Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/56529
• Openness to opportunity. Procter & Gamble execu- tives were planning a fine arts fund raiser and asked me if I could deliver a corporate program for the event. I didn't have one at the time, but I adapted my Books Alive for Kids program to create a new product called Discovery in a Box. This experience taught me that there are always new pos- sibilities in existing products, and it taught my students that they should always be looking for new opportunities. I think it's important that I show my mentees exactly how my business works. Running a nonprofit ain't for the faint of heart. You have to be creative and make hard deci- sions. I have a plaque in my office with a Winston Churchill quote: "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." It goes alongside a blow-up doll of the screaming man from the Edvard Munch painting. Tomorrow's leaders will have to know how to balance these elements well. The Consultant Donald C. Waite III spent his career at McKinsey & Company in various positions, including lead- ership roles in the firm's Banking and Securi- ties Practice and Global Financial Institutions Practice. In his final six years with the company, he was one of the three people in the Office of the Managing Director, over- seeing McKinsey's overall management. When he retired in 2002, he joined Columbia University's School of Business in New York City as director of its Executives in Residence Program. Since then, he has doubled the executives on hand, from five to ten, and taught courses on topics such as social enterprise. The future isn't going to be like the past. A few years ago, I would have said businesses were looking for graduates with strong skills in a specific field and the ability to execute superbly. It used to be, if you were interested in finance, you could spend three-fourths of your course time studying finance, and you might focus on some very esoteric areas. But no more. Today, business wants integrative thinkers. Finance students also will need an understanding of market forces, globaliza- Today's graduates will need to bring a mix of creativity and critical thinking skills to solving the problems facing business and society in general. tion, technology, and all the other areas that affect a business. So will everyone else. Looking back, I don't think you can say globalization is the one thing that has shaped our current business environment, or that technology has been the biggest driver. Many different drivers have all come together. What business also wants now are people who can antici- pate what issues are going to come up, who can diagnose the problems, and who can suggest innovative solutions. Today's graduates will need to bring a mix of creativity and critical thinking skills to solving the problems facing business and society in general. But it can't just be an off-the-wall creativ- ity. It has to fit in the context of practicality. These graduates should understand how to make change happen. Finally, tomorrow's leaders will need a high degree of social consciousness. For instance, a graduate who finds employment at an energy company might explore the viabil- ity of alternative sources of energy. I think everybody will have to have a social objective as well as a profit objective. To turn out students with these skills, business schools must supplement the traditional pre-set curriculum with interactive forums that can focus on current hot topics. For instance, schools might examine the financial crisis by put- ting students together in a room with practitioners and aca- demics, while they all explore what the crisis means and how it will affect the future. They also will need to introduce students to the concept of interdisciplinary teamwork, which is an idea that academia greatly favors but doesn't always achieve. Schools will need to take the typical disciplines—finance, marketing, human behavior, accounting—and add integrated thinking and problem solving to create graduates with the right skills. Schools with executive-in-residence programs can help students achieve that integrated model and gain a much more practical perspective than they might get from their professors. Very few business students are going to stay in academia and become PhDs. Most are going to go out into the world and find their own ways. Business schools provide students with a terrific base of knowledge, but executives can help students think about how to integrate their backgrounds—their skills, their experiences, their inclinations, their desires, and their aspirations—into meaningful roles in the business world. BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 31