Collective Leadership in a MBA Disruptive Innovation Course
Strengthening Transversal Skills for Students
In October 2020, FIAP (Faculdade de Informática e Administração Paulista — in English College of Informatics and Administration of São Paulo), a higher education institution in Brazil, decided to create in-house university extension programs in order to strengthen transversal skills for all students, regardless of the course, and use them as a differentiation for their MBAs. One of the programs is the Disruptive Innovation & Mindset track, which I was invited to coordinate.
The creation of the track was carried out together with two other teachers, and aims at provoking transformations in a time span of 20 hours divided into five days, mixing students from different MBAs, and designed for online format even after we returned to in-person classes after the pandemic.
We had complete freedom to create content and a truly disruptive experience, including in the evaluation format. Paraphrasing the words that we were given at the time: “we could set the students on fire.” The idea was to reach as many students per class as possible, even if it meant calling in more faculty for support. We had 15 meetings to build the trail.
In the first meeting, as coordinator, I proposed Theory U as the basic framework to create the course’s journey. The idea was for each teacher to contribute with their knowledge and experiences, to deepen and deconstruct concepts , go through the eye of the needle , mature what to leave behind and then emerge with new paradigms. Both teachers agreed with the proposal, and we began to populate the journey with ideas, content and suggestions.
Initially there was some insecurity with the size of the challenge and with the teamwork. Theory U helped us to organize all contributions efficiently.
“Will I be able to handle it? What will it be like to work with 6 hands?
The challenge interested me deeply!
I didn’t know if I had answers, but we generated a model that looked beautiful.”
Accounts from one of the teachers
The first major challenge encountered was to work collaboratively among teachers from different areas with different experiences and who did not know each other well, as well as being in an online environment, full of uncertainties, in the middle of the pandemic.
The deadline to get the structure and content of the subject was January/2021, and was getting closer and closer, so due to difficulties in the joint construction format, I started holding separate meetings with the lecturers to build the journey as a whole, and defined the contributions more clearly. In this way, we unlocked the process and were able to complete the course’s design, and the format of the challenges for a project-based learning experience that would also become the evaluation method. Due to my years working with innovation and as a teacher, it was clear to me that the element of practice and hands-on was essential in this process.
In February 2021, a class of 120 students started the course in the presence of the three of us who created the trail plus six mentor teachers to assist the groups more closely. The students’ testimonies show that the course had a positive impact on their ways of thinking and acting, as well as encouraging them to become protagonists in changing global and complex problems. In this first class the course was able to achieve its initial intention of taking students out of their comfort zone and, on top of that, it generated bonds between all the teachers involved, which is very important to sustain the delivery in the long term.
“In addition to the integration with other students from different courses, I believe I perceive myself with a different mind, with another vision of how we can change our world and everyone around us.”
“The most relevant thing is that I am responsible for building the future”
“The most important thing was to realize that I’m not the only one outraged and how this feeling can be a propellant for a better world rather than just an excuse to say so, it’s not going to change. In addition to meeting excellent people with whom I was able to evolve together throughout the trajectory carried out in the course.”
Testimonial of some students
Energized by this evidence of achieving our intention, we also looked at the challenges encountered. One of them was the dropout in the number of participants throughout the course, which can be explained by the optional nature of the activity: of the 120 enrolled, only 55 started and only 32 were present in the last class.
Another challenge was related to the design of the course and the classes themselves, which were considered too intense and extensive, with insufficient interaction time between the students. In addition, there was a perception of difficulties in managing the students’ dedication to the extension program in relation to the rest of the MBA.
“Time conflict with various other activities/other power skills (extension classes). Lack of time to dedicate.”
Student testimony regarding difficulties encountered.
Finally, in this first class, we were frustrated with the final delivery — the disruption project aimed at responding to global and current challenges. The projects created did not meet the expectations of students and of the faculty.
“The provocations, especially today, were good. However, in some way I felt uncomfortable, because I was under the impression that you wanted more and we delivered little!”
Student testimonial“Needs more power”
“It’s not moonshot.”
“They didn’t look at the structural point, stayed in excessive superficiality!”
Comments from faculty members
We managed to deliver a very disruptive track that worked on the skills we wanted, but that didn’t reflect in the quality of the deliverables on the part of the students. At that point we couldn’t understand why it happened, and it became the seed of what would turn out to be a great moment of frustration and a big test of the teachers’ container. This blind spot is still being worked on by the collective leadership of the group of teachers, in my point of view.
After the second group of students finished, I sent two questions to each of the faculty members about their learnings from these two classes and asking each of them to identify which parts of the themes taught they could contribute the most. I used their answers as input for reviewing the course for the incoming year.
In this new version, I altered the role of each teacher, from mentors of specific groups, to leaders as content providers and facilitators of the whole class. With this, I wanted the teachers to feel more responsible for their delivery, and to change their consciousness of blaming students for the level of delivery, since the voice of cynicism (us vs them) was present in the team. We needed to open ourselves up to review our delivery and our journey, rather than just blaming the students for not meeting our expectations.
In this first year, we had four losses in the faculty container. The first was a teacher who due to various problems had to be removed from the program, what, simultaneously, generated relief and concern. The concern came from an insecurity if we would be able to occupy that space. Soon this insecurity dissipated, as two teachers answered the call for collaboration by taking over the delivery in a super competent way.
