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What’s love got to do with it? The motivating power of passion in business

If managers want to retain and motivate, they should appeal to employees’ passion and desire..but how? RSM’s Stefano Tasselli turns to the ancient Greeks for inspiration and suggests that we start by furthering our understanding of the importance of love

Outside the business world, we have heard about the power and virtue of love for centuries. However, love is not all rainbows and butterflies. The expression of love at work can often be tough and challenging but if we want to give our employees a sense of purpose, it is vital.

Expressed as trust, compassion, friendship, and creativity, love shapes our working environment to such an extent that we could say love is the organisation and vice versa. However, for today’s data-driven systems, love is impossible to quantify or manage. My research has found that many organisations fail to recognise that they are made up entirely of people. And the truth is, people are motivated by love.

Why we ignore love

Love gets expressed at multiple levels of the business system. Sometimes we have heard about it being expressed towards a colleague, sometimes within teams, sometimes within a whole company through HR practices, and sometimes outside the organisation, through relationships with suppliers, customers and other stakeholders.

Yet love has largely been avoided in the study of organisations. We can still find its traces in studies of related concepts, however they often avoid the word ‘love’. These studies may focus on workplace creativity, or ego and the working environment. They might study friendship and trust, they might study altruism, or any other number of personal motivators. In short, love has not received the attention it deserves.

Fundamentally, there is conflict between organisational design and the many ways love is felt and expressed. Studies of organisations and management have been dominated by an emphasis on efficiency, rationality, and measurable performance. These ideas contradict the idea of love, which is about passion and desire, and which is personal and subjective. 

Organisational life tends to choose authority over passion, and consistency over self-realisation. Because love demands exceptions and singularity over reproducible consistency, it presents an innate challenge to the tools we use to study and manage organisations.

Ironically, modern organisations are intrinsically dynamic and evolving, just like love is, but our managerial styles and the reward systems within these organisations are more reflective of assembly line management. Organisations are obsessed with measurable performance and efficiency. But if managers want to retain and motivate their staff, they should appeal to their employees’ passion and desire, which is impossible to quantify.

Love’s three faces

Creating a framework for studying love within organisations begins with understanding the three concepts of eros (me), philia (we), and agape (us all). 

1. Eros

The ancient Greeks seemed to have a strong understanding of the power of love, with separate words to denote its different forms . ‘Eros’ is sexual or passionate love, and is the type most akin to our modern construct of romantic love. Although, in the age of #metoo, it is perhaps not too appropriate for organisations to focus on this type.

2. Philia

 ‘Philia’, on the other hand, should be incorporated in all organisations. This is the love for our friends and something that is based on mutual respect and built on trust. We know that employees are more productive when they have positive relationships with their co-workers. New employees’ might experience philia when they feel welcomed into an organisation, and the resulting emotional bonds promote loyalty and are nearly as important as the work itself.

3. Agape

‘Agape’ is the broadest love of all, and equates to compassion for all humankind. Agape love is unconditional, sacrificial, and pure. Agape in organisations is perhaps best expressed through compassionate leadership, for example when the UK’s Queen Mother visited Londoners during WWII bombing, or like former US President George W Bush shaving off his hair as a sign of empathy for an employee’s young son who had cancer.

Compassionate leaders are not afraid to show concern and emotion towards their followers. In practice, this helps avoid common workplace problems that we prefer to pretend don’t exist, such as performance review bias, when a person is judged on who they are rather than what they do.

Non-profit organisations are an obvious example of agape in practice, especially when the organisation is staffed by volunteers.

Employee motivation

Love is also vital for employee motivation, for example, unconditional compassion may encourage a firefighter to work not for money, but to help a community they really care about. A manager who understands this motivation is at a distinct advantage compared with one who simply offers yet another raise.

But there is also a dark side to passion. Self-sacrifice may contribute to overworking and strong friendships at work may lead to cliques and favouritism. However only with a stronger understanding of love can we identify these kinds of problems before they start.

Understanding the importance of love will uncover new opportunities and help us understand our organisations, our teams and ourselves. This not only helps understand the ‘why’ behind work, but also improves employee retention and engagement in today’s changing nature of work.

My strongest message to you, as a reader, is that love is neither alien nor misplaced in your organisations. If you consider love to be a worthwhile pursuit in any aspect of your life then you have the opportunity to express love throughout your life, including at work. As a leader, you should commit to expressing love at work. In doing so, you can make a huge difference to the lives of your employees.

Stefano Tasselli is an Associate Professor at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.

