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By Barbara Elmore

The good news is that top-notch scholars with Ph.D.s in accounting, finance and marketing will discover a healthy job market today and probably for many years to come.

The bad news is that the numbers of people to teach students who want those degrees are disappearing by the hundreds and not being replaced.

Back to the good news: The pulse at Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business remains strong, even though recruiters are seeing increased competition for professionals and finding that some jobs wait for professors longer than they would have in the past.

“We have been fortunate in last two to three years to get great faculty,” says Charles Davis, chair of Accounting & Business Law and the Walter Plumoff Professor of Accounting. “They are finding us and we are finding them.” However, adds Davis, the accounting applicant pool is at an all-time low. And even though the last few years have been fruitful overall for his department, this year marks the third one that he is seeking a tax professor. “A lot of that is because tax as a specialty area that has very few Ph.D.s coming out,” he notes.

University recruiters will continue to see those shortages, says business school accrediting expert Jerry E. Trapnell, whose accrediting agency The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) has documented declining enrollments in business school doctoral programs for a number of years. The drop is a result of baby boomer retirements in the face of growing student enrollment. Meanwhile, says Trapnell, some universities have reduced Ph.D. programs because they are expensive to maintain.

Trapnell is a former business school dean and accounting professor who retired in 2004 and then became executive vice president and chief accreditation officer for AACSB. The 90-year-old agency was formed by universities with business schools to help enhance the quality of business and management education.

Shortages are most acute in the areas of accounting, finance and marketing, Trapnell says. Students coming out of those areas are seeing other opportunities open to them, and many are not opting to obtain Ph.D.s. “It’s a very interesting phenomenon, and very challenging,” he adds. AACSB estimates a shortage of 1,000 Ph.D.s in the United States this year, a number that will grow to 2,400 by 2012, according to an online story in CollegeJournal, a publication of The Wall Street Journal. Trapnell says the shortage per year is about 200 to 400.

Although Kirk Wakefield, chair of the Marketing department, has noticed a shortage of Ph.D.s who want to do research, he was able recently to hire two people he considers top-notch. “There is definitely a shortage of people with Ph.D.s from the best programs who are capable of doing high-level, quality research,” he says. “That has ratcheted up the salaries they command.”

This means salaries are escalating and that packages offered to hard-to-find Ph.D.s include summer supplements and research support. The latter category helped Wakefield attract a highly qualified applicant in a recent round of hiring. “She was largely attracted by our Keller Center, an endowed, funded research center that pays for the faculty position,” he says. “It also provides resources for research and direct access to data and generally just support for research.”

Other things that universities have done to attract faculty is to limit their teaching load, which is pricing some schools out of the marketplace, and to pay one of their lecturers to get a Ph.D. “We’ve seen a few limited cases of those,” says Trapnell. “We’d like to see that grow more, but it is expensive.”

His agency sponsors a program called Professionally Qualified (PQ) Faculty Bridge Program, a seminar for people in industry who want to test the waters of academia. “Our standards allow for schools to hire appropriately qualified people with masters’ degrees, but you can’t populate your whole faculty with that and maintain accreditation,” he says. At least 50 percent of the faculty must be academically qualified or have a doctorate, according to AACSB standards. So there often is room at universities for people in industry who might want to make a career change.

The PQ seminar zeroes in on academic life and teaching skills, and was first offered last year at the University of California at Irvine. The next one will be in May and another may follow in the summer. After working with Irvine and the University of Southern California, the accrediting agency will move around the country to metropolitan locations, Trapnell says.

Baylor’s Christian environment sends a powerful recruiting message, professors note. Wakefield, who obtained his MBA at Baylor and his Ph.D. at St. Louis University, returned five years ago to become the chair of the Marketing department. “I was attracted by the opportunity to be involved in a university where scholarly productivity is important, but also accomplishing a mission with a higher purpose and influencing students who will go into the workplace and have a positive influence because of their training here at Baylor. I can’t imagine being as committed or loyal to another university.”

Van Pham, professor of Economics, came here for many of the same reasons. A native of Vietnam, Van Pham left Saigon as a seven year-old, along with his mother and two sisters, in 1975. He came to the U.S. in 1976 after living in a refugee camp in Guam for a year. He grew up in St. Petersburg, Fla., and then went to college at MIT. He got his Ph.D. in Economics at Cornell.

“My research has an international dimension and focuses on poor countries,” he says. “Because of Baylor’s Christian mission, there seems to be a natural interest in development work and what seems to be a general interest from students and faculty in international programs. The existence of the McBride International Center at the Hankamer School of Business is an example. This interest in international programs and with developing countries was especially attractive to me.”

Kendall Artz, chairman of the Department of Management & Entrepreneurship, came to Baylor in 1995 after working at both Hewlett-Packard and Norwest Corp., which is now Wells Fargo. He teaches strategy and is coordinator of BEST, a business honors program for seniors.

Although his opportunities in the corporate world were excellent, he found himself wondering what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. “I wanted to work in an environment where I could still work in (strategy) and have an impact on people’s lives, more than in the corporate setting.”

