Joe Gottlieb:
You’re a former business school professor, flexing the art of the possible in terms of business management at an institution. Again, i.e., for a second time…
Len Jessup:
To implement the changes I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in in universities over the years, I had to know enough about technology to understand the importance and not to do anything stupid, but man, did I have to know a lot about organizational behavior, organizational change.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s Len Jessup, a two-time University president, two-time business School Dean Long-time business school professor, and a startup investor. And pioneer Len is currently president of Claremont Graduate University, a member of the prestigious Claremont College Consortium in Southern California. And that is where he is applying his unique combination of skills and background, which I refer to as a mutation that is producing a new level of evolutionary fitness for Claremont Graduate University, while demonstrating a new strategy for leadership selection employed by boards of trustees, increasingly aware of what it takes to succeed in this era of massive change. Len has also served as president of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, as well as Dean of the Business Schools at both the University of Arizona and Washington State University. The first in his family to graduate from college. Jessup was born and raised in Northern California. He holds a doctorate in management and organizational behavior from the University of Arizona with a minor in Management information systems.
Joe Gottlieb:
He also holds an MBA as well as a bachelor’s degree in information and communication studies, both from Cal State University Chico. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to TRANSFORMED, a Higher Digital podcast focused on the new why’s, the new what’s and the new hows in higher ed. In each episode, you will experience hosts and guests pulling for the resurgence of higher ed, while identifying and discussing the best practices needed to accomplish that resurgence. Culture, strategy and tactics, planning and execution, people, process, and technology. It’s all on the menu because that’s what’s required to truly transform. Hello, welcome and thanks for joining us for this special presidential series edition of TRANSFORMED. My name is Joe Gottlieb, president and CTO of Higher Digital, and today I am joined by Dr. Len Jessup, president of Claremont Graduate University. Len, welcome to TRANSFORMED.
Len Jessup:
Joe. Thank you. Happy to be here. What do you want to talk about today?
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, I’m glad you asked. I would love to talk about your thoughts on organizational mutations leading to higher education evolution.
Len Jessup:
Okay.
Joe Gottlieb:
Before we get into that fun topic,
Len Jessup:
Joe Gottlieb:
tell me a little bit about your personal journey and, and how it has led to what you’re doing in higher education today.
Len Jessup:
Well, thanks, Joe. I love that title. Um, and as a student of organizational behavior, I, now, I’m wondering is am I the mutation? I, I guess we’ll figure that out here as we go, but I, yeah, I mean, on that to to on that theme, I shouldn’t be here. I, you know, I’m <laugh>. I come from a long line of Italian immigrants, small businessmen, small businesses, you know, by men and women. And, uh, my dad was blue collar, you know, firemen. I went to college in California, Northern California, used to play baseball, a little junior college for the first couple years. Uh, never envisioned being a university president, obviously. So that’s what I mean when I, you know, that’s the pathway. And then I’ve got faculty who encourage me along the way, and eventually I get a PhD and I find myself in academia. But yeah, technically speaking, I should not be here. I shouldn’t be in my job. I shouldn’t be in this podcast today.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, it’s great to have you here, and we’re gonna dive into why you’re here. In fact, let’s get into it. Uh, your background is interesting. I can certainly relate. And at the risk of insulting you, I’d like to suggest that you are a mutation, that your trajectory as a person has created a situation where you can bring a very unique set of skills and even more important than skills, presence to the way that you’re leading and, and create opportunities therefore, for organizational mutation. So, you know, rather than a business person being invited to run an institution, you’re not only that, but you’re a, you’re a former business school professor flexing the art of the possible in terms of business management at an institution. Again, for a second time. Tell me about that.
Len Jessup:
Yeah, it’s interesting when you frame it that way, I guess if I think about it, right? I, I, on the one hand, I’m at that level of, I, I’m sorry. Even though I’m steeped in higher ed in a long career, I sort of think of myself as an outsider to higher ed in many ways. Although, although it’s beloved to me, you know, and I, I hold what we do very sacred. It means a lot to me, maybe because of where I came from and what, you know, what it did for me and what I see that we do for people. Um, but also to your point, I’m, you know, I was the tech and entrepreneurship professor and always doing things, very applied consulting and exec ed, and, uh, helped to do a little, start a little boutique, uh, venture capital firm in, in Seattle. So I’ve, I’ve always been, you know, dabbling in things in the outside world. So that also I think gives me a perspective that’s a little different, um, for higher ed and makes me a little more impatient, maybe within higher ed <laugh> in getting things done. So I think it’s all that I think has caused me to be a bit of a disruptor, even though I, I don’t, I’m not actively trying to be that way, but I think I, I am that way and, and, you know, using Clayton Christensen’s term.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, let’s talk about that then, in terms of how you’ve applied that, uh, approach. And, and let’s talk about the evolution of, of higher education leadership and, and, you know, why do I call this an organizational mutation? Because in a world shaped by evolution, and by the way, higher ed is less and less immune to evolution, your mutation has produced significant opportunities for what evolution does greater fitness, it produces greater fitness in this case for an organization. So, so help me paint the background for that, how that’s been come about, and how you’re seeing that shape, what you’re doing at, uh, at CGU.
Len Jessup:
Yeah, I, you know, I think it’s, you think about what’s going on right now in higher ed, obviously a lot of headwinds, and that’s causing, you know, the, I’m thinking of the IPEDS database, 4,000 plus university and, you know, universities and colleges of all shapes and sizes in the country. And outside of a, you know, a very privileged view that are turning away students, the rest of us, you know, 3,900 whatever, colleges and universities we’re scrambling. And it’s hyper competitive. And, you know, we’re all in a dog fight for students and for resources. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and that’s been going on for quite some time. I don’t think the headwinds all ha ha have happened all at once. So that’s causing, I, I think, uh, you know, some universities to respond and to try to be more responsive. It’s definitely caused boards to change their thinking of about who they need to lead these organizations.
Len Jessup:
So you start to see a trend now, for example, toward hiring people like me, a business school dean, uh, that’s now happening. It’s more common. University of Utah, uh, did that from within their business school, Dean becoming president, university of Texas, two big flagships. Also, they, Texas takes their business school dean, he becomes president. I don’t know that I was the first, I think I was maybe on the front end of that wave that’s now happening more typically, the boards are figuring out, wow, this job has evolved. We need to think differently about who we’re putting into this job. So I think I, I’ve benefited from that good timing, um, of being kind of right place at the right time, I think in, in some respects. Fascinating thing I was gonna say too, you made me think that when I shifted from UNLV President down to Claremont Graduate University, not down, literally on the map, I mean, I, I moved south by about a three hour drive, uh, to Claremont Graduate University here in Southern California.
Len Jessup:
Um, that, well, that was a move in and of itself. The Chronicle of Higher ed ranked, um, university leaders that had made the sort of most high contrast move that year. And they had this quantitative ranking. And I happened to have gone from a big public to a small private, from an all access institution to kind of, of an elite school part of the Claremont Colleges. Um, you know, so, you know, so a big change in many ways. And they did this ranking, and I was ranked number one on their list of people who had made the, the most high, highly contrasting kind of move. Um, but I think that’s also a sign of the times, right? This little elite private, this board thought we need to shock the system. We need something different here.
Joe Gottlieb:
Interesting. I’d love to see that algorithm, by the way, to see how they came up with that. But I, I’m not surprised. Yeah.
Len Jessup:
Joe Gottlieb:
To know that you’re number one. You know, you mentioned boards and boards. The area of board evolution is an interesting topic these days because because of all the disruption in higher ed, the, the necessary changes, the difficulty in changing the complexity of harnessing digital, um, in a way that’s gonna work well, uh, for, uh, a higher education organization. All these things are producing new forms of, of, um, of requirements for governance and, and for, for, for leadership and for evolution, all this stuff that we’re talking about. So I’m just wondering, you know, what your perspective is on, on how boards are becoming more educated about these things and accomplishing perhaps a, a shift in perspective. I, in your case, you, it sounds like you, you were in a position, you were in a situation that benefited that, you know, some from some recognition there. But my, a lot of my background is in the information security world. Yeah. And the boards are still learning how to deal with information security at the, at the enterprise level and how to provide governance that’s sensible in this world where cyber is so critical to risk management and the viability of any organization. So, wondering what your take is on how boards are evolving.