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Solving complex problems with design thinking

Design thinking requires essential ‘front-end’ questioning skills to understand the end user’s experience fully writes David Steinberg

Allow me to introduce you to three hypothetical individuals, with differing priorities, who will set the context for the following article:

Zaha is a full-time MBA student at a prestigious Business School, taking a design-thinking course and learning how to apply the process to her capstone project. Her School will apply design thinking to help her take the next step in her career.

Anna is a partner at a prestigious consulting firm and responsible for recruitment planning. She recently completed a design-thinking course for executives offered by Zaha’s Business School. She’ll apply design thinking to help Business Schools around the world visualise the ideal student profile in three, five and even 10 years. 

Etienne is Director of Post-Graduate Careers at Zaha’s Business School. He recently met and spoke at length with the professors who teach Zaha’s and Anna’s design-thinking courses. Etienne will apply design thinking to help his Business School align its curriculum to the strategic goals of the world’s most successful companies, including Anna’s firm. He’ll also help Zaha take that next big step in her career.

What Zaha, Anna and Etienne don’t realise is that their questioning skills are critical to the success of their design thinking. 

Why? Because design thinking begins with empathy. With empathy, we can immerse ourselves in the world of the end user, and by doing so, we can properly frame the problem experienced by the end user, and go on to solve the problem together in extraordinary ways. 

Design thinking fosters the co-creation of value, ideal for those who work in the highly competitive, ever-changing and relationship-dependent professions of graduate business career services and employer recruitment.

What is design thinking? 

Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO, describes design thinking as ‘the integration of feeling, intuition and inspiration with rational and analytical thought.’ 

To Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, design thinking is a ‘balance between analytical mastery and intuitive originality’. 

Meanwhile, David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, calls it a ‘framework that people can hang their creative confidence on,’ providing those who don’t consider themselves to be creative with a way to solve some of the world’s most complex problems. 

University of Potsdam and Stanford University are two of the leading centres for the study and application of design thinking. Companies flock to the campuses to apply it to their challenges and change management. Ian Wylie at the Financial Times writes that industry adoption of design thinking ‘has encouraged Business Schools to add design-thinking methods to their executive MBAs and help students find innovative solutions in sectors from healthcare and pharmaceuticals to banking and insurance’. 

It turns out that there isn’t one design-thinking process: several have emerged in the past decade, each with its own terminology and devotees. 

For example, IDEO’s process focuses on inspiration, ideation and implementation. Roger Martin’s version requires ‘moving through a knowledge funnel’ from mystery to heuristic to algorithm. The Design Council, Google and IBM have their own versions. However, the Stanford five-step process is considered the gold standard: empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test.  

Let’s bring in Anna and Etienne to help explain each phase of the Stanford process using a simple scenario.

Empathise: during a recent meeting, Etienne initiated a series of questions and learned some sobering news about new hires from his School. They’re not building trust with clients of Anna’s firm. Etienne then conducted extensive interviews with other clients and heard a similar story. 

Define: Etienne returned to his School and met with faculty and staff to define the problem. They determined that the underlying issue was that students, while certainly high-calibre, lacked training in advanced interpersonal skills.

Ideate: Etienne’s team held a brainstorming session and came up with several solutions, including coaching and feedback, workplace simulations and field immersion.

Prototype: a sub-committee of Etienne’s team developed a prototype programme to solve the problem.

Test: Etienne’s School tested and tuned the programme with a selected group of graduate business students before formally launching it the following year.

The enduring value of the Stanford process is that when it is applied properly, it can produce innovative solutions that emerge not from the ‘ideate’ phase per se, but from the ‘empathise’ phase – the information-gathering phase. Proper application means not moving too quickly downstream into the latter phases – what most of us would consider to be the exciting bits involving late nights and whiteboards and lots of pacing around the room – without first understanding the underlying issues associated with the end user’s experience. 

Here’s a common and costly mistake that many companies and organisations make: they conduct a few cursory interviews with end users; they think they understand the problem; they think they have a solution; they roll out the solution and go home feeling good. They return the next day… and the problem is still there. 

IDEO’s Tim Brown describes empathy as the most important skill for the design thinker. He adds that empathic designers ‘notice things that others do not and use their insights to inspire innovation’. 

Design thinkers are taught how to empathise by combining observation and engagement in ways resembling techniques used by ethnographers in the field. Observation includes looking for work arounds and for disconnects between what is said and what is done. Engagement means asking mostly ‘why’ questions to ‘uncover deeper meaning’. 

