prove that investing in low-risk stocks gives surprisingly high returns – significantly better than those generated by high-risk stocks.

The low-risk funds, in which van Vliet specialises, are based on academic research and provide investors with a stable source of income from the stock market. 

He is a guest lecturer at several universities, the author of numerous financial publications and travels the world advocating low-volatility investing. Together with investment specialist Jan de Koning, van Vliet has presented his counter-intuitive story as a modern upbeat stock market equivalent of ‘the tortoise and the hare’. And he explains why investing in low-risk stocks works and will continue to work, even once more people become aware of the paradox. 

But this theory flies in the face of traditional and accepted thought regarding classic investment theory – so how did he build a theory that goes against the grain?

‘High risk does not bring more return,’ he explains. ‘It’s a paradox and I want to get the message out there. Unfortunately, this is an inconvenient truth for the finance community and it’s puzzled me for half my life.

‘It’s because we define risk in the wrong way, but when I was able to reconcile the paradox and started to research and apply the knowledge I was accumulating, by managing low-risk funds for investors, we were able to generate high risk-adjusted returns by investing in low-risk stocks, which attracted billions of dollars

The concept of investing in low-risk stocks for high returns is a compelling argument, but at odds with the views of some economists. Van Vliet, outlines his own hypothesis as follows, explaining: ‘My investment hypothesis is evidence-based: any idea on investing should be validated by empirical data. Although this approach is common in the field of medicine, it’s not in the world of finance.’   

He pauses, then adds: ‘In general – at a high level – the truth still holds: more risk will equate to more return. In the long run, stocks will earn higher returns than bonds for example. But if you dig a level deeper down, this idea fails within the stock market and also within the bond market. Lower-risk stocks provide higher returns than higher-risk stocks. The slow stock beats the fast stock. I explore this at length in my book. 

‘Benchmarking provides an important explanation for this effect. If you have stocks with lower risk factors, you will be less affected by the stock market. Imagine a stock posting a fixed return of 10% per year. That stock has – in absolute terms – 0% risk. However, when adopting a relative perspective this low-risk stock would lag behind if the market is delivering a return of 40% in a year, or be well ahead of the market during a market loss of -20%. This 30% return gap – whether positive or negative – is perceived as relative risk. It is the misalignment of interest here that poses a problem, because the role of an investor is different to that of a money manager. A professional investor is paid to take risks with people’s money to generate return and if they are not taking these risks, they could be shunned. In other words: due to benchmarking low-risk stocks become unattractive.’

Van Vliet compares his investment hypothesis similar in idea to the fable of the tortoise and the hare in that ‘slow and steady’ often wins the race but there is a human nature lesson here as well as advice for financial strategy. 

‘Most people want to bet on hares,’ he says. ‘In psychology, finance and literature it’s the moves in the market that generate the most attention and they drive up prices in stocks, which in turn makes the news. Tortoises are never in the news. Volatility makes headlines – this exacerbates a culture of short-termism and people who are bullish and want a quick buck.’

Van Vliet is quick to point there is fine line between ‘bullish’ and ‘reckless’ when it comes to investment and he worries that investors in general are too quick to ‘shun’ more defensive equity funds. 

He elaborates: ‘For this reason, society is experiencing a collective sense of over-confidence [in that they want to invest in high-risk funds]. This is really good for people’s mental wellbeing but it’s bad for financial health.’ 

Tortoises, according to van Vliet, are stable companies and defensive funds that ‘never seem to go up’ in stock market terms. But, as the saying goes, at least, fortune favours the brave – and in van Vliet’s analysis, it’s those that invest in risky funds that view themselves as brave. He counters this assumption. 

Re-defining bravery

‘Low-risk investors are brave,’ he asserts. ‘They are seen as conservative, but in reality they are not following the crowd. It’s like the character in The Pilgrim’s Progress, following a tough long road, but leading to a good end result.’

To capitalise on the low-risk anomaly, a long-term investment vision is required. The advantage of a low-volatility strategy is that the stocks involved will fall less than other stocks in a declining market. Once the market recovers, low-volatility stocks have less ground to make up to recover and start yielding positive returns again. 

Citing the experiences of the world’s second-richest man as an example, van Vliet explains that Warren Buffett is inclined to take a long-term view when it comes to his investments. Instead of following the crowd, Buffett has built his career and success on seeking out undervalued investments. Although Buffett’s portfolio has lagged behind the market several times during his career, he has beaten the market average decisively over time. 

