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Category: lifelong learning

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Differentiation through impact part V

Business Impact: Differentiation through societal impact part V

Differentiation through impact part V

Business Impact: Differentiation through societal impact part V
Business Impact: Differentiation through societal impact part V
How are business schools making a positive impact on the alumni?

Competition between business schools compete is changing. Those institutions which can demonstrate their positive influence on society are increasingly able to stand out from the crowd, in the eyes of prospective students, employers, and other stakeholders.

Business Impact set out to learn more and share examples of how business schools across the global BGA network are striving to make a positive impact on their graduates, communities, and the natural environment.

This article considers how business schools are making a positive impact on their alumni. Interviewee respondents represent business schools in France, Japan, Egypt, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada. 

How is your Business School working to make a positive impact on the lives of your alumni in the years after their graduation?

Sherif Kamel, Dean, The American University in Cairo School of Business: Alumni are an integral part of the School’s identity. They are regularly invited to participate in a variety of academic and social events. This gives them a sense of belonging and grants them unique networking opportunities, both locally and internationally, through the university’s various alumni chapters around the world.

For example, the School’s EMBA graduates were recently invited to join sessions with a visiting EMBA class from Antwerp Management School who were on a study tour hosted by the School.

Headshot of Sherif Kamel

Nicola Jackman, Head of Academics, Geneva Business School: Our alumni community is one of our most important stakeholders. In addition to tools, services and events that support our alumni network, we also collaborate with alumni-generated projects and initiatives. We also support our alumni through social media campaigns, interviews, and access to our stakeholder database, among others.

Some of our most successful projects include our alumni mentoring programme, where doubts regarding management, leadership, HR, marketing or finance/economic-related issues can be addressed at a personal level. Our alumni are also engaged in mentoring existing students, an initiative that has been widely accepted by all parties.

Headshot of Nicola Jackman

Kenji Yokoyama, Dean of External Relations, NUCB Business School: There are 14 networks under our alumni association. The mission of the networks is the continuous development of their careers. Most of our alumni belong to one or two [of these networks]. They meet regularly to exchange information and help each other develop their careers in their chosen fields.

Headshot of Kenji Yokoyama

Yasmina Kashouh, DBA candidate at Ascencia Business School and Faculty Member at Collège de Paris International: Collège de Paris has created a dedicated employment service (reserve digitale) which collects and distributes employment opportunities. In addition, alumni are constantly invited to contribute and attend masterclasses and scientific colloquiums. They are also offered continuous education programmes.

Headshot of Yasmina Kashouh

Steven De Haes, Dean, Antwerp Management School: For recent graduates, our Career Management Service is always available to offer coaching and advice for entry or re-entry in the labour market, as well as for personal advice for future career development. A dedicated alumni platform enables the exchange of business ideas, as well as career opportunities. Alumni are regularly invited to [attend] online or on-campus presentations and networking activities, where they can discover recent business ideas.

One special type of such activities are ‘come-back’ days, which are mostly organised per degree programme. These consist of a series of lectures and debates where both current students and alumni explore recent developments, and their practical implications, in their degree’s subject area.

Headshot of Steven De Haas
Business Impact 12

This article originally appeared in the print edition (May 2022-July 2022) of Business Impact, magazine of the Business Graduates Association (BGA).

Read this print edition here

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Business Impact Volume 19

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Looking to the future: the move towards lifelong learning

Business Impact: to the future: the move towards lifelong learning

What skills are organisations looking for in the talent they employ, and how can Business Schools instil these?

Business and the labour market changes continually, as do individual career paths. In a volatile world, even MBAs are challenged to keep abreast of the trends and issues, and ensure they are nurturing and enhancing the skills they need to succeed in their career trajectories. 

There are many opportunities for Business School professionals and students to further their knowledge and develop the skills they need in their chosen professions and throughout life. And with countless learning and development (L&D) opportunities available in a saturated market, students need to embrace learning from other facets of life that can be integral to their growth. 

Knowledge can be acquired, and skillsets developed, anywhere in everyday life. Lifelong learning requires a positive attitude towards both personal and professional L&D. 

Lifelong learners are motivated to develop because they want to better themselves continuously, and this mindset needs to be acknowledged by education providers. So how do Business School leaders provide lifelong learning to their students and community?

Learning to manage knowledge

In a session of the AMBA & BGA Business School Summit 2022, four business experts – all passionate lifelong learners themselves – came together to share their expertise in ongoing learning, and how this impacts their search for talent. 

Session chair Robin Gibson, Marketing Director at Kortext, started by pointing out that having four different countries represented on the panel (with many more watching) ‘attested to the change we have seen in the past couple of years alone. It really re-enforces the question of ‘why lifelong learning is so important in the current climate’ he said.

Tim Ackermann, Director of Global Talent Acquisition at Oda, addressed this important question by noting the speed at which knowledge moves. ‘If you look at the engineering and technical degrees, up to half of your knowledge is already outdated when you end your degree,’ he pointed out.

‘Not only do you need to upgrade your knowledge and skills, specifically, in higher education,  I also think it’s important to understand how to manage knowledge, and how to manage teams. You need to find a passion for moving into different areas of knowledge. Even in today’s climate, it’s valuable if you have switched disciplines because everything’s becoming more interlinked.’