If empathy is the most important skill for the design thinker, then asking questions comes a close second. However, there are as many generic approaches to understanding the end user’s experience as there are processes for design thinking. One size doesn’t always fit all. What follows is an approach to questioning tailor-made for the ‘empathise’ phase of the Stanford process and for people in career services and employer recruitment. Indeed, business students can also use it to complete their external projects. This approach will put you on the right path towards successfully defining and solving the end user’s problem. 

Change points

Your first step as a designer is to determine the topics to explore with the end user. John Sawatsky, Michener-Award-winning investigative journalist and interview expert, argues that the secret to crafting compelling questions is to build them around ‘change points’, which are key changes in someone’s personal or professional life. In the context of design thinking, the designer seeks to discover change points in the end user’s experience and to understand the associated underlying issues. Focus on the timeframe before a change point and build your question sequence around it. 

There are parallels between this process and an intriguing principle in Eastern philosophy called ‘ma’. According to theatre director Colleen Lanki: ‘Ma is a Japanese aesthetic principle meaning “emptiness” or “absence”. It is the space between objects, the silence between sounds, or the stillness between movements… The emptiness is, in fact, a palpable entity.’

Listen for ma in Japanese conversation in the form of question fragments, or in the silence between drum beats or flute notes or lyrics in Kabuki theatre. Look for ma in Japanese visual arts such as paintings that have empty space in them. Author and TV presenter James Fox notes that ma can give structure to the whole, the way open spaces in traditional Japanese homes are given meaning by those who live in them. It’s the spaces between the change points in people’s lives that offer rich insights for the design thinker.

Ask ‘what-how-why?’

Your next step is to develop a list of questions. In the early 1980s, Sawatsky began teaching journalism at various Canadian universities. He noticed that students who asked ‘what-how-why’ questions (topic-process-motivation) for class projects elicited more vivid responses from sources compared with students who used other words and sequences. This sequence corresponds with the neural basis of human listening. 

Social Neuroscientist, Robert Spunt, at Caltech writes: ‘Listening requires not simply a comprehension of what others are saying and how they are saying it, but also why they are saying it: what caused them to say that and to say it in that way?’ 

Think of the what-how-why sequence as a navigational system in an aircraft cockpit. Use the sequence to prepare for your end-user engagement by developing questions that function as waypoints between the first and last topic you’d like to explore. 

In between the what-how-why waypoints, probe and clarify responses using questions that you deem appropriate; open-ended questions work best, particularly when you want to explore matters of degree such as confidence, dedication, and success. When you’d like the person to confirm or deny a topic, ask a yes/no question, but it’s best to do so after you’ve explored a matter of degree. Moreover, use what-how-why when the person offers you a revelation. If you only have one opportunity to ask the person questions, you must quickly improvise a new sequence. You might eventually return to your original flight plan, or you might decide to stay on the new course. You’re the pilot.

Remember: we prepare to improvise.

PHASE 1: DEFINE THE CHALLENGE

The Stanford ‘empathise’ phase begins with defining the challenge. This can be interpreted as discovering one or more change points associated with the end user’s experience. Three question models follow to jumpstart your information-gathering process: 

Etienne’s questions for Zaha

• What was a positive moment during your time at the Business School that you vividly remember and often reflect on?

• How did this moment make you feel?

• Why do you think this moment made you feel this way?

This question sequence helps Etienne ‘dig into the emotion’, as the Stanford design school phrases it, to help Zaha take the next step in her career. Etienne learns that Zaha often thinks about her idea for a startup project in her elective: to build high-definition cameras and install them inside incubators in neonatal units to help parents see their newborns when they’re away from the hospital. Her work group’s enthusiastic response to her idea gave her a level of confidence she’d never had before.

Etienne’s questions for Anna 

• What is your firm’s top strategic goal in the next five years?

• How will this strategic goal change your firm?

• Why is this strategic goal important to your firm?

This sequence is designed to create alignment between Etienne’s Business School and Anna’s firm, while at the same time assuring that he understands the underlying issues associated with her firm’s strategic goals. Etienne learns that Anna’s firm has access to vast quantities of data with no means of harnessing it for clients. He also learns that the firm’s managing director is growing uneasy about the fierce competition from rival consulting firms, and has asked for ways to design innovative solutions for clients and to roll them out more quickly. Indeed, Etienne learns that the firm would like to launch a new data/predictive analytics division.

Anna’s questions for Etienne 

• What, in your view, is the next step for our employer/ Business School partnership?

• How can we collaborate on this next step?

• Why do you feel this step is right at this time?