He’s been department chair since 2001 and has done a lot of faculty hiring over the last four to five years. “We always tell them that Baylor allows you to do things that you cannot necessarily to do at other institutions. The Christian environment impacts the way people interact around each other, the way they conduct themselves. The students generally have the same world view. The environment is supportive and collegial.”

Artz, who recently won the Hankamer School of Business Teaching Excellence Award, notes that Baylor offers a balanced model between research and teaching. “We value research and go after people who are doing that, and those are the same characteristics that top tier schools would go after. But we also care about the teaching dimension. We are not saying that other schools don’t, but not to the extent that we do. If you like working with students, Baylor’s the place to be.”

Professors often say they can attract others to Baylor because of its Christian heritage, the work environment, and the balance between research and teaching, reasonable tenure requirements, and the reputation of its business programs. “Once you start getting faculty active in academic circles and networks, these things spread,” Davis says.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007

By Nancy Godson

Focus Firms were not the established norm at Baylor when Mark Hurd graduated from the University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

The practice of partnering MBA candidates with regional, national or multi-national companies to research and provide solutions on real-time, core issues is relatively new to Baylor Business.

Still, as CEO, chairman and president of Hewlett-Packard (HP), Hurd had the opportunity to see a Baylor Focus Firm in action last fall, when students from his alma mater traveled to the IT giant’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, to present global expansion initiatives to HP executives.

Carl Allen, a program manager at HP, served as corporate point person to Baylor’s three student teams. His role as project manager was a semester-long commitment, during which he facilitated student access to HP data and resource personnel and provided overall direction to the teams as they conducted intensive research, critically assessed corporate issues and tested potential solutions before finalizing their recommendations. Weeks of preparation culminated in Baylor’s formal presentations to HP executive leadership on November 30, 2006.

“The project came about after initial discussions with Baylor and a visit to campus to meet the students,” said Allen. “Following that, we had high expectations about their ability to drive a high-quality product.”

He was impressed by the MBA candidates’ passion and surprised by their desire to work very long hours on the three projects, a work ethic Allen says is similar to what he sees at HP.

“Together we decided to make the projects as fulfilling as possible by treating them as real-life work streams, which, in fact, they were,” he said.

The HP Focus Firm project consisted of the students being divided into teams and given the task of recommending expansion strategies in three diverse markets: North America, Russia and China.

The primary objective of the Russia and China projects was to identify overall HP growth opportunities in those regions. The students were asked to select products from the HP catalogue with the greatest marketability for Russia and China, and then determine the most appropriate markets within each region to promote those products. Along with this chief directive, HP had additional imperatives significant to each region.

The team of students investigating HP growth expansion in Russia was required to investigate prospective foreign direct investment options, and the potential impact of each investment on increasing Hewlett-Packard’s share of wallet in that region.

Baylor’s China team was tasked with developing a regression model that could estimate the pull-through capabilities of each HP product segment in that region. Ideally, the model would help the company assess how product bundling can give HP a competitive advantage.

The North America team’s directive took a different focus. Team members were expected to identify and suggest initiatives on how HP could best position itself to gain incremental market share in the small business segment. The team was to determine primary growth opportunities throughout America and Canada, and then conduct a line of investigation to confirm their recommendations. An online survey would have to be developed and implemented for data collection.

The analytical model the team was required to use to study the small business market in North America was a new concept to the team members.

“The complexity and scope of our project initially surprised me,” says Tony Romanello (MBA `07), who served on the North America team. “I had very little strategic marketing or market analysis experience, and the demands of the project were quite challenging.”

He admits to feeling overwhelmed after his first meeting with Carl Allen, but also excited at the prospect of working on such a worthwhile assignment-plus, participating on a real-life strategy project with a top Fortune 500 company would stand out on his resume.

The level of commitment required to complete the project came as a surprise to most of Romanello’s teammates, as well.

“The intensity of the project and demands placed on us were much greater than anything else we’d experienced up to that point in the MBA program,” said Kevin Hutchison (MBA `07). “It would be a challenge, but I knew we were able to do it.”

The opportunity to participate in Focus Firm project was something Eric Monaghan (MBA `07) had looked forward to since arriving at Baylor, and was a major factor in his decision to enroll in its MBA program.

“I feel strongly that the link between academics and practice must be maintained throughout the MBA process,” he says. “Working on strategy projects with the 11th largest company in America is exactly what Focus Firm should be.”

Every Focus Firm project is fraught with challenges, perhaps the most important being learning how to balance the time requirements of the project with the demands of family, jobs and other coursework.

“We learned a great deal about our ability to multi-task,” said Hutchison.

Sorting through mounds of endless data was another challenge for the teams.

“We eventually realized that the only way to make real breakthroughs was to stop sorting through data and start making relevant, educated insights of our own,” says Romanello. “Of course, then the task became balancing and debating each team member’s insights.”

While each member brought valuable insights to the table, Romanello admits that getting everyone to agree on the best choice took some time.

