Category: organisational development

For business schools to meet new student needs, the actions outlined in the last part of this article series (Creating cultures of change, part III) will go some way to responding to the ‘what’. But, we also know from experience that most large-scale change initiatives fail at some level – and as has also been explored in the book, Organization Development, by Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge and Linda Holbeche.

Therefore, if business school leaders are to deliver this new agenda, they will need to focus as much on the ‘who’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ as the ‘what’. These are the factors that build the internal culture to make change happen. How is this done?

I believe the key is to develop an effective ‘Change Mindset’, as covered in my book of the same name, to respond to the current uncertainty. There are four key action areas in which business schools can do this:

1. Identity – reinventing the brand (who we are)

• Why change is needed – to respond to educational megatrends and attract future students through a more compelling identity
• How leaders can respond – by creating a clear view from the top that answers the questions:   
         
                  – What do we stand for?
                  – How are we relevant to today’s learners?           
                  – What is our customer/learner experience?           
                  – How will we prepare leaders for the future of work?

2. Content – adapting instructional design to new learner needs (what we offer)

• Why change is needed – students want new learning formats and more relevant content through a differentiated offer that provides new learning experiences
• How leaders can respond – by restructuring their learning offering to match new external realities:

                     – Wider content reflecting topics from sustainability to ESG, AI, and DE&I
                     – Smart hybrid learning that leverages virtual, face-to-face and experiential formats
                     – New structures that offer customisation for both groups and individuals
                     – New partnerships that offer complementary knowledge and learning

3. Culture – creating the conditions for innovation (how learners will experience us)

• Why change is needed – learners want to partner with more innovative institutions with cultures that excite and engage them, the faculty and staff
• How leaders can respond – by building energy about new possibilities and creating permission to change:
  
                    – Build a change mindset to open up people’s minds to the value of change
                    – Create psychological safety to encourage experimentation and change
                    – Practice curiosity and use positive framing to encourage action
                    – Entertain ‘ridiculous ideas’ that push current thinking to innovate

4. Purpose – creating a new business model and purpose (why we exist and our aspiration for impact)

• Why change is needed – learners need a clear and compelling reason to choose you, based on a clearly stated purpose and business model
• How leaders can respond – start by examining the school’s history and attributes to then build on those strengths to refresh and reinvent the learner experience:
  
                – Build on legacy successes (reputation, impact, innovation) to refresh purpose
                – Build new content and capability that will enhance the core purpose
                – Create flexible business models (pricing, learning structures, certifications)
                – Build wider ecosystems through partnerships, experts and competitors

Enrolling and engaging in the change

This series of articles has looked at how leaders of business schools, and their faculty, can remain relevant and profitable in a post-pandemic world, when at the macro level postgraduate education is at a crossroads.

Teaching methodologies and content are clearly in need of a refresh to meet emerging learner requirements, but equally important are the cultural elements required to enrol and engage faculty and staff in the change.

This is easier said than done: change requires clarity within each business school about who that business school is, what it does, how it is delivered and why change is needed. Contradictory, yet complementary, skills are needed for this: hard skills such as courage will get things done while softer skills, like empathy, are critical to bring others on the journey.

If it is reframed as an opportunity to meet the real, emerging needs of students and clients, a change mindset can unblock the threat response so often encountered in business at times of transition, especially when externally imposed.

With a refreshed vision and purpose, an updated learning curriculum, and the culture to support change, business schools can bring their institutions successfully into the 21st century. The key starting point is for leaders to create the conditions for curiosity, engagement and action towards an envisioned future that energises and enables the institution and its faculty to embrace and drive the change it needs.

The pandemic and its related consequences call for novel business school content, structures and impact. How can leaders respond? A good place to start this transformation is by revisiting the three elements of content, methodology and impact (see Creating cultures of change, part II for more details) using a future focus and asking ourselves what might be possible.

Content: From ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘shared learning solutions’

Learners will always need the wisdom of the expert at the front of the room. However, they now also want challenge and ‘meaning-making’ rather than merely the passive absorption of facts. Educators can experiment with content and styles that include dialogue and facilitation, panels, group-work, ideas exchanges, experiential learning, off-campus visits to widen perspectives, debriefs and meaning-making, and practical application of new ideas to real work.

New learning content topics might also include: business model disruption; emerging value chains; big data and AI; ESG; sustainability; and the future of work. Creativity, innovation and the broader value of DE&I in business are also hot topics.

One example of these new methods is London Business School’s Horizon Scanning Forum which pairs students with external leaders around a focused strategic question (for example, ‘how can we diversify our customer base to capture millennials?’ or ‘how can we engage and retain a diverse and remote workforce?’). The ensuing debates and sharing of experiences equalises the older learner-teacher dynamic as groups make sense of issues through exploration and dialogue. Hybrid and virtual structures lend themselves very well to these new methods as leaders interact across timezones, industry sectors and professions.

Methodology: From ‘unidirectional knowledge transfer’ to ‘smart hybrid’

To reverse the old one-way learning model, the key is to inject dialogue, meaning-making and application into the process. Optimising physical and virtual learning is also key. For example, small groups can work offline to share ideas, while coaches or tutors can engage in deeper debates on a topic. Alternatively, mixed learner cohorts (for example, from different class years or programmes) can cumulate their shared knowledge and directly drive innovation back in their companies. So-called ‘digital assets’ can be created by educators, experts, business leaders and students themselves as they share ideas and case studies. Technology can capture best practices and AI can match data to learner needs over time to supplement faculty content.

These flexible learning mechanisms can include simple and well-planned experiments, immersion, panel conversations and TED-style formats that further customise learning and democratise knowledge and insight across learning topics and student groups.

Impact: From ‘linear learning’ to ‘strategic ROI’

With a tighter economy and scarcer resources in many sectors, students and their sponsors are making more selective trade-offs about where to invest in talent development.

Students are also looking for closer alignment between what they gain from a business school and how they have impact in their roles. Making invested development dollars drive business outcomes requires new metrics beyond traditional Kirkpatrick levels [based on the renowned model for analysing and evaluating the results of training and educational programmes] towards longer-term, measurable change. Business schools can up their game by co-creating impact dashboards that measure business and behavioural change, post-programme. Even for open programmes, like MBAs, metrics can track individual change through application of learning, innovation, promotional rates, salary increases, and career development.

Strategic ROI for business schools themselves is also important, and can start with investments in learning capacity, such as partnerships and ecosystems. As an example, LBS currently partners with Singapore Management University to create immersive learning experiences for African multinationals. Schools can also embrace their rivals, and partner to create value. One recent example is the ‘Learning Aggregator’ platform, Emeritus, which has partnered with MIT Sloan, Wharton, Kellogg and Cambridge, among others, to handpick content and aggregate it into new custom programmes. Such ecosystems and partnerships offer broader content, add relevance and can even help reach new markets like India and China with large potential student populations.