This sequence is also designed to align Etienne’s Business School with Anna’s firm but from Etienne’s perspective. Anna learns that Etienne’s Business School proposes to co-create the new analytics division to help the firm’s clients address their own customers’ challenges and make informed predictions about the future. Students would enrol in a new business immersion course and spend six weeks at Anna’s firm. 

After the induction period, students would then work on challenging projects based on their specialisation. This partnership would provide students with the immersive learning experience they expect, and provide Anna’s firm with a continuous supply of ideas and skills provided by students at one of the world’s premier Business Schools. 

PHASE 2: GATHER INSPIRATION

Once you have defined the challenge by discovering a change point, the next step in the Stanford ‘empathise’ phase is to gather inspiration, which can be interpreted as exploring the change point. Help the end user go deeper into their experience. 

As market research interviewers will attest, the end user’s first response may not fully capture their feelings. 

For example, the end user might initially describe their long-haul flight to Shanghai as being ‘fine’, but after a few probing questions, ‘fine’ turns out to mean ‘the in-flight meal was average and the entertainment was limited’. 

Here are three ways to explore a change point:

Ask an immersive question

Craft a question in a comparative structure and turn up the contrast. 

For example, Etienne might ask Zaha this question to learn more about how her work group’s positive reaction to her start-up idea has changed her self-perception: ‘Thinking back to your work group’s positive reaction to your startup idea, how would you compare your perception of yourself as an entrepreneur then and now?’

Embed a verbatim comment

Embed a verbatim comment made by the end user in a comparative structure and once again, turn up the contrast. For example, Anna might ask Etienne this devil of a question to learn more about his Business School’s vision of the ideal student profile in five years: ‘You recently said that “artificial intelligence will reshape labour markets in unimaginable ways”. How would a student’s profile that takes into account the rise of high-level machine intelligence compare with the profile of a current student?

Wrap the change point

Again, it’s the spaces between a change point that are as important as the moment of change. Ask one question that takes the person back into the moment before the change point. Ask a second question that explores the actual change point. Then ask a third question that explores the moment after the change point. 

For example, Zaha might ask the following three questions to her client at Lego as part of her capstone project:

• Thinking back to 2012, before you introduced your co-creation process, how did Lego developers bring their ideas to market?

• When Lego introduced co-creation with customers, what were the steps to bring these products to market?

• What’s the primary difference between products created only by Lego developers and those co-created with your customers?

Design thinking offers people in career services and employer recruitment a way to co-create rather than dictate solutions. It also offers a way for students to hone their problem-solving skills and to co-create solutions with their clients for class projects. 

However, design thinking requires essential ‘front-end’ questioning skills to fully understand the end user’s experience. Mastering these skills will assure that everyone involved is headed in the right direction. 

Dr David Steinberg is Principal at Reykjavik Sky Consulting. He conducts MBA masterclasses on advanced questioning skills at several Business Schools including Cass Business School and Nottingham Business School and is Associate Professor in Leadership, Strategy and Organisation at Heriot-Watt University.

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Exploring the future of globalisation

Business Schools must collaborate within a global partnership to help create a sustainable future for all, argues Steef van de Velde, Dean and Professor of Operations Management and Technology at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Interview by David Woods-Hale and Jack Villanueva

At AMBA’s recent conference in Latin America, you presented on the future of globalisation. What did you cover? 

I shared a couple of stories about how to be a part of a global partnership. The world is globalising very fast. We all want to be international. So I shared a couple of case studies about how we started our international journey, what worked, what didn’t and what we needed to do to make it happen. 

You’ve joined the board of AMBA. How would you like to see the business education arena change for the better? 

I’m looking forward to doing my bit. What I’m hoping to bring to the table is the perspective of the continental European School. It’s important to bring in diversity. It’s important to have people of different backgrounds. 

What draws prospective MBAs to Rotterdam School of Management? 

It’s very international and diverse – 98% of the cohort is non-Dutch. Our mission – ‘to be a force for positive change’ – works very well.  It goes beyond sustainability and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). I believe business is a force for change. More and more people are embracing this principle. We promise our students that by joining our MBA, they will be agents of positive change. 

What differentiates the Rotterdam MBA? 

It’s very hard for any School to have a genuinely unique element. We all claim to be unique. We all teach finance and marketing. But if you want to stand out, you need to do something different in the area of character building. We very much drive the importance of the SDGs. We tell our students business is not about making money for yourself, but creating a sustainable future for all. It’s about creating business models that do well but also do good. those values are very much alive in our part of the world. 

What are some of the innovative teaching methods you’ve come across? 