Len Jessup:
Evolving. Yeah. So I’d, I could go back a little bit to think about my background. I think I just, I benefited from, you know, the PhD was in organizational behavior, minor in information systems. I, and I had, and I had a little bit of tech in me before that. And, you know, then when I came out, there just weren’t a lot of jobs for management professors at that time in 1989, way more opportunities to be an information systems faculty member. So I had to lean on the minor area and I was just, you know, just technical enough to be dangerous. Mm-Hmm. And so then, then I, you know, my, my research agenda was all about, you know, technology-enabled organizational transformation, technology-enabled changes. And so, like I, when I was at Indiana and the stint in the Kelley School, that was about teaching MBA students that the internet’s about to happen.
Len Jessup:
And that’s gonna have huge implications for you as a business leader. Um, you know, there’s gonna be this thing called electronic commerce that you need to get ready for selling electronically or implementing enterprise-wide information systems like now, uh, you know, Oracle and, and PeopleSoft. And, you know, that’s all coming. You need to get ready for that. These are gonna be huge, weighty, heady decisions for you. And then that, that shaped my research also. And it was, what, what are the effects of these, these technological innovations on people, on organizations, on jobs and those kinds of things. So that shaped the career. And I’m putting, I’m pushing building state-of-the-art classrooms. And, you know, and then as I got into leadership positions, I, I’m starting to think about online learning and all that programs and Dr, you know, technology enabled change. So back to your point of the board, this board I think, saw that body of work and, and said that we, we need that here.
Len Jessup:
We know, we know technology now is, is it’s so critically important and it’s influence everything. We, like the background of this guy, not only is a disruptor, but there’s a pretty good, you know, pretty high level of knowledge around technological innovation there. That, that this guy probably is a good fit for what we think needs to happen next year. So I, I think, you know, boards are, they’re aware enough that, uh, of the important role technology plays that I think they’re, they’re looking for that also, is this a person that understands, they don’t have to necessarily be a technologist, but, but can they harness technology to help this university get to where it needs to get to?
Joe Gottlieb:
I think that’s the key with the way you just said it, right? Because to, to hunt for real technology, you know, experience and depth and orientation that could go too far, right? That could, that could get into technology for technology’s sake. And I think all industries have wrestled with this a little bit as they’ve adapted to the importance of technology, but also the evermore increasing importance of leadership <laugh>, right? Like, so this is all a balancing act of how do you get the right set of things in a person that’s gonna be really effective at leading. But I agree with you, increased comfort leading in a digital world is a really important part of the list. Yeah.
Len Jessup:
Uh,
Joe Gottlieb:
In any industry.
Len Jessup:
Totally. I mean, I think about to implement the changes I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in, in universities over the years. I had to know enough about technology to understand the importance and not to do anything stupid, but man, did I have to know a lot about organizational behavior, organizational change.
Joe Gottlieb:
Well, and so let’s, that’s a good segue to my next question for you, which is now you got, you know, you, you wind up in this school, it’s a smaller school. So you, you know, I imagine some of that feels, um, you know, exhilarating to be able to bring things that you’ve done and scaled at a larger level to a smaller organism that you now can have some fun with if I, if I take some liberty there, right?
Len Jessup:
Yeah. But,
Joe Gottlieb:
But so how are you, how are you driving this situation and, and really leveraging this sort of leadership momentum to, to innovate at Claremont Graduate University?
Len Jessup:
So the, I mean, to to start where you started with the question <laugh>, it’s definitely been fun being here. ’cause I, I went to big Public, I taught at Big Public. I, I led big Public. I mean, the whole career has been large public comprehensive universities. So this is my first stint, you know, period at a, at a private, at a small private to boot. So it’s been a fun now just finished up five years and now, now beginning into my sixth. And it’s been fun refreshing at how nimble and entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial this kind of an organization can be. Because you sort of think it’s not possible in higher ed. It is. I mean, I, I think of us as a, you know, if you think of the comprehensive, big, comprehensive public as the battle group that you’re trying to position, you know, into, into, into the, into the, the theater as it were.
Len Jessup:
Um, you know, this is, we’re like the li we’re the little PT boat. We’re not even a destroyer <laugh>. This is, we’re just buzzing around <laugh>. We can turn on a dime, we can launch a program, you know, quickly, immediately. We change price. It’s dynamic pricing. I mean, we use a discount rate every day. We’re changing the price. Um, so that’s been, you know, in terms of the organizational form, really fun and refreshing for me. And, and, and it, and definitely suits me well, uh, you know, for kind of how, how I’ve been built to lead, I think in a sense. So then it’s that, that’s then manifested in a number of ways here. An example is that when I got here, you know, we, the model here was built. This is, I always joke, these Claremont colleges and CGU in particular were like an Ivy League, but with better weather and, and, and an Ivy League.
