Recently, the dean of Kyiv Mohyla Business School, Oleksandr Savruk, took part in the "Smart Ukraine" program with Volodymyr Yermolenko on public television.  They spoke about what makes a modern leader, why an idea steers better than a person, and why open systems will determine the future.  Here are the key points of the interview.

About the essence of business:

Business is about adding value, and creativity definitely lives here.  And it's not just about production, like it used to be during the last 100 to 150 years.  It is about value that has to be accepted both within personal perception and broader logic.  So it's always a creative challenge in today’s fast-paced environment. 

 About what drives people to attend business school:

Money is an expected reward for making strides in business.  The times that a person faced in his half-starved childhood have ended.  Today, when you have a "house, three sons, three trees” and have visited all museums and islands, the question arises: "What now?". This question usually arises around age 30.  A proactive person strives for something more.  

He is successful on the surface in only a conventional way.  And the rules, where success is measured by money, material gains and so on, are no longer essentially satisfying to a person.  He wants to, and can, create more, to hold more cards.  Life used to ripple within that criteria of success.  He did not know other rules of the game, other footholds, other action patterns then, but he sees that they exist somewhere abroad in "normal worlds".  We are trying to provide for such novelty seeking.

Here at kmbs we foster an environment that encourages people to think aloud and share ideas of logic.  Participants bring to the audience their experiences, doubts, and deep, hidden questions.  When they find the same people around them, it is easier to open up.  We work together on in-system findings, consider cases, and reflect.  We find understanding.  All of the above gives rise to the possibility of creating our own proactive and subjective logic: "How will I now treat the world with an understanding of human nature and the nature of systems?”, as we call it, of social systems.  Our participant starts feeling like a leader with new opportunities, the ability to influence more.

About ideas and art:

We are focused on compositional choices, design, synthesis.  We have the concept of a model, composition, and harmony within the model.  We work to create natural and balanced systems, human systems, whether it be for a company or a community.  This includes state, city, and ministry, if necessary.  It doesn't matter what makes up a community, so long as it has a common subject matter and reason for existence.  The leader of this community or system has to create an idea: a rulebook and infrastructure, tangible and intangible things that make it harmonious and allow it to exist without a manager forcing it.  There is tons of opportunity for creativity, so contemporary art is relevant here.

About management:

People do not need to be managed.  One should manage either the systems or the roles people assume. A human cannot be managed.  “Let someone guide me.”  Those days are over.  But if I choose a role and build my own identity around that role, then I accept the rules of the game that come along with it.  And it is better to play by the rules together for mutual success.  If you do not want to play this game, for example if you want to play football, but there's only basketball here, then you are in the wrong place and in the wrong role. 

About leaders:

Prior to and during the Industrial Era, administrative methods were premised on managers having the "gift from above”, charisma, as it is called.  This used to influence people rather effectively.  Nowadays, the world has shifted from closed systems in which one influences and pushes and someone responds to this impulse, to open systems in which common sense reigns and self-motivated persons cooperate by their own free will.

I recently heard a "self-starters" term about people capable of doing something, making decisions using their own viewpoint, who have a natural understanding of self responsibility.  When they enter the game, they understand their role, the extent of their impact on broader systems, and the effectiveness of joint action within the game.  And the "laws of the game" are an idea that someone has to create.  Inspiring through an idea is much more powerful and systematic than any direct impact a person has on another person.

 About roles in open systems: 

In such systems, you do not have to choose who creates the idea.There are executive roles.Usually, people tend to prefer roles that comes natural to their preferred type of self fulfillment.People seek an inherent job, as Skovoroda said.For example, the creators of something new — They don't fit in a stable system, but they do affect progress.They are pioneers of new paradigms, apostles who assume responsibility and implement innovations and ideas, but not their own, and add sustainability to the new system.And then there are those who are happy just to play by the rules. It works for the benefit of society, too.  

About ecosystems:

What used to be important in the past may be less so now.  The borders of the state don't play the same role they did 50 years ago anymore, and the type of relations between state and citizen has also changed.  The same goes for business. It can no longer be governed by the logic of one state only, and it competes and interacts beyond national or cultural boundaries.  

So using information and conceptual flows, you can work with Americans and Chinese in one project in Ukraine.  In this case, IT, energy, science, education, and military models already have ecosystem logic in place.  Clusters are examples of regional open systems that provide both competition and interaction.

If a Ukrainian businessman wants to position his business in the Facebook ecosystem, for example, then he must adhere to the rules of Facebook.  These standards are not created by him, so he has to accept this logic and understand what his strategy should be — niche player, R&D player, etc. 

There are people in Ukraine who create good value offers for global systems, but they are still not being supported in infrastructure as efficiently and quickly as they might be in more developed countries.

Though it's a bit of a threadbare example, let's look at Elon Musk.  Recently, one said that nowadays Roscosmos (The Russian Federal Space Agency) is competing not with NASA, but with the "collective Elon Musk", and we can definitely predict who wins.  That is, a person has an idea and comes up with an offer to some professional community, and people cohere to it.  There are so said “pools” of people ready for cooperation in many countries, including Ukraine.  Even if I had problems with them or competed with them yesterday, today I say, "Let's join our efforts and fly to Mars," and they say, "Oh, it sounds promising."

Making arrangements goes faster now, creating an open structure that no longer has an arduous traditional managerial relationship as in the past.  This fluid structure can also quickly dissolve after the interaction, once the idea is over.  In this process, subjectivity is not lost. After creating new opportunities, each subject still moves on as a subject.

Some things cannot be done unless there is an ecosystem, a willingly interdependent logic of relationships.  For example, if you want to switch to an electric car, this will require special charging stations, repairs, suppliers, and more.  Without a wider range of players and standards, you will not be able to implement the idea.

In Ukrainian society, the vast majority of decision makers have an obscure understanding of the crucial meaning of this process.  But people who have graduated from business school do have such aspirations.  They tend to cooperate with each other and try to spread this logic and interaction culture within their turf. 

About education:

Our educational institutions mostly do not yet have an essential, value-based attitude to knowledge and skills in the context of their application in creative actions.  University is very important, but it is a continuation of high school.  Soft skills like creativity, leadership, etc. are barely emphasized.  Instead, they invest efforts into skills and competencies specific for executive roles only.

I often tell kmbs participants about the so-called “Singaporean” type of educational "product" that is high school.  Their definitions begin with two phrases: to “be able to”, and to “create a person's abilities to”. The paradigm of knowledge is not enough today. Every matter can now be solved in 1000 different ways.  We need to know what this knowledge is intended for, where you can get it and how to apply it.  We shall nurture a person with an open imagination and holistic view of life.

Management is no longer an economic branch of knowledge.  The problem is that our concepts of "management" are studied on the basis of yesterday's economic faculties.  This is misleading because management is about relationships between people within social systems, first and foremost.  And this is another nature of knowledge.

High school should shape the person.  Above all, it should mould a personality, a character.  And the ability to be open, self sufficient, and strong, to understand how the world works, to draw our own conclusions, is essential.  There is a popular phrase that says to "teach critical thinking."  That is not enough for me.  Critical thinking is still supportive.  It means that something has happened and I have to evaluate it critically.  Creative thinking is what I like more.  And high school has to prepare a child for lifelong learning.

The university should provide for universal knowledge that is useful no matter which specialization a person chooses — from business and creative fields to scientific research.  

About Ukraine futures:

In the future, Ukraine will be a country with its own identity, and not one that is a pale imitation of Western states, Western civilization. It will create value for world civilizations and contribute accordingly.  Obviously, it will adopt a lot of things from the West, but it will come into its own and gain experience by interacting with other civilizations in the East and South as well.

We regularly get into teasing situations, which give us the opportunity to understand more about who we are, our differences, and the variety in visions for tomorrow.   But now, Ukraine is open.  People travel and study all over the world.  Ukraine has shown that it has people capable of self organization.  We still need to learn how to work with ideas, to create leadership and leaders that can work with complex ideas to bring people together.

The cultural component — the ability to interact and negotiate — is also gradually developing in Ukraine.  It is respect for the other, understanding the other, and having empathy.  All of this is more or less making an appearance among young people.  Of course, there is the problem that social networks compart.  After all, you can create a mini-world via the screen and stay there forever.  And then the important question is: Does the youth sitting in front of the screen see a wider context?  But our Maidans, the development of the intellectual sectors in Ukraine show that we have very good human and emotional potential, which can be revealed in the creative sense.  When we start to create and offer something Ukrainian for the world that becomes both popular and interesting, then Ukraine will be actualized.

from Hromadske.ua