Georgetown McDonough’s Dean: 4 Ambitious Goals For The Next 5 Years

Paul Almeida: “Everyone talks about purpose now and everyone talks about business as a force for good. But that’s a part of our DNA, the idea of values and the idea of business serving the common good.”

P&Q: So much of the discussion around entrepreneurship is how to be prepared to fail. What are your plans for Georgetown’s entrepreneurship curriculum?

I think in a dynamic, inherently uncertain world, our kids need to learn how to take risk differently and view the future and possibilities differently and learn how to fail and pick themselves up and keep walking. We have to prepare them for that, so I’d seriously like to do a course where at least at the midterm level, they all think they’re failing and have to still figure out the way ahead.

Business schools don’t teach them how to fail. I am especially thinking of the kids who’ve come here, 73% or some huge percentage, I’m not sure, are valedictorians. They have no concept of if something doesn’t happen quite to their expectations, what to do. “The world’s falling down!” Oh, you didn’t get the Goldman Sachs job? “There is no future in life!” That kind of thing. That’s not going to be what we should be teaching them. We need to be teaching them to enter unexplored landscapes and figure some of it out while they’re going and be able to work with incomplete information — and not say, “I’ll do the perfect analysis and now I’ll act.” Even the mindset for managers in big industry is going to have to change, let alone startups, again for the common good.

Another program we are looking into, and we haven’t started but we’ve identified the person we want to launch it, is the business of health. As you know, health is a huge business whether we like it or not, and let’s face it, could do with a lot of business and management and leadership thinking in healthcare.

What we’re trying to do is in these areas — sustainability, health, entrepreneurialism — have a master’s program as well. Why? Because that’ll straightaway change the conversations. We hire more faculty in these areas. They still might be from finance or strategy or marketing, but as dedicated to health or as dedicated to technology or as dedicated to sustainability. What we’re in fact creating is a matrix. Of course, I’m not taking away any of the traditional disciplines because that extends way beyond me. It extends to all the top schools of the world. But I can allow and encourage people to think of themselves differently so that simultaneously they focus on what students will need, and I think that melding will take place over the next five years and it’s already started.

P&Q: That’s more than enough to keep you busy.

I hope it is, because otherwise I lose interest.

P&Q: So once this five years is over then back to the classroom full time?

Yes. Definitely. I promise you that.

I’ll tell you something. About three years and three months into my term, they asked me to write something to be considered for renewal. I think they were trying to hurry it on and I said, “It’s really early.” “Just write up anything.” Then I said, “I have to think about what I want for the future.” I’m now in my late-50s, it was my middle-50s then and I thought about it and I said, “I love my job. I believe totally in what I’m doing here, but I’ll always wonder, should I have been a university president? Should I not?” I applied to two places, I reached the finals in both, I was offered the job in one and I told them honestly that I’m not sure whether I want the job or not. I’m checking myself and fit and so on. Then I realized I didn’t really want that. I like this job. I like the location. I like the school. I like being dean because of the interaction with students, and I didn’t want to deal with some issues presidents deal with.

I just feel alive over here. I know that’s selfish, but I felt I could be most useful here. My wife wasn’t too keen on moving, to tell you the truth. We talked about it and I said, “I’ll do five more years because we are on this trajectory that I really believe in.” There were eight deans in the 20 years before I took over, and I said, “There’s too much turnover. A new person would come in, try to do something, leave, then we’d have a one-year gap to interim.” I said, “We didn’t make enough progress because of that,” so just to have that continuity, it’s important. But I love teaching. I’ve got some good ideas. I don’t have the capabilities, but I have some good ideas for future research.

I’d like to do a little more other stuff as well. Maybe finally play some real golf! I don’t know. I think I actually will be a very happy faculty member, but I’m glad I went through that process of saying, “Do I want to be a president? Do I want that thing?” And I discovered I didn’t and my wife didn’t, more to the point.

DON’T MISS: HOW GEORGETOWN BECAME A LEADER IN SUSTAINABILITY or TO RANK OR NOT TO RANK: DEANS’ CONCLAVE DEBATES MERITS OF B-SCHOOL RANKINGS

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