Stories from developing naturally

STOPPED Here are some stories of how managers have reacted to the reaching-out pedagogy of our programs for practicing managers.

At the end of the very first module of our International Master Program for Managers (IMPM.org), devoted to the reflective mindset—reflecting on self—while everyone else was going around saying “It was great meeting you!”, Alan Whelan, sales manager at BT, was saying: “It was great meeting myself!”

“This is the best management book I ever read!” So said Silke Lehnhardt to her colleagues at Lufthansa who were about to start the IMPM that she had done earlier. She was holding up her Insight Book, which she received empty at the start of the program, to record her thought while doing it.  Since graduating, she told how she returned repeatedly to that book, for its insights. Shouldn’t every manager’s best management book be the one that they have written for themselves?  

Jane McCroary, an American working for Lufthansa, shared a taxi with me from the airport to the Bangalore business school, to attend the IMPM module, that on the Worldly Mindset—so named to get beyond conventionally global, to get into other people’s world. I had suggested to my colleagues at the school that we all come in on an autorickshaw from the airpor, but they rejected that idea. Good thing, because Jane, just sitting in that protected taxi, was astonished by the traffic. A few days later, at the module, she asked a professor from the school: “How can you drive in this traffic?” He replied, casually, “I join the flow.” In other words, this is not chaos on the streets of India, just a different world. Welcome to the worldly mindset!

The first time a managerial exchange took place, where each manager spends a few days with a colleague at their workplace, Mayur Vora travelled from his jam-and-jelly company in Pune, India to visit Françoise LeGoff, number two on the Africa desk of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Geneva. At the next module that took place shortly after, they couldn’t wait to tell how excited they were about the experience. On the first day, Mayur saw Françoise typing and asked, “Can’t a secretary do that?” Welcome (again) to the worldly mindset: Geneva is not Pune! On the last day, Mayur told Françoise he would be happy to meet with any of her staff. All of them lined up to convey various messages to her through him. Françoise reported enthusiastically that Mayur “was like a mirror for me.”