Future leaders are soft leaders, aspiring for a better world, or in the words of Michael Jackson’s famous song – a better place for you and for me:
Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make a better place
For you and for me
INSEAD, one of the most prestigious business schools in the world, goes its own (and innovative) ways to shape future leaders. As a consequence of the global financial crisis, the focus on maximizing profits and performance are downplayed, and shifted towards a focus on social responsibility. The school is determined to equip their students with a higher purpose, hence, going forward, in parallel to Finance and Marketing the school will also teach Shakespeare, forgiveness, peace and spirituality. Leaders will apply their success to heal the world and change the world, says Dipak Jain, the school’s new principal.
When INSEAD got a new principal last year, it wasn’t just a new man at the head of the table. It was a revolutionary breakup with the last 20 years of the school’s self perception. A stop to the teaching of non sustainable economics, and a return to the original ideals of the world-famous school, based in its 1957 origins.
The school’s Honorary president, Claude Janssen, openly admitted in an interview with the French paper Le Monde, that there has been too much focus on money and performance, and too little on the great ideals. Janssen acknowledged that the school had become too Americanized under the last principal, and referred to the appointment of an idealist as a natural evolution.
The idealist was Dipak Jain, born in a poor family in an eastern corner of India, later integrated as an American and a deeply respected leader, and former principal of the reputable American Kellogg school of Management. Above all, he is a man of substantial social business ideals, as well as a true globetrotter, who moves just as naturally in western power circles as among poor entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.
To the board of INSEAD, Dipak Jain was the incarnation of the globalization that has become the school’s trademark. As the only MBA school in the world, INSEAD has campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Arab peninsula, and the school unashamedly calls itself “The Business School for the World”.
See the world
For years, INSEAD has focused on cultural diversity, and other business schools have observed with envy while the mother school in Fontainebleau has built new campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. The previous principal for Booth School of Business in Chicago, Edward Snyder, said in an interview with Financial Times that INSEAD is the world’s only truly global business school.
With Dipak Jain, the globalization was accelerated further. Together with the board, Jain has created five year plans for expansion in Asia, and he talks openly about penetrating the American market. At the same time he is personally deeply involved in the construction of a business school for women in Bangladesh.
In parallel, the new principal focuses on strengthening the school’s cultural diversity, which has become INSEAD’s hallmark. Every class should look like a meeting in the UN, Jain says, and for every class and school year he does not tolerate more than 10% of any nationality. For that very reason, there are 80 different ethnic groups at INSEAD, and the teaching is organized in such a way that Americans, Zulus, French, Egyptians, Koreans, and Norwegians are forced to work together and understand each other’s cultures.
Through the one year MBA education the students work in small groups and the school deliberately puts the traditionally hereditary enemies like Syrians, Israelis, and Lebanese together to solve common tasks. The students are thereby pushed to overcome their prejudices and antipathies if they want to pass the exams.
The importance of spirituality
Dipak Jain is raised in the Indian state of Assam, which is wedged in between Bangladesh and Bhutan, and only connected to India through a small corridor. He is born into the Jainism, a small but substantial religion, built on reciprocity and good deeds between all people.
To Jain, spirituality is therefore a natural part of everyday life, and he likes to mix the concepts of Spirituality and Leadership. Indeed, at INSEAD in the last 11 months, it has become truly legitimate to talk about peace and harmony, forgiveness and charity during a lecture on marketing.
- To have an interest in spirituality means that you have the will to look inside yourself. It is not necessarily related to a religion, but it is important for a leader to have self-knowledge. A good leader treats everyone with respect, and can forgive and apologize, Jain says.
- Too many leaders are controlled by the sensation of power that their position gives them. They put themselves above others and behave like they are not accountable for anyone. That is wrong. That makes them weak leaders over time.
- Therefore, it is so important for a business school to teach human character. Because it is our responsibility to be involved in the development of good leaders, and today the world needs leaders who are able to create profits for shareholders and create value for the community, all at the same time, Jain says.
- Forgiveness is also incredibly important for a leader. If he is able to forgive, he can be successful. Then he won’t grumble on some past incident, which has negative influence on future decisions, Jain claims.
CSR as buzzword
As any other proud business school, INSEAD has already been teaching ethics and social innovation for a long time. Going forward, value-based leadership will permeate every class, Jain says, rather than being an optional class in good behavior.
For the same reason, the new principal doesn’t like the term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which INSEAD otherwise excels in.
- You can’t just dictate from above that an entire corporation should be socially responsible. In reality, a corporation is nothing else than a grouping of people, and if those people are not interested in CSR you can write quite a few great purpose statements without doing any good, INSEAD’s principal says.
- But you can work on making every single employee socially responsible, and when enough people are acting responsibly, the whole business rises. It starts with every single person, and that’s why I insist on calling it ISR, Individual Social Responsibility. But CSR, that’s only a buzzword.
In the future, businesses will take over some of the social responsibilities from the State. So far, there has been a very strict division: the State holds the social responsibility, while the corporations are responsible for doing business and making money. In the future, this will not be a valid division. Businesses have to invest in human capital – and thereby also in the community. I think the public and the private will work in greater proximity in solving their problems.
