There were many speculations about why this is occurring, but one of the more interesting comments of the day was one from one of our more senior board members and instructors on the need for young professionals to practice the “art of influence without authority.” Many of the younger students in his classroom he noticed were convinced that leadership was synonymous with a position and many were struggling with issues of influence and persuasion while lacking official authority and power.

Influence without authority, on the other hand, requires a high-touch, people focused approach that involves winning people over and requires a lot of additional energy. Any manager can easily enact a new policy that forces people to change. A true test of leadership (and a situation that many young leaders find themselves in) is to produce change without the organizational and authoritative levers and power to make it happen.

The reaction from many of these young leaders is one primarily of frustration, specifically slanted towards positional authority as an end goal to producing change and becoming a leader (“if I only had the authority I would be a great leader”). Influence requires an entirely different skill-set and is one that is great (if not essential) to practice. The next time you get frustrated with your lack of authority to produce change, think about what this situation is trying to teach you and how you can practice the art of influence to win people over.

Are there times when you’ve been frustrated with your lack of positional authority? What are some additional ways you could practice the art of influence without authority?

As a result of the recession, many business schools are pondering the role they played in the largest financial crisis of our generation. One such entity that has taken bold steps to think differently about how to prepare future business leaders is Roger Martin, who is leading a revolution in design and integrative thinking at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Martin is the Dean at Rotman and has written a number of books on the topic including “The Opposable Mind,” which is one of my all-time favorite reads, and has a new book out titled “The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage.”

The New York Times has caught on to his efforts and did a great piece about Martin and Rotman’s innovative practices with integrative and design thinking in this last Sunday’s paper. The article gives some great examples about how Martin and Rotman are thinking differently about delivering a business degree and preparing future business thinkers and leaders (hint: it’s not all about how to prepare a spreadsheet). It’s an engaging read that has many implications for the future of management and how we are trained to use mental models (see Senge).

If you’re interested in the topic of business school reform, there has been much discussion on the topic in the last year and I would highly recommend the following articles:

• NYT: Is it time to retrain b-schools? (March 2009)
• HBR: The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School (June 2009)
• BusinessWeek: MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1? (May 2009)
• Fast Company: Reinventing the MBA (November 2009)

What are some other ways b-schools could be reformed? Would you want to see your business school take a multidisciplinary approach to business training? What have I left out?