Message from the Dean, May 2023

May 30, 2023

As we near the conclusion of the academic year, I’ll be wrapping up my year-long series on strategic management and its application in the Parker College of Business. I hope you’ve found it enjoyable and thought provoking; I’ve certainly enjoyed thinking about the issues and discussing them in these commentaries. In the remaining newsletters, though, I want to talk about a couple of singular topics that are tangential and closely related to strategic management but that also stand alone and so warrant special consideration. For today, the topic I want to consider is leadership.

Scholars define leadership in a variety of ways but most of the definitions involve two basic elements: translating a vision into reality and guiding others to accomplish outcomes that they could not achieve individually. Putting the two ideas together, a few things become clear. First, leadership is something you do, not merely something you are. In other words, leadership is an activity, rather than an identity. Holding an important office or a position of authority doesn’t make one a leader. Rather, doing the difficult work of actually creating something new does.

Next, leadership involves others. It’s often said that, if you want to go fast, then go alone, but if you want to go far, then go together. Leaders depend on others and empower them to work together in moving forward. Leaders create, organize, motivate, promote, and drive for better outcomes—outcomes that others often see as being impossible. Leadership improves things and “moves the needle” in a way that others cannot.

Third, leadership involves creativity; leadership involves seeing a future state that is better than the current one and then articulating that vision in a way that others can see, understand, and join in on the work of making it so. That requires more than just dreaming; leadership requires practicality and pragmatism and an ability to work with the tools at hand.

Finally, leadership is not easy; quite the contrary, it is very hard work. True leadership is so very valuable precisely because it is so very rare. And it is rare precisely because it is difficult. Leadership is not formulaic; it has no policy manual or recipe to follow. And, more often than not, the steps and actions required to lead effectively will not be obvious or even well-understood by the majority of those following. Nevertheless, good leadership gets good results. It’s right there, in the definition and in the job description.

So, how do we apply these understandings about leadership in the Parker College? In two ways really. First, we teach it in the classroom. We challenge students to actually do things. Rather than relying on a pedigree or their superior education and knowledge, they understand that they must produce real and tangible results. That involves imagination, creativity, and innovation, but it also involves organization, coordination, communication, and plain hard work. Second, we try to model these principles ourselves through an emphasis on innovating in our own business and in our ways of doing things, motivating by providing a clear sense of what we believe is possible, and then building a team and organization that can translate that potential into reality. We see a future where the Parker College is among the world’s great business schools, and we work every day to translate that vision into reality.