Business leaders face a world that is much more dynamic and complex than in the past. Business education needs to reflect this. The content becomes less important than equipping students with skills and tools for the “unknown unknowns”—those challenges they will face in their careers that we don’t know about today.
How can undergraduate students prepare better for leadership roles in business and non-profit organizations? How can higher education include new contents and new teaching models to enhance learning in these areas?
In 2012 the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management launched “Creative Complexity: Preparing for Leadership in a Dynamic World”, a two-year pilot project led by me in my capacity as Undergraduate Program Director to include new topics into the undergraduate curriculum.
Together with accomplished international facilitators, Frankfurt School has developed and run the following ten modules:
- Change Yourself, Change the World
- Leadership from Within
- Leading Through Personal Influence
- Learning Change: Unlocking Your Immunity to Change
- Personal Presence: How to Communicate with Confidence
- Story Telling and Content Strategies for Personal Branding and Corporate Marketing
- Successful and Agile Collaboration
- The Three P’s of Public Speaking
- Using Video as a Communication Tool
- Working With Media and Crisis Communication
All workshops took place outside of Frankfurt with up to 30 students to create a unique and very intense working atmosphere. In addition to the modules, the School ran a Writing Lab, a Speech Lab, and a “University Survival Training” as part of the incoming 2013 Bachelor cohort’s immersion program.
The project was jointly funded by Frankfurt School and by the European Social Fund through the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and the Arts of the State of Hesse and had a total budget of about € 280,000.
The videos
We filmed at most of the workshops—sometimes ourselves, sometimes with a professional camera crew from IVY Film. They also produced the final video with impressions and statements from participants. There are two versions: a short “teaser” (2:51 minutes) and a full video (9:25 minutes).