Sponsored feature: Students at Leeds University Business School will find a path through volatile times

When asked to choose a theme of current significance for executive MBA students, I initially found it surprisingly hard.
Vince Dispenza of Leeds University Business SchoolVince Dispenza of Leeds University Business School
Vince Dispenza of Leeds University Business School

I could have written about the success of the Leeds MBA programme (12th in the UK in a recent Financial Times ranking); the depth and breadth of the programme, our world-class facilities, or our outstanding students.

Online research wasn’t helpful - I was bombarded with news and advertising specifically targeted at me and based on my previous searches and consumer profile. Computer algorithms determine the news which I see and the solutions to my consumer needs. My world is getting narrower, I thought. Which is when I stumbled onto the theme.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

What does this have to do with an MBA? MBA students are implicitly honing their skills and knowledge to lead and manage in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. This is a world of threats and opportunities. We have to distil answers from a quagmire of fake news and fake science. We are also complicit in allowing organisations to manage the boundaries of our knowledge, reality and experience because to not do so would be to become paralysed by too much choice.How do we find a path through this? Whom and what should we believe?

More than 25 years have passed since I was an MBA student, and my abiding learning has been the exploration of uncertainty and ambiguity. The main skill that I gained was to learn more effectively, to open my mind and to keep it open. As well as gaining the skills and knowledge to manage more efficiently, I explored the nature of management itself. I was challenged to do things differently and to do different things, not just to do things better.

I now teach at Leeds University Business School, a faculty of research-intensive university. We are committed to rigorous and reflective inquiry and to maintaining an open mind, which is surely the antidote to the fake news that we see and hear about on an almost daily basis. In a world of blurred boundaries, our Executive MBA students are taught to reflect upon what they do and not simply take things at face value. One way in which we encourage critical thinking in our students is to emphasise the importance of continuous reflection through an ongoing process of identifying significant experiences, recording them, sharing them in a safe and confidential way, and getting constructive, formative feedback.

The feedback from our MBA students suggests that this works. One recently said: “I did

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

expect to learn more about business, management and organisations, but I didn’t know I was going to learn so much about me”.

The premise is simple. If we develop skills to reflect on action (on what we have done), then the skills of reflection in action (of what we are experiencing here and now) are more likely to follow. We become more skilled in developing the ability to reflect before action, and become more strategic.

So I hope that my message to MBA students is clear. And I trust that computer algorithms and data analytics will ensure that my message reaches the right people.