Len Jessup:
And you think about an organizational form. I mean, you think Ivy League, I think you get the impression of what that organization looks like. That’s kind of how we were not quick to change, um, resting on laurels, um, you know, not feeling the need to change or to innovate. Um, built on a model of small, intimate seminars, great faculty, beautiful campus, you know, be beautiful spot here in Southern California. And we launched two fully online <laugh> degrees when I got here that, and that was like, talk about, you know, diametrically different from what this place had been about. But thank God we did that because I was here for about 18 months before Covid hit and the lockdown happened. And if we had not done that, we, we would’ve been in a world of a hurt because for, because we had done that. We already had instructional technologists and instructional designers, and we had a learning management system and all of that infrastructure and that thinking, and the faculty buy-in that was already all in place because then, you know, overnight that March of 2020, we had to go all the way online, fully everything in remote work.
Len Jessup:
Um, and another one was we built, and I had done this before at prior institutions, but we built a classroom of the future here with, uh, the partners were View Sonic and Acer, two great Taiwanese, uh, computer companies. And built this beautiful, totally flexible, movable classroom with the big, you know, the giant onic view boards. They’re on wheels. You move ’em around the room. And, uh, we had laptops from Acer, if people needed them, we had Steelcase furniture. You can refi, reconfigure that room on the fly to be whatever you needed to be. And, and to be able to work remotely, learners or whomever could be outside the room, and you could bring them inside the room in real time. Again, thank God we did that <laugh> when I got here, because that, that literally became our war room as we were heading into Covid, and we were training up faculty to go home and staff to work remotely. Um, people would come in and ma with masks on or even be, or their home. And we’ve got them coming in, you know, remotely on the big view boards. And that, that was in about a week that, that classroom of the future was our war room to get to go into then the lockdown. And here in California it lasted for almost two years. So those were a, a couple of new muscles we started flexing here early, and thank God we did, boy did it pay off.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. It’s, it’s, I hear so many interesting stories about the, the oftentimes good fortune that schools had in getting a couple things just right enough, right before Covid hit. And that proving to be a big part of not only their, their survival, but their, the acceleration of their ability to do different things, to do, to, to change, to, to use technology, um, to do their bidding. That’s where technology should be, right? It should not be confusing us. It should not be scaring us. It should not be dictating to us.
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
It should be enabling us. And, and, uh, it sounds like you’ve got just one of those stories there that, that that has come to bear.
Len Jessup:
Yeah, exactly. Uh,
Joe Gottlieb:
You know, it, it, it also makes me think about, um, just, well, what, what kind of makes me wonder what kind of new programs are you, are you, are you seeing as possibilities given how you can direct this little PT boat?
Len Jessup:
Yeah, we’re definitely, we’ve become, I think here at CGU much more externally focused, externally facing, right? That it’s the awareness and that it’s okay to talk about here in higher ed. It’s okay to talk about markets and demand and partners and externally and stakeholders. That, that, that that’s okay to talk about that. And, and that in fact, then we’re leaning in, leaning out and we’re, you know, we’re thinking about those opportunities that drives new programs, uh, that we’re doing. We typically try to do them in partnership with somebody if we can. We do, we tend to do them in high demand areas. So we’re, we’re guided by the Department of Labor forecasts, you know, that, that, that the, that the, the, the great jobs in the future generally fall in areas, in the areas of tech quant and health. So we try as much as we can.
Len Jessup:
We try to make sure that the new programs fall into those areas. We do some things outside of those areas. If we think it’s a niche we can fill well here, especially in Southern California, that the 20 million people in this market that we serve directly, um, and then, you know, we’re, and, and we’re performance based. We’re we direct resources away from programs that don’t have that kind of demand, and we’re not achieving a standard of excellence. And, and then as somebody retires, we’re gonna divert those funds into programs where we have demand and we know that we can do things well. We can, we can meet, you know, a standard of excellence in those programs. And the faculty are leaning in and helping. So, I mean, just organizationally that I, we shifted even just in five years, I think we’re thinking and acting differently. And then, I mean, there’s, and there’s many examples of those.