If you look at curricula all over Europe, the delivery format is changing. More and more of the teaching is being done in an experiential way. It’s not just listening to instructions – it’s learning by doing through living cases, field-work and assimilations. That’s basically what’s going on. Ideally, this would be done in diverse teams with people from all over the world. This gives students the opportunity to learn in a very fast pressure-cooker type way, but also with people from different backgrounds. 

How important is sustainability in terms of Business School course design? 

Sustainability is very important. However, we try to step away from using that word, because often the connotation is too narrow – environment or green issues. We’d rather talk about sustainable development and big societal challenges, which go way beyond this narrow interpretation of sustainability – and which make people nervous. 

The SDGs  talk about poverty, inequality, lack of employment, lack of infrastructure, climate change and much more. In our School we avoid ‘sustainability’ and talk about SDGs.

In light of that, what does a sustainable leader look like to you? 

We use the word ‘responsible’ rather than ‘sustainable’ and this means people have a very broad eye on what’s going on in the world; you manage a style of company that goes beyond making money for you and your family, but contributes to a better world. We try to encourage our students and graduates to contribute to a better world and be a force for positive change. 

In your personal and professional life, you’ve worked all over the world. How do you instil this international mindset in your students? 

We do this by recruiting people with different backgrounds from all over the world, in all our programmes, and by creating an international atmosphere. We create opportunities for people to work with others with different experiences. We also recruit faculty from all over the world and who will go places with their students. Our students travel all over the world and therefore are exposed to the global mindsets. 

How can MBAs turn theory into practice in the working world? 

People have to do something experiential. We stimulate students to set up their own businesses, often in the area of social business. 

You’re looking for students who can deliver on a global scale. Should students look at local economies first and work up – or take a top-down approach? 

To me, it’s very clear: people bring local experience but they have to do something with global impact. 

Collaboration is vital in uncertain climates. How is your School building links with other Schools, employers and alumni? 

We’re international through strategy and sheer luck. We’re members of leading groups and our Triple Crown accreditation gives us access to very strong international networks, in which we can discuss new initiatives and programmes. This collaboration for us is key to stay ahead of the competition. 

I’m using the word ‘competition’ but some of the Schools we’re ‘competing’ with in the same market are also the Schools with which we want to collaborate. 

What are the challenges that Business Schools face? 

There are quite a few challenges facing us. First, funding: we’re mainly a public university, so funding goes down year after year; one way or another you have to absorb that. At the same time, all Schools want to be international and we’re after the same faculty and students, so competition is getting fiercer. Faculty management and retention is a big challenge for most Schools. 

What would your advice be to other Business School leaders operating in this volatile and uncertain world? 

Over the years, I learned something that surprised me: the importance of having a compelling mission. Up until three years ago, I thought no one cared about mission. Then we worked on a new mission. To my surprise, this has released an enormous amount of energy and passion. 

Mission, to my mind, is nothing else but common purpose. Everyone wants a purpose in life. If you have a purpose you can rally everyone behind it and then it’s a lot easier to change things as they all understand what you want to achieve. 

Our new mission has had an impact on our School, students, faculty staff and also external stakeholders. It has served us very well so far. I’d urge Business School leaders to define their mission and purpose; once they do, things will become a lot easier. 

How can a Business School add value to a corporate employer with which it’s working? 

A Business School is all about delivering talent to the job market, so as a Business School you need to stay on top of what exactly the market requires. It’s changing very fast and teaching is moving away from accounting and finance towards business analytics. Business Schools have to follow the trends, there’s no way around it, and you have to stay in contact with companies. 

What’s your level of optimism about business, Business Schools and the economy? 

On a scale of one to 100, it’s very close to 100. I’m an optimist by nature, in spite of all the uncertainty in the world – especially around politics. I truly believe in the EU and this has worked well in Europe. 

Steef van de Velde is a Professor of Operations Management and Technology and the Dean of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). 

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Applying original thinking to business

Business Schools must encourage independent thinking and bravery in their students to help prevent future financial crises, says Fiona Devine OBE, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School. Interview by Jack Villanueva and David Woods-Hale

What were the key points of your presentation at AMBA’s 2018 Global Conference for Deans and Directors? 

I wanted us all to reflect on the global financial crisis of 2008 because the causes and consequences of that crisis are still being felt today and will be for some time. 

I wanted us to think about its impact on the world with a particular focus on leadership and management education. We have to produce the leaders of tomorrow who still take issues of corporate governance very seriously. There are many examples in the business world and in all aspects of life in which we have to think about fraud, accountability, corporate governance and how we address those issues. 

