New Management Skills for the 21st Century Q1: Does globalisation and sustainable development demand new skills from business leaders? Challenges Peter Lacy So what I think we see is a range of global issues and sustainability trends coupled with changing stakeholder expectations creating a very different and challenging business environment for business leaders. And one that is not necessarily conducive to traditional problem solving and traditional business approaches. Lynette Ryals We haven't really thought through the implications of what do companies do if the drive for consumerism, for continuous replenishment, for having more products and more things starts to fade away or attitudes start to change about that. Business leaders haven't thought through what the consequences would be for their companies. Stephen Howard Business schools have to think very differently about what skills sets that managers need to succeed in this fast changing environment because it is changing very quickly, and things we used when I began business 20 years ago are looking pretty obsolete. Skills Adrian Hodges The skill sets which managers need now, and indeed will need more of, in the next 10, 20 years are I suppose related to a growing importance of social issues and the impacts of interconnectiveness through our global trading system. Nigel Doughty What are the business skills for embedding responsibility? It's being a good businessman. Ruth Bender It demands a different emphasis in skills, I mean the basic skill of running a business, managing people, reacting to the environment stays the same but the emphasis changes. Stakeholders Stephen Howard What is very clear to me is that the world is getting smaller, getting flatter – as the famous book says – the social contract that is out there between a business and its various stakeholders is changing. Bob Wigley To embed corporate social responsibility right now I think there are two or three key lessons. The first is that it has got to start with the most senior management – if the chief executive and the board don't support it you'll never make it happen, so it’s got to be owned by the board and very much promoted by the Chief Executive. Ruth Bender In the old days we just needed to worry about the shareholders and profit, these days there is a legitimate of other stakeholders and business leaders need to react to that and to understand what they need to do to make sure that all of their stakeholders are on side. Henri‐Claude de Bettignies Indeed they need to deliver shareholder value otherwise they won't be in business. But that should not be the main objective – that should be an instrument to create value for a number of stakeholders, and for the long view, the sustainable development type approach. Attitudes & Behaviours Lynette Ryals That if attitudes towards consumerism change, we will have to rethink – or business leaders will have to rethink – the drive for year‐on‐year growth in revenues, year‐on‐year growth in profits, year‐on‐year growth in sales. It may be that that is now an unattainable target, it may be that companies need to learn to manage in a climate in which growth is perhaps zero or negative – maybe for years on end. Sandy Cotter I think of what Lord Wolfe said recently "Business is currently done on the basis of legality, and what legality means is a structure or grid of what we can get away with." He says "Business needs to shift from a basis of legality to a basis of morality and ethics." And he was asked what he meant by that and he said "It is not so much what you can get away with, but what morality and ethics means is what you would be pleased to tell your friends and family you have done." Henri‐Claude de Bettignies If we can develop men and women of character, we have a strong moral spine and we are able to cope with the turbulence of competition and the uncertainty of the world. Sir David Bell Managers of the future have got to recognise that management is actually about leadership, and running a company so that it has the right impact on society is an issue of leadership – it doesn’t belong in a box, it’s not the thing that you give to HR to do. It is actually what your company is about; and that is a fundamental difference between a generation of managers who think that their only job is to make as much money as possible in as short as time. Q2: Does this demand new approaches from business and management schools around the world? Challenges Ruth Bender The simple answer is no because business and management schools have always been teaching how to do business within the context, and so the approach is valid, it is just the context has changed. Andy Logan I think the answer to that is probably yes – I think globalisation and sustainability are issues that no one yet knows the answer to. Therefore we are going into the unknown. Peter Lacy There is an enormous opportunity for management educators to place themselves at the heart of the biggest challenges that we face as companies and that society faces more generally, and I am absolutely convinced that there is a key role for management education and a better quality of research to play as we see the shift to a sustainable economy and a sustainable society globally. Truett Tate I think more important than ever they need to help make connections, to be able to bridge the gap between things that are important for the destiny of humans and success of a business. Mark Goyder What is best about executive education and the work of business schools traditionally has been very strong, great vertical strength, but actually what we are going to need in the next generation in business schools, as much as in business organisations generally, is very strong lateral strength. It is the ability to work across boundaries in a holistic way. Business Needs Peter Lacy The challenges that business leaders face nowadays don't break down neatly into the silos of marketing, strategy, finance and accounting, organisational behaviour; you have some messy complex cross functional issues that you need to tackle. Lynette Ryals I would suspect that we will think a lot more in the future about the thematic issues in business, rather than silos. Nigel Doughty So I think it’s just teaching that all parts of business are interconnected and you can't treat one in isolation. You have to ensure that you, as manager of a business, have a grounding in each of those to make proper and full decisions. Content & Delivery Peter Lacy The challenge that that poses for business schools is to think creatively not just about the content of what they are trying to convey to business school students and to future leaders, but also to think about the way in which they deliver that. Mark Goyder My first request would be that at the heart of any business school programme, indeed executive programme, there is that module or that element that tells us that the students have really thought about where success comes from. Ruth Bender We have to change some of the content we do, so particularly in the Western world most of the case studies we do are focused on the UK, Continental Europe, the States – I think now we live in a more global environment we need a lot more case study work that deals with different economies and developing economies in different contexts. Lynette Ryals I think a second consequence might be to do with the way that we deliver programmes and the way that we support companies. I think that here at Cranfield we have already had a significant move towards blended learning – using different mechanisms – and I suspect we will see more of that as time goes on. Henri‐Claude de Bettignies Well maybe we invite business schools to modify the paradigm that they teach. We are still very much based on the Friedman type of model to maximise shareholder value. I think today globalisation and a number of changes in society invite us to rethink the purpose of the corporation, and to invite business leaders to have a much more encompassing approach to long term development of the firm. The Future Lynette Ryals And, here at Cranfield, we strongly believe that a lot of management practice is good practice and that we can learn as much from those managers and executives coming here, as perhaps they learn from us – the whole process is much more about an exchange of knowledge, it's not a one way transmission. Bob Wigley In terms of what we need from business schools, I think it is partly the lessons learned from those who have developed best practice over what is now an extended period. The great thing about business schools is they can look at what everybody has done and they can distil from that what are the key issues. Truett Tate Increasingly business schools pursue the elements of the world that are disconnected but need to be connected. They provide methodology of thought, the framework, so that it is not a new skill, but it is a new connection; and sometimes there will be competencies that were unimagined before that a business school can make tangible, understandable, and within reach. Ruth Bender We have a business model that can be incredibly inefficient in the use of time and resources, and paper, and travel and all that sort of thing. And I think that one of the things we are going to see is people accepting a change in that model; maybe different ways to teach, different ways to learn – something that is less resource intensive.