Len Jessup:
I can go into the things we’ve done with partners, new programs that are outside the box for us, thinking and thinking, shifting our idea about how we, how we serve value to, to, you know, to, to, uh, pockets of demand. Like the professional doctorates that we’re driving are a good example of that. Um, but I mean, just in terms of the organizational ethos, we’re, you know, definitely more performance-based, externally facing, think thinking about how we’re adding value, um, partnering up with people where it makes sense and it makes sense in almost every case. It’s a, it’s a different, it’s a different way of functioning for sure.
Joe Gottlieb:
And that must translate to some reasonably objective prioritization. Like, what are you not gonna do? Right? And Yeah.
Len Jessup:
And
Joe Gottlieb:
How do you, how do you let the things that make sense happen? And how do you make room for those things by removing things that aren’t happening?
Len Jessup:
Yeah. Is
Joe Gottlieb:
That fair?
Len Jessup:
Yeah. It’s de it’s definitely performance based and da data-driven decision making. Um, and, and the difference I would say here is I, I see some of my colleagues and good friends or uni university presidents that go through a process. It’s like the focus on the negative. Let’s just focus on the negative side of it. What are the programs that aren’t doing well? And let’s, you know, use shared governance and run a process to identify those programs and go through a very public closure of those programs. And it almost never works. It’s so, it’s so difficult to do operationally, um, because, because you’re just, you’re just inviting opposition to that. But it also, in terms of the organizational ethos, you’re focusing the organizational on the negative. Mm.
Joe Gottlieb:
And
Len Jessup:
I’ve had much more success focus focusing the organization on the positive. Where, where’s the demand? Where are the opportunities? You know, what, what can we be doing new? How can we repi programs toward those opportunities? Ra you know, rather than doing sort of the, you know, the public closure process.
Joe Gottlieb:
So we
Len Jessup:
Have programs that we’re diverting resources away from, but, uh, but it’s with much more of a focus on, on where, where do the opportunities lie for us?
Joe Gottlieb:
I love that point of emphasis because it, it reminds me of a classic pattern in business, right? If you’re just cost cutting, that’s really negative and it creates a lot of just bad
Len Jessup:
Turmoil,
Joe Gottlieb:
Mojo in the organization, right? And yet, if instead you are identifying the ideal things that you’d like to have your have in your business, and some of those might be net new, and then you’re thinking cleverly about, alright, how do we arrange our resources to be able to do that, to pursue those things that are
Len Jessup:
In
Joe Gottlieb:
Demand and fit our strategy and our mission and things like that. And then in the presence of those exciting opportunities, making room for those things becomes a positive act. I think that’s what you’re saying, right? Versus a negative act.
Len Jessup:
Yeah. It’s, that’s a great way you did the dichotomy. ’cause it’s much more strategic, number one, it’s much more productive, number two. And man, does it make organizational change easier? You know, number three.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. Particularly if you also have a situation, and I’d love for you to react to this, to to, to test its validity, but where you’re, you’ve got trust, you have relationships, you do, you do treasure your team, and you’re looking at ways that they can evolve to do these new things. Not looking for reasons to get rid of them and try and take gambles on net new is, I mean, is that, I don’t wanna put too much detail in your mouth mouth, but, but, but when, when, when you, when you’re open to evolution, when you’re, when you realize the hard thing to replace our trusted relationships, the easier thing to, to replace or make different is how you’re aiming the PT boat, right? Yeah. That unlocks a lot of possibility. Is that fair?
Len Jessup:
For sure. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It just makes it, it, it makes the work a lot more fun. But yeah, I’d rather, if I’ve got a group of faculty that’s in an area and I’ve got a lot of tenured faculty, that’s, there’s not a lot of demand there. I’d much rather have a conversation with ’em about how to pivot, right? Tell me how you guys think you can pivot towards something where you can, you can satisfy a demand rather than me having a conversation with you about how do I wind down this department, um, and and move you guys into retirement. I, I, yeah, I’d rather have the former conversation than the latter.
