Repurposing Leaders to Attack Social Problems
FROM SUCCESS TO SIGNIFICANCE: Kanter (at left) with several of this year’s ALI fellows.
Photo by Jodi Hilton
Baby boomers of the world, arise! Calling it “an opportunity to deploy people to fix the world’s problems,” HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter launched the Advanced Leadership Initiative — a program she cofounded and implemented — at a December event at HBS at which she introduced the ALI’s first cohort of fourteen fellows. Ranging from a former U.S. astronaut and a former Venezuelan health minister to a former IBM international executive, the fellows — all in their 50s or 60s — are now spending a semester at Harvard in the second month of a yearlong program. They are drawing on the University’s academic environment to plan and prepare for field-based initiatives they will launch to confront global and local problems in areas such as education, health, and the environment. Their Harvard experience will complement the skills and wisdom the fellows acquired during their “first” careers in the public and private sectors. “People who have accomplished a great deal during their careers are uniquely suited to lead and to envision solutions to big problems,” Kanter said.
The ALI is designed to enhance and leverage the skills and experience of already-accomplished leaders. It will prepare them to make an impact on public life through, for example, leading a cause campaign; establishing a foundation; running for political office as a way of tackling a large social problem; or engaging in social enterprise. Its fifteen core faculty members intend for the ALI’s innovative new curriculum — “life-stage appropriate and taking experience into account,” as Kanter put it — to serve as a model for other colleges and universities to give experienced executives “an education pathway to their next years of service.”
Kanter was followed by Harvard Kennedy School professor David Gergen, an adviser to several presidential administrations. Gergen cited polls that reveal Americans’ deepening discontent with the quality of leadership across the board among all institutions. But Gergen added that he is optimistic about young people from 18 to 29, citing their high energy and entrepreneurial spirit. Combining those youthful traits with the wisdom of baby boomers is a pairing of forces and generations that the ALI seeks to advance, at Harvard, through mentoring and study groups involving fellows and students, and in the outside world as well. Said Gergen, “Let’s encourage an intergenerational dialogue about the world.” For its part, he noted, the older generation is ready and eager “to move from success to significance.”
Fellow Dr. Donald Arthur, former Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, felt that his generation “relaxed” after the Vietnam conflict and that it was time to get back to work to make the world a better place for succeeding generations. In the 1960s, Arthur said, he saw how a movement could begin: “One or two stand up and thousands come along. Individuals can make a difference.” IBM’s Hans Ulrich Maerki, a Swiss native, commented, “I hope that when we talk about leadership, we talk about globalized leadership between countries and generations.” He added, “Maybe I can bring something to the table, but I’m here to find out what.” Former astronaut Charles Bolden said he hoped that one day people might say to his children, “ ‘Your dad helped change my life.’ I’m searching for that.”
An interdisciplinary Harvard initiative, the ALI began to take shape in 2007, thanks to Kanter and HBS professors Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana who designed it with the help of faculty members from across the University. Currently sitting with Kanter, Nohria, and Khurana on the ALI’s executive board are HBS professors Bill George, Allen Grossman, and Forest Reinhardt.
Noting that the ALI could one day include as many as fifty fellows a year, Kanter declared, “We expect to define a new field. This is not just a transition vehicle; it is a new approach to knowledge about leadership.”
For more on the ALI, visit www.advancedleadership.harvard.edu/.