For Buffett, average is doing what everybody else is doing; to rise above the average, you need to measure yourself by what he terms the ‘inner scorecard’ – judging yourself by your own standards and rather than the world’s.

A sustainable approach

 But where do ethics fit into a low-risk investment strategy? Does van Vliet agree that a values-led, sustainable approach to investing is becoming more important in the current financial climate?

He explains: ‘Low-risk portfolios make for sustainable, long-term investments, but in terms of ethics, the key consideration is how we, as investors, take care of our clients’ money – perhaps by investing in green companies or more sustainable funds for that reason.

‘High-risk and low-risk investments have the same mechanisms. And low-risk investments drive up risky projects. I’m not saying that a degree of risk is not a good thing – but prudent decision making is more important.’ 

Does van Vliet therefore believe that would-be investors have to be finance experts to understand the intricacies of the market?

‘You can over-train for a marathon,’ he explains. ‘You need information about the markets and I’ve outlined this in my own work – but the secret to successful investment is wisdom [rather than market knowledge only]. For example, the latest “hare” in the market place is FinTech and investors are keen to invest here. The truth is that some of these FinTech organisations will win, but most will lose.’

 He sums up by adding: ‘I think a good philosophy for investment is “some risk”. Putting this into the context of diet, a moderate amount of vitamins and salt is a good thing – but not taken to the extreme. There is no such thing as “no risk” as the risk spectrum is not linear. You have to create a bit of risk to generate value. If there is no risk, your investments will be negative. I believe the ideal investment choice, is what I call the “conservative middle”, which is a situation between very high and very low risk. 

‘We often are attracted to the extremes, but ancient philosophers wisely pointed to the virtue in the middle. Too much risk hurts long-term wealth creation, but a moderate amount of stock market risk is good. There are more and more companies that live and work according to this prudent investment principle, from private equity firms to family businesses. This is the secret to sustainable investing.’

Dr Pim van Vliet is a Senior Portfolio Manager within the Quantitative Equities team of Robeco, an international asset manager with
a strong belief in sustainable investing, quantitative techniques and constant innovation. His primary responsibility is Robeco’s conservative equity strategies.

Van Vliet has published articles in the Journal of Banking and Finance, Management Science, the Journal of Portfolio Management and other academic journals, plus a book on the topic of low-volatility investing. He is a guest lecturer at several universities, advocating low-volatility investing at international seminars, and holds a PhD and
MSc (cum laude) in Financial and Business Economics from Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Exploring the digital marketing revolution

Exploring the digital marketing revolution

Screen Shot 2019-02-27 at 14.07.21
Screen Shot 2019-02-27 at 14.07.21
To create and communicate superior customer value, marketers must now combine traditional advertising with social and digital tools, argues American marketing guru Philip Kotler, in an interview with David Woods-Hale

You’ve written Marketing 4.0? What has changed since Marketing 3.0 was published in 2010?

Marketing is undergoing a digital revolution. We published Marketing 3.0 seven years ago to help companies broaden their view of how computers and the internet impact marketing theory and practice. We stressed the importance of meeting the needs of women, young people, and ‘netizens’ in carrying out company marketing activities. 

Today there is a need to pay attention to the growing role of social and digital media. Social media – such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat – create an increasingly connected world and they stimulate greater communications and sales to a wider world. Digital media is enabling artificial intelligence (AI) and the ‘internet of things’ (I0T) and increasing the rate at which robotisation and automation is penetrating business. Our aim in Marketing 4.0 is to illustrate the growing role and impact of digital marketing. I’ve also described this 'new marketing' in my 15th edition of Marketing Management. 

How can Marketing 4.0 help in bringing marketers up to date with the current skills required – from traditional to digital?

In the past, consumers made purchase decisions largely in retail outlets, whether in an auto dealership or in a large department store. Some consumers also used the telephone or mail order catalogues. Today, a growing number of consumers are making more of their purchases online via online retailers. In-store retailing is facing a major decline: witness, in the US, the news of Macy’s closing many stores, clothing store The Limited going out of business and shopping centres in deep trouble. 

Consumers still go into stores to sample and touch the product and then use their smartphone to see if they can a better deal elsewhere. Many retail shops are evolving into ‘showrooms’, partly charged by the company to its advertising budget. Business-to-business transactions are being increasingly conducted with digital media. Most companies list their product catalogues on the internet. Purchasing agents are happy to compare prices on the internet and are less interested in accepting sales calls. All this points to the need for companies to acquire social and digital skills before they are outclassed by more sophisticated digital competitors.

