Faced with complex challenges, CEOs hit the books

A CEO’s job is nev­er easy, but lead­ing organ­i­sa­tions through infla­tion­ary spikes and eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty takes the chal­lenge to a dif­fer­ent lev­el. Not only must they keep tabs on cash­flow and ensure prof­itabil­i­ty, but they also need to pre­vent employ­ee churn and act as a bea­con of hope for those who stay. 

This unique com­bi­na­tion of chal­lenges has got many CEOs rethink­ing their approach to lead­er­ship and con­sid­er­ing whether they need to invest in exec­u­tive edu­ca­tion. A sur­vey by the Grad­u­ate Man­age­ment Admis­sion Coun­cil (GMAC) found that near­ly half of all exec­u­tive MBA pro­grammes report­ed a sig­nif­i­cant increase in appli­ca­tions in 2020. This trend con­tin­ued at a slow­er pace in 2021, with 33% of exec­u­tive MBA pro­grammes report­ing a bump. 

But is an MBA the right choice, espe­cial­ly when there are so many exam­ples of suc­cess­ful CEOs who have for­gone grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion alto­geth­er? How do you decide what’s right for you when time is tight and the stakes are high?

A new perspective 

There is, of course, good rea­son for the increased inter­est in exec­u­tive MBAs. The pro­grammes usu­al­ly cater to the busy sched­ules of busi­ness lead­ers, while giv­ing them an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see their busi­ness through a dif­fer­ent lens. The diver­si­ty of the cur­ric­u­la and the breadth of expe­ri­ence brought by the cohort itself is enough to cov­er any busi­ness sce­nario imag­in­able, not some­thing to sniff at in a time of cri­sis. 

Many uni­ver­si­ties are also con­tin­u­ous­ly adapt­ing their pro­grammes to respond to the lat­est chal­lenges. For instance, this is the first year that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh Busi­ness School (UEBS) is offer­ing a ful­ly online MBA. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cambridge’s Judge Busi­ness School (JBS), on the oth­er hand, has invest­ed a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time and effort over the past five years to embed digi­ti­sa­tion and ESG into its cur­ricu­lum.

“If I com­pare what we’re doing now to five years ago, the main changes have been around tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion. We’ve added core class­es on dig­i­tal dis­rup­tion and more elec­tives on big data and data ana­lyt­ics,” says Con­rad Chua, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the MBA pro­gramme at the JBS. “We also put a great empha­sis on ESG [envi­ron­men­tal, social and gov­er­nance], which runs through­out every­thing we teach. In fact, about one-third of our teach­ing dis­trib­uted across all our core class­es has some kind of ESG ele­ment to it.” 

One of the unique ben­e­fits of an MBA is the real-life indus­try sce­nar­ios brought to the class­room by the cohort itself. Julian Rawel, direc­tor of MBA pro­grammes at UEBS, says its most recent cohort had about 55 stu­dents from more than 20 dif­fer­ent sec­tors. “We take a huge amount of care over how we recruit,” he explains. “We don’t look to just recruit peo­ple, but to cre­ate a cohort of peo­ple where there’ll be dif­fer­ent gen­ders, dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties and skill sets, and dif­fer­ent sec­tors, so that we’re cre­at­ing this kalei­do­scope of skills and learn­ing.”

This diver­si­ty of think­ing and holis­tic overview of how a busi­ness runs is exact­ly what gave Michael Fly­nn, CEO of Lon­don-based sports ana­lyt­ics firm Dat­aPOWA, the con­fi­dence to start his own busi­ness. He com­plet­ed his MBA at Not­ting­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Busi­ness School in 1990. “Before the MBA, every­body I knew in busi­ness worked for Exxon­Mo­bil, because that’s the one busi­ness I worked for straight out of uni. So dur­ing the MBA I learned the most from work­ing with oth­er peo­ple who were work­ing in oth­er busi­ness­es. I met peo­ple from Kodak, Shell, from brew­eries and banks. The social side of it was just as valu­able as the actu­al cours­es them­selves.”

Fly­nn sold his first busi­ness in 2016 and went on to build Dat­aPOWA, which sold dur­ing the pan­dem­ic for near­ly £10m. Had it not been for his MBA, he isn’t sure he would have had the knowhow or the con­fi­dence to go for it. “I think under­stand­ing a busi­ness in its entire­ty gives you this con­fi­dence from an entre­pre­neur­ial per­spec­tive to think, ‘I know how it all works. I can build a busi­ness.’”

Other options

An MBA, then, can be great if you have the time and ener­gy to do it and need to go beyond your scope of exper­tise to scale and grow a busi­ness. But they’re not for every­one. In fact, many CEOs find that self-direct­ed learn­ing and exec­u­tive train­ing on the job can be just as good if you take the time to under­stand your needs.

Melin­da Matthews is a for­mer IBM exec­u­tive and CEO of Code­Clan, a dig­i­tal skills acad­e­my based in Edin­burgh and Glas­gow. She’s a pas­sion­ate life­long learn­er. Dur­ing her time at IBM, she made use of all the learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties her employ­er offered, from inter­nal train­ing on sales strat­e­gy and lead­er­ship to secur­ing a place­ment at the UCLA Women in Lead­er­ship pro­gramme.

Matthews spends a lot of time on LinkedIn Learn­ing and Blinkist, as well as talk­ing to oth­er CEOs about the prob­lems she’s fac­ing. She choos­es what to learn next by study­ing her own reac­tions, help­ing her deter­mine if some­thing is amiss. 

“As I get old­er in a lead­er­ship posi­tion, I think a lot about my reac­tions. Why am I being this reac­tive about some­thing? What’s irri­tat­ing me? And that has prompt­ed me to realise that maybe I’m not doing some­thing right. Or that I need a dif­fer­ent tool out of the tool­box. And that’s cue­ing me up that I’ve got to learn some­thing.”

Matthews cred­its her self-aware­ness to the years of coach­ing she received at IBM, which she kept prac­tis­ing long after she moved into a dif­fer­ent role. Coach­ing is also a big part of the MBA pro­grammes at JBS and UEBS, so much so that the UEBS MBA includes cred­its from the school’s pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment course.

Always learning 

With or with­out an MBA, good lead­ers are life­long learn­ers. Both Fly­nn and Matthews ded­i­cate sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time to learn­ing out­side the remit of their cur­rent jobs. Fly­nn recent­ly fin­ished a Yale course on the sci­ence of well­be­ing and is start­ing an arche­ol­o­gy course in Octo­ber with UCL. Matthews spends a lot of time prac­tis­ing yoga and learn­ing about med­i­ta­tion, Rei­ki and acupunc­ture. 

While these may seem unre­lat­ed to the chal­lenges of their jobs, they both say expo­sure to dif­fer­ent fields helps their cre­ativ­i­ty. Fly­nn likens his ongo­ing learn­ing expe­ri­ence to a well-kept Rolls-Royce. “If you keep main­tain­ing it, it’s always going to deliv­er.”

After all, being a good leader isn’t about hav­ing all the answers. It’s about sur­round­ing your­self with the right peo­ple who are moti­vat­ed to find those answers for you. For that, you need more than knowl­edge. You need intu­ition, self-aware­ness and – above all – empa­thy. And there are many ways to work on those skills.