Global Cultural Fluency and MBA’s

Last week saw me running a series of training programmes on the world-renowned MBA programme at Warwick Business School (apparently ranked 36th in the world and 4th in the UK.)  I was helping to develop global cultural fluency and MBA’s definitely need this skill! There were a couple of remarkable things about these programmes:

• Firstly, all of the students are incredibly motivated.  They all give up successful careers and invest a lot of their own cash to take part in this programme, so they are very keen to make the most of every opportunity.  It is in turn very motivating for me to be in the company of such amazing people.
• Secondly, the group is wonderfully diverse in terms of nationality.  There are apparently around 120 in this year’s cohort from in excess of 40 different countries.  Every continent in represented and this is such an exciting environment within which to be talking about the impact of global cultural differences on cross-border working.

When I started working on this programme with Warwick Business School my sessions were positioned much later in the process but it was moved forward to be one of the earliest modules which MBA-ers are asked to look at – at the express request of the students themselves.

It was recognised that global cultural differences have an impact on just about every other module in the programme.  If you are studying global business, you need an understanding of global business culture and you need to nurture your cultural fluency.  Cultural understanding is also incredibly important when the students work together in multi-national teams on various different assignments throughout the year.

Can’t wait to meet next year’s cohort to look at global cultural fluency and MBA’s personal development.  I really think that this is a topic that all MBA programmes should focus on.