You describe ‘shifting power dynamics’ in the market. Can you explain this in more detail? 

Power has been shifting from the advertising giants who used 30-second commercials to inform and persuade consumers, to savvy consumers – who rely on their friends and acquaintances, plus online product ratings, to make their brand choices. Power has moved from companies to consumers. Companies must now develop fresh pictures of how consumers journey toward making their final purchases. It’s no longer a journey from a 30-second commercial to a purchase but from a stimulus on the internet, or from a friend, to a search for further information, to a purchase. Marketing 4.0 discusses the key steps in consumer journeys and the various touch points that will have an impact on the final purchase decision.

You explain how the rules of marketing regularly change, but this time the very customers have changed – and this is revolutionary – can you talk a bit more about this?

The basic maxim of marketing hasn’t changed. Decide on the consumer need your company wants to meet and the individuals who strongly have this need. Create a solution that meets this consumer need better than any competitor can meet it. See your job as one of creating superior customer value and communicating this value in a superior way.

What is revolutionary is the need for the company to incorporate social and digital tools to carry out this work. Companies need to collect ‘big data’ about individual consumers who have specific needs and apply sophisticated marketing analytics to arrive at consumer insights that can be converted into compelling consumer value propositions.

How do cyclical trends in the economy affect marketers? More specifically, if demand-led growth is on the decline, what single marketing effort is the most important to avoiding a loyal consumer defecting to a competitor?

Buyer behaviour obviously changes in times of market growth versus market decline. When a recession, or a fear of recession, occurs, consumers will intelligently reduce their expenditure and move towards lower-cost products. Every competitor will have a choice: increase the value of the offer, or cut the price of the offer. Normally it makes sense for the company to retain the price and better document and confirm the offer’s superior customer value. If superior value doesn’t exist, the company either has to add more value (for example, free shipment) or cut its price.

Do you think the original elements of the traditional marketing mix will still be relevant in 10 years’ time? 

The marketer’s main toolkit remains the 4Ps (product, price, place, and promotion) and STP (segmentation, targeting, positioning). Each of these elements undergoes modernisation all the time. Product includes packaging, as well as service products. Place is being redefined into omni-channel marketing but it is still place. Promotion is including digital and social communication alongside print and broadcast media. I would welcome a new marketing framework if it promised to address marketing decision problems in a more decisive way. Until then, most companies will use the traditional framework in preparing their marketing plans.

How will creative and media agencies need to evolve over the next five years to keep up with the pace of technology? 

The agency of the future will develop skills in both traditional and digital advertising. This would be better than hiring separate traditional and digital agencies because companies must connect traditional and digital advertising. A 30-second commercial may need to include a digital address showing where viewers can go for more information. The job of the ‘full-service agency’ is to find synergies between the two types of communication, so that 2 + 2 = 5, not 4.

Do you think that the chief marketing officer (CMO) role will be replaced by a combination of chief tech officer and chief analyst, or is this still a viable career path?

I’d like the CMO position to continue to manage the integration of all the elements that will impact on customer demand. The CMO should spend at least 50% of their time working with the other ‘chiefs’ in the company. The real value of the CMO will be realised when he or she is included in all the strategy planning. It would be unwise to confine marketing to designing tactical moves. The CMO is in the best position to foresee where the particular market is going economically and technologically. The CMO’s staff must include an excellent digital person and technology person. 

Do you think marketing and HR may evolve into one business function, as people leadership and organisational branding become increasingly connected, with shared goals and purposes?

I would prefer the heads of marketing and HR to work very closely together but remain separate functions. The CMO is highly interested in seeing that HR hires very service-minded people. In the hotel business, Marriott says that the first job is to hire the right employees and then the customers will come. The CMO should support the HR person to gain a sufficient budget to hire excellent employees, not just average employees. The evidence is strong that excellent employees have a productivity impact that is several times that of average employees.  

Do you think that zero-based budgeting for marketing, based on the Unilever example, will be widely adopted, to make marketing entirely accountable? How can value be measured throughout all channels since tracking is harder offline? 

Zero-based budgeting for marketing means starting each year with no budget allocated to marketing, until marketers propose specific marketing spend – along with the evidence that results will exceed costs. This is in contrast to normal budget setting where the budgets of the past year are the starting point, raised or lowered slightly. We acknowledge that some past marketing expenditures were not productive, and that from time to time, it is worth reviewing each major budget item to decide whether it should be eliminated, decreased or increased. 