In light of that, how do you think Business Schools should be preparing MBAs to be leaders of tomorrow?  

Business Schools should be producing well-rounded people. By that, I mean people who understand business in the wider context – the social, economic and political environments in which businesses are operating. 

They need to understand this external environment as well as the environments of the organisations in which they’re working.
I think business leaders of the future need to understand how to manage change, how to lead change, and how to deal with risk and uncertainty. 

How can we be sure that the skills that are currently being taught are the right tools to safeguard against another financial crisis?

We’ll only know that when there isn’t another one. 

I don’t suppose we’ll never have crises in the future. But there should be people who will have the independence of mind to step up and say when there is uncertainty about issues. It doesn’t have to be a big crisis for people to draw attention to something. It’s about having the independence of mind and the courage and bravery to say something different – and not be part of group think. It’s about reflecting on and challenging things that come along if they don’t feel right. 

Do you think MBAs are being taught the necessary skills to succeed? 

I would hope so, as a Business School Dean. They will be taught what’s needed if the curriculum is up to date. An old curriculum doesn’t serve anybody, so we want an academic community that is abreast of the latest developments in the world of business and how it’s changing; and always bringing theory and practice together. 

Our strapline in the Business School in Manchester is ‘original thinking applied’ and it is really about defining theory and practice. Theory is often speculative and not grounded; it’s about connecting this to practice and this is very important and I know that many Business School Deans aspire to achieve it. 

How important is the continuation of learning after achieving an MBA? 

It’s hugely important. We all talk about it and we know that in a world of change, risk and uncertainty, it’s important to have the space to step out of your organisation, find a platform to talk to people about issues and challenges and get advice. 

Executive education and continuing professional development provide that space for you to do that. It’s easy when you’re in an organisation to think you’re the only person facing these problems and you’re the one who has to come up with novel solutions, but often when you join an executive education programme you’ll find yourself confronting similar dilemmas and challenges so it’s good to have those conversations and join that collective discussions about the best ways forward. 

In what ways have Business Schools adapted sustainable leadership into their programmes? 

Sustainable leadership is to do with resources and how you use them efficiently and effectively for the long term. One of our preoccupations is with environmental sustainability – but there are other forms – and in Manchester we have scholars working in this area. 

For example, there are lots of discussions at the moment about the need to move to a low-carbon future, but how do organisations get there? It’s a huge transition, especially if you’re a dominant player in a particular market. How do we get there? This has to be a core part of the curriculum [in Business Schools] whether it’s in the MBA or electives on specialist masters or undergraduate programmes. There’s a high demand for these programmes from students. 

What are some of the innovative teaching methods being used to prepare the leaders of tomorrow? 

Teaching has changed considerably over the past 10-20 years, most notably because of new technology. The days when you would go into a lecture for an hour of being talked at, as a passive audience member, are long gone. 

Technology has allowed us to do amazing things in the classroom and that learning engages students a lot more. It’s not about passive learning, even in large lectures. Material can be presented in innovative ways, using apps and gamification, to help people learn and think in active ways. 

Is the need for innovation a major challenge that Business Schools face? 

Like any other organisation, Business Schools have to think about change, evolution and relevance. Business Schools have to be useful to the business world, serving local as well as international communities. 

The biggest challenge is the politics of today – will the world remain as international as it has been for the past 20 years? Will we embrace people of all nationalities moving around the world and studying at Business Schools? Will people still feel comfortable to do this as the politics of the world changes? 

Which is the bigger issue for Business Schools: the volatile economic environment or barriers to student mobility? 

International mobility is important, not only for the Business School world but education in general. The academic world has enjoyed a surge of interest from students coming to Business Schools from all around the world and it would be shame if we lost that confidence people have to travel. 

We’ve got to think about keeping students up to date with current debates about politics, looking at international relations in terms of trade, how countries collaborate with each other, and all those sorts of issues. These are important for understanding businesses and what happens in the business world.

What innovations have you seen in Business Schools that have the potential to change the way businesses do things? 

There are lots of things out there and even as a Dean of a Business School, you hardly know the breadth of innovations happening in your own School. 

I’ve been interested in knowledge-transfer partnerships, in which Schools work with organisations. I have a number of colleagues working with legal companies at the moment, around legal tech. They’re exploring changes happening with legal technologies, how that’s disrupting the legal world and also how data is disrupting this sector, in the same way as fintech has disrupted the finance sector. 

Academics are bringing their expertise to the areas of solving business problems and helping companies through this. It’s important to be useful. 

