Spring 11 MASTER.indd - Thunderbird Magazine

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faculty focus Teagarden receives faculty ambassador award from alumni Thunderbird Professor Mary Teagarden, Ph.D., has received the 2010 Faculty Ambassador Award, which includes a check for $1,500. Thunderbird’s Alumni Relations Office established the award in 2009 to recognize Thunderbird faculty members who exceed expectations to engage alumni around the globe. The first recipient was Professor Roy Nelson, Ph.D. Teagarden uses Thunderbird’s alumni network as the backbone of her Winterim and Summerim courses overseas. She also has co-written at least half a dozen cases and articles with T-bird graduates over the years. Teagarden also shares her expertise with alumni through webinars and guest lectures. She was a featured presenter at the Macau and Shanghai alumni reunions, and she was a panelist at the seventh annual Thunderbird Global Private Equity Investing Conference. In addition, she serves on several advisory boards for alumni business ventures. These include 4Stones with Donny Huang ’94, GlobalVantage with Marianne Gouveia ’02 and China Strategic Development Partners with Rich Brubaker ’01. “I do my best to support our alumni in their various efforts, and they are wonderful in the support they provide me and the school,” Teagarden said. “Our alumni are Thunderbird’s most valuable asset.” ‘Wall Street Journal’ honors Thunderbird professor The Wall Street Journal has selected Thunderbird Professor Andreas Schotter, Ph.D., as one of 10 Distinguished Professors of the Year for 2010. The award recognizes Schotter for his use of articles and discussion questions from The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com to keep his lessons fresh and relevant for his students. Wall Street Journal Regional Education Representative Thomas Cook said Schotter skillfully uses Internet resources to help students understand global strategy, emerging markets and multinational corporations. “He has a talent to maximize the power of digital media platforms directly into the classroom,” Cook said. “And he helps his students prepare for their careers by conducting highlevel media research.” Schotter said managers in today’s fast-paced global economy must be able to access the most reliable Internet information quickly and comprehensively. “Too often Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are being falsely regarded as sufficient for researching current events, trends or other data,” he said. “Successful leaders need to resist an overreliance on these sources.” He said The Wall Street Journal and WSJ.com represent a comprehensive and trustworthy information platform essential for highimpact decision-making. “No other similar media outlet has the editorial and journalist horsepower that The Wall Street Journal represents,” Schotter said. “After only a few sessions, one can actually see the positive results in the classroom.” Schotter, an assistant professor of strategic management from Germany, has lived and worked in Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe. He came to Thunderbird in 2009. Tap into Thunderbird’s Thought Leadership Visit the Thunderbird Knowledge Network to read more from our faculty including the following blogs: • “Global Leaders Can Be Made” by Ángel Cabrera • “Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship Blog” by Robert Hisrich, Ph.D. • “Managing Projects – A Team-Based Approach” by Karen Brown, Ph.D. • “Thunderbird Student Projects” by Nathan Washburn, Ph.D. • “Prosper in a Project-driven World” by Bill Youngdahl, Ph.D. • “Gregory Unruh In The Huffington Post” by Gregory Unruh, Ph.D. • “World Cafe” by Karen Walch, Ph.D., and Denis Leclerc, Ph.D. www.thunderbird.edu/knowledgenetwork 54 spring 2011
faculty focus Dilbert Effect Disconnected leadership derails strategy implementation BY BILL YOUNGDAHL AND KANNAN RAMASWAMY Many bold new strategies hatched in executive conference rooms around the world never have a chance to gain traction. Something happens between inception and implementation loosely described as the “Dilbert Effect,” a nod to the farcical world of cartoonist Scott Adams. In our consulting and teaching experience with Fortune Global 500 organizations, we frequently feel the pain of Dilbert empathizers trapped in their metaphorical cubicles. Lack of clarity, poor communication and insufficient resources sink some strategic initiatives. But a more fundamental problem is disconnected leadership. Like the pointy-haired boss who torments Dilbert, many real-world leaders remain disconnected from the realities of strategy implementation. Despite their good intentions, these leaders often get in the way of progress — somehow limiting rather than enabling the full potential of their employees and partners. Checking for the Dilbert Effect is not part of the official briefings we conduct with our corporate clients, but issues of strategy derailment come up in classroom discussions and interviews with people from various organizations. Many working professionals report cultures of fear and lack of support from leaders who seem to believe another layer of management can solve any problem. We recently met one manager who sees the pointyhaired boss on cubicle walls as evidence of disconnected leadership. When she visits parts of the company adorned with numerous Dilbert cartoons, she knows the jokes are hitting close to home. She laughed when she told us her company could save a fortune in consultant fees if its leaders grasped the meaning of this simple visual signal. The irony of some situations is hard to overlook. We heard of one organization that fired an employee for criticizing its new “speak your mind” campaign. Another company scrapped its simplification initiative after the process became too complex. In a third case, an organization chose the name “Brighter Tomorrow” for an offshoring initiative that displaced 25 percent of the workforce. Other examples of disconnected leadership are more Bill Youngdahl, Ph.D. subtle. Cross-functional and cross-divisional initiatives typically start with committed sponsors driven by longterm vision. But overlapping initiatives often emerge, resulting in confusion. When everything is a priority, schedules slip and budgets swing out of control. The combined effect can be organizational paralysis and employee burnout. Go a few levels down and most employees are unaware of the strategy, let alone the supporting pillars that originated in the corporate suite. In an effort to understand the factors of strategy derailment, we have launched a formal study that will build on our background as global strategy consultants and educators. Our aim is simply to define the Dilbert Effect in greater detail so Take Dilbert Effect survey Spend 10 minutes to share your insights by participating in an anonymous online survey at www.initiativeleader.com. The link also contains a blog section that will host a discussion of the results. Kannan Ramaswamy, Ph.D. we can begin to understand the root causes and costs of disconnected leadership and provide insights into how leaders can overcome such dysfunction. We do not believe any leader wakes up in the morning and asks, “How can I become disconnected from the realities of my organization?” Something else is afoot, and we intend to define it and explore it so we can help leaders reconnect with their true missions — for the sake of Dilberts everywhere. Bill Youngdahl, Ph.D., is an associate professor of project and operations management at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona. Follow his blog, Prosper in a Project-Driven World. Kannan Ramaswamy, Ph.D., is the William D. Hacker chair professor of management at Thunderbird. Both professors teach extensively in Thunderbird Corporate Learning, the school’s executive education division. thunderbird magazine 55
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