[MUSIC] >> So this module is all about how do we actually think about aligning our different codes if you will. And, I thought one question that might be on your mind is saying well it's one thing talking about these things but are you actually practicing what you preach? So, as you know from my bio, I'm chairman of a company called The Brandon Side, so yes I do have a professional, at least toe, in the real world. But, actually having been here for over a decade at London Business School, we've seen many changes happen and I've been involved in actually implementing this kind of a strategy here at London Business School. So if we go back in some time when Andrew Likierman our current Dean became Dean, he came to the marketing faculty and he asked us what we envision for the future, and one of the things that came to mind is that we had a vision statement. Which was quite powerful, which attracted me and many of my colleagues to the school in the first place. Which was striving to be number one. And the way it was articulated was to be the world's pre-eminent global business school. And the way we measured success on that were the financial times, the FT rankings. And at that point, for three years, we had held the number one spot in front of Harvard and Wharton. Not just for the MBAs but also for the Masters in Finance program, so it's mission accomplished. The power of vision statements is that they are something you aim for. So, encouraged by that, we said maybe we need to revisit our vision. At the same time, we were thinking about can we articulate the brand of London Business School more. And, what became apparent to us, we had a bunch of values. They're written on a piece of paper. Nobody actually knew that they were. So, this was a unique opportunity in many ways to align those different codes on the business side, the vision, on the brand side, what does our brand stand for and on the behavior side, what are the values that drive our behaviors. So we decided to do this project together as a group of students, staff and faculty and to really from the ground up engage people in this process. And this took about two years. We first interviewed vary stakeholders, hundreds of people and it became quite tedious and it becomes tiring after a while. We did surface a lot of history. We went back to the history books where we've been finding principles, what role we did hope to play in the world of business schools and that was good and well. After you go through so many committees, the love was basically gone. At that point, one of the earlier videos you saw from Richard Hytner. He's the adjunct professor here but also the vice chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide. We brought him onboard and he said you need to bring the love back. And he posed a very simple question. What business are we in? And what would the world look like without us? And, he didn't ask us to write essays. He asked us to bring in some videos. So, I thought I'd provide a few links to those videos just so you get a sense of the kind of videos people brought in. The first one, which really is about what business are we in, is a video about this movie from Coach Carter where he works with inner city youth, men. And he's a sports coach but he has a transformation impact on their lives. Take a look. So, this video really highlighted the fact that we want to make a difference In people's lives. And after a lot of discussion we came up with a new purpose in that sense. So, it wasn't really a vision statement, more of a mission statement which is to have a profound impact on the way the world does business. So it's clearly about business. It was about impact which is about changing behavior. And it was about profound, meaning not superficial, it was deep. And that has certain implications. If you're dealing with individuals, to have a deep impact on people, you really had to understand them. At a much deeper way as individuals, not just intellectually. It had to be emotionally, as well. When we work with companies, and half of our business is working with organizations or executives, we had to have a longer-term engagement so that we could actually have a longer-term impact. We also came up with values in part that came from our history. We used to be a small, communal campus where our students had residences on campus, so one of our values is communal. But London is also the new, the old. We have a huge diversity of people where over 90% of our students in all our programs are non-British. So it's this idea of eclectic, where you're taking the best of different parts and mixing it together in new and different ways. Another value's engaged, we want companies and individuals to engage with us, not just to be served by us and a few others. And that became, the part that underpinned our behaviors. So, now he have a purpose and we have values that underpin our behaviors. Now, when you look at that, it's not that different, at least in terms of our purpose, from other leading business schools. So, the real aspect of differentiation is we have to actually deliver on it better than others. And that then became an internal change management process. We ran workshops where we not only got people onboard to understand what these values mean, but to translate them into behaviors no matter where you were in the organization. And this included faculty as well as students and staff and it didn't start there. After we had an understanding of these principals, we then took it into real changes as well. Some of these changes were that we ran different kind of induction programs for both faculty and staff. We had different kinds of awards that were based on our values and on having the impact. If you want to become a full professor here, where I think we might be one of the few if not only business schools, that actually writes to executives to see whether we have made an impact on business