The Mindful Manager
Strategy-making at the top
Discover below how Kevin is working with the Lancaster MBA on this module.
Module leader: Dr Peter Lenney
Duration and timing: throughout all three terms, from Induction onwards
The Mindful Manager module is concerned with your development as an aspiring senior manager and with building the skills you will require to perform effectively at the most senior levels. Because it deals with the fundamental behaviours, attitudes and processes that underpin management, and is designed to reshape your thinking, it runs as an integrating thread throughout the MBA programme.
The module deals with the art and craft of ‘managing’ as a social and political practice. The focus is on process – that is, on the ‘how’ of managing, not on ‘what’ is being managed. The aim is to help you to develop the self-awareness, critical thinking skills and team-working competences that are vital to effective managing.
Strengthening your cognitive and collaborative skills
From the induction period onwards, we seek to kick-start your self-development and rapidly enhance your capacity to learn from experience. In partnership with executive training companies, such as Human Factors International (HFI), we will deliver training in the cognitive, deliberative and collaborative skills vital to success in senior management positions and that prepare you for the forthcoming challenges of your MBA.
As teams and as individuals you will be practising and reflecting on how to interact and work with one another to maximise your effectiveness and productivity. You can also take advantage of personal psychometric testing, and repeat this at intervals throughout the MBA to determine how your own skill-set and preferred managerial style may be shifting.
Developing your managerial judgement
Within the module you will also have a unique opportunity to examine strategising and strategy through a live case study with a top CEO, in which you potentially contribute to the actual strategy deployed by the business.
Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, makes four visits to the MBA, spread over the period from January to August. In the first of these four workshop sessions he will introduce you to the company’s scope of activity and its key strategic issues. In the second you will be given access to latest company data, and on the basis of this information you will be asked for your recommendations, as a class, on the top ten strategic priorities for the year ahead – which he will then evaluate with you and compare with his own set of priorities for the company. In his third session he will revisit those priorities with you, reporting back on action taken and facilitating discussion of the various environmental and other factors that have impacted upon the company’s goals.
In the final session, after the summer projects have been completed, he will present his personal take on the skills and motivation needed to be a top company leader.
Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts on the Lancaster MBA
In this video, we follow Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi, as he teaches the first of his four workshops.
Building your capacity to reflect and learn
In addition to the intensive periods of experiential learning, we will be drawing on all the other experiences and activities you have during your time here at Lancaster – whether in other taught modules, projects or any other part of the Lancaster MBA – and encouraging you to exploit all these experiences as process-learning opportunities.
You will be required to keep a web-based reflective learning log, and will have a personal tutor to help you in the process of evaluating and drawing out your learning.
In this video we follow students on one day of Lancaster's Mindful Manager programme, on which the students reflect on their experience and assess how their team working and group behaviour have developed over the past year.
Assessment
Three main elements:
- a series of 12 reflective learning log entries, completed at intervals through the year
- four collaborative learning exercises (prepared and presented in teams)
- development of an online CV