“In the end, everyone’s contribution was critical,” he said.

Certainly all would agree that weekly conference calls with Carl Allen to debate the more challenging aspects of the project were essential in keeping them on track.

“Although Carl was extremely busy with other projects, we knew that every Monday morning at 7 a.m. he would give us his full attention for an hour to work through obstacles we’d encountered,” said Monaghan.

“We received continuous feedback from Carl on our progress,” agrees Romanello. “He really pushed us to keep reaching and refining our analysis and recommendations.”

HP executives throughout the corporation were equally helpful to the teams, gladly reviewing matrices and online questionnaires, or providing information on key research issues. Each professional encounter served as a learning opportunity for the Baylor students.

“Understanding the model that Carl Allen uses to analyze complex markets and his method of presenting information were the most important professional lessons I learned from this experience,” says Monaghan, who will work for American Airlines in corporate finance after receiving his MBA degree this spring.

Tony Romanello hopes to move to the Austin area after graduation and work in the fields of strategic marketing, supply chain/logistics and operations.

“Professionally speaking, Focus Firm opened my eyes to the fast-paced, upper-level thought processes of top-level execs,” he said. “I learned that hard work, team work, preparation and execution can yield results that are greater than you initially expected, and even surpass the expectations of the requesting party.”

“It was clear to see the value that the students were gaining throughout the Focus Firm process, both by working closely with HP during the projects and living the life of an HP corporate strategy executive,” says Carl Allen. “During my own MBA study I was not offered anything similar to this experience.”

As November 30 drew near, the teams began to feel the pressure of what lay before them in Palo Alto. Exhaustive nights and hectic days became the norm, and the mood grew stressful as adjustments in numbers and refinements to formal presentations continued up until the final hour.

“If we wanted to succeed and give HP something of value, we needed to remain committed until the end,” says Hutchison. “We wanted everything to be perfect and were not willing to settle for less.”

The Baylor teams were welcomed to Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters by HP executives who spent the majority of the afternoon speaking with the MBA candidates about their careers at Hewlett-Packard and their work experience prior to joining HP.

“The HP executives were really impressive to see in action,” says Romanello. “Interacting with such highly successful and intelligent business professionals was an amazing experience.”

All the students agree that meeting CEO and fellow Baylor Bear Mark Hurd was a singular highlight of the trip.

“Mark Hurd was very down-to-earth, very candid and exhibited a genuine interest in the teams and Baylor in general,” said Romanello. “He had some interesting comments about his motivation as a CEO and the “early-days” of his professional career.”

The MBA candidates were encouraged by HP’s enthusiastic welcome and the sincere interest of its senior leadership team to view Baylor’s presentations.

When Eric Monaghan looks back on his team’s presentation, there is only one thing that he would change.

“The findings from our project made such an impact that the presentation turned into an interactive meeting with questions, discussion and debate between everyone in the room,” he said. “We ended up having to skip a few slides because our time ran over, but other than that, everything went according to plan.”

“Judging from their response, I’m confident that our recommendations will be utilized in some capacity at HP,” says Hutchison. “We delivered.”

He felt that the North America team gave HP executives a different perspective on key business markets, and provided competitive insights and leverage tactics that were revelatory, or else confirmed what HP executives already believed to be true about those markets. His teammates agree with him.

“The primary market research we conducted through the online survey provided extremely valuable information,” said Monaghan. “It pointed to what small businessmen and women need from HP, and exposed opportunities to win business from competitors.”

Carl Allen says that he and his HP colleagues were impressed by the content and professionalism of all three Baylor presentations.

“Each team drove to insights that are very useful,” he said. “As part of HP’s growth in the three areas covered, we will be implementing some of Baylor’s recommendations as part of our strategy.”

According to Allen, the general consensus among HP executives is that the Focus Firm teams helped answer strategic questions pertinent to a major business poised to expand into new geographies and customer markets.

“I think that Baylor’s Focus Firm initiative was a great test-case for HP interacting with the MBA community,” says Allen. “I would like to think that HP can work with Baylor again in the future.”

Kevin Hutchison, who plans to pursue employment in Denver after graduating in May, felt privileged to represent Baylor in Palo Alto and, like his teammates, considers his Focus Firm experience to be invaluable.

“Focus Firm represented a significant personal accomplishment, as I wanted to help make this project a success for Baylor and HP,” he said. “To become a part of the HP experience and contribute to their initiatives was a rare privilege.”

Tony Romanello agrees.

“Any MBA program in the world would have wanted this opportunity to work with HP execs and present in Palo Alto,” he said, and added that the teams are especially grateful to the Baylor graduate faculty.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007

Business school rankings. Their relevance ranges from being seen as a useful benchmark between peer institutions and programs to a highly controversial marketing tool. Yet, more and more publications produce rankings each year and students and parents increasingly lend them credibility in their decision-making process. The rankings are not going away, nor are they becoming more uniform and regulated. This forces business schools to compete with each other, not only in admission standards, but course offerings, causing some schools to drop their quality niche programs to become a more well-rounded, full service business school. This dilemma poses the question: will rankings ultimately improve or hinder business schools?

