6th Annual BMDA Conference "If Ever … ": Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders

Citation

Gaile-Sarkane, E. (2008), "6th Annual BMDA Conference "If Ever … ": Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 3 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bjm.2008.29503cac.001

6th Annual BMDA Conference "If Ever … ": Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders

Article Type: Conference report From: Baltic Journal of Management, Volume 3, Issue 3

The 6th Annual BMDA Conference “If Ever … ”: Growing Tomorrow’s Leaders – was held on 8-9 May 2008 at ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius, Lithuania and brought together more than 100 leaders and professionals from academia and business from 19 countries all over Europe and beyond.

By tackling various leadership issues Professor Peter Lorange, former President of IMD came up with the most critical leadership challenge – creation of symbiosis between innovative thinking and practice. By turning thinking on the issues of growing new leaders a lot of questions were contested. How do we motivate and lead the new generation? What are the key aspects leaders have to keep in mind to ensure that there will be suitable people to continue the leaders’ work when their time is due? What has been done so far and what could and should be done in the future? What could be the role of schools in the process of educating the new generation of leaders?

Mr Wilfried von Rath, the Vice President of Human Resources Top Management of Volkswagen Group, presented experience of Volkswagen in Germany in growing tomorrow’s leaders for whom the money is not the only choice for employment anymore. There are a lot of new different drivers for employment attractiveness, including brand leadership in the market.

Participants also learned about the role of genes in leadership. Professor Oyvind Martinsen form BI Norwegian School of Management presented very interesting research results on this topic. On the premise that the methods of heritability research are valid, at least 30 per cent of the variance in leadership occupancy is explained by genes, but some of genetic influence on leadership seems to be shared with personality traits. The traits of conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness for experience are particularly important. Scores on these traits may indicate talent on leadership; however, much of the variance is explained neither by genes, nor traits. Therefore, inheritance is important for leading, but still we should look for the talent and train them.

As usually, conference participants enjoyed “BMDA Learning Café” where all delegates discussed different leadership challenges at the round tables. Conference members showed attractiveness and imagination during their debates. Innovative approach was used in presenting outcomes of these discussions, as well.

During the second day of the conference diverse leadership topics were covered in three parallel sessions. Representatives from academia and business shared their points of view during hot discussions. Many actual topics were covered starting from leading stars to ongoing succession planning, from cognition and motivation to driving excellence throughout the organization.

The parallel sessions were divided in three tracks. Professor Alfons Sauquet, the Dean of ESADE Business School (Spain), covered very topical questions about dilemmas of planning and about feminine leadership during the session “Succession Planning and Sustainability”. Afterwards, Ms. Aneta Jajkowska, HR Manager Baltics from Microsoft Lietuva (Lithuania), shared the IT industry experience in developing of strong and capable leaders’ pipeline in the organization.

In the parallel session “Leading Stars” Professor Jens Aaris Thisted, Vice Dean of Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) gave profound overview of problems what are common in academia leadership – how to manage people who are smarter than you? The insight in CBS organization structure, program management and experience template were presented. Insight in practical usage of Talent Management Program was presented by Ms. Gunita Smirnova, HR Manager Baltics from Deloitte Latvia. She shared the company experience in talent management landscape, future development of this program as well as challenges of the coming decade. She stressed that: “Companies like to promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating and retaining talented people as they were a decade ago. Short-term perspective is often a major problem, which diverts top-management attention from long-term issues such us talent sourcing and career development. Since investments in talent intangibles are expensed rather than capitalized, executives may try to raise short-term earnings by cutting discretionary expenditures on people development”.

The session “Keeping Your Staff on Board” was very attractive by sharing two almost opposite philosophies of leadership. Professor Kai Peters, CEO of Ashridge Business School (UK) presented research projects what have been done and the challenges faced by the school in the leadership. Questions about teamwork versus individualism, assessment of others and the loneliness of leadership were tackled. Mr Paulo Peereboom, Country Managing Director of Rimi Lithuania shared his experience in leading employees of Rimi. The ideology of the presentation was based on important factors for management of large number of functional level employees. Some of statements were: “Managing own job well – leads to satisfaction. This statement doesn’t work vise versa”, and “do not look for stars… look for loyal employees”.

The following conclusions have been done during the summaries of the parallel sessions: “Today’s leadership demands an ability to adapt personal style to achieve the maximum effectiveness. In organizations what are forefront of new ideas and at the same time with a lot of traditions leaders must learn to take different approaches to suit the various needs of differing situations. They should create a productive place for everyone to work well together.”

Dr Ichak Adizes, a world famous Leadership Guru provided a perfect summary for the conference discussions by his closing key-note speech. Dr Adizes provoked participants to look at leadership from different angle helping to better understand the real essence of leadership phenomenon.

The conference provided opportunities for participants to experience the implementation of leadership theories and served as a good platform for exchanging experiences and best practices. It also was an interesting meeting point for business and academia, as well as a forum for fruitful debate and dialogue.

Elina Gaile-SarkaneRiga Technical University, Latvia