Joe Gottlieb:
Absolutely. And then that translates to, it’s like when you, when you hear these stories about, well, there’s a, it’s a cla classic pattern. When you reimagine your organization around some new services you want to deliver or new capabilities, you’re like, all right. You know, the, the concept of everyone’s interviewing for their jobs again, but, but you turn that into a positive, just saying, Hey, we’re, we’re gonna do this more efficiently with this new information, this new context, but we, we need all of you to do it. In fact, we’re gonna need more than this when we earn that, right. To add more. But it’s like redeploying, redeploying replacement headcount. I, I I, I encounter a lot of great stories about people that had the foresight to learn enough about what was possible, and then commit to redeploying replacement headcount to make that the way that they’re gonna make it happen. Um, yeah.
Len Jessup:
Versus
Joe Gottlieb:
Freaking everyone out be, because there’s gonna be, even, even even 1% cuts, 5% cuts. It’s just, they’re so different.
Len Jessup:
Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly.
Joe Gottlieb:
Alright, let’s keep this evolution theme going. You know what? Yeah. Yeah. What, what sort of path breaking activities are, are helping to evolve the state of the MBA, like, so we’ve, we’ve talked about the organization and its evolution and what it’s pointing out, but what’s the state of the MBA look like and how’s that changing?
Len Jessup:
So let me just sort of set the, the broad brush strokes first, and then I’ll say a couple things about the NBA. So some ex quick examples just to kind of rapid fire partnership. We’ve got right next door to us, very successful Western University of Health Sciences, um, you know, doing a variety of, of health related degrees. And they’ve got their osteopathic rather than allopathic. So instead of MDSs, they do, doctor of osteopathic medicine, DOs with covid. They knew they needed their doctors to have a better handle on, on public health and epidemiology. So we, their students now come over and enroll in an online version of our master’s in public health. So it’s dual enrollment across the two organizations, and it’s working out great. We’ve already got about 50 of their students that are, that they’re medical students that are simultaneously doing our online MPH.
Len Jessup:
Uh, there’s a good example of a partnership, um, another one about sort of think a partnership where it’s talk about different business model. I’ve done so many different online programs at so many different institutions, and I mentioned that we started two when I first got here. We’re working on that MPH Now, in order to take that to a whole nother level of quality and excellence online, I’m partnering with who I think, uh, the, the school that’s doing online best, Arizona State University. And based on my longtime friendship with Michael Crow, his team in, in Ed Plus is helping us to rethink and redo, rebuild our online masters in public health. So that we’ll be able to offer an even better version of that for those Western students. And it’ll be open to ASU students and the rest of the world to go through a state-of-the-art Masters in Public Health, a high demand area.
Len Jessup:
Um, and then one other example before I mention the MBA, um, we’re all graduate and we’re heavier on PhD than master’s and most of our PhD trainings for people to go into the academy to to be faculty members. That’s how the training is built. We noticed we were getting a lot of people coming to get PhDs from us, but not wanting to go into academic. They wanna go into industry, into government. They wanna go run a school district. They wanna run the, you know, they, they aspire to run a gallery like the Getty. ’cause we’re, we’re, you know, comprehensive. And so we’re leaning into that. We’ve got now about 10 professional doctorates coming four that just launched, and there’ll be about five or six more for next year that lean into that concept that that’s what that learner really wants from the doctorate. So the design principles on that were, you gotta crunch it down to like three years.
Len Jessup:
You got, you can’t, you know, it’s not gonna be a, a original research, a 500 page dissertation. It’s gonna be applied, applying research, short, punchy, it’s, you know, solving a problem. Uh, don’t kill ’em with the comprehensive exams. We’re trying to get people through here. Um, and then leaning in with a working adult on the modality. So that’s another example on the MBA, we’ve already done the short-term changes. We shortened it. That’s what, that’s what the, the market wanted heavy dose of humanism and Drucker principles that the market was telling us they, that they didn’t want so much quant. They wanted that humanistic, humanistic approach. And then we’re working on one now where I’ve got a, uh, an outside group actually outside the country telling us, what if we wanted it with a heavy dose of government and, you know, training the next, you know, the next generation of governmental leaders for our country. Could you customize something like that? And our answer is yes. Anybody asks us a question like that. The answer is yes. We, we will make this MBA program be what you need it to be. And so, I mean that, again, examples of I think being much more, um, open externally focused, you know, and, and, and, and keeping opportunities, markets, clients, partners in mind.
Joe Gottlieb:
Fascinating. I, it’s, uh, I so those, just to repeat, right? So, so, so shortened, which really opens up a lot of possibilities as you already named to pair it with something.