View:

Orthodox business strategists defend that companies should focus only on those industries where they can excel, based on their resources and capabilities. According to this perspective, the diversification of activities is not a preferred option for growth, unless the newly entered industry is closely related to the company’s core business or there are clear synergies to be exploited. In sum, they defend, “your company can not excel in every industry”. This axiom could be also applied to educational institutions, business schools included, and was very lucidly explained by Prof. Peter Lorange, President of IMD, in a previous post on BizDeans Talk blog: “Strategy means choice. Not only in business but also in educational institutes. In the short term, choices that break with tradition may be painful but I firmly believe that in the long term they pay off. Of course, choices must be made consistently and must be based on a clear strategy, shared and supported by the whole institute”. His statement is evidenced by the success of IMD, the centre that he leads, which is fundamentally focused on executive education programs.

However, the globalization of education, and management education in particular, is changing traditional paradigms. In recent years, we have attended the consolidation of full-service business schools, i.e. institutions that offer programs at all levels of higher education -undergraduate, graduate, PhDs and non-degree executive education courses-, thus having a wide diversified portfolio of activities. Full-service business schools are normally big in size and scale -in terms of faculty, students, facilities or other resources- and resemble large corporations that compete in other global industries. They may belong to wider universities, like Said Business School at Oxford University or The Wharton School at Penn’s University, or enjoy an independent status, like HEC in Paris.

Interestingly, last year’s European Business School Rankings, published by the Financial Times, allows for two conclusions related to the commented issue: First, a significant number of the institutions ranked in the higher positions are full-service business schools; and second, those highly ranked full-service schools do actually excel in different education segments, a fact that contradicts the thesis supported by orthodox strategists.

Like large corporations, leading full-service business schools benefit from many operative synergies and from a “brand halo” effect: they are supposed to achieve the quality of the current programs in their newly launched offerings.

I wonder whether the globalization of management education will foster the polarization of business schools’ models: on the one extreme of the spectrum, “focused schools”, covering only one or two segments of higher education; and on the other end, full-service business schools, offering a wide array of educational activities on a global scale. Will the institutions that do not choose one of these models become trapped in the middle?

Santiago Iniguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa Business School

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007

by Barbara Elmore

The decades-old Hankamer School of Business, which has given wings to scores of successful entrepreneurs, is bustling – perhaps bursting – with new programs tucked into offices and squeezed into hallways and down stairwells. With fixed seating in its classrooms and little room for student meetings, the school is all filled up with no place to grow.

“The building supports what we have been doing, but I’m not sure it supports what we need to be doing,” Dean Terry Maness says. “We need a facility that meets the current state of education, and where education is moving.” That means classrooms that encourage interactive learning and the development of programs that both anticipate the needs of business and that are aligned with Baylor’s Christian mission.

The main components of the business school are the three-story Hankamer building, erected in the 1960s, and the five-story Cashion Academic Center, a 1980s-era structure. They house classrooms as well as a 256-seat auditorium, the Southwest Securities Financial Markets Center, a graduate center, an advanced technology lab, the KPMG Tax Library, and a large banquet room. Space carved out for new programs chews up existing classroom space, Maness says. Planners are looking at schematics now, trying to figure out the best way to build.

One area which needs more space is the three-year-old healthcare program that is currently operated out of an office. “We saw the opportunities for students and looked at it from the perspective of what better brand can you have in health care than Baylor University?” says James Henderson, the academic director of the Healthcare Administration Program. “There seemed to be a real void in that area, given where students could go.” Many Baylor students who were interested in such a program went somewhere else to get graduate degrees, and did well in ranked programs, Henderson says. So three years ago the program began as part of the business school’s MBA.

Those classes developed from health economics courses Henderson offered at the undergraduate level in the late 1980s. “That began a process of creating an undergraduate degree program, a B.S. in economics, focused primarily on the large number of pre-med students on campus that major in biology and chemistry,” he says. “We wanted to offer them an alternative which would show a varied interest and provide a technical undergraduate major, one that had some practical application as far as understanding how to think.”

The program needs an office suite, Henderson says. With everything in place, it would have space requirements for six faculty members, both teaching and research scholars, that would be make up the healthcare core. Eventually, the Healthcare Administration Program would become an integrated program in health care, health services, health economics and health policy, he says, and would include a Ph.D. in economics.

“We need a showcase facility which would include classrooms, conference rooms and a computer/research lab where students are able to have access to computers and other research materials.”

Other program needs include:

• Accounting

Charles Davis, department chair and the Walter Plumoff Professor of Accounting, sees a school of accounting that will include dedicated classrooms as well as meeting space and faculty offices. Classrooms would be remodeled to fit with today’s technology, Davis says. “We need a technology teaching lab, a computer laboratory that we could use for teaching,” he says. Right now, technology-based courses that faculty members demonstrate have no meeting or laboratory space. Students must seek space elsewhere on campus.