Gibson turned to Heini Utunen, Head of the Learning & Capacity Development Unit of the Health Emergencies Programme at the World Health Organization (WHO), to ask how her organisation copes with the speed at which knowledge evolves, and whether people inside her organisation have a genuine thirst for knowledge.

Utunen responded that, for the most part, they do, explaining: ‘It’s both personal learning, but also that broader learning in the professional areas, and in the community. 

‘But I think, for us in the sector of health, science is changing. My team provides the support function for that learning intervention and health, so we also need to be abreast of the technologies and how consumers of information change, and this is a constant cycle. This is a constant way in which we must be open-minded and able to come with a solutions-orientated mindset.

‘Many of the professionals today are just problem solvers,’ she added. ‘When this problem-solving, curious mindset is there, the professional background is actually much less important.’

Gibson then turned to Elisabetta Galli, Global Human Resources Business Partner and Learning & Development CoE Lead at Lightsource bp, to ask how candidates’ approach to lifelong learning impacts the search for talent. 

Galli replied that she fully agrees that continued learning is one of the most important issues of the moment: ‘It must be part of the natural attitude of the talent we are looking for in the marketplace, much more than their technical skills’ – adding that ‘the culture of the company, the values, and this new organisational empathy require different attitudes’.

‘The talent we are looking for need to have strong human values, strong abilities to manage people and to stay close to people, to create and to develop strong relationships with employees. They really need to be able to understand what external customers want and what motivates them.’ 

Galli rounded up the conversation by adding: ‘I think, especially now, what we are looking for in the external talent marketplace is the cultural behavioural fit, on top of technical skills.’

Chair
Robin Gibson, Marketing Director, Kortext

Panellists
Tim Ackermann, Director, Global Talent Acquisition, Oda
Elisabetta Galli, Global Human Resources Business Partner and Learning & Development CoE Lead, Lightsource bp
Heini Utunen, Head of Unit AI, Learning & Capacity Development Unit, Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO)

This article is adapted from one which originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs.

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Inviting alumni back to Business School, for the planet

Business Impact: Inviting alumni back to Business School, for the planet

Business Schools can make a difference by providing sustainability education to alumni alongside current students, write Carina Hopper and Johanna Wagner

Lifelong learning is a crucial part of United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education), which aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’. 

In Business Schools, lifelong learning is often offered to a wide audience of professionals, including those who did not graduate from a management programme and seek the soft and hard skills necessary to get to the next step of their career. Today, in the context of the climate emergency, the need for companies to change the way we do business calls for greater commitment from Business Schools to transforming the paradigm not only among their current students but also among their alumni.

Where we are now

Surveys (including 10 years of research around education and sustainability from UK organisation, Students Organising for Sustainability) are showing an undeniable shift in student expectations, with rising demand for the skills needed to transform companies in the Anthropocene Era. 

In the field, more and more practitioners are showing a willingness to adapt their professional practices by placing a strong focus on sustainability, but do not have the necessary training to do so. One reason for this is that sustainability teaching began as late as 1992 and has only recently begun to grow in scale. 

As a result (and what is now a defining obstacle to rapid change), during their studies, most current professionals were not equipped with the knowledge and competencies needed to manage sustainable businesses. Many higher education institutions are already working to remedy this situation for their current students, but they can also contribute to filling this gap for their alumni, thanks to the development of new, targeted lifelong learning options.

Bringing alumni back to School 

One solution, represented by the Back to School for the Planet initiative, leverages the existing relationship between higher education institutions and their alumni to provide critical sustainability learning in a way that is innovative and simple to implement. 

How? By considering alumni as potential students for newly introduced sustainability courses, sessions and activities. Most of the time, a strict boundary is set between students and graduates, but when it comes to sustainability, this boundary should be reconsidered. Indeed, on the topic of sustainability, many alumni resemble incoming students. They are new to the subject and curious to discover everything it has to offer. Business Schools can build on the trusted relationship with their alumni to offer them a free update by inviting them Back to School for the Planet. 

Whether updates are offered online or in person, this initiative brings alumni back into the classroom alongside current students to participate in the discussion. Beyond the clear advantage for alumni in terms of benefiting from quality education from their institution years, or even decades, after their graduation, their presence in the classroom proves to current students that this topic has become strategic for companies. It also sends a strong message to students, candidates and the wider community that the School is committed to providing lifelong learning on issues that matter, as part of its added value.

How it works

Alumni inclusion in your institution’s new sustainability education offering can take shape in a myriad of ways and can be adapted to School policy, course format and alumni availability.

Benefits for current students

Thanks to Back to School for the Planet, the student learning experience can be enhanced in several ways:

1. First-hand accounts of how the sustainability strategies and concepts being taught may play out – or may have already been executed – in the professional world are integrated into the classroom discussion, thanks to presence of alumni with experience in the field.

2. A strong link is created between current students and participating alumni, leading to potential networking and employment opportunities.

3. A new type of collaborative environment emerges that is intergenerational and bridges the academic and professional world in a dynamic way.

Scalability

Back to School for the Planet is highly transferable and scalable thanks to the widespread transition to online and hybrid education seen in many regions of the world. Schools that wish to do so (particularly those without online learning capabilities) can invite alumni to participate in their new sustainability-focused educational offering in person.

The only requirement for institutions interested in participating is to have introduced new courses or activities in sustainability – something that is becoming increasingly common due to the rise in education for sustainable development (ESD) in recent years.

