Leaders for a new economy

I liked Kai Peter’s article in the FT that business leaders of tomorrow need a new bag of tricks to succeed in the current times of complexity as the transition to a mixed economy with multiple stakeholders takes place.

I was also interested to read Kai’s observation that traditional business education is not meeting this educational challenge.

It’s heartening to read as it gives credence to the new types of leadership initiatives we’re trying to develop at the Eastside Foundation.

We’re not a business school but we do believe that a great way for business professionals to develop new leadership skills is to work with peers from other sectors on strategic initiatives.

So in the last year we have pitted together teams of professionals from private sector firms (PricewaterhouseCoopers and BT) with social enterprises.

Take one example: A team of 5 business managers from BT were challenged to assist the management of Bikeworks – an East London based social enterprise employing homeless people – to put in place a corporate sales strategy.

The BT team worked on this intensively over 3 days to tight deadlines. Each team member pursued personal learning goals and each also learnt about social enterprise, homelessness, partnerships and relationship-building. The levels of engagement and feedback were very positive.

On a deeper level, the experience provided participants with insights into new types of business models and enabled each BT member to have hands-on experience of working in a mixed economy scenario.

Since then, BT has gone on to set up joint-ventures with other social enterprises.

If you would like to find our more about this initiative or get involved in some way then please get in touch with Tim Hartley.