Meeting space is also hard to schedule, he says. “We have advisory board meetings, student orientation, simulations, and career day for our students, that require larger space than what the classroom provides.” Large meetings or luncheons that can accommodate 150 people must be scheduled six to eight months in advance in the only room with space for that many people on the fifth floor of Cashion.

Davis also wants space for faculty and support staff that is connected to classrooms. “That is conducive to doing what we need to do. Our current offices are too small. If you’re meeting with a group of students, there’s really no place to do that. There needs to be a little more faculty space that can be used to meet with students and other faculty members on collaborative projects. That’s my dream.”

The accounting department is already recognized for its excellence, and Davis wants to see continued recognition. “Our graduate program was ranked for first time this year [ in Public Accounting Report’s Top 25], and our undergraduate program for two years in a row. I want us to go up and stay up.”

Hand-in-hand with that goal is growing the program to graduate more accounting students to accommodate all the firms that want them. “We have 30 firms that come to recruit accounting majors,” Davis says. “In a good year, we have 150 graduates. Competition for those students is high. I’d like to have a lot more students that can go to work for those firms.”

• Ethics

“We already integrate ethics into our curriculum because of the Christian character of our faculty,” says Mitchell Neubert, the H.R. Gibson Chair in Management Development and the Chavanne Chair of Christian Ethics in Business. Still, Baylor wants to become the national center for ethics in business, and that will require ramping up of course offerings that may lead to a minor in Ethical Leadership, or a certificate for people who want to concentrate on ethics. The Hankamer School of Business undergraduate program is currently ranked third in the nation by BusinessWeek in its Ethics rankings.

Ethics study fits well with Baylor’s Christian perspective, says Neubert, who notes that Baylor’s ethical studies are not new. “I did a check of faculty and found that we have more than 20 people doing ethics research in their disciplines. That’s much stronger than a lot of schools. We want to leverage the strengths we have and build on them and be in the national conversation about ethical leadership. Many people are talking about it but have no strong foundation for teaching it. We can point to our Christian heritage as a resource for understanding why we do what we do and a reason for emphasizing ethics. At some schools, ethics is reactionary or a fad. But I think people are realizing that as management gets more complex, the ethical issues get more complex. The need is never going to go away.”

Neubert envisions a Baylor Leadership Institute to coordinate the interaction of Christian scholars and practitioners and promote initiatives directed toward practicing ethical leadership in the marketplace and integrating Christian theology and vocation. “This institute also could build on and leverage the foundation of Christian values that define Baylor to amplify the unique voice of Baylor in scholarly activity among its peer and aspirant institutions,” Neubert says. He is working on a proposal for an Institute of Leadership that includes three pillars: ethics, servant leadership, and faith at work issues. “We hope to be a place physically and informally where people can come together to research and encourage the practice of these important ideas.”

• Professional development program

A focal point of the undergraduate program is the undergraduate programs office, where every student in the business school goes every semester for advising after finishing 30 hours, says Blaine McCormick, associate dean for undergraduate programs. Right now that office fits snugly on the first floor of Hankamer School of Business. “We’d like to take that office and rename it the Center for Undergraduate Excellence,” McCormick says. “We’d want to grow that office from advising only to professional development and career services, and also have it be our welcome center. We can’t do that in its current location.”

“The Center,” as McCormick refers to it, would move to a central location within the business school, and allow for advising offices, career services, and an area for professional development. Planners envision a place where students can learn how to interview for jobs, for example. “Interviewing is a learnable skill and you get better at it the more you do it. We need a place for mock interviews on a regular basis,” McCormick says.

It would also be a place for companies that recruit on campus to schedule information sessions so that students know who they are and what they do. The Center would partner with Baylor’s Career Services and leverage training that is now an informal part of business education. “We need to have a platform, not reinvent the wheel. We need to shout as loud as possible about what’s available.” Once students are informed, the rest is culture-building, McCormick adds. “Space matters,” he says, referring to the new basketball practice facility at Ferrell Center. “We need a space for our students to practice their skills on game day. We need something we can point to so they can see immediately that career services are a big part of this. It’s a visual cue that we currently do not have.”

• Technology and entrepreneurship

As director of University Entrepreneurial Initiatives, Greg Leman’s role is to teach students how to commercialize technology for use in business. “That process is done not only by startup companies. Existing companies live and die by their ability to innovate. While even service companies must innovate — like a high-end restaurant keeping its menu “edgy” and new — I focus on companies that depend on creating value with new inventions.”

He teaches two courses that address the necessity of connecting technology and business. The first was Technology Entrepreneurship, which focuses on innovation and was offered beginning spring 2006. The second, Corporate Entrepreneurship, is an introduction into how technology works, how it is managed, and how to keep innovation in a corporation on track. Students in this class get the information they need to keep up with their counterparts on campus. “I am trying to demystify a whole realm of technology,” Leman says.