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
Uh, as a dual, a dual enrollment, dual degree type scenario. Love that packaging. Um, humanistic another great team’s humanism.
Len Jessup:
Yeah. Drucker, principles leading, leading people, understanding yourself as the leader. And that the whole point is that you are leading people, the organization’s point the role of the organization’s. Peter Drucker, right. Functioning society
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. Role
Len Jessup:
The organization’s to serve as a benefit to society. It’s a, it’s a different way of thinking about an MBA.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yep. And then third, something that partners well with the, the, the shortness and the packaging flexibility is just open to potential applied specialization. Right? So this customization that you mentioned, but to do that, um, so how do, how does that work? Um, is that, is that a way, an opportunity for you to gather some folks that are kind of close enough to a discipline to be able to help you with that customization? How does that work in practice?
Len Jessup:
Yeah. I mean, like for that one, this, this client that we’re working with, it’s a government in another country that because we’re so small and nimble, I think, and we, and we we’re transdisciplinary and we cut across boundaries, we’re able to go over to the, the faculty and government policy and say, look, this is what they’re asking for. You guys are already doing these courses. Would you mind doing a version of them that we would package with this? Because we’ve sh you know, we’ve shrunk the program down. We got room to fit this in. And those, of course, those faculty say yes. We say yes to the client. You know, that’s, you know, this is about being externally facing and really taking it seriously is when those opportunities come, when those questions are asked from a client, your answer’s yes, <laugh>, yeah. Let’s just work out how to do it. But the answer’s yes.
Joe Gottlieb:
Wow. I love this. This is like, what, what I’m, what I’m, what I’m hearing is this is a really, uh, evolved architecture for how a program can, can, can address need, right? And, and so you’re literally looking at, okay, wow, if we make it shorter and we make it a little, a little more modular and interchangeable, it can, it can incorporate these, these injections that allow it to be applied in a particular specialized way and all those things, particularly if we embrace less and less of the classical model orientation and more and more of the applied, um, the applied expertise and leadership and, and sort of agility concept.
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
That’s what this is. That’s what’s going on with the future of the
Len Jessup:
Md. Exactly. We’ve got like a quick example in our information systems school. They’ve got a, an artificial intelligence concentration, and you can weave it into the master’s or the PhD or into the new professional doctorate. And the question was asked, what can I marry that with an MBA yes. <laugh>? And somebody else said, can I just do the AI part of that as a certificate? Not even as a, as a degree. The answer is yes, <laugh>, of course, we we’ll do that. Somebody wants that. We’ll do that.
Joe Gottlieb:
Interesting. Uh, and it’s, it’s a, it’s also an openness to market demand and, and it’s not, not overreacting based upon the classics and the structure. It’s, it’s, you know, this, this lesson that you, you highlighted earlier about what you experienced going from the big public to the small private, and how you suddenly felt so able to make changes happen more easily. It’s a great lesson for those that are, that don’t have that background Yeah. And maybe don’t fully appreciate the agility potential their small organizations have. Yeah. And that Wow, if we could bottle that up and help others
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
Apply it, that would be something too.
Len Jessup:
I, I think we can, I mean, I’ve driven big, you know, big changes at big institutions as well. So it’s not like it can’t be done. And the lesson this taught me was, wow, at, you know, small and private where you’re, you’re reducing size and you’re reducing rules and regulations and barriers and silos. It does get easier. It’s in some ways it’s quicker. But I think there are, there are things that you can take from that, that apply, you know, to the bigger institutions as well. I, it is just, you know, for me, if I was back at a big institution again, it would just, it, it would be about transparency. Let’s just all get around the table together from different areas and just be brutally open and honest, candid with each other about what we need to do or where we need to go. ’cause that it’s, you, you do that a lot in a small private, it’s harder to do that in a siloed, big research university, but it can be done.
Joe Gottlieb:
Yeah. It’s a great point. I think it is the, one of the singular most fundamental things that come for free. Um, if you’ve got a leader and a team that is going to drive that kind of behavior, right? Yeah. And the scale ha isn’t so large that it makes, it, it, it presents difficulty for that. You’re right. It, it can be done, but boy, it, it, doing it at something large, uh, increases the level of capability and aptitude required to accomplish it at that scale.
