AACSB SOCIETAL IMPACT ACCELERATORS
Client: Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)
Dates: October 2021—January 2023
Departments: Visioning, Disruptions, Deceleration, Resilience
The Invitation
AACSB Chief Product Officer Nick Igneri approached Solvable with his vision to build a cross-sector collective that could identify the future leadership competencies needed for positive societal impact in the private and public sectors. Given our background in building networked peer-learning spaces, he asked if Solvable could design and facilitate a process that would galvanize a collective while harvesting the wisdom of senior leaders.
Context
AACSB is the largest business school accreditor representing 1,000+ schools in more than 100 countries and more than 5 million learners globally. In subsequent years to the Accelerators, AACSB had incorporated general societal impact into their accreditation standards. They desired greater specificity of what societal impact leadership entailed, and a set of competencies that could impact curriculum, shape the standard, and create new product offerings.
SOLUTIONS
Together with the AACSB team, we designed two, three-month Societal Impact Leadership Accelerators that would appeal to corporate, NGO, governmental, and business school senior leaders. The Accelerators centered around the guiding question: “What are the competencies business schools can prepare graduates with to lead positive societal impact in organizations and systems?” The leaders contributed to an emerging body of knowledge around societal impact leadership, while enhancing their own leadership capacities. The format was online, peer-learning based Zoom sessions complemented by small group sessions and individual coaching. An Advisory Circle of illustrious impact leaders shared their work with the cohort during sessions and directly collaborated with them in working groups.
Underlying the Accelerator design was the assumption that in order to emerge a set of competencies both different from our present and distinguished from business-as-usual, the learning spaces needed to be carefully prepared to avoid reproduction. The design connected work on their inner leadership conditions with the capacity to make paradigm shifting impact in the world. The Three Horizons framework served as a scaffold from the journey so we could discern between paradigms and how competencies would intervene in the paradigm’s prevalence. The two Accelerator cohorts identified and defined seven leadership competencies that business school education should cultivate* and four competencies it should no longer cultivate and hospice**. The seven societal impact leadership competencies were later validated by market research with high-degrees of acceptance across all competencies.
*Competencies to cultivate: Co-Creation, Compassion, Depolarization, Discernment, Interconnectivity, Paradox, Self-Reflexivity
** Competencies to hospice: Comfort, Competition, Entitlement, Maximization
testimonials
“Solvable cultivated an intentional and thoughtful community among our cohort, and the work we did as a group was invigorating. Having access to such a dynamic group of thinkers and doers gave me hope for the future and refined my understanding of impact leadership.”
Sophia Rodriguez
“Participating in AACSB’s Societal Impact Accelerator, facilitated by the fabulous folks at Solvable, was a truly engaging, illuminating, inspirational, and transformative experience that far exceeded my expectations.”
Kristin Joys
“Being part of this Accelerator was enlightening for me both personally and professionally. The process allowed me to really look deep at who I am as a leader, and what I want to do moving forward to maximize the impact I have on people and the planet. The group and the discussions were incredibly motivating, and really got to the heart of what is needed to be a societal impact leader. In a career spent helping people achieve educational and workplace success, this is some of the most rewarding work I have done.”
Steve Kappler
“I believe that the impact of this initiative will reach far beyond us, just as the stone dropped in the water ripples to the shore.”
Accelerator One Participant
REFERENCES
To learn more about the competencies, our process, the cohort members, and the Advisory Circles, please visit the AACSB website