To demonstrate how to combine technology and business in the best way, Baylor needs to build a team of clinical professors that span the technology circle, Leman says. He envisions a wheel with different spokes all pointed toward the hub. “Business kids are on one spoke, and engineering on another,” he says. “The vision is to have lots of spokes.” To that end, he is in the planning stages of making a new spoke with the chemistry department for chemistry students who may go into industry and need the business side. He wants to build another spoke for environmental science. “The idea is to make a multi-spoke wheel.” That’s where the team of professors comes in. They will find the projects in their areas of industry and will turn out graduates to work in those industries.

With lots of students needing to work together as a team, the program has a need for bigger team space, like conference rooms. And with each team working with a company outside Baylor, they need good collaborative tools such as a top-end telepresence, which brings students and a communicating video presence together in a classroom. “You look at a screen and the person on the screen is life-size in real time,” Leman says. “A conference room that has that in it is a relatively near-term need for the program.”

“I see a lot of mixtures of technology and business,” Leman adds. “You get business that’s international and technology that’s international. We put it all into one experience.”

By Barbara Elmore

Dean Maness notes that all of the needs are a matter of both developing and creating new programs, and developing the environment in which to showcase them. “It’s not just a matter of taking things that are nailed down and subbing,” he says.

Although planners have talked about building out instead of up, Cashion’s foundation would support two more stories. No firm answers are in place on which way to expand, but Maness hopes to have a design in place in the fall and to see an expanded business school within three to five years.

“We have a solid foundation laid for an academic program,” he says. “It’s time to really focus on becoming a distinctive school of business.”

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007

“I have found that Baylor students are the most well-rounded students, both academically and culturally. Baylor students care about what they are doing and are the most likely to succeed. They are quick to adapt to the work environment.” Don Spitzer, National Partner in Charge – Private Equity, KPMG.

KPMG is one of the world’s largest global networks of professional firms. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, it provides Audit, Tax, and Advisory services. KPMG contributes knowledgeable benefits for its clients, people and the capital markets. KPMG employs more than 113,000 and operates in 148 countries. In 2006 KPMG’s total revenue of member firms increased from 2005 by 7.6 percent, totally $16.9 billion United States dollars.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007

by Ken Blanchard

The world is in desperate need of a different leadership role model – not just an organizational model, but a life role model.

We’ve all seen what has happened with leaders who are self-serving in business, in churches, in running countries. As I travel, I see problems with leaders who think leadership is all about them, all about the accumulation of wealth for them and their friends and family, about power and status and moving up the hierarchy.

But, as Paulo Freire says in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, once the oppressed throw off the leader, unfortunately the only leadership role model they have is that of the oppressor. So the oppressed then become the oppressor.

I went on safari three years ago, and I was with my wife at a party a few weeks before. They asked the guests who they would like to have dinner with. For me it was a really easy choice. I said Nelson Mandela, because I would like to have dinner with a man who was jailed for 28 years, mistreated and abused, and he comes out of there full of love, reconciliation and compassion. Then we visited Robben Island, where they held him for most of the time. You wouldn’t believe the conditions that guy lived in. I got a copy of Long Walk to Freedom, about his life, and I was reading it as I was heading to Africa. And then we get out to the jungle.

We’ve been on safari a number of times. But when I compare it to Nelson Mandela, I realize how vicious the jungle is, how territorial the jungle is, how violent the jungle is, and how self-oriented the jungle is. The lion’s roar can put a chill up your back. Our guide on safari says when the lion roars he is shouting, “It’s mine! It’s mine! It’s mine! Baby, this is MY territory and if you mess around with this, you’re in trouble!” A lion will kill his sons if they challenge his territory.

We are animals, although we don’t like to think so. We are intelligent animals. We have the opportunity to make choices that the animals don’t make. The choice is between the flesh and the spirit, between being self-serving and serving. A rhino can’t get up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll go over and make friends with the lions today.” It’s not in his nature. But we can. Every day, when we get up, we can make a choice. Do we want to serve or be served? Do we want it to be all about us or all about the greater good? We have all seen what has happened with leaders who are self-serving.

There are life leaders, and there are organizational leaders. Very seldom do people mention a boss when you ask them who their role model was. They mention their mother, their father, their uncle, teacher or coach. When I became a Christian in 1988, I went right to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts because I am a behavioral scientist. I wanted to see what the man did. I find that the guys that did everything that I ever taught or wrote about were 12 incompetent guys. They were slow. You would never have hired that lot.

It’s very interesting; they were all businesspeople, no clergymen. Henry Blackerby and I agree on this: He says the great spiritual revolution will come from businesspeople by demonstration, not proclamation. It will not come from evangelism.

I pray every morning, “Lord, protect me from your people.” I have never met such vicious people as Christians. They want to be right. My big disillusionment since I’ve become a Christian is that we’ve got the worst business model in the world. I was in suburban Chicago and asked a guy there, “How many churches here have Jesus central to them?” He said about 1,200. I said, “Do you think Jesus is a good product?” He said, “Yeah, the best.” So I said, “What if I wanted to franchise Him?”

