Dean and Professor Ansgar Richter: “A ‘leader’ who does the job of leadership primarily for his or her own benefit isn’t a leader at all”
“Whether we are leaders or followers (and often times, we are both!), we all share our humanity. I deeply believe in servant leadership. A “leader” who does the job of leadership primarily for his or her own benefit isn’t a leader at all.”
I had the pleasure of interviewing the Dean of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) Ansgar Richter. He is also a Professor of Corporate Strategy, Organisation and Governance. Since becoming Dean last year he is facing unprecedented challenges. However he likes to think of challenges as opportunities, believing that the leaders of tomorrow will need to be incredibly comfortable with constant change in order to succeed.
Thank you so much for joining us Dean Richter! Can you tell our readers why you decided to pursue this career path?
My own career path has not been a straightforward one. Upon leaving high school, I began to study theology and philosophy, and later on added economics. I did my PhD at LSE in the mid-1990s and this is the place that introduced me to the big societal challenges of our times — inequality, resource depletion, poverty, poor governance, limited access to health and education — and the intellectual tools that can help us address them. Following my studies, I worked for over three years as a consultant with McKinsey & Company, advising clients on matters of strategy and organisation. I returned to academia in 2002, but the desire to work with decision-makers and to use rigorous analysis in order to address real-life challenges in organizations and societies at large has stayed with me.
I began to discover my knack for the development of academic institutions in 2008, when I became the Chair of what was then the Department of Strategy, Organization and Leadership at EBS Business School in Germany. I get real energy from helping to make an organization a better place for all its stakeholders. In 2016, I became Dean of Surrey Business School, a young, up-and-coming business school in the UK with a particular focus on the digital economy. I have now been at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University since 2019, and I thoroughly enjoy the responsibility to serve one of Europe’s top business schools as Dean. While it’s not been a linear career in any shape or form, the experiences that have shaped me are my international exposure — I have worked in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, the US, France, India, China, and elsewhere — as well as the opportunity to work at the interface between academia and business, and the interaction with multiple stakeholders: Students, faculty and professional service staff, executives, policy-makers and others.
How would you describe your approach to leadership?
Whether we are leaders or followers (and often times, we are both!), we all share our humanity. I deeply believe in servant leadership. A “leader” who does the job of leadership primarily for his or her own benefit isn’t a leader at all. Generally speaking, people want to make a contribution to the organization. My objective is to find out how others can be at their best, and to create new opportunities for them.
As a leader, I provide direction to the organization: Developing a vision, a strategy as to where we go, and challenging us where necessary. For example, at RSM we are revising our program portfolio, and we are finding new ways to engage with executives and companies, for example in sustainable finance, in business analytics, or in supply chain management. But I would never impose these changes without consultation with those who, at the end of the day, need to implement them. And it is also my role to strike an appropriate balance between continuity and change. RSM has enormous strengths, for example in areas such as neuromarketing, or in sustainability management. I want us to leverage these capabilities to their fullest effect.
This is not an easy job. What motivates you?
I guess I have a pretty strong work ethic. But underlying that is a true desire to make things better, for the benefit of all of us. I take great joy from the successes that others have: From seeing colleagues develop, from having our graduates make a difference in the world, or our alumni leading great businesses. But at RSM, we don’t just do our work in order to make individuals enjoy their individual successes. Our mission is to be a force for positive change in this world. We are currently undergoing a Business School Impact Assessment exercise organized be the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), and it is just great to see how much of a difference the School has made over the 50 years of its existence, both in this region and internationally. As a School, we have over 42,000 alumni worldwide. Think about how much employment has been created by them, how many new ventures they have created, or what the tax volume is that they have collectively generated — for the benefit of their countries and communities. At RSM, we encourage our staff and students to make an I WILL commitment. Mine is: “I will make a positive difference”. This is what motivates me.
From your perspective as a business school dean and professor, what do you think the managers of the future need to be like?
It is often said that a large chunk of the jobs that will be done in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. Similarly, the meaning of management will be totally different in future from what it is today. First, the companies they’ll manage will be different: They will be smaller, nimbler, and less strictly tied to traditional industry demarcations. Organizational boundaries are also increasingly blurred, with people frequently moving in and out of organizations. Tomorrow’s managers will need to be incredibly comfortable with constant change. For example, they’ll need to move back and forth between their organizations, and business schools or other places of learning, where they can refresh their knowledge on a regular basis. They’ll also have greater tech affinity. But at the same time, they need to be able to relate to people, invest in organizational culture, and establish trust-based relationships with their people. Tomorrow’s organizations will be even more fragmented than today’s already are. Managers won’t be able to keep it all under their control.
What are some of the challenges and opportunities you’re currently facing? How do you hope to address them?
Of course, like every other business school in the world, we have to deal with the Corona crisis. We shifted our programs online very quickly, and overall, this has been very successful. But I am not expecting the situation to return to what it was like pre-Corona. So, we are now preparing new blended programs, and full online ones; but only in those areas where we have unique strengths over what others offer.
Our model is based on interaction on campus and that is what we also want to facilitate, we will move more strongly onto blended formats but we do want to bring the students over to Rotterdam and we hope this will continue to be possible.
But I’d like to think of challenges really as opportunities, and they existed already before the Corona crisis. For example, I’d like us to make our programs much more modular, so that participants can mix and match them flexibly and co-create the programs that best suit their needs. There are also opportunities in working with others. For example, we have a world-class technical university in our immediate vicinity (the Technical University of Delft), and we are making good progress in strengthening our ties with them.
What is the main advice you would offer to aspiring leaders?
Be yourselves, but never stop learning. If you pursue success in a selfish way, it will elude you. Ask yourself how you can best make a difference, and listen to others when they tell you what difference you’ve made to them. Do take time to reflect, and allow your long-held assumptions to be challenged. This is also where a School such as RSM can really help. Yet at the same time, take good care of yourself. Stay healthy in body and mind, and help others to do so too.
Do you have a new agenda for the school, as its new Dean? What are the things you want to accomplish?
Well first of all, I’m really proud to be part of this institution, I think we lived up to the expectation we set of us being a force for positive change and we want to grow in this aspiration further. The first 50 years of the school have been really successful and I want to continue that, I want to put an emphasis on the quality of the student experience which goes across all programs. For the MBA it means personal and career development and that is really important to develop further, we are founded on a set of companies that wanted access to the next generation of business leaders but we want to broaden the number of companies we work with, in the Netherlands and abroad, so we are developing new ways to cooperate. For example, in data analytics and the areas that define our world today. I want to continue our emphasis on research, we are really interested in original knowledge creation but want to build on that further.
Thank you! We wish you continued success