Support in implementation

Back to School for the Planet grew from a teacher-led initiative to a non-profit scheme to encourage its application, and support Schools in its implementation. By providing instructional guides, alumni recruitment support, participant certificates, a communication toolkit, access to a Back to School for the Planet network, and more, the organisation can help your institution to broaden the impact of its sustainability efforts by opening up these opportunities to alumni. The full potential of higher education to contribute to change can be achieved when the dissemination of sustainability knowledge and competencies efficiently target current professionals as well as future ones. Your School can accelerate the change by inviting its graduates Back to School for the planet.

Case study: ESSEC Business School

In 2020, as faculty teaching new sustainability classes in the MSc in hospitality management at ESSEC Business School, we created the Back to School for the Planet initiative in order to test our hypotheses that: alumni are interested in accessing sustainability training in the form of newly introduced sustainability courses in the School they graduated from; and this access can have an impact on their personal and professional lives. 

Both the number of applications, and the answers to the impact survey we conducted six months later, supported the hypotheses and demonstrated additional benefits. A few weeks before the start of the 2020-2021 School year, an alumni gathering presented the opportunity to discuss the introduction of a set of new sustainability courses for current students. One conclusion from the discussion was clear: while  graduates were pleased that sustainability teaching was now being incorporated by their former School, they did not feel that they themselves had the necessary knowledge or understanding to act in favour of greater sustainability in their companies. 

This led us to ponder how we could help them shift towards more responsible business practices. Since Covid-19 had made hybrid teaching commonplace at our institution, we realised that course attendance could now be extended to motivated alumni as a lifelong learning option. From their home or office, participants could benefit from the same new courses as current students. We submitted the idea to the programme director, who shared our vision and supported the piloting of the initiative.

For the pilot, we opened to alumni four spots each in two new 25-hour courses on sustainability. We received 16 applications from former students. The eight successful applicants were invited to attend all 25 hours of their assigned course alongside current students. During the sessions, we observed that the graduates were engaged – both in terms of asking questions and sharing relevant experience – while the students were stimulated by the of alumni and their contribution to discussions. 

Of the participating alumni, five answered our impact survey and unanimously agreed that the experience of returning to their classrooms to learn about sustainability was transformative and had positive impacts on their lives.

Carina Hopper teaches sustainability in fashion and luxury and sustainable hospitality management at Business Schools, including ESSEC Business School, SKEMA Business School and ESMOD Fashion Business School.
Johanna Wagner teaches in leading European hospitality management master’s programmes. A hospitality professional, she moved from working in finance and asset management positions to facilitating sustainability for students and professionals.
Carina Hopper and Johanna Wagner are Co-Founders of Back to School for the Planet.

This article is adapted from one which originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs.

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Changing the narrative: why we should focus on long life learning rather than lifelong learning

Time for celebration, candles on a cake. Business Impact article image for changing the narrative: why we should focus on long life learning rather than lifelong learning.

Author of Long Life Learning, Michelle R Weise, is on a mission to change the future of education, envisioning a shift from lifelong learning to long life learning. Ellen Buchan and David Woods-Hale caught up with her to learn more

According to the Institute for the Future, as many as 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t yet been invented, so how do we prepare for these jobs when we don’t even know what they are?  

Michelle R Weise, author of Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet, is on a mission to change the future of education from being divided and siloed, into an ecosystem which is user friendly for job seekers. 

This interview with Weise seeks to investigate how to build a workforce of people who can thrive in these future jobs. 

Why did you decide to write this book? 

One of the impulses for writing the book, was to say: ‘Ok, this concept of lifelong learning is not new – in fact it’s decades old – but it has been very slow to catch fire’. 

The most helpful model was hearing lots of different experts on ageing and longevity, as well as futurists, talk about a longer life and potentially a longer working life. 

We are seeing people stay in the labour market for longer. The concept of a 100-year life, or a 150-year life, suddenly makes our systems look deeply inadequate. If we get a college degree, it seems unlikely that two or four extra years of learning is really going to last us a 60- or 80-year work life. 

That is where the concept began. Instead of being paralysed by inertia about lifelong learning, we flip this model on its head and think about long life learning: what is this going to mean and how is it going to change our behaviour? 

Is preparing for the future about taking courses or having an agile mindset? 

Having an agile mindset is key to success in the future. Sometimes, it’s going to mean that we need to broaden our human skills. There are a lot of prognostications out there that we will have to bring our human skills to bear, and we will have to leverage this competitive advantage that we have, as humans, over the artificial intelligence (AI), computers, or robots whose work we are coordinating and complementing. 

It’s not just that we can be generalists, it’s sometimes going to mean understanding enough about AI to make the right sorts of intervention,s or understanding data science sufficiently to be able to acquire that next job. 

It’s both the human skills such as communication, collaboration, teamwork, systems thinking, agility, and resilience plus having enough tech skills to be dangerous. 

How has Covid-19 impacted the need for long life learning? 

It’s funny, because almost up until the final draft of my book, Covid had not occurred.

What was interesting was this laser focus in the book on people who were not thriving in the labour market. I think, when we tend to focus on the future of work, it’s helpful to move away from the statistics; I was really focused on the 41 million people in the US who were already being left behind by the present of work, people who maybe only had a high-school degree and who were not earning a living wage through their work.

When I had to revise my book because of the pandemic, it really brought front and centre all the deep inequity and the lack of opportunity that existed.  

