Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54913
To deliver in their difficult roles, deans must succeed at a number of distinct tasks. They must act as strategic leaders willing to push for bold visions. They must act as CEOs who handle business deci- sions with clarity and set their stra- tegic agendas decisively. They must act as collegial individuals who are "first among equals" as they guide and interact with a highly capable, highly intelligent, and highly idio- syncratic staff. They also must function as catalysts who bring about change inside and outside the school. These conclusions are based on recent research we conducted at five prestigious international schools: IAE Business School in Argentina; IMD in Switzerland; INSEAD in France, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates; and London Busi- ness School and Warwick Business School in the U.K. Our goal was to develop a portrait of the many roles deans play during their relatively short tenures. The Dean as Strategic Leader A dean's central role is that of stra- tegic leader with responsibilities that cross four dimensions: school visibility, fund raising, intellectual guidance, and operations manage- ment. While very few people are likely to deal with all four areas equally effectively, all deans con- Deans must act as strategic leaders, CEOs, collegial individuals, and catalysts. 56 May/June 2011 BizEd stantly juggle a series of organiza- tional dilemmas and roles. It's not easy to lead a school's strategic agenda, a task made even more complicated by business schools' collegial nature and diffuse power schemes. Former LBS dean John Quelch told us in an interview, "I knew what I wanted. If I asked too many questions and I had too much discussion, I knew that there would be—as is always the case in academia—100 reasons not to do something. So my attitude was: just do it. From a political management point of view, you launch your first initiative, and some people are against it. But before they can organize, you launch another initiative that splits that group, because some people who opposed your first initiative are going to be in favor of the second. And so you basically keep splitting through initiative after initiative. You frag- ment the opposition." Strategic leadership skills are even more relevant today as busi- ness schools attempt to realign internal structures and reformulate their value propositions to come closer to real-world needs. Some leading business schools have responded to this challenge by recruiting experienced management consultants as deans. However, these new "practitioner deans" must not only bring their real-world expertise to the business school, but also quickly understand the differ- ences between the academic world they've entered and the professional world from which they've come. Whether deans are drawn from the business or the academic world, they must be able to interpret dif- ferent perspectives internally and externally before they can formu- late a strategic direction. In the external context, they must identify threats and opportunities shaped by a variety of factors: regional and global trends; domestic and international economic conditions; the needs and concerns of their global corporate clients; competi- tors' offerings; and the expecta- tions of donors and benefactors. As they consider their internal context, deans must devote time to getting to know all school stake- holders, with their respective inter- ests, needs, and skill sets. Indeed, to introduce strategic initiatives into their schools' agendas, deans need to understand the interests and the priorities of faculty and board members. Otherwise they'll