Category Archives: Nanyang Fellows

Women in Leadership

  By hmteam • October 28, 2015 ,

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Even with MBA statistics pointing towards a gender bias, with a higher percentage of men enrolling in B-schools, lots of women are also choosing to do an MBA. Some experts say that an MBA degree and experience is the answer to building a woman’s confidence in a field of male competitors. Plus, with an advanced degree being a prerequisite for many senior positions, this degree can be the key to success. An MBA can help women break the ‘glass ceiling’ that exists, owing to the vast set of skills they’d acquire.

  • Indra Nooyi

One example of a shining MBA graduate is Indra Nooyi. She is the current Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo. Last year, she was ranked 13 in Forbes’ global list of most powerful women. In addition to an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Nooyi earned a master’s degree in management from Yale. She joined PepsiCo in 1994 and was named President and Chief Financial Officer a few years later. She has been the director behind PepsiCo’s global strategy for over one decade and led its restructuring as well. In 2006, she became the company’s fifth CEO in its 44-year-old history.

  • Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the Burmese National League for Democracy and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is an MBA graduate of Oxford University. She returned to Burma in 1988 after years abroad, to see the slaughter of protesters opposing the brutal rule of the dictator U Ne Win. She began a nonviolent movement for achieving democracy and human rights. The government placed Suu Kyi under house arrest, and she spent 15 years in their custody. In 1991, her ongoing efforts won her the Nobel Prize for Peace, and she was finally released from house arrest in 2010. In a speech, Suu Kyi said that her time at Oxford taught her how to respect the best in human civilisation. This is a woman who made an impact on the world while being stuck at home for such a long time!

  • Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, is another example of how a top class MBA can contribute to your career. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in the 1990s. Before Facebook, she worked with Google and before that, served as chief of staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Sandberg joined Facebook with the aim to make it more profitable. It did happen. In 2012, she became the eighth member – and the first female member – of Facebook’s board of directors.

In fact, Sandberg’s famous Lean In tips have helped many women build their leadership skills. She advises women to be more open to taking career risks and skip people pleasing. It’s important to be willing to lead and learn as you do new things rather than to not do them at all. Her tips also encourage women to visualise their careers as a jungle gym instead of a ladder because there are obviously so many ways to climb a jungle gym and only one way to climb up a ladder. Let’s face it; everybody can’t have the same, straight path. There will be ups and downs and detours. In another vital tip, Sandberg tells women to allow themselves to fantasise about their careers, focusing on improvement. You can surely think of times when you were afraid to do something because you weren’t really good at it in the first place. She also suggests that women in leadership can gain from a Lean In circle, which consists of a peer group who meet every month to exchange support and ideas.

Business schools around the globe try their bit to contribute to the growth of female leadership. Forums such as The Nanyang Women in Business Club and women-specific recruitment events are just one of many ways in which these schools try to resolve the issue of gender diversity. The more women in a programme, the more other women will want to join. Call it inspiration if you will. If the last decade has seen more women succeed and stand out, the future will hopefully see more.

Managing the Enterprise of Tomorrow

  By hmteam • October 26, 2015

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Future enterprises will be immersed in an even more digitised economy. Every individual in a company will have a bigger impact on business. Whether you are managing a team of two or five, you will have more influence in your company. Daily working conditions will be different and your day-to-day schedule would be affected by these, but tomorrow’s admin guy is going to learn to be much more versatile than somebody in his current profile. Regardless of job titles, everybody is going to have to throw themselves into the new environment.

More Complexities

Tomorrow’s enterprise is more complex. If you think that knowing fluent English and being able to talk to foreign clients is good enough, think again. In the future, more internationalisation will create a thin line between the global and the local. That means that businesses will need to know when local trends and culture cannot be overshadowed by a globalised view. Imagine starting company operations in a country where the people prefer to lead more traditional lives relying heaving on cultural norms but you try to force an American office environment on them. So sensitivity and the ability to simplify things will be important. If communication is a priority today, it will be the topmost feature distinguishing enterprises in the future. A good manager needs to integrate market strategies, activity and long-term policies with the shareholder expectations, customer aspiration and colleague mindset in focus.