The pandemic revealed how inordinately stuck our systems were. We couldn’t help large numbers of people move out of their jobs in the retail and hospitality industries when they were completely decimated and shift them into jobs which were open and in demand.

There is an opportunity to take advantage of this unique moment that brought the future to us and made it clear how much work we need to do by pulling down some of the barriers that exist for millions of people. Part of that is to move towards a skills-based hiring environment that allows people to prove they can do the job, instead of relying on blunt proxies for talent such as degrees or credentials. 

Do you feel MBA programmes are equipping people for a long life learning career? 

The question we need to keep front and centre is ‘how do we build and cultivate the best problem solvers for the future?’. That must be something we keep as a shared agenda when we break down the artificial silos of how we create problems to solve for our learners, because whatever we pursue – whether it’s an MBA or a degree in biology or anthropology – no problems exist in a vacuum. The crossing of silos and boundaries exists in any problem we encounter in our work today.

If you look at the kinds of opportunity that exist today, not only do we need those traditional negotiation skills, or the traditional courses we provide in a Business School, it’s about business transformation skills and how we enable the future leaders of our organisations to manage change.

So how do we prepare leaders to meet organisations in the midst of all that volatility? It requires organisational change management – transformation skills – and we don’t deliberately build those into our curricula. It’s fascinating that, at least in the US, most Business Schools don’t teach sales or business development. The jobs of the future will always entail some form of sales. 

How do we remain aligned with the demands of the labour market? I think core to all of this is ensuring that we are infusing curricula with real-world problems and getting people in the mentality of building a mindset of being able to exercise judgement in ambiguous circumstances.

In the book, you call for a different type of learning ecosystem. What does this look like to you?

To build a better future, instead of thinking about multiple systems running in parallel, we need to think about taking an ecosystem approach. 

This came out of the qualitative research we did with people who were part of that US population of 41 million people not thriving in the labour market. We were trying to understand the barriers they faced that prevented mobility, movement, and advancement. We kept hearing the same issues emerge around the inability to access the right career navigation or support services, or to find the right educational pathways that were not a two or four-year degree, or a one-year certificate. 

Five principles emerged: the new kind of learning system must be more navigable, supportive, targeted, integrated, and transparent. We can all think of different sorts of solution, or interesting innovators and organisations that work on career navigation or target more precise opportunities, such as boot camps.

The idea is that it’s not just about one solution, but instead about bringing together lots of different organisations and resources – existing and new solutions – to make this centre around the job seeker, so that they know exactly where to turn and how to navigate their next job change. 

Whose role is it to ensure the workforce is equipped with skills for the future?

It’s on all of us, and that’s the driving motivation behind this ecosystem-based approach. In many cases, there’s a blame game going on where employers criticise higher education for not producing the candidates they need, and higher education blames employers for disinvesting in the education of new workers. Individuals often bear the brunt of this, having to navigate it on their own, especially as they mature in their working lives. 

It is not sufficient for us to continue in this manner, where the bulk of reskilling and upskilling is pushed onto us, as individuals. We need to figure out the skills gaps that we have and where to turn to get the precise education that fills those gaps. We’re just kind of praying and hoping that a future employer will know how to make sense of this new learning.

Our learners need to understand better who they can trust and ways of sorting through the different options – and that’s where venture capital innovators and social entrepreneurs have a role to play in helping all of us to make sense of this burgeoning ecosystem.

It’s not one or the other; it’s not about blowing up something that exists today, it’s about really shifting the orientation around all of us as people and job seekers, because as we think about a longer work life (and the 20 or 30 job changes that we might have to anticipate for the future) we are all going to bump into the same challenges that those who are struggling today are already bumping into. 

It’s this idea of all being stuck in a web of mutuality – which is a term Dr Martin Luther King Jr came up with. If we cut into the curb for the people who are struggling the most, we open opportunities for everyone. It’s this concept of the curb-cut effects – when you focus on the people who really have the most constraints today, that means that all of us are going to be able to take advantage of the new ecosystem we are building. 

So, my answer is that it’s the role of each and every one of us to ensure that the workforce is equipped with the right skills for the future.

Michelle R Weise is the author of Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet (Wiley, 2021). She is a former Fulbright Scholar and graduate of Harvard and Stanford.

This article originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs.

 

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Leading change and inspiring lifelong learning

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Changing landscapes necessitate changing approaches to alumni relations and lifelong learning. Experts from a variety of industries offer their perspectives

In a volatile world, even MBAs are challenged to keep abreast of trends and issues constantly – and 34% of graduates were found to have accessed lifelong learning from their Business School, post-MBA, in a recent AMBA & BGA survey. Growing interest and demand for continued learning presents Business Schools with a golden opportunity to retain close links with their alumni. As such, a session of the AMBA & BGA Festival of Excellence explored strategies and opportunities for Business Schools to reinvent teaching and learning among students, graduates, alumni networks, and in their custom and executive education offerings. 

Chairing the panel was Ivan Mitchell, CEO of Studious Digital Education, who kickstarted the conversation by saying: ‘I’m sure lifelong learning is on the agenda throughout organisations across the world. I want to start thinking about what the future holds for this space of lifelong learning – what are we optimistic about and what do we think is going to happen?’

Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair of AMBA & BGA, and Professor of Marketing at WU Vienna, proceeded to present a challenge for Business Schools: ‘Business Schools have to become more flexible in two ways. They have to give a lot of delivery options, in terms of the content they are producing, but also in terms of the focus of their content. 

‘A lot of Business Schools have thought in the past that graduation is it, the students are no longer our customers. This meant that alumni relations were more of an afterthought – it was maybe about getting money, or getting someone in to give a talk. That is very wrong, because we need to look at education from the cradle to the grave, so we have to address these kinds of customers in a very different way. I think that for Business Schools, that is the biggest challenge at the moment.’ 

More active roles

Offering a corporate and employment perspective, Ehab Abdel Hafez, Head of Talent Acquisition for Africa, the Middle East and Turkey at Johnson & Johnson, responded: ‘Business Schools should be making sure that corporates are playing a more active role in developing curricula,’ he said, adding that there is ‘a lot of appetite within organisations’ for this form of collaboration. 

Offering the perspective of an MBA and DBA graduate, marketing practitioner and author, Geraint Evans, said: ‘What we must do, in terms of supporting lifelong learning, is challenge the academics, educators and the people who run Business Schools. We have to act now and focus on the fundamentals as we understand them.’

Panellists were in agreement that Business Schools have an opportunity to offer more diverse and innovative forms of lifelong learning. However, Schelegelmilch pointed out that other providers exist in the market and threaten the success of this proposed strategy: ‘There’s a whole range of institutions that offer various degrees and various types of courses,’ he said. ‘In this context, you have to be careful not to just equate lifelong learning with another degree. I think another degree is always nice, but lifelong learning can be as short as a five-minute podcast you listen to every lunchtime. The interesting question here is how institutions can manage and provide lifelong learning opportunities. And how do corporations entice their employees to participate regularly in lifelong learning? I think that is a key issue.’

Keeping up with changes to technology and aspirations 

So, how is the corporate world reacting to this change in the need for learning and development, and how can Business Schools remain in the mix? Elisaveta Nojkovska, Industry Executive for Central and Eastern Europe, Higher Education at Microsoft, offered some advice: ‘Education cannot stop with university or with the MBA. The technology is changing, the environment is changing, tools are changing – so keeping up with trends is something that needs to be a norm and needs to be flexible. Being adjustable to the current situation is something that will help everyone be upskilled.’

Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning and Capacity Building, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization (WHO) picked up on the current pace and depth of change, before saying: ‘What change requires is for us not to educate or train, but to learn because the purpose of learning is application in real life. Our roles are changing so, even if you’re academically qualified, you will need constant learning and the systems to support that. I think our aspirations also change. Our understanding of equity and human rights has changed our aspirations, and this requires learning not just in our domains but in a complex system. That requires all of the 21st-century skills of communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. 

‘All this necessitates constant learning, not just formally in universities but also through informal learning, so we may go to a course or learn from a webinar but there’s also what we learn every day, informally. How are we learning from our experiences, codifying this learning and sharing it with others? It’s this whole complex system that makes lifelong learning.’

Chair: Ivan Mitchell,CEO, Studious Digital Education

Panellists: Ehab Abdel Hafez, Head of Talent Acquisition (Africa, Middle East and Turkey) Johnson & Johnson; Geraint Evans, marketing practitioner, academic and writer; Gaya Gamhewage, Head of Learning and Capacity Building, WHO Health Emergencies Programme, World Health Organization; Elisaveta Nojkovska, Industry Executive for Central and Eastern Europe, Higher Education, Microsoft; Bodo Schlegelmilch, Chair, AMBA & BGA; Professor of Marketing, WU Vienna

This article was originally published in Ambition (the magazine of BGA’s sister organisation, AMBA).

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Making lifelong learning a natural extension of an MBA

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Lifelong learning opportunities shouldn’t feel forced – instead, they should feel like a natural extension of the programme. Tim Banerjee Dhoul talks to the Director of the Anáhuac MBA, Guillermo Zamacona, and programme alumna, Pilar Brogeras, about where the responsibility lies for graduates’ continuing education

‘Doing what I do, you know that people need development – all the time. You need to be on your toes for whatever’s coming,’ says Pilar Brogeras, a Managing Director at executive search firm, Stanton Chase, and an MBA alumna of Universidad Anáhuac México in Mexico City. 

‘What I see is that when you’re working, you’re in this one lane and it’s pretty easy to lose sight,’ she continues. ‘Sometimes, you’re just running and running like a hamster on a wheel. I think that is where these [lifelong learning] programmes can slap you on the face and be like, “hey, you have to keep it up, you have to keep pushing and gain a little bit of perspective,” because organisations do not always give you the opportunity or the tools to realise where you have to develop.’

‘For me, it’s more of an internal motivation – it starts with you, but I do think that universities have to do this work of putting in place programmes that really respond to the needs of companies and professionals. They have a responsibility to put in place a platform that can allow you to reach whatever it is that you want to reach through those programmes because they have a very strong network of players and strategic alliances.’ 

‘A responsibility from both sides’

Guillermo Zamacona, Director of the Anáhuac MBA, agrees that Business Schools have a responsibility for their graduates’ continuing education: ‘It’s a responsibility from both sides. I think it’s our responsibility as a Business School to be creative enough and to have the right strategy to make it feel natural so that the alumni and the students get involved.

