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Albers Leads. Albers Connects. Albers Serves. At Seattle University's Albers School of Business and Economics, students develop intellectual excellence that is respected in the business world. An Albers education extends beyond the classroom; students have opportunities to learn from the knowledge and guidance of experienced business leaders. Following the Jesuit tradition of educating the whole person, our students develop strength of character and compassion in all aspects of life. This foundation of ethics and social responsibility prepares them for ethical leadership in business and the community. #21 Executive MBA program and #24 Part-time MBA program in the nation (U.S. News & World Report) become culturally sensitive to different social practices and to the ways of global business. How important is it for employees to speak the local language? When our employees go to different countries, we give them basic language training onsite. But the working language of our company is English. In fact, the work- ing language of many multinational companies is English, because it is the one language that the majority of college- educated people in the world speak. If you're working with a German company, for example, it's actually difficult to get everybody to speak German on a functional basis. I've lived and worked Europe and in Asia, but I'm embarrassed to say I'm very monolingual. As you look ahead to Caterpillar's future, what are your biggest concerns? My very immediate concern is the shape of this cyclical recovery. As we come out of this recession, we don't know whether we'll end up with several years of sluggish growth or a very sharp recovery as a result of the stimulus money that's awash in the world. Each scenario would be a chal- lenge to manage, just in a different way. But it's important that we be prepared to go in either direction. So I will have to work with our leadership team to make sure that we're prepared from a cost basis to have reasonably attractive profitability if we stay in this cycle for two or three years. We also must be ready for a fairly explo- sive increase of sales and revenue in a given year. Even in 2004, after the last recession, our sales were up 30 percent worldwide. Almost every machine line was up over 40 per- cent. We know it can happen and probably will happen. The question is only, when? In the longer term, we must be ready to capitalize on the world's emerging markets, which will be the most dynamic, high-growth parts of the world for the next 15 or 20 years. They are likely to grow at two to three times the rate of the U.S., Europe, and Japan. With that kind of growth, there will be an emergent middle class and a higher standard of living, particularly in Asian countries like China, India, and Indonesia. This will drive demand for commodities and big infrastructure. These are things you can't get without prod- ucts like ours. We want to be sure that we position ourselves with the right products for those customers and that we place the right leaders in those economies who can help us succeed and win. What do you most need from business schools? We need people with truly global perspectives, who under- stand the implications of currency market movements, political upheaval, varying growth rates, and the competitive pressures that come from that. The graduates we want to hire will have these critical dimensions. ■ z BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009 27