I’ve spent the last four weeks in Asia, partly on holiday (or more accurately giving my parents a chance to dote on their 9-month old grand-daughter) and partly for work. I met several companies who were interested to learn more about the Cambridge MBA students and hosted an information session for a roomful of prospective candidates.
One of the attendees shared her feedback about the session with the session. She felt that I had not done as well as I could to convey the values of the Cambridge MBA through the information session. I do a decent job talking about the benefits and the features of the MBA but I only implicitly, through some examples, suggested the values of the Cambridge MBA.
On reflection, I agreed with her comments. But some people would think that this is no big deal since almost every MBA program talks about their features (eg the program structure, the career office etc). The better ones, and by that I mean those who are better at communicating, go on to talk about the benefits and outcomes but very few programs speak much about their values, or if they do, it is in a very perfunctory way (eg “our students are global leaders”). One exception is Berkeley who have a set of defining principles for their student body.
The reason her comment struck a chord with me was because, at the time, I was reading a fascinating book called Herd by Mark Earls, who is @herdmeister on twitter. It is well worth a read if you want to understand why top brands have the power that they wield. At the risk of oversimplifying matters, I will pick out one argument that Earls makes, which is that great companies are fuelled by their beliefs. These are not beliefs that come through a series of committee meetings set up to write mission statements but rather they are deep-seated, personal beliefs about what’s right and wrong in the world, and they are beliefs that the companies are completely committed to. These beliefs shape the way they run their businesses and the companies are able to create something of social meaning for people (employees, shareholders, communities, customers) who share their beliefs.
It was a great articulation of some of my thoughts on the state of MBA education. It’s no secret that the MBA world is becoming a commoditised one. Program structures, textbooks and case studies are very similar. But what differentiates each program will be their belief systems and how that influences the way they shape their business. From the type of students a school looks for, to the way staff and faculty interact with applicants and students. So it is no longer enough to understand the “what” and “how” of a school, but also the “why”.
In many ways, this has been going on in the business school for a long time even if no one has sat down and explicitly written everything down. We strongly believe in the power of collaborative leadership and hence we look for excellent students who also share that belief. Our position as a business school within a university that, through the college system, brings together the best minds from a wide range of disciplines, mean that we want students who also have a wide range of intellectual interests. And Cambridge’s tradition of producing graduates who have great impact on the world mean that we want students who want more than just a nice job after their MBA. We want people who will leave their mark on the world and transform it in the years to come.
As a relatively young business school, much of what I’ve written in terms of outcomes is still aspirational. But it is our belief that things will come together over time. In an inter-connected world, leaders will have to collaborate with many different parties. Innovation will increasingly come through insights gleaned from other disciplines. And our students, through the MBA, will be better prepared for the challenges of making an impact in such a world.
