On the evening of September 15, 2015，Dominic Barton, Managing Director of McKinsey & Co, delivered an inspiring lecture for over 400 Tsinghua faculty and students at the fully packed lecture hall of Weilun Building at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, which officially started the 4th season of Tsinghua SEM & McKinsey Global Leadership series course. 

                        Dominic Barton, Managing Director of McKinsey & Co

The course, co-launched by McKinsey & Co and Tsinghua SEM in the autumn of 2012, won unanimous applause from local students and international exchange students with its distinguished lecturers and pragmatic, as well as compressed, contents. Besides Mr. Dominic Barton, other members of the Curriculum Review Board such as Mr. WANG Ping, Ms. YE Mei, Professor QIAN Xiaojun and Professor DUAN Zhirong also attended this open lecture. 

                   Professor DUAN Zhirong of Tsinghua SEM as the presenter

   Professor QIAN Xiaojun, Deputy Dean of Tsinghua SEM, introduced Mr. Dominic Barton

“The future is yours”

“The future is yours."This was the message that Mr. Dominic Barton, always keeping a low profile, would like to convey and emphasize as the original intention for launching this course every time he traveled afar to Tsinghua. In order to be a good leader of the future, one needs to understand the key trends of the environment and know how to respond to these changes. In addition, personal cultivation of the leader also plays an important role.  

Understand the times

With the changing dynamics of the world, an indispensable quality for a leader is to recognize the key trends of the times. Mr. Dominic Barton advised everyone to closely follow the five major trends: the shift of power impact from the west to the east, the development of disruptive technology, the ageing society, the ever closer connections between countries, and new geopolitical issues. “Africa should be put on top of your schedule”, he said. As the chairman of the African policy think-tank for President Obama’s administration, Dominic Barton has a positive view of Africa’s role in enhancing global economic growth. He believes that the Chinese enterprises can play an important role in Africa’s economic and social progress. Meanwhile, he also stated that the future would not be completely safe and sound. Rather, there might be some fluctuations as shown in the refugee crisis, because the year of 2015 has witnessed an unprecedentedly large number of refugees in the world since the World War II.

Take business wisdom seriously

How should an enterprise respond to the “new normal” created by these key trends? Dominic Barton took “city” as the unit of analysis to illustrate with examples of how an enterprise makes segmentation analysis on growth under the trends in order to spot opportunities. He further suggested enterprises make reasonable allocation of talents to ensure the organization flexibility in terms of structure and executive capacity, so that they may respond calmly to or even take the initiative to build up a more digitalized work and service environment for survival against risks and shocks.

Make oneself as an example to follow

While the first half of the lecture, with consolidated data and analysis, fully illustrated the theme of “understanding the times in order to lead the future”, what made the audience laugh with insight was the summary Mr. Dominic Barton made in the second half of the lecture, that is, of the necessary qualities for a good leader, supported by his own observations and experiences. A Tsinghua MBA alum who traveled far to attend the lecture, said afterwards that he fully agreed with what Dominic Barton said about “influence without authority”. The concept of “crossing sections”, by which Dominic Barton meant the ability to possess the expertise and insights of public sector, private sector and social sector at the same time, aroused the audience’s active participation in the question and answer session.  

Meet in 2015

The Tsinghua SEM & McKinsey Global Leadership course was developed mainly for MBA students and postgraduates of management, accounting and finance programs. The annual course is composed of 8 lectures. Instructors come from senior management of leading enterprises in different industries, such as Alan Mulally, former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ford Motor Company, Mark Wiseman, CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Doug McMillon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Walmart Stores, Inc., and Michael Spence,  recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, who all delivered one or more lectures. Besides, for each lecture there will be a senior board member of McKinsey & Co., with experience and insight in relevant industry, to interact with the lecturer on certain subject in order to intensify the effect of learning and inspire students’ further thoughts. To encourage and support constant learning of MBA alumni, the first lecture of 2015 was an open lecture. Many MBA alumni received warm invitations from Tsinghua SEM and responded positively to the course contents.

With the leader’s broad mind and the lecturer’s sincerity, the McKinsey Global Leadership course and the future leaders meet again in this fall of 2015 at Tsinghua SEM.

                Mr. Dominic Barton is giving a lecture for Tsinghua faculty and students

(By Professor DUAN Zhirong of  Department of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy)