life’s business plan:
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Life’s Business Plan:. Jesuit Business Education’s Secret Weapon. Discussion Outline. Jesuit business education’s competitive advantages Corporate America’s predicament The Jesuit secret weapon that fits America’s predicament. Competitive advantage is fundamental to strategy. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Life’s Business Plan:
Jesuit Business Education’s Secret Weapon
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Discussion Outline
• Jesuit business education’s competitive advantages
• Corporate America’s predicament
• The Jesuit secret weapon that fits America’s predicament
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Competitive advantage is fundamental to strategy
“Strategy is the deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a
business’s competitive advantage and compound it.” (Porter, Strategy) …
Ramon’s corollary: focus on clients not competitors
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Some competitive advantages don’t involve the “Jesuit thing”
• Location
• Reputation
• Quality of faculty
• Cost?
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Other potential competitive advantages are distinctly Jesuit
• National network of Jesuit universities
• International network of Jesuit ministries
• The Jesuit “brand”
• Approach to intellectual and human formation
• National alumni network
• Spiritual Tradition
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How well do Jesuit institutions leverage each advantage?
National network B
International network C
Brand A
Approach to formation A
Alumni network B and C?
Spiritual tradition D
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Jesuit spiritual tradition, aka Spiritual Exercises
A lost opportunity for Jesuit business education…or not
leveraged because it’s irrelevant?
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What are the Spiritual Exercises, core to the spiritual tradition
• Loyola’s “systematized” spiritual journey
• Four “weeks” of meditations on one’s own life, Jesus’ life, and one’s path in life
• Lots of stuff about hell
• Specifically Catholic
• Arcane language that Jesuits won’t change
• Idiosyncratic: one week has 12 days?
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Some obvious problems with Exercises on modern campus:
• Lots of stuff about hell• Specifically Catholic• Arcane language that Jesuits won’t
change• Idiosyncratic: one week has 12 days?• “Soft stuff”: business teaches “hard
stuff”
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Rubric of “Strategic Plan” might showcase Exercises’ relevance?
• Vision
• Mission
• Values
• = Our “enduring core”
• Strategic Decision-making
• Execution or Implementation
• = Our ability to adapt by navigating change
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Corporate predicament, #1: No one believes in “enduring core”!
• “Vision is just a word, show me the growth”
• 76% of financial executives say they would sacrifice economic value to keep earnings rising smoothly
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Corporate Predicament #2: Problems making strategic
choices
• Up to 40% of public mergers don’t add significant value for shareholders
• 45% of executives rely on intuition rather than on facts in running their businesses
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Predicament #3: Corporations don’t implement strategies well
“Execution is a systematic process of…tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability..[it’s] the great unaddressed issue in the
business world today.” [Charan/Bossidy, Execution]
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Predicament #4: Employees don’t care about the mission
either• 67% of us now equate the good life with
“good for us”
• 80+% of college students aspire to be well-off financially; only 30+% interested in developing a “meaningful philosophy of life”
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Jesuit business education’s “secret weapon”: the spiritual tradition
Strategic Plan = Spiritual Exercise
Mission = To praise, reverence,and serve…
Vision = Kingdom
Values = Love, humility, self-understanding, etc
Reframe the Exercises as a personal “strategic plan” addressing corporate
America’s challenges: good for companies, good for students, and good for your school’s competitive
advantage
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Re-framing the Exercises as a personal strategic plan:
• Mission
• Vision
• Values• = Lots of reflection on
life’s “enduring core”
• = “To praise, reverence and serve”
• = the Kingdom?
• = Humility, love, self-awareness
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Exercises also imbed strategic choice and execution skills
• Making sound strategic choices
• Executing accountably
• Practice of discernment
• Detachment
• Ends before means
• Daily examen
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Companies win by getting better-equipped recruits who:
• Can navigate complicated decisions
• Can monitor their daily effectiveness
• Know their values
• Understand the concept of mission: goals larger than self
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Students win: acquire critical, modern-world relevant skills
• The challenge• Lots of job changes
• Chaotic lifestyles• Collapse of organized
religion• Few acknowledged
community values
• The antidote• Decision-making
technology
• Daily Updating tool• Establish your mission
• Articulate your values
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Jesuit Business Education wins by leveraging a unique competitive
advantage
Students draw on the Jesuit spiritual tradition to craft their personal
strategic plan as capstone of their business education
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The last word, from the patron saint of Jesuit business education:
“There are in this city 6,500 beggars…and many of these have been reduced to
begging the necessities of life….Perhaps if we had a flair for business…we could
concern ourselves more with this problem.” (P. Favre)