To those individuals who have already attained their MBA degrees I’d like to give a few points to reflect on… To those still journeying towards its attainment, or those contemplating undertaking the journey, the points might also give you something to think about…

An arduous journey has culminated to that point in time… that momentous day when you where rewarded for your hard work and endurance… the day on which you were bestowed with the sought after Master in Business Administration degree and entered the ranks of those that so many aspire to do.

So what? Then what? What happens after that? In somewhat paradoxical fashion I’d like to shift the focus from the certificate you’ve received, to you, the recipient of the certificate.

The certificate in itself is a lifeless piece of paper, the result of trees sacrificing their lives, transformed to pulp, processed into paper and embellished with ink impressions… It can do nothing: It cannot lead; it cannot manage; it cannot create change. Only you, the bearer of the certificate can do that.

Hence, the true value of your hard-earned MBA is not in the certificate, but in the growth and development that have taken place in you – in its empowering and equipping attributes – and the enablement to create positive change in your sphere of influence. Essentially, whether you’d acknowledge it or not, a metamorphosis has occurred in your being.

The MBA has transformed your thinking, reasoning and acting. In essence, your MBA programme did not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather led you to the threshold of your own mind.

From an organisational perspective, you are now more aware of the external environment. You now have a more strategic orientation; you now think systemically and have the ability to integrate all the parts of the whole – understanding that any organisational issue is embedded in an array or interrelated elements in the system;

You have the ability to transcend the mere management of what already exists, to create something fundamentally new. You can address human emotions and values – the “soft issues” as well as the traditionally “hard” issues of market share and financial performance.

And… you can lead, i.e. influence people to voluntarily go where they wouldn’t go by themselves. You can build the bridges between today and tomorrow in order to create a better future and add value to all stakeholders.

These are all attributes so desperately needed in our local context of skills shortage and the brain-drain. You have been empowered and equipped by the MBA programme to meet those needs and address the gaps. And ultimately the knock-on effect comes into play when you apply your knowledge and skills gained for the programme… and society benefits.

My message to you is simply this: It is your finest hour… awaken the giant within that have been moulded and enhanced by the MBA programme… and… go out there and make meaning – change the world. Our country and world desperately needs change makers… I believe you have what it takes. You have proven that by successfully completing a rigorous MBA programme

Take some time to consider the major changes that occurred in your industry over the past five years. Could you have foreseen them? Perhaps yes… perhaps no… perhaps some. More important, have you even taken the time five years ago to consider what the major changes over the next five years would be? If you had, would your business be in a better position now?

Strategy is about shaping the future. This involves addressing a number of questions:

• Where are we now and how did we get here?
• What did we do well, or badly, to arrive at our current position?
• What business are we in?
• Will this remain the same, or will we need to change our business?
• If so, to what?
• What factors internal and external to the business will, or can, have an impact on what we do in the future?
• Where do we want to be in the future?

Only when we have addressed these questions, can we start addressing the next issue: how are we going to get there? Implementing a strategy is primarily about managing change. You might think that strategic planning is a waste of time because the future is too uncertain to predict. You might argue that locking a business into a plan causes problems when things change. It is true that the pace of change is such that you can no longer plan 15 or 10 years ahead, but continually.

Your strategic process should include flexibility and continuity to anticipate and embrace change, instead of fearing it and responding to it reactively. The old-fashioned way of conducting strategic planning, involving only a few of the senior elite who hide themselves away at some Game Lodge for a weekend, no longer applies in today’s age of radical change. Strategy is very much about getting your people involved and making time for them to make a contribution. If you think that developing a strategy in this way is costly, weigh up the cost of being unprepared for changes in the marketplace. Asking the right questions also means getting the imagination to work on the key strategic drivers that affect the way the marketplace works. It can often mean leading customers rather than following them. Focusing on the future does not mean forecasting, predicting, or working out a plan – usually, such attempts end in disappointment. It does, however, mean accepting that change will probably take us all into a new playing field.

Strategy today means tackling the questions that will shape the future:

• Who will be our customers in the future?
• What will their concerns and priorities be?
• What kind of lifestyle will they have?
• How can we get close to them?
• What will their preferences be for accessing products and services?
• What will the major channels be for reaching them?

What have you done today to shape your organisation’s future?

I found this video clip of Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP at Stanford University’ Entrepreneurship Corner. Fiorina provides an insightful distinction between leadership and management. She describes leadership as changing the order of things and management as the production of acceptable results within known constraints and conditions.

Insightful… “changing the order of things”… works for me…

A recent article in Strategy & Business – “The 21st Century MBA” - Mary Gentile argues that management education needs to be transformed to match a world that requires business leaders to address the concerns of all their stakeholders. She states that Business schools are now at a crossroads, and that critics from both outside and inside these institutions are seriously questioning the philosophy and methods of training leaders. She quotes the critics as saying:

Business schools are excessively focused on a narrow conception of enterprise driven exclusively by short-term maximization of shareholder profits. Research is driven more by the review requirements of academic journals than by the needs of managers; researchers eschew studying the real-world messiness of multiple objectives for the pristine fiction of strategies that optimize a single value or point of view. The upshot is a generation of MBAs who lack a sense of how to manage corporations in the complex, multicultural environment of today’s global businesses, and who don’t recognize the way that business fits into the broader fabric of society. Determined to speak both the language of the market and the language of academic disciplines, business schools have all too often overlooked the proven practices of day-to-day management in large organizations, especially those in critical functions like operations and human resources that are seen as lacking “fast-track” or quick-money potential. And business schools have also ignored those educational methods, no matter how well tested in other fields, that might allow for experimentation and afford students the time to build skills in a thoughtful manner — methods like peer coaching, testing pilot programs in a safe space, and, perhaps most important, stepping back from an action to name and question the broader purpose of the whole endeavor.

In response to this turmoil, Gentile writes, a number of business schools are forging a new path. There is a nascent sense of purpose invigorating the management education profession, and recent innovations demonstrate that schools, their faculty, and their students are starting to seize this opportunity.

Business Schools should sit up and take note… the tremors that are felt in the foundations of the business school fraternity are getting stronger, and the voice of the critics are getting louder. To read Gentile’s complete article in Strategy & Business, <click here>.