New Profiles

Enterprises in the future will have to rely on their capacity to attract talents and on digital world skills. In other words, the human resources and information technology departments will be highlighted. New job profiles will be created; for example, data scientists – not a description that we are very familiar with. Individuals who are capable of predicting trends and tastes will be in demand because change will be so frequent and solutions so customised.

Leadership Qualities

A changing business environment has brought on a change in expectations of behaviour. The topmost person in an industry has always been known as someone who knows almost everything about everything in his or her field. This will become rare as enterprises start equating authority with attitudes, personalities, charisma, the capacity to make others adhere to ideas, and above all else, the talent to encourage others to work well in collaboration. The new leaders will be mobilisers and facilitators. You have certainly already seen things moving in this direction.

Vital Responsibilities

Digitisation brings with it new forms of competition and risk, so future company leaders will have to focus on corporate strategy and cost reduction. Decisions will be taken to comply with the need to differentiate a business from its competitors. You need divergent strategic plans to achieve this and cost reduction. The management will still have to continuously demonstrate to shareholders that the decisions taken are increasing the value of their assets. That happens today as well, but the future will see such decisions being made more frequently.

Training Needs

Costs for training associates will increase. Enterprises will want technically qualified employees who are fully operational on day one. Earlier, companies would spend a lot of time and effort on training new entrants, in hope of retaining them for a long duration.

Today, the global economy is volatile. Escalating costs, changing technologies, complex regulations, unpredictable markets and record deficits are affecting businesses around the world and have created new challenges in meeting expectations. Enterprises that possess the ability to anticipate needs, will adapt more easily to change. A business needs to be globally effective in terms of addressing various markets and running operations optimally. It also needs to be innovative, adaptive and ready to face certainty and uncertainty.

Making Sense of the Global Workplace

  By hmteam • October 25, 2015 ,

 

 

 

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Businesses have been tackling an evolving scenario post the 2008 market crash and the subsequent economic downturns. You’ve probably confronted some of those changes yourself whilst being part of a team. The demand for sales and trading roles isn’t as high as before. Mergers & acquisitions roles have gained popularity. With the jobs market being more stable now, a lot of people are interested in financial training as a key to switch roles or move to a different kind of a company. Reflecting on the globalised nature of the industry, top business schools are welcoming more and more students from around the world. There’s clearly been a rise in internationalisation.

Ethics and responsibility

The effects of economic ups and downs have not stopped impacting world financial centres. That is why there is a big emphasis on risk management, with B-schools updating their regulations curriculum consistently. Ethics is another area of interest that scores high on importance. Sustainability doesn’t lie far behind. What started as a small module in many business schools has become a core subject for many. A good knowledge of mathematical tools, plus a confident grasp of world financial markets, and IT techniques, is your recipe for success here. In fact, your current role has certainly exposed you to these aspects in some degree already. But even if you know it all, you need to know how to use it. An MBA programme such as the Nanyang Fellows MBA aims to create managers who are able to reflect on and look at the implications of their action AND their inaction.

Internal Collaboration

Collaboration and teamwork characterise today’s professional life, regardless of your location. Businesses want their employees to work together and create results even if they are thousands of miles apart. The global workspace now demands that you work together remotely, so a greater focus is given to international teamwork. If a business has teams collaborating efficiently, problem solving and the creation of positive results will come easily.

Knowing how to effectively collaborate is a skill you can nurture every day. Just always be open to spending time with all kinds of people even if you have a language or cultural barrier. Think of the executive who had coffee with a visiting colleague and how he found out that India doesn’t allow people to find out their unborn baby’s gender. That would definitely help him when he’s working on a campaign involving pregnant women in India.