How can a Business add value to a corporate with which it’s working? 

There are many ways we can work with corporates. Business Schools act as a platform to bring people together to discuss important topics. 

Manchester Alliance Business School recently held a talk on the industrial strategy in the UK, bringing people together to talk about this. What was gratifying about this event was that people were sharing business cards with each other. We can be a place where big ideas are discussed and we can bring solutions to problems as well.

Fiona Devine OBE is Head of Alliance Manchester Business School and Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. 

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Winning at interview and preparing for AI-infused recruitment

If your CV was good enough to get you an interview, that’s great, but looking good on paper is just the starting point. At interview, you have to demonstrate that you have the skills to do the job and will be a good fit with the team.

Your audition

An interview is an audition – your opportunity to shine and prove you are the perfect person for the role. The actor Harlan Hogan is famous for delivering the catchphrase, ‘you never get a second chance to make a first impression…’ and it certainly pays to be well prepared.

The interview is not, however, just an exercise in self-promotion. The hiring manager has a specific brief and, in effect, you are there to convince the interviewer that you can solve their hiring problem. An interviewer will focus on gaining an understanding of you and your motivation and how these fit with the role, existing team and organisational culture.

Be prepared to show how you will add value and that you are the best candidate to help the organisation succeed. When you are asked to tell the interviewer about yourself, what this request really means is that you should show ‘what value would you bring to us?’

Thorough preparation and the way in which you present yourself are crucial to success; but, since performance at interview is not a reliable indicator of job performance, interviews these days tend to be quite structured and often concentrate on competencies with targeted behavioural questions.

The basics

Clarity and brevity are your touchstones. Show you are articulate and able to think on your feet while communicating effectively under pressure. Be ready to provide work-related examples that show your personality and how you operate and illustrate that you will be a good fit in the role. Ensure you pinpoint your strengths and expertise and emphasise your points with examples that showcase your achievements. Show how you will make a real difference when you are appointed.

You may be asked some tricky questions as interviewers probe to assess how you react. Keep your answers concise and relevant. You are likely to be asked competency-based questions relating to your previous roles, so make sure you have plenty of examples prepared.

Employability skills are also an important factor for success at work and showing that you have these skills and focusing on them during the interview process, along with your technical expertise, will help differentiate yourself from the competition. Concentrate on showcasing good communication skills, commercial awareness, a commitment to lifelong learning, problem-solving skills, and professional manner and attitude.

Demonstrating your skills at interview is not easy and we all have ‘off days’ but interview practice will help. If you can, get a friend, colleague, career coach or mentor to help with some sessions to rehearse your responses, improve your confidence and hone your performance.

The changing face of recruitment

HR now use robotics to enhance and expedite the recruitment process and leave hiring managers free to concentrate on more complex tasks. AI is supposed to remove human biases that adversely affect some candidates and it seems that nearly all Fortune 500 companies are using some form of automation to enhance hiring processes.

It’s interesting to consider what changes job seekers are likely to see as robots are used in the interview process more often. A large Swedish recruitment specialist, TNG, has been experimenting with such a system to offer candidates job interviews that are free from the unconscious biases that managers and recruiters may bring to the hiring process. The idea is to make the experience ‘seem human’ while ‘background-blind’ AI programmes manage tests and perform initial online interviews.

The robot interview doesn’t indulge in pre-interview small talk and asks all questions in an identical way, in the same tone, and typically, in the same order. This is believed to create a fairer and more objective interview. Recruiting managers are then provided with transcripts of the interviews so they can decide which candidates to move to the next stage of the process, based on their answers alone.

Impressing the algorithm

Interviewees can’t relax too much in this context as the AI programme records and analyses responses, and where there is a video interface, monitors facial expressions. Some candidates will find they are comfortable with such an interview, as they will perceive it as a non-judgmental, non-threatening and non-invasive means of interaction which affords them scope for presenting themselves in a relaxed manner. Others may find talking to a screen and recording their answers more challenging.

There is some discussion around the issue of bias and AI. After all, the algorithms at work here are programmed by people who have flaws, biases and preconceptions that are all too easily inherited by an AI system. That said, many candidates seem happy with these developments. Randstad, a Dutch multinational recruitment firm, found that a majority of US job candidates believe technology, AI included, has made applying for jobs more efficient. These same candidates also felt more respected and engaged in the recruitment process as they received automated updates.

Impressing a robot at interview may require candidates to adjust their focus. Answering questions that will be analysed by an algorithm means your responses must focus on the job specification, using words and phrases directly related to the role. You cannot rely on building rapport with the interviewer because a robot is not interested in bonding with you. It will still be important to be well prepared for the interview, having read not just the job description but also the organisation’s website information to see what qualities they prioritise and the culture they portray.

