The Success Story of AT&T

Recently, a forum was organized by EY in which officials from AACBE also participated.

A keynote speaker at the conference was the CEO of AT&T — Randall L. Stephenson. During his presentation he discussed things about internet traffic rules. He also provided some interesting points on the boldness of strategy needed to stay in business in the long term. Some of the same principles also apply to the professionals who wish to build long and successful careers.

He asserted the importance of being bold enough to re-invent things that cannibalize existing, profitable products and services. AT&T has had to make some strategic bets to manage the demise of a technological era – bets that assured their ability to survive and thrive long term, despite cannibalizing the profitability of their core businesses.

He says that at the core of AT&T’s obsolescence survival story lies the fact that it is the first to make product trade-offs, improving its chance of survival. Today’s market, quickly displaces those who don’t rapidly adopt innovation. Think Blackberry. This process of managed obsolescence applies to your career and your future, as well.

Business careers are not a straight line path anymore. You have to anticipate some zig and some zag. You also have to anticipate you’ll need to make tough tradeoffs from time to time keep your job and get ahead.

What kind of trade-offs? Maybe you have to take a step back in title and responsibility to leap frog to more responsibility down the road. Or accept a lateral move to groom yourself for rapid acceleration a position or two in the future. Sometimes you even need to step back and think refresh your skill set. For business students he urges them to be proactive — before the time passes and see the handwriting on the wall. 

• Take stock of where you are. Ask trusted colleagues what they think you’re good at. What do they think your growth opportunities are? Where do they see you fitting in the organization? In the work landscape in general? Accept the input, good and bad. Inventory your skills and experiences. Identify the gaps and the holes.

 

• Commit to yourself that you will let go of the OLD professional you and open yourself up to the NEW. You need to find the mental resolve to move forward and embrace change in your professional life. This is the first step in the journey.

 

• Make your manager your ally. Have a frank discussion about your long term career goals. Ask your manager’s help in reaching your goals – even if it means a shift to a new department, or extra assignments you feel less than equipped to handle, or taking some of the drudge out of your manager’s day to day, or even taking time off to allow yourself some mental and emotional space.

 

• Proactively set out to build your skill set. Your goal is to strategically fill in skills gaps. Have management skills? Check! Have product expertise? Check! Have P&L responsibility? Check! Have international experience? No….then go get it – whatever “IT” is. And if you can’t get “IT” from your job, then seek to do it outside of the workplace through classes, volunteer work, study- options.

 

• Be open to opportunities. Don’t let that inside voice tell you “you can’t” or “it won’t work.” First and foremost, you need to be a believer in yourself and your capacity to evolve and stay in the game in one way or another. For the naysayers? Ignore them. They are not worth your time or mental energy.

 

Are Our Business Executives Good Leaders?

We all agree that all business executives are not good leaders. However, these days this topic is highly debated across the business schools all over the world. Employers wish to hire graduates who have leadership skills and so they are also complaining about this.  

In order to further understand and elaborate on this, AACBE conducted a study among its 2200 accredited schools and 67,000 students about how they view the role of the company in society and how their views are shaped by what they learn in business school.

The findings were: 

·         MBAs shift their priorities during the two years of the business school program, from “customer needs” and “product quality” to “shareholder value.”

·         MBAs believe that they can’t change company values. If they experience a values conflict, they are more likely to leave than try to change the organization.

·         MBAs are not sure what “social responsibility” is. Many think it’s an internal issue, and that it is the job of the corporation’s human resources department to help create a happier and more productive work force.

·         MBAs would like their business schools to show them the financial benefits of fulfilling social responsibility—as both an internal and external force. They also would like to see social responsibility incorporated into the core curriculum, rather than being taught as an elective on ethics or corporate philanthropy.  

This is the first time MBA student attitudes have been documented over the course of the MBA program. And the results tell us that MBA programs do indeed influence students’ attitudes toward business and society, and that business schools are not adequately preparing students to see the link between the two.

"Recent disasters have brought societal issues to the fore, making the training of future business leaders in these topics not only timely, but urgent,” says Nathan K. Hall, Program Director at AACBE said.

 

Innovating Business Education

Recently a meeting was held among the AACBE accredited member institutes, government leaders and corporate representatives to discuss how technology should drive innovation in the nation and international business schools.

Currently, the business schools of today are faced by the challenge of equipping schools and teachers with new equipment and instructional strategies, gauging the progress of new teaching approaches, and scaling up proven strategies.