In this sense, much of the work revolves around not only creating the right opportunities, but also facilitating the engagement of alumni. ‘We’ve developed a lot of channels, from academic and social events, to challenges and WhatsApp groups – a really big agenda, both within the MBA programme and in terms of lifelong learning,’ Zamacona explains. ‘We have tried to develop it in a way where it doesn’t feel like they are doing something extra where they have put it in their diary and it’s like, “ugh, today I have to go to this”. We’ve been trying to do it more naturally so that the networks get more efficient and the alumni get more valuable courses and activities.’

Network ‘efficiency’ comes when alumni interact and work with each other automatically in the years after their graduation, as if it were a natural extension of the programme. In the process, they can also continue learning from each other.

‘It’s great to see that our channels are generating this,’ says Zamacona, giving a recent example of spotting – casually, on social media – two alumni collaborating outside the School’s official channels. ‘I saw their picture and it was great to see that they were working together on a new artistic project, especially because it was nothing that we have done directly… I wish I could charge a fee for every business that is created among our alumni and our network.’

Gaining traction

A self-confessed bookworm with a background in communications, Brogeras says she enrolled in the Anáhuac MBA because she wanted to broaden her skills and knowledge through a programme that balanced hard and soft skills. ‘For me, it was very important to have the overall picture of how an organisation works…what I do is place talent – maybe I’m not the specialist in a role but I understand the main challenges.’

She then took full advantage of international opportunities that arose because of her MBA, attending short programmes at Harvard Business School and EADA Business School in Spain in the year she graduated. More recently, she secured a scholarship for a highly selective executive education programme aimed at preparing female leaders for board roles. Run by Banco Santander and known as the Santander W50, Brogeras attended the programme at UCLA Anderson School of Management, having received notification of the opportunity from her alma mater. ‘These [opportunities] were not necessarily from Anáhuac, but they were a result of the educational offer of Anáhuac,’ she says. 

Lifelong learning opportunities offered directly by her School have progressed rapidly in recent years, in Brogeras’s opinion. ‘To be super blunt, when I was there, I think there was not a lot of interest post-graduation. It was more ‘thank you’ and ‘bye’,’ she confides. ‘So, I think it has taken a while to get some traction, but all the work [Zamacona] and the team has done has started getting the attention of many of the alumni.’

‘We offer all of our students the chance to join the alumni association when they graduate and all of them say “yes”,’ says Zamacona, referencing cohorts from the last six or seven years in particular when asked about the current take-up for the School’s lifelong learning opportunities. ‘They sign and become part of the association. But [in terms of] really being involved, we have around 1,000 alumni… I would say that [engagement] is gradual. The three years after graduation around 75% are involved with all of these activities; the next three years, 50%; the next three years, 25%. 

Brogeras, who sits on the alumni association board, concedes that her fellow MBA alumni can be ‘tough cookies’, saying: ‘For someone that graduated maybe 10-15 years ago, there was nothing, and now there’s this bunch of activities. But they probably still feel a little disconnected from the programme as it’s been such a long time. I think it’s sort of like carving stone and being there and being there and eventually they will come back.’

Cocreated activities 

Nominated for an AMBA Excellence Award this year (with the winner yet to be announced at the time of going to press), the lifelong learning programme at Anáhuac’s Faculty of Economics and Business is designed to cover a full range of activities – social, academic, spiritual, cultural, communitarian, and physical – deemed necessary for ongoing career success. These opportunities, Zamacona advises, are all cocreated with its stakeholders: ‘For example, we have quarterly seminars and, this quarter, we had a three-day seminar, after which we launched a survey. In that survey, we asked what alumni want to know in the next quarter. With those answers and some other inputs, from the alumni association or from the professors or students, we create the next agenda.’ 

When asked how the peer-to-peer learning that is so integral to MBA programmes can be replicated at alumni events, both Zamacona and Brogeras talk about the importance of an event’s format and setting.  

‘It’s not like we invite all our alumni to a lecture on finance, or with the CFO of Miniso,’ Zamacona says, referencing a recent example of an event featuring an alumni and c-suite manager with the Chinese retail multinational offering insights into doing business with Asia. ‘It’s a one-hour talk, then 30 minutes of Q&A and then an hour and a half of networking with him and all of the other participants. It’s a balance between academic and social.’ 

‘The right people with which to connect’

Brogeras agrees on the importance of activities’ social aspect, saying that she values, for example, the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee and a chat with other participants before going to see such talks. She’s also big on the value of that traditional benefit of joining a leading Business School’s MBA programme – the network you gain access to as a result.   

The network – or rather, ‘putting in place the right people with which to connect,’ has, for Brogeras, been a clear highlight of what’s been on offer from Anáhuac since her graduation from the programme in 2014. ‘Through your network there is so much to leverage, in terms of perspective, mentoring, or just information you want to understand more about, relating to the sector you’re working in,’ she reasons.

Seven years on from her MBA programme, Brogeras says she’s in touch with fellow Anáhuac MBA alumni a couple of times a month. ‘I have one who was from the MBA, but from a couple of generations [cohorts] before me. We were together in the W50 programme – we’re very close and we even started doing some business together. Another friend is in Deloitte and has done a lot of stuff, so I reach out to him every now and then,’ she says by way of example, before adding that she remains in touch with people from the Harvard and EADA programmes she attended at the time of her MBA.  

A couple of times a month is also the average frequency with which the School facilitates a point of interaction for alumni, a get together, or other lifelong learning opportunity, according to Zamacona. 