The plain fact is that a robot can interview many more candidates per day than a person can and will also review a candidate’s social networking activity thoroughly and quickly. At least in the early stages of the recruitment process, we are likely to see automated AI powered systems being used as a matter of course. Whether the interviewer is human or machine it remains important that the applicant makes a good impression.

Liz Sebag-Montefiore is a Director and Co-Founder of career management firm, 10Eighty and has provided HR solutions to a wide range of industries since 2005.

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7 tips for thriving in your workplace

For recent graduates and professionals seeking their first real taste of working life, thriving in your workplace is vital. After all, this is the first step in what will be an illustrious career for you, so you want to make it count by being the best you can be.

Truly thriving in your workplace can also only increase your job security, help you network internally, raise your confidence and help with career progression down the line.

Here are a few tips for those who are looking to maximise their chances of thriving in the workplace:

1. Set up quarterly targets with your manager

In some industries, like sales, your performance will be entirely measured on targets. However, why not set some individual professional goals to achieve with your manager too? These are ones that you won’t share with the rest of the office.

It’s always good to have something to work towards and it should ensure that you are constantly developing. Plus, you’re bound to work more efficiently and with more motivation if you’re chasing a goal, rather than simply praying that the clock hands move faster.

2. Write out daily and weekly targets

Setting more frequent goals is an excellent way to motivate yourself. Each Monday morning, for example, you could set out what you want to achieve for the rest of the week.

The best part is, these goals don’t even have to be work-related. They can include something as simple as talking to your colleagues at lunch in order to improve your working relationships or using your break to walk around a park and get some fresh air.

Writing out a to-do list each morning, meanwhile, can keep you organised and on top of your tasks for the day. It also helps you to see where you might have free time to ask for more work. Organisation is a key strength you need in order to thrive at work.

3. Work with your colleagues

If you’re an introvert, this can be difficult. However, working alongside your colleagues can play a huge part in not only enjoying your job, but perhaps thriving in your role too. 

For recent graduates, this is likely going to be your first experience of a full-time working environment. You don’t want your first proper job to be awful, do you? This is the start of your career, so you need to hit the ground running.

Show your colleagues that you aren’t a deer caught in headlights and offer your knowledge and insight into projects. Plus, don’t be too proud to ask for help or to work on certain tasks in the first few months. This will enable you to bounce ideas off your colleagues, gain some invaluable knowledge of how tasks are completed and start building a strong professional network.

4. Lead meetings or projects

For recent graduates, confidence in your new role is key. From the very start, you want to show that you belong in this environment and you’re far more likely to thrive in your workplace if you feel confident.

You’re never going to gain leadership skills by taking a back seat. So, why not take some initiative and put yourself forward? Whether this is asking to lead meetings, client calls or projects, putting yourself in these positions is an excellent way to acclimatise yourself to working life. It also sets you up nicely for career progression too!

5. Hone your key skills

If you’re good at something, whether that’s a certain task or use of a specific software, demonstrate your ability. When starting a new job, doing something you know you’re good at will fill you with confidence.

What’s more, you may become the go-to person in the office that people come to when they need help with a task you’re proficiently skilled at. This will ensure you thrive in your workplace, and allow you to develop your best skills to a level of expertise.

6. Jump into the deep end

However, don’t just focus purely on one particular skill you have. You don’t want to be a one-trick pony. This can damage your chances of getting a better-paid position or promotion, as employers will always pick an employee who can offer versatility in their skill set.

Learn new skills, put yourself out of your comfort zone – these are just a few examples of what you can do to improve your versatility. If you’re worried about the consequences, make sure you have a few safety nets to fall back on. For example, ask a senior colleague to listen in on your client call so they can help you if you get stuck.

7. Are you ready to thrive in the workplace?

In order to secure career progression and get higher paid jobs in the future, you need to be the best you can be in your current role. When applying for new jobs, you will most likely have to use your existing employer as a reference. It goes without saying that if you thrive in their company, they’re far more likely to give you a glowing reference.

Make sure to follow these tips whether starting a new job, or if you just want to improve in your current role. Thriving in the workplace goes a long way to helping your career!

Lee Biggins is the CEO and Founder of CV-Library, an independent job board in the UK. Having launched the company from his bedroom nearly two decades ago, Lee has since seen CV-Library grow from strength to strength, and he is now committed to growing Resume-Library, its US sister site.