not just publish academic articles but made a difference in the real world. When we have our annual reviews, we look for is it on values? Are we looking for impactful research? We have new grants that seed fund impactful, ambitious research. Ambition being one of our values. The staff compensate framework became different. We will evaluate faculty not just on how well they delivered a class, but then five years later, we would go back to some of the students and ask them, whether, what they remember about their London Business School experience. So these are profound changes internally that really push this purpose forward and the values and so it's not enough to have an impact but are we doing it with the right values as well. Now, we have to ask ourselves well what about the brand promise. How does a brand promise fit into that? So remember the brand is kind of a little engine that sits between behavior and a business. So does the business and the purpose underpin the brand, and do the behaviors fit that? And critically, are we delivering on something that customer cares about? And again, we brought in different kind of videos and some of them quite humorous. So, here's a humorous video from The Life of Brian which is a quintessential British sort of humor. Take a look at this and let me tell you what we did with these kind of videos, afterwards. So once we've seen these videos and it really resonated with the value of eclectic, that it's really about being eclectic. It's also about being engaged, that you take responsibility for your own development. Having ambitions, in terms of the impact, it's about a profound change at the individual level or the corporate level, if we have any corporate client. And, one of our students on the committee, said it best. He said, sometimes, when you're in London Business School, with all these different people, it feels like you are in this sea of accents. And you need to find your own voice, and the accents, the different perspectives really challenge you to find your own voice, because things you've taken for granted you now have to, you see people from others cultures, other geographical areas who might have a different view, which really makes you understand your own values, behaviors, beliefs. So, the brand promise which we never really articulate so I'm a bit hesitant articulating it on this mook, but it's about find your voice. And it means what do we do? We have to redesign our programs that it wasn't so structured that we gave people more flexibility so they could find their own path rather than having a set path to go to. And so, our product in some sense had to be changed as well. And the whole visual identity changed as well for the brand. It's all about more fun, different, finding your own way. It's about t-shirts that say, keep dogma on a leash, there's no one way there's multiple ways. Just to celebrate this eclectic idea, in the old days you'd walk through a school and we had these wonderful golden framed pictures of long dead British men with white wigs. And it felt like you're walking into an old style British country club. And that didn't really fit any of this. So we had to actually change the visual identity of the space. So everything kind of had to fit together afterwards. Also, one of the things is we have little name cards that our students have in front of them, especially in the executive programs. Now, instead of just having people's names, we now add the flags of where they come from. Why? In order to celebrate this eclectic, this diverse nature of participants, and to remind professors as well as students that people come from different perspectives and that we need to respect those and that we can bring them to the table to learn more as a collective. So lots of little changes. Some larger changes. But the key message here is it took a few years, but progressively we worked on the business side in terms of our purpose. We defined our brand, and we defined our values. And we integrated them into everything we do. Small visual nudges, more profound reviews, product changes, the way we engage with companies, literally everything we do. And it's an ongoing journey over time. And I'll sign off with this video that our staff put together themselves to put all of this into a narrative. And I think this really summarizes it nicely and probably gives you a bit of more of the emotional feel of this process. [MUSIC] >> In the turbulent, ever-changing business of business, everyone needs a vision to inspire them. Something to reach for and something to hold onto to. Ours is to have a profound impact on the way the world does business, and that will require every one of us to find our invoice, and make an impact in everything we do, and in every corner of our day and that begins with you. Living, breathing and sharing the kind of values that will sustain us. In a world where the accountability that used to start and finish with me, now increasingly needs to end with we. Values like sharing and community and the rewards of staying connected and engaged. Values like a love of the eclectic, you thinking and doing. Ambition with its ability to reset our sights again and again for the better. The value of embracing the courageous and the spirit of dare to burning brightly in even the quietest and smallest moments. This is how London Business School will find a clear and distinctive voice to bring our beliefs to life. We don't do dogma, and we believe in the global view, we believe that if you're not actively engaged and passionate, you're in the wrong place. We believe the strength we draw, and the cultural diversity, the hunger, the dynamism of London sets us apart like no other. So if we're going to fill the world with people generating the kind of impact, what the world of business really needs. Then our vision, our values, our beliefs, and our spirit are essential and they begin with you. [MUSIC]