Such regularity seems particularly apt at a time of uncertainty for global business and society. The Covid-19 pandemic, for Brogeras, has certainly upped the need for MBAs to look at ways of upskilling and reskilling: ‘Now it’s hit us that we have to change the way we work and the way we
do business. Business models have changed considerably, so it’s very important for us to remain aware of where we might need to develop ourselves if we want to keep our jobs.’

This article originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs (AMBA).

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The continuing quest for knowledge

Business Impact article image for The continuing quest for knowledge.

Lifelong learning research from AMBA & BGA shows that more than a third of graduates have sought to continue their education beyond their studies, and outlines their areas of interest. David Woods-Hale reports

From quarantined students to a rapid migration to online teaching and learning, business education experienced its fair share of disruption in 2020.

Yet, during this tumultuous year, AMBA & BGA was able to carry out a 360-degree portfolio of research, looking at the perspectives of Business Schools, employers, students and graduates as they sought to acclimatise to the conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The research delved into the need for greater technological innovation – both in terms of course delivery and digital skills – and explored respondents’ views on how successfully the business education landscape is evolving to meet the ever-changing needs of stakeholders at all levels. 

This section of the research focuses on the views of 2,110 MBA graduates, surveyed in the spring and early summer of 2020, on their satisfaction with their MBA and their continuing relationships with the Business Schools at which they studied, in relation to lifelong learning and their continuing development. 

Graduate satisfaction, post-MBA

Graduates’ sense of satisfaction with their MBA qualification was gauged in an earlier part of the year’s research. Encouragingly, 71% of those polled were either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘fairly satisfied’ with the impact of their MBAs on their careers to date. At the other end of the scale, 10% were either ‘fairly dissatisfied’ or ‘very dissatisfied’. 

Following this, participants were asked for their opinion on the areas in which they believed the MBA had added the most value to their career prospects. Among respondents, 88% agreed that they have ‘gained substantially more skills to help them do business better’ as a result of completing the MBA. Meanwhile, 81% agreed that ‘the skills they learned during their MBA have helped them be more mentally resilient’, and 74% believed ‘they have been able to develop all the business-related skills they wanted’ as a result of completing the qualification. 

In terms of salary expectations, graduates were less sure as to how far their MBA has made an impact. Just over a third (23%) neither agreed or disagreed that ‘they felt equipped to reach the salary they wanted to achieve in the future’ – and 11% actively disagreed with this statement. 

When the sample was segmented to only include the findings for MBA graduates that had completed their qualification less than a year before taking the survey, the results revealed a higher level of satisfaction, compared with the rest of the sample. In all the areas measured, recent graduates are either one or two percentage points higher in agreement that they had achieved the outcomes listed, on account of completing their MBA programme, than those that graduated more than a year ago.

Survey participants were also polled on the difference that their MBA made to them in terms of their behaviour in the workplace. The top answer, cited by 68% of MBA graduates, was ‘I was more confident about myself’, followed by ‘I was better at resolving problems by finding new solutions’ (62%), and ‘I was more prepared to work in a highly competitive environment’ (58%).

‘If I were to do an MBA again…’

Graduates were asked: ‘On reflection, if you were to do an MBA again, which of the following aspects would you like to see more of, or improved?’ and were provided with options ranging from ‘better quality of teaching’, to ‘more confidence building’. 

Overall, the largest proportion of respondents (54%) said they would have liked ‘more networking opportunities’; 37% would have liked ‘more knowledge and skills specifically to help them start a new business’; 34% would have liked ‘more content on how to run a profitable business’; and 31% would have liked ‘content that was more appropriate to the industry in which they work’. At the other end of the scale, the smallest proportion of respondents (22%) would have liked ‘better quality of teaching’.  In an open-ended question, graduates were then encouraged to share other thoughts as to what they would like to see more of in their MBA programmes, if they were to study for the qualification again. 

Answers were diverse, but responses comprised the following: 

• Case studies that inspire students to find solutions and help in developing a way of thinking.

• More practical case studies with a current or recent focus, relevant to today’s and future industry needs.

• More information about new disruptive businesses.

• To shed more light on current local and global challenges, and how to
handle them. 

• More technological updates and a means to learn how to improve
business skills in such a fast-paced technological environment. 

• Equip me to manage jobs that don’t yet exist and to look more into the future.

• Develop emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence.

• More practical experience of running an SME, or starting an SME.

• Greater oversight of managing a business’ finances.

• The reality of the job market and how to understand that an MBA doesn’t put you at the top of the food chain.

Remaining ahead of the skills curve

Business changes continually, as do individual career paths, so in a volatile world MBAs must keep abreast of evolving trends and issues constantly, and make sure they are nurturing and enhancing the skills they need continuously, in order to succeed in their career trajectories. 

With that in mind and considering these postgraduate reflections, Business Schools have an opportunity to remedy knowledge gaps in their alumni by keeping contact with graduates and offering access to lifelong learning in a variety of ways. 

The survey therefore sought to find out graduates’ views on the subject of lifelong learning as well as the means and frequency with which they are currently accessing it from their alma mater, as well as other Business Schools and further providers in the market. 