This is also discussed in the book titled ‘Disrupting Class’ written by Clayton Christensen. The authors reached their conclusions not by studying schools, but rather by studying innovation in business. They stood outside the public education industry to examine its problems from a different perspective. The book is an excellent read that AACBE also suggest all its accredited member institutes to read. The book has conveyed five major messages:

• Few education reforms have addressed the root cause of students’ inability to learn. Most attempts have not been guided by an understanding of the root reasons for why the system functions as it does, or how to predictably introduce innovation into it.
• School reformers have repeatedly tried to confront the status quo head-on. The authors’ previous studies of innovation showed that direct attacks on existing systems do not lead to effective disruptive innovation. Instead, innovation must go around and underneath the system.
• We know that all children learn differently, but the way schooling is currently arranged discourages educating children in customized ways. We need a modular system.
• Emerging online user networks offer a model for circumventing the education system and creating a new, modular system that facilitates customization. Decentralized user networks democratize development and purchase decisions to the end users in the system—in this case students, parents, and teachers.
• To facilitate innovation administrators will have to use the tools of power and separation. Using these tools is easiest in the chartered and private school sectors.

Online universities and online courses are best suited to students need as they offer the most customized and focused student centric education and instruction. The book suggests that online institutes should designate one person hose job should be to implement online courses. He or she should not be the chief information officer or info technologies officer. She or he should report directly to the principal or district superintendent. She or he should not have responsibilities for the rest of instruction in the school, but instead should be free to take any steps necessary to import online courses to meet students’ needs.

AACBE accredited member institutes should also conduct a research on how different people learn, how to identify those differences, and how different students can best educate themselves and each other and then implement strategies to make the students successful.

Note for Teacher Training Colleges:

Future teachers should have skills to work one-on-one with different types of learners as they study in a student-centric way. Business schools must also train researchers to go beyond doing descriptive research that seeks average tendencies. Instead, they should study the anomalies and outliers, where the richest insight often is found. 

Note for Teachers and Parents:

When your school does not offer a course students need, seek them online and demand that their schools accept them for credit.

“Schooling can and should be an intrinsically motivating experience,” Christensen says. Why has this often not been the case? How to resolve these problems? Explaining why and how is the purpose of this book.

Tomorrow’s Business Schools

 

With the advent of new technology and infrastructure, times have changed. These changing times call for changing educational facilities and procedures. The days for big box educational infrastructure having carefully partitioned classrooms, hidden lounges, and enclosed hallways are over. 

The business education of today calls for teamwork and hands-on learning which requires educational institutions to build or modify their infrastructure. But amidst of all this the education providers should not forget the fact that in its entirety they must create an environment that suits its mission, expresses its personality and serves the needs of its students.

AACBE has identified a few important factors in the modern business schools infrastructure. These educational needs are in correlation with the social community. So to better inhabit and serve that world, modern business schools and AACBE accredited member institutes should be constructed with five important “C’s” in mind: collaboration, connectivity, comfort, convenience and most important, community.

Education in business schools is happening collectively as the world of internet and technologies has made us more interactive and collaborative society. AACBE suggests that the modern business school infrastructure calls for a user friendly space where team work and collaboration is focused upon. There should be open spaces such as executive suites and lounges breakout rooms, and places where groups of individuals can work together on projects to instil community and culture system. The business schools ideally should have collaborative work rooms, an auditorium, area for socializing and a cafeteria along with a wireless network throughout the school so to foster human interaction, recommends AACBE.

To create an ideal learning atmosphere, business schools can create a central courtyard or an atrium with open meeting areas and a vaulted, glass ceiling where people could talk, meet, or read; and study and exchange ideas. Since there would be students busy working or collaborating round the clock, this call the need for vending machines and kitchens.

To foster human interactivity, business schools can also offer more and more business programs by creating joint programs with other entities or integrating them with other entities courses. So there will be more faculty teaching outside the business school and more non- faculty teaching inside the school. This is where connectivity comes in and plays its role.

With the boom in business school education expected to continue, the changes in technology occurring at a rapid pace and business schools new emphasis on collaboration, AACBE believes that the online business schools design should be learning oriented and not teaching oriented. The modern business school should be designed for the needs of the present, but always with an eye on the future trends. It should be an embodiment of a new level of integration, representation of collective decision-making of students, faculty, staff, alumni and community and is connected.