The problem with zero-based budgeting for marketing is two-fold. Many campaigns need continuity and they shouldn’t be cut off before they have achieved their full impact. 

Also, it is increasingly difficult to assess the financial impact of a particular digital tool or a particular marketing channel in an increasingly complex and interactive world. 

Zero-based budgeting is a highly impractical tool for yearly budgeting. However, I grant that it could raise marketing efficiency by being introduced every few years.

Do you believe leaders across all disciplines and functions need to change their mindsets to succeed in a volatile world? 

Today’s world is increasingly characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Donald Trump’s election as US President has greatly contributed to VUCA. If Hillary Clinton had been elected (she won the popular vote by 3 million votes), we would arguably not be in a VUCA world. Events would have taken their normal course and businesses would carry normal expectations. 

But Trump sends out tweets in the middle of the night, many of which attack companies, journalists, judges, pollsters, or the voters themselves. These attacks are a sign of paranoia. Many business leaders have to think twice about any move for fear that the president will call them. Consumers are worried about their health benefits and they are no longer certain about social security and Medicare. They, and businesses, are spending their money more carefully, which slows down economic growth.

My answer to that? Business leaders must change their mindsets, in light of Trump’s erratic behaviour; he issues executive orders almost daily. His behaviour has been copied by populist leaders abroad with the effect of introducing even more instability into the world economy. 

Are there marketing skills that all MBA students and graduates need to thrive in a VUCA business world?

Most Business programmes are training their students in social and digital skills. They are also making students more aware of the effects of climate change. Professors are increasingly criticising shareholder value as the measure of business success and replacing it with stakeholder value as a more comprehensive measure of business performance. Marketing students graduate with a broader view of the factors that affect corporate image and reputation than previous Business School graduates. 

And finally, do you feel optimistic about business adaptability as the world becomes more uncertain but also more connected? 

Business literature increasingly emphasises company agility and responsiveness to rapidly changing conditions. Companies need to monitor technological trends, political debates, and economic issues. Companies such as Unilever, Starbucks and Amazon show incredible business adaptability. But many companies are still coasting and need a few more shocks to wake up. My hope is that an increasing number of companies recognise that growing income inequality will hurt, not help them, and that they need to take a more expansive customer benefit and welfare view of what makes an economy strong.

Philip Kotler is the SC Johnson & Son Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Professor Kotler received his Master’s Degree at the University of Chicago and his PhD Degree at MIT, both in economics, conducting post-doctoral work in mathematics at Harvard University and in behavioural science at the University of Chicago.

He is the author of 57 books and has published more than 150 articles in leading journals. He was the first recipient of the American Marketing Association’s ‘Distinguished Marketing Educator Award’ (1985) and has received a host of other accolades, being inducted into the Management Hall of Fame in 2013. 

Kotler has consulted for such companies as IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Honeywell, Bank of America, and Merck in marketing strategy and planning, marketing organisation and international marketing. He has travelled throughout Europe, Asia and South America advising companies on applying economic and marketing science principles to increase competitiveness, and governments on developing the skill sets and resources of their companies for global competition.

He has been Chairman of the College of Marketing of the Institute of Management Sciences, Director of the American Marketing Association, is a member of the Board of Governors of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and of the Advisory Board of the Drucker Foundation. 

He has received a number of honorary doctoral degrees from several international organisations.  

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Unpicking the strengths myth

Unpicking the strengths myth

Human crowd forming a big chain symbol on white background. Horizontal  composition with copy space. Clipping path is included. Bonding and social Media concept.
Human crowd forming a big chain symbol on white background. Horizontal  composition with copy space. Clipping path is included. Bonding and social Media concept.
The current emphasis on strengths has fundamentally discouraged people from challenging themselves to become better leaders, argue James M Kouzes and Parry Z Posner, authors of Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader

For millennia, people have been searching for a magic formula or elixir that explains leadership success: from ancient literature on leadership that searched for the individual kissed by the gods (Charisma) to historical ‘great man approaches’ (already limited by gender bias). However, the current fascination is with the concept of ‘strengths’.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the notion that there are certain skills, knowledge, and attitudes that produce higher levels of performance in a task, whether it’s sales, engineering, nursing, or hospitality. Leadership is required of all professions, and it has its own set of skills and abilities. So far, so good. But the strengths approach has been misapplied to mean that you should only undertake tasks in which you are strong, and avoid wasting your time attending to your weaknesses; in areas where you don’t have natural talent, you or your organisation should assign tasks to other people.