To start off with, participants were asked if they had accessed any lifelong learning opportunities through the Business Schools from which they graduated. Lifelong learning opportunities were defined as courses, modules and other initiatives related to MBA study that graduates can complete or attend after completing their MBA and throughout their careers. Just over a third (34%) of participants had accessed lifelong learning post-MBA from their own institution. 

Participants were then asked to share some information, in open-ended questions, about the nature of the lifelong learning options they had accessed. Formats cited included executive education programmes, masterclasses and alumni weekends, while topics cited included ethics, presentation skills, mentoring and negotiation.

Satisfaction with lifelong learning to date

Considering the myriad of courses and lifelong learning initiatives in which MBA graduates had partaken, the survey moved on to examine their levels of satisfaction with the options accessed.  

Almost three quarters of alumni who had taken part in postgraduate lifelong learning opportunities from Business Schools said they were either ‘very satisfied’ (32%) or ‘fairly satisfied’ (41%) with what they had completed or attended. Less than 3% reported dissatisfaction with lifelong learning provisions undertaken. 

Areas of interest for continued learning

Graduates were subsequently asked which subjects they would be most interested in, if their Business Schools were to offer additional management programmes to its MBA alumni.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the rapid evolution of the technology sector, MBA graduates are most interested in tech-related refreshers. The most popular topic cited by respondents was data analytics for managers (47%) closely followed by digital strategy (45%). Other popular topics among survey participants, included strategy execution (42%) global leadership (41%) and global strategy (39%). 

Topics and modules that are most commonly core elements within traditional MBA programmes were of less interest to the survey sample as a whole, in terms of postgraduate lifelong learning or refresher courses. Less than a fifth were interested in completing additional management programmes with a focus on economics (19%) supply chain management (17%) strategic HR management (16%) business ethics (16%) statistics (15%) or accounting (12%). 

Survey participants that selected ‘other’ were prompted to share what they would like to learn more about in their pursuit of lifelong learning. Answers put forward mirrored some of the courses that other participants had already completed (as evidenced earlier in the report), with suggestions encompassing diversity, project management, philosophy, presentation skills, crisis management, financial modelling, conflict resolution, game theory, branding and design, as well as culture and intercultural business. 

Conclusions

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that business continuity and success depends on leaders who know what they want to achieve and understand how they can make a difference in the world.

In conditions that remain volatile and uncertain, businesses are crying out for a new breed of leader to future-proof economies and innovate through complexity. This new breed of leader needs people skills, as well as focus – and this presents Business Schools with the challenge of developing these game-changing traits and relevant skills both while studying on a degree programme at the School and – as this survey confirms – throughout their future careers and lives. This challenge provides an opportunity for traditional business educators – Business Schools – but also for the corporate world and other training providers, who represent growing competition to Schools’ provision of executive and custom education. With adaptive learning and AI also emerging, ‘business as usual’ is no longer sustainable. Traditional Business Schools cannot continue without embracing fundamental change.

Having said that, this piece of research demonstrates that graduates, for the most part, are satisfied with their MBA experience, hold a high opinion of what their School has offered them after their graduations, and have ambitions to continue to grow and hone their skills. 

The test which the Business School community will have to collectively pass is to take this thirst for ongoing development and compete – or collaborate – with the corporate world strategically, effectively and quickly.

This article has been adapted from a feature that originally appeared in Ambition – the magazine of the Association of MBAs (AMBA).

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The value of lifelong learning

Judith Hanika-Grünn, Group Expert, Executive Development and Change Management at Raiffeisen Bank International AG, was a keynote speaker at AMBA & BGA’s Business School Professionals Conference 2019 in Vienna, Austria. Here, she discusses the importance of lifelong learning and how MBA qualifications can add value

Why do you value the importance of lifelong learning for employees? 

Lifelong learning is a given. There is no life without learning. We do it anyway. The only differentiation is that you can do in a smart or less smart way. Lifelong learning is a must.

Anyone who has been employed over the past 25 years has had to learn, and that’s whether or not they have attended formal classroom training, or they would no longer be in employment. 

How do you see MBA qualifications adding value to your business? 

MBAs are one of many ways in which we can support our employees in their development. It’s very selective due to
the cost and the time needed for an MBA. It’s not a format that will suit everybody, but for certain people, perhaps those with a technical background who are now stepping up to a more managerial role, for example, an MBA can really help them broaden knowledge and expertise. 

What does ‘good’ look like in an MBA graduate? 

I look at MBA graduates and compare them to how they were when they considering doing an MBA. 

What I first see is that their self-esteem has grown in a very healthy way and the achievement of completing a part-time MBA alongside a full-time job. It is a challenge and if you’re able to do it, it’s a very cool thing. Of course, they have also gained cutting-edge knowledge and built a network beyond their own industry. Our industry is banking, for example, but on an MBA you will normally meet people from outside financial services and this broadens your thinking and expectations. 

What advice would you give to someone considering taking an MBA? 

The first thing is to have a good reason for doing it. You should be very clear about this, perhaps writing down your reasons and sticking them on a pin board at home so that whenever you experience doubts, you remember why you are doing it. You should also ensure you have the support of family and friends, as well as your team and colleagues at work.  

How can MBAs be sure to use their skills in business once they have finished the programme? 

From my experience of colleagues studying MBAs over the past 12 years, as soon as they began studying a particular module or topic, they started discussing with colleagues what they could do differently in their job. This comes naturally.  

This article previously formed part of a larger feature published in Ambition, the magazine of the Association of MBAs.

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