The other losses were of a professor who no longer had time to collaborate, a professor who was not engaged enough and chose to leave, and another who left the university. Each exit was felt in a different way, and the container of teachers reshaped itself in the new format and with the new team.
The 2.0 prototype was implemented for the classes of 2022, with a more decentralized delivery and each teacher contributing in their specialty. What the container built by itself through this opening of space was spectacular. The classes and the mentoring system were adjusted, with the appointment of a group representative as the focal point of communication. Previous faculty departures were overcome, and the dynamic among teachers improved. A winter class with a new format of the 5 classes in just 2 weeks generated experience and learnings for the course as a whole, the highlight being the inclusion of sensing journeys in the classroom (before they were set as homework to students between one class and another).
What the container built by itself through this opening of space was spectacular.
In the group of the second semester of 2022, there was a crisis in the last class, when the frustration of the faculty with the delivery of the students reached its peak and was taken out on the students, generating a bad atmosphere. There was an attempt to rescue morale, with limited success.
“It could have been a better presentation, but we did what we could according to the deadline!”
“I could have worked harder.”
“I did not like the speech made by the teachers that the whole room did not meet the expectations, the way it was said it was frustrating and discouraging for us students. Teachers should be more careful in how they evaluate students, if 43 participants did not deliver what teachers expected, who is incorrect?”
Students’ account
Later the class requested the grades given to the projects, but we found that the university administration only determined whether the student passed or not, without releasing the grades. To solve the matter, we send the grades in the WhatsApp group of the students. After a few months, one student questioned the discrepancy between the good grades of other groups and the negative feedback the class received in the last lesson. This situation revealed a flaw in our leadership, because the class only requested their grades due to the quality of the relationship formed and the demand we made on them, in that last class.
“When the note was requested, it’s because we put them in the box of pass or fail. The thought was, since you demanded me perfection, what’s my grade?”
Teacher’s account
It is worth contextualizing that some external factors, such as the residual exhaustion of the pandemic, hotly disputed presidential elections and an off-season World Cup, contributed to the situation. The best leadership option, at that time, was to rest and recover. A few side conversations took place, each individually metabolizing what had happened.
My individual reflection is that the quality of my presence in the year 2022 dropped a lot. It was a very stressful year in my consulting activities, and I depended a lot on the responsibilities that the container took on. But, by opening up the space to other teachers, the quality of my awareness in the process should have increased, rather than decreased. However, due to these factors, external to the course, I was unable to.
This absence of mine brought to the team a lack of clarity of what we were building. From the point of view of collective leadership, the way it should be was: holding the container of 7 teachers so that they in turn could hold the container of 50, 60, 70, 80 students.
After a while, we got together to build an action plan to prevent the problem from recurring. A meeting was scheduled to revisit the intent of the discipline and create clear tasks. At the meeting, only 3 of the 7 teachers fulfilled the agreed assignments on time, due to health and other work issues.
One teacher drew my attention to the fact that, while we directed the frustration at class processes and syllabus review, we were unable to emotionally process what had happened. “I think we’ve been pretty corporative in the sense that we’re going to improve and refine the product. We haven’t had the opportunity to personally adjust how we were and how we are performing now.”
With these reflections, I began the year seeking to be more present in classes, to participate more effectively with groups of students, and to open all classes with a global vision of the whole program, so that it would not be forgotten either by the students or by the teachers. We changed the distribution of time within the classes so that the groups had more time to work together in each lesson and a teacher took charge of looking after the groups’ big picture, also contributing to a better organization of the sensing journeys.
In a discipline that proposes reflection in search of change, it seems natural to me the feeling of constantly being provoked to evolve. Going through this experience of discomfort showed us how much we are involved, humanly, to deliver the best to our students. In this process of continuous learning, we are redefining ourselves and helping our students to realize how we are all responsible for the current conditions of the planet.
I understand that, from a collective leadership standpoint, we need to continue investing in the container and shared intent, as well as in reviewing expectations regarding student delivery and the ways to actually evaluate what we are teaching. One of my colleagues provoked the reflection: “the project the students deliver does not measure the skills we teach and help them develop”.
The classes are unique, the responses to the stimuli the students face in the room, the clashes between different perspectives, the need to show ourselves vulnerable to open up different construction spaces, all of these aspects become very relevant deliverables.
As teachers, taking responsibility for leading the process without trying to mold it to our desires becomes our major challenge. We need mindfulness to understand that we will never be ready, but that we can build meaningful improvements all the time.
The world’s present moment seeks life in imperfection, in the midst of the ever-accelerating evolution of the perfect answers offered by artificial intelligences. The course allows us to pursue deeper questions believing that transformation can unfold on the path to the answers we don’t yet have.
It is undeniable, the quality of the results we have already been able to achieve. Class after class we impact the lives of these students. We seek to continually refine our joint delivery; we would like to reduce more and more the dropout of students during the course, and to see them take truly transformative initiatives off the ground.
As the format of this course improves, we feel that it has the potential to be offered also in the ‘in-company’ model, to plant the seeds of generating desired futures in different contexts of society.
I would like to thank the entire teaching team of the course, especially Professor Rose Longo and Professor Igor Souza who collaborated in the elaboration of this article.