Think of it. Twelve hundred franchises, none of them talk to teach other, all of them compete with each other, and all of them bad-mouth each other. We’ve got to get a life as Christians and stop arguing about each others’ rituals. Who cares? The important thing is do you love Jesus, and do you use him as a role model in your life? We’ve got to look at the way Jesus said we need to lead. He said, “Even I have come to serve, not to be served.” He said we are supposed to be servant leaders.

A lot of people say “How can you lead and serve at the same time?” You can if you understand leadership. There are two parts.

Part 1: Where are you going?

The first part is vision and direction. At Baylor you have Vision 2012. You’ve got to have somewhere you’re going. Otherwise your leadership doesn’t matter.

A vision is made up of several parts. Do you know what business you’re in? What’s your picture of the future if you do a great job, and what values are going to guide your journey? If you have a really clear sense of that, then people who work there know what to do.

Let me tell you about Walt Disney’s vision. Why have the Disney parks lasted for so long? I asked Walt. He said he was in the “happiness” business, not the theme park business. Here’s what he said: “My picture of the future is that everyone leaving the parks will have the same smile on their faces that they had coming in.”

Now, there are values that guide our journey, and some people have too many values. Three or four is the most we need, and they have to be ranked in order, because life is about values conflict. You can’t do two things at the same time. The first two values are the most important. If you believe in them, the rest will take care of themselves.

At Disney, the number one value is safety, because Walt Disney knew that if someone got carried out of one of the parks on a stretcher, he wouldn’t have the same smile on his face leaving as when he entered.

The second value for his parks was courtesy. But you have to rank them because you don’t deal with courtesy when the number one value calls you. The third value is the show, the entertainment. And the fourth is success or efficiency, which helps ensure a profitable organization.

A lot of places don’t place financial security as a value. If you don’t, everyone then knows that your values are a joke because if there are financial problems, you spend all of your time looking at the financials. But when it’s the number four goal, you know you’re not going to do anything to save money that will put people in danger. Why? Because safety is a higher value. Your values must drive your behavior. If you have a clear vision and put your goals under that, now you have a sense of where you are going.

That’s the “lead” part of servant leadership. Was Jesus clear on this? Yes. He said, “I’m going to make you fishers of men.” Was he clear on his picture of the future? Yes. He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” He didn’t say “Go evangelize,” he said “Make disciples.” What is a disciple? It’s somebody who behaves like he’s trying to teach.

You have to be a follower of the Lord first to be a disciple, but we forget that it’s about our behavior, and not just signing up for a one-time deal, and then behaving completely inconsistently with what we’ve pledged to do. These values are love God with all your heart, and love thy neighbor as thyself. You are number three – it’s God first, your neighbor second, and you third.

Remember, he said, “Even I have come to serve, not to be served. So the vision part of leadership has got to be the responsibility to hierarchy. This doesn’t mean you don’t involve other people. The responsibility to say, “This is where we are going” comes from the leadership. It’s the visionary direction part.

Part 2: How do we accomplish the goals?

The second part of leadership is implementation. How do we accomplish the goals? We turn the pyramid upside down, and now the people in charge of the vision are at the bottom of the pyramid, cheerleading, supporting and encouraging everybody to live according to the vision.

What happens to mess organizations up is that we get egocentric and once we set a vision, then we still want to keep the hierarchy alive and well, and make sure everybody knows who is in charge. What this creates is a whole bunch of ducks. Everybody’s quacking, and nobody is soaring like eagles. When you’ve got a lot of quacking going on in your environment, you had better recheck your vision. Because you haven’t got a vision that people buy into.

If you’ve got a clear vision and you get a lot of static in the system that is irrelevant to that vision but self-serving to different groups, you’ve got to call them on it. You have to ask, “Where is what you are doing consistent with that vision?”

Let me give you an example from my son. He asked me, “How would like to be the ‘one-minute son’?” When he was growing up he used to hope that he’d be punished like the other kids – sent to his room, or even spanked. Instead, he had to show up at the dinner table and talk about how his behavior was inconsistent with family values. That’s what we called the kids on. You have to set a vision, whether it’s your family or your organization.

You cannot serve anything if you don’t have a vision. My father, who was an admiral in the Navy, quit early because he liked the wartime Navy better than the peacetime Navy. Not that he liked to fight, but during wartime, they were really clear on what they were doing. They had a vision during wartime. In the peacetime Navy, no one knew what they were supposed to be doing. As a result, too many leaders believed their job was making others feel unimportant. We spend so much time pushing and shoving for hierarchical positions, when it comes time to implement a vision, we don’t let those go. Our role should become encouraging, supporting.

When I look at organizations that are doing different things, one of them is Chick-fil-A, which outstrips everybody in the fast food business. They have less than three percent turnover in restaurant managers out of 1,200 restaurants. That’s unheard of. Why? Their mission statement says, “We will use the talent the Lord gave us to have a positive influence on everyone who comes in contact with Chick-fil-A.” Truett Cathy and his son Dan are the head cheerleaders.