The emphasis on strengths has fundamentally discouraged people from challenging themselves to become better leaders. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t attend to their strengths, nor that they are not happier and more successful when using their strengths at work and in other aspects of their lives. But as it stands, they can just throw up their hands and say ‘well, envisioning the future just isn’t a strength of mine, so I’m not going to become very good at it’ or ‘I’m not very comfortable letting people know how much I appreciate their accomplishments, so I won’t bother’. 

First, ignoring feedback about things you’re not good at is inconsistent with a lot of research on learning. Second, it’s not very motivating to tell people to give up before they even start, or when things don’t go as well as expected the first time they try them. Finally, this thinking is impractical: organisations can’t bring in a new person every time someone makes a mistake or there’s a new challenge that someone initially doesn’t have the skills and abilities to handle.

Over all the years we’ve been researching leadership, we’ve consistently found that adversity and uncertainty characterise every personal-best leadership experience. Typically, they’re challenges people have never previously faced. When confronting things they haven’t done before, people often have to develop new skills and overcome existing weaknesses and limitations. They make mistakes and may even feel incompetent. If people built only on strengths, they would likely not challenge themselves or their organisations. You simply cannot do your best without searching for new experiences, doing things you’ve never done, making mistakes, and learning from them. Challenge is an important stimulus for leadership and for learning.

Learning is the master skill

We have a question for you: ‘Have you ever learned a new game or a new sport?’ Undoubtedly, your answer is ‘yes’. We get that response every time we ask the question in our classes or leadership development programmes. Invariably every hand in the room goes up. 

We then ask ‘and how many of you got it perfect the first day you played it?’ People chuckle. No hands go up. No one ever gets it right the first time.

There was one occasion, however, when Urban Hilger, Jr raised his hand and said that on the very first day he went skiing he got it perfect. Naturally we were surprised and curious, so we asked Urban to tell us about the experience. Here’s what he said:

It was the first day of skiing classes. I skied all day long, and I didn’t fall down once. I was so elated. I felt so good. So I skied up to the instructor and I told him of my great day. You know what the ski instructor said? He told me, “personally, Urban, I think you had a lousy day”. I was stunned. “What do you mean lousy day? I thought the objective was to stand up on these boards, not fall down.” The ski instructor looked me straight in the eyes and replied, “Urban, if you’re not falling, you’re not learning”.

Urban’s ski instructor understood that if you can stand up on your skis all day long the first time out, you’re only doing what you already know how to do and are not pushing yourself to try anything new and difficult. By definition, learning is about something you don’t already know. Those who do what they already know how to do may have lots of experience, but after a while they don’t get any better because they’re not learning anything new. 

Research has shown that teachers, for example, improve during their first five years in the field, as measured by student learning, according to University of Virginia psychology professor Daniel Willingham. He goes on to report that after five years their performance curve goes flat, and a teacher with 20 years of experience, on average, is no better or worse than a teacher with 10. ‘It appears that most teachers work on their teaching until it is above some threshold and they are satisfied with their proficiency,’ concludes Willington. The same might be said about many leaders.

So ask yourself:

Are you pushing yourself to learn something new when it comes to leadership every day? Or, are you just doing what you already know how to do? Are you stretching yourself to go beyond your comfort zone — beyond what you do well enough — and engaging in activities that test you and build new skills?

Are you learning?

This is an exclusive edited extract from Learning Leadership:  The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader, for Business Impact by James M Kouzes and Parry Z Posner (published by The Leadership Challenge, a Wiley Brand, 2016)

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course design

Diving in: action learning with impact

Experiential learning projects offer rich potential for showcasing positive social impact at business schools. Splash Projects MD Simon Poole outlines their value at a time when institutions are increasingly being judged on their contribution to sustainable development and purpose over profit

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Business Impact?

For questions about editorial opportunities, please contact:

Tim Banerjee Dhoul

Content Editor
Business Impact

Tim

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Download the latest edition of the Business Impact magazine

Want your business school to feature in
Business Impact?

For questions about editorial opportunities, please contact:

Tim Banerjee Dhoul

Content Editor
Business Impact

Tim

Share this page with your colleagues

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