Cultural understanding and agility

Global employers value cultural awareness and agility. You need to be ready to take care of yourself and business irrespective of your surroundings. That means that you could be sent off to live in a remote country for three months and you would have to deliver results while you are sitting there with the local people, eating their local food, speaking their language, and joining them for festive occasions. You may have already spent some time outside your home country, but did you stay there as a mere tourist? Next time you go somewhere, venture to spots that are not traditionally touristy. Who knows? You could find out something that the people don’t like and never repeat it again with clients from that country.

Leadership, consulting and entrepreneurship

Everybody wants to be a leader. The evolution of business and management careers has brought entrepreneurship and consulting to the limelight. It isn’t always about creating great products – it could also be about delivering unparalleled service that impacts multiple countries and thousands of people. The business industry sees people breaking away from the corporate ladder to start their ventures every day. When you choose to do an MBA, you get the opportunity to rethink your career path. Some successful start-ups have started from a college dorm room. So what are you waiting for with your years of experience? Build your business plan and take it from there. See how it goes. If consulting is your passion, then go for it. Once you are into it, you’ll know what is going right and what is going wrong.

The Nanyang Fellows MBA is for seasoned professionals like you, who are ready to embrace these challenges head on. The evolving business world needs well-trained professionals who can combine their experience with top class knowledge. That’s how leaders are born.

Kickstart Your Managerial Career

  By hmteam • October 22, 2015 ,

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When you decide to begin your MBA journey after a few years in the corporate world, you should know that you are taking a major leap. Everybody knows that there’s a huge difference between a junior level manager and a senior manager armed with a top class MBA Fellowship degree. Making the choice of applying for the programme is your first step. But there is a lot more you can do to kickstart your managerial career. The more proactive you are, the better chances of success. Build your career strategy with your eye on the next phase of your work life. In other words, you need to do your research and figure out where your future lies and what you can do to go in that direction. Start planning and get moving!

Discover Opportunities

You’ll have lots of opportunities to take advantage of, but sometimes you can’t pinpoint them. Sometimes, you’ll need to create those opportunities as well. Compare your current role to the managerial role that you aspire for. Have coffee or dinner with seniors you know in that role already. Get the inner story about what happens every day in that job. Compare your current role to that role and take notes. Admit your strengths and weaknesses to yourself. Ask yourself if you are running after it all just for a huge pay hike. Once you are done answering your own questions, you’ll know if you are ready to get on the managerial bandwagon. Then you can step up things at work and put in that extra effort. For example, you could be a manager with two people managing you, but why not offer to take up additional responsibility? You’ll learn on the job and earn respect in the field as well.

Plan Ahead

You’ve been here a few years. You’ve seen companies grow and business go up and down. A place that looks good right now, may not be that great once you get there post the MBA fellowship. Industries change rapidly and the ‘next big thing’ alters frequently. So, you should do chalk out a plan. Why do you want to spend a year in this programme? Maybe it is because you feel like you aren’t growing in your current job. Or it could be that you are ready to specialise in what you know you are best at. Whatever the reason, you need to be able to visualise your future when you are armed with this degree. Yes, you could be a manager already, but there are more of them at the top. How will you contribute to the industry in ways that you haven’t already?

Make Networking a Habit

You can’t be a manager if you stay stuck inside your office alone all day. You already know that a manager’s career involves using people skills on a daily basis. As you aim higher, communication is more important. If you are an introvert, push yourself. If you can talk to more people, they will know more about your accomplishments and interests. Networking is all about selling what you have. There is no point having a boss who loves you if nobody else in your industry knows about your good work. At this stage in your career, you’ve already built a reputation – so spread it. Use social media, events and get-togethers to let people know you’re ready to move forward.

The Nanyang MBA Fellow Programme

Once you get things rolling, you’ll need to work on your B-school applications. Some top MBA programmes require hardly any work experience from its candidates, while others require a significant amount. The Nanyang Fellows MBA Programme is one year long. The typical Fellow has about eight years of work experience and is in the middle of his career. The combined experience in the classroom brings great expertise to the table. The programme also includes a month’s residency at a top United States business school, which will help you understand how things and people function globally.

Once your application is submitted, don’t put your managerial career on hold. Keep moving. Keep talking. And keep learning!