Kellogg's Dipak Jain on Leadership

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Kellogg's Dipak Jain on Leadership

From BW Web

Dean at BW's No. 1 B-school, he explains the focus on "collaborative wisdom" and developing MBAs who can be well-rounded leaders For the second ranking in a row, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management came out on top in BusinessWeek's biennial MBA ranking. Many credit Dean Dipak Jain for carrying on the Kellogg tradition -- and improving upon it -- after longtime dean Donald P. Jacobs retired in 2001. Jain brings his unique vision for management education to the school -- along with an incredible amount of energy.

The school is highly regarded for its "high-touch factor" -- deeply involved faculty, staff, and administrators -- as well as a culture dedicated to the idea that hands-on learning is key. Also noteworthy is Kellogg's incredible family-like atmosphere. BusinessWeek B-Schools Editor Jennifer Merritt spoke with Jain before the rankings were revealed and discussed the school and his plans going forward. Following are edited excerpts:

Q: How do you keep a balance between academic rigor, team approach, and high touch. Particularly, how do you balance the latter two -- which the school is famous for -- with the need to infuse academic rigor?
A: This is a philosophy in which I strongly believe. In order for this to work you must have outstanding teamwork and team leadership, making the team part of the decision-making process. This leads to the high-touch "action learning," which is another way of saying "make it work in the real world."

This model instills rigor through collaborative wisdom, because team members depend on each other, their professors, company management, and others to build unique solutions. In this case the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Almost always there is more rigor brought on by the triangle of academics, teamwork, and high touch, than just by academics alone. From my own experience, I have found this to work in boardrooms where the team culture leads to rigor and excellent decision-making.

Q: Leadership is a big topic these days in business schools. What's your stance on this -- and how Kellogg wants to develop leaders?
A: We are in the business of producing socially responsible global leaders. When you are here, you have to learn the skills of managing projects, people, and policy. We have defined what we describe as our paradigm for leadership.

The first thing we all have to believe is that we are developing thought leaders. The second notion is team leadership. It's how students learn not only to work well with others, but how to inspire others. The third part is the notion of civic leadership. The idea of giving back to the community, the ideas of ethics.

Q: Global leaders -- that's something a lot of schools say they want to create. How are you going to do that in the future?
A: In the future, we would like to create four centers -- one would be [split between] Hong Kong and Shanghai to study ways of doing business there. The second would be in Miami to do research on business in Latin America, South America, and the Caribbean. The third would be in India, and the fourth in Frankfurt.

The hope is that over time, students can go to any of these campuses for part of their time and get a major in any of these regions. So, you could study finance and then study the Latin American economy in Miami, or study marketing with a focus on China through time in Shanghai. We are already working on building our expertise in these areas.

We would open these centers with partner institutions -- both of us investing equally. In the last year or so, I have been working on this idea of focusing on a certain geography as opposed to just a functional area.

Q: Though the talk has quieted some, a lot of critics question the value of the MBA. How do you think its value should be measured?
A: I really believe the time has come for all of us to make sure that we collectively, in management education, make sure the world does not get caught up in the idea of the value of the MBA.

The impact is what's important. I don't understand this talk of the MBA as a commodity. To me, it's the value and difference to the person wherever he or she goes to work. You are not just there to solve problems, you are there to make an impact. We need to think of progression of a career, of the MBA's impact, over its entire life cycle.