Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54913
The Life Cycle of a Dean find it impossible to inspire and mobilize a large number of these actors to support—and even spon- sor—key initiatives. For instance, George Bain, another former dean of LBS, spent six months talking to everyone with some influence on the school's strategic agenda before he actu- ally assumed the deanship. This dedicated effort translated into a significant asset when he set out to define and raise support around LBS' strategic guidelines. Based on his experience, he confidently stat- ed that leadership "is more about having good ears than having a good mouth." Strategic leadership ability is what enabled Antonio Borges to implement two breakthrough ini- tiatives at INSEAD. He turned the school into a research-oriented institution—when most of the fac- ulty had a different background— and later spearheaded the drive to open a new campus in Singapore in order to globalize the school. The globalization move easily could have conflicted with his earlier initiative, sidetracking INSEAD's efforts to make its incipient research capabilities competitive with leading U.S. business schools. However, Borges' ability to sell his initiatives to key faculty and board members, effectively engaging them as initiative sponsors, made it pos- sible for INSEAD to overcome a multitude of obstacles and difficul- ties in both pursuits. The Dean as First Among Equals As heads of institutions where all members have a certain amount of parity, deans must share their visions on school strategy while building consensus among faculty on key Deans assume many roles as they lead business schools, and they also go through specific stages during their tenures. In fact, research by Howard Thomas and Fernando Fragueiro shows that a dean's path typically covers four stages: initial exploration and learning; planning and agenda setting; improved performance during the middle years; and declining performance toward the end as strategic inertia and lack of moti- vation sink in. Says Thomas, "I've seen these four critical periods played out in several of my own postings as dean, includ- ing my ten years at Warwick Business School. During 1999–2000, as I was transitioning out of my deanship of the University of Illinois, I made several visits to the U.K. Like George Bain before he took over the helm of the London Busi- ness School, I engaged key players and developed a sense of where Warwick was already positioned and where it needed to go. This enabled me to 'hit the ground running' when I arrived." As his deanship at Warwick came to an end, Thomas saw that his career there was clearly split into the four stages: n 2000–2002: Planning an agenda; building a commitment to strategic vision. n 2002–2006: Settling on a paradigm; enjoying successful faculty development; overseeing student and program growth. n 2006–2008: Moving to a new paradigm; creating a vision that would carry WBS through 2015. n 2009–2010: Reaching a strategic crossroads. "During this time of financial crisis, the university centralized finan- cial control, initiated funding cuts, and began its search for a new dean," he says. "As the decade drew to a close, I began my transition to the deanship of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at the Singapore Management Universi- ty—where I began a new cycle." The cycle has been slightly different for someone like Fragueiro, who helped shepherd the young IAE Business School through its quest to become a world-class institution. "Between 1995 and 2008, I needed to anticipate and adapt to continuous and dramatic insti- tutional and external change," he says. He identifies three stages in his dean- ship at the school: n 1995–1998: Integrating and con- solidating full-time faculty and staff that shared the school's common vision. Key among these was developing an economic model that would be viable in Latin America, where private sec- tor funding is almost nonexistent. Also important was identifying core teaching and research activities, setting strategic priorities, beginning the hiring process for the next group of full-time faculty members, and attracting the support of top business leaders who would help fund the school's growth. n 1998–2003: Expanding the program portfolio; building academic relations with top business schools; strengthening IAE's reputation. n 2004–2008: Positioning the school for the future by integrating with Austral University and pursuing accredi- tation from several international bodies. "In retrospect, I see that those 14 years at IAE shaped my professional profile as an 'academic entrepreneur,'" says Fragueiro. "I began every year with a new personal agenda in which I decided which old tasks to delegate and which new ones to add that would be in tune with the evolution of the school." After his successor took over in 2008, he spent a year as a visiting scholar at Harvard before launching a new academic initiative within IAE. ENOVA Thinking is a learning net- work of business leaders committed to speeding up sustainable business growth and socioeconomic develop- ment in Latin America. It's also the new- est stage in Fragueiro's career as an entrepreneurial academic. BizEd May/June 2011 57