There are other examples of leaders that love to cheerlead. There is a grocery store that kills the competition because it’s driven by values. I know of a bank run by guys who have written about servant leadership. Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines – that’s a complete servant leadership model.

I have something I call a “geezer pack,” which includes my driver’s license, my passport, and other necessary things that I put in a packet around my neck when I travel. One day I was going to the airport in San Diego and I realized I’d forgotten my geezer pack. It was a few years after 9/11 and everyone’s uptight about identification. I didn’t have time to go back and get it. So I went to the airport bookstore and they had one of my books with the picture of me with Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins’ coach.

Fortunately the first airline I went to was Southwest Airlines. When the guy checking my baggage asked for my identification, I told him I had left it at home, but will this do, and I showed him my book. The guy started yelling, “This man knows Don Shula!” Everybody started high-fiving me. Then a guy in line said he knew the security guards and he thought they could help me, and he got me in.

The next day at another airport I still had no passport or license because there hadn’t been time to overnight it to me. I was flying on an airline that was always in financial trouble. I showed my book and the ducks jumped out. “Quack, quack, quack quack!” Pretty soon I’m up five levels talking to a guy in a suit about my identification. I said, “Could you get a life? Do you really think I superimposed my picture on this book just to get by you?”

What we’ve got to do in leadership is create an environment where people can soar like eagles, not quack like ducks. The way you do that is to set a vision so people know where you’re going and what you stand for, and then turn the hierarchy upside down. When Jesus washed the feet of the disciples, he was symbolizing moving from vision to implementation. He said, “This is the way I want us to spread the word. Not from a hierarchy standpoint, and not from an ego standpoint.”

If we want people to be interested in our religion, we ought to behave differently. In my company, we have 300 people and partnerships in 32 nations. I deal with every faith in the world. I don’t beat people up with Jesus, but they know where I stand. They get really fascinated watching how I behave, and they say, “Ken, tell me more, because I have watched you in good times and in bad times, and you seem to hang in there in the way that you treat people.” That’s what you’ve got to do, and then you can tell people where you got it from. That book, the Bible, is a pretty good book.

What would Jesus do about ethics?

I wrote a book with Norman Vincent Peale about ethics. I wasn’t even a believer at the time, but I was open. That’s when I became a Christian. We decided there were two problems with being ethical and leading like Jesus. The first was knowing the right thing to do. I think most people know the right thing to do. The biggest problem is doing what you know.

We developed an ethics test and told people to ask themselves three questions related to ethics:

1. Is it legal?

2. Is it fair to all involved?

3. How would you like for your family to see it if it were published in the local newspaper?

Something can be legal and unfair, and you wouldn’t want your kids to know.

We developed five principles of ethical power. The first is “p” for purpose in life. We all need to develop a personal mission statement. Mine is to be a loving teacher, an example of simple truth that helps me and others to awaken the presence of God in our lives.

The second is pride. That’s when you think more of your self than you should. The counter to that is fear, where you think less of yourself than you should. Both edge God out, because you’re putting your performance or the opinion of others as the label for your self-worth and forgetting that you are unconditionally loved. If you can get that you are unconditionally loved, you can get your pride out of the way and can listen to feedback.

The third and fourth go together. The third is patience. You want results quicker than you deserve them, and God is on a different timetable. But you have to keep moving, so the fourth is persistence. You’re still doing what you need to do, but you don’t try to short-cut the deal. You’ve got to keep moving but you’ve got to be patient.

The fifth is perspective. We get this from prayer, solitude, the study of Scripture, a small accountability group. You take a helicopter to the ceiling and get a distance from what you’re about to do. A lot of us don’t take that time, and don’t have people in our lives that give us feedback.

One of the problems we have in this country is that a lot of people are pushing for success, and success is defined by how much money you make, how much recognition you get, and how much power and status you have in your job. There is nothing wrong with making money, and nothing wrong with power and status unless that’s who you think you are. People like that miss significance.

Do you know the game Monopoly? I have a friend who used to play it with his grandmother when she came to visit. She was a tough competitor. They’d play for hours, and at the end she would always own everything.

When he was about 12, a kid moved in next door, and his new neighbor loved Monopoly. They played every day. The next time the boy’s grandmother came to visit, he asked, “How about a game of Monopoly?” Her eyes lit up. They played their game, and this time, the boy had everything at the end. He said it was the greatest day of his life!

“That’s great,” his grandmother said, “but let me teach you a lesson about life: it all goes back in the box.” The only thing you get to save in the end is your soul.

I have been married 45 years to Margie, who once told someone who asked her to define leadership, that “leadership is love, it’s not ‘about’ love. It’s loving your mission, loving your customers, loving your people, and loving yourself enough to get out of the way so that other people can be magnificent.”

Go out and spread love.

© 2007 Ken Blanchard. All rights reserved. Reprinting of the Article not permitted.

 

 

Baylor Business Review, Spring 2007