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
Um, you mentioned transdisciplinarity, and I love this topic. I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m new to the topic, but let’s talk about how that approach, which is really, really baked into what CGU is all about, right? Um, helps you do some of these things.
Len Jessup:
Trans-disciplinarity is a, it’s a, it’s like next, next level up from interdisciplinary, the notion that interdisciplinary, like when I was at WSU and running the entrepreneurship program, we’d mash up engineering students and their capstone projects with business students who were majoring in entrepreneurship. And they would, you know, they’d work on business plans together. One, one domain, another domain, stick ’em together. Tr that’s interdisciplinary. Transdisciplinary is that your, your whole ethos and how you, you approach a problem or an opportunity is you’re, you’re, you’re above, you’re, you’re operating above domains and disciplines and boundaries, learning and thinking about things without limits, without bor, you know, borders without boundaries. That’s been in the DNA for a long time here. Students are at the, at the small level, they’re required to take AT course, a transdisciplinary course, at least one. And so any given semester, we got a bunch of these t courses that are offered by faculty.
Len Jessup:
And they’re so cool that students end up taking more than one. They’re, because they’re in interesting courses and interesting ways to think about the world. Second level is that way more higher of, um, preponderance of students who marry disciplines together here. And I think it’s because of the T courses and our openness toward this. Like, I, there are, I, I can’t remember the percentage, but it’s a very high percentage of our MBA students that do a certificate or a concentration out in another area because they got exposed to it and they like it. But way more of that happening here than I’ve seen at Big R ones and Aus. And then at the, and at the high level, it’s like with the new building, we’re building the Kagan building. We originally called that Davin, the DaVinci concept, because it was a, because of our transdisciplinarity, it’s a mashup of the School of Arts and Humanities and some things from the Drucker School of Management that all that get mashed up together in a building. So it, it runs through everything we do. That’s what, that’s what we think of when we say transdisciplinarity. And it’s what the world needs now. You can’t, you can’t solve, you know, the grand challenges without, without rising above a single domain or discipline.
Joe Gottlieb:
I love it. I wanna, I want more of that for sure.
Len Jessup:
It’s,
Joe Gottlieb:
Uh, it’s
Len Jessup:
Really
Joe Gottlieb:
Cool. It’ss simultaneously exciting, interesting, compelling and, and practical, right, for this world that, uh, in which we find ourselves with so much change happening.
Len Jessup:
Yeah.
Joe Gottlieb:
So we’ve talked also about edu edu uh, evolution and Mutation. Let’s, um, let’s try to summarize. So, so what three takeaways would you, would you offer up our listeners on this massive topic that we’ve been playing with organization we mutations? Yeah. Leading to higher education evolution.
Len Jessup:
I’ll try to, wow. Let me try to take, I like the word mutation. Lemme try to, and I think about that, like the biological concept applied to organizations. And just play on that for a minute. You, I think, and if you think about everything we talked about, I think number one is, is especially given the way, I think things are turning against higher ed in terms of the, you know, the value, the value proposition around higher ed, you can see that shifting in the United States right now. And, and it’s evidenced in polls about how people think about higher ed. So, so that’s number one value. Um, and I won’t say impact, because impact could be negative or positive. I’m gonna say value that you gotta, are we adding value? What’s the value proposition of higher ed right now? And if you are, if you are leading a university or college right now, and you are not relentlessly pursuing your notion of value, the value you create for the world, then I think you’re, you’re off the mark.
Len Jessup:
Yeah. You’re the, you’re an organism within a system. Are you, are you parasitic <laugh> or are you enabling? And are you adding value that you’ve gotta be in the degrees, that it’s a transformational experience? And those people then go out in the world and they transform the world. They are, they’re adding value. And in the research and, you know, scholarship and, and creative activity that you’re thinking about, that the, the value that that provides to society, it’s gotta be, it’s gotta be demonstrable. And that has to be the way you think about how you govern, you know, the institution and the mechanism. Relentless pursuit of value. So if you buy into that, then then number two falls right out of it. We talk about being open, open system in terms of a mutation. Are you an open system or are you a closed system? You’ve gotta be open.
Len Jessup:
You’re thinking about markets, you’re thinking about demand partners, stakeholders. ’cause I now, ’cause now I wanna add value to them. I gotta listen to them versus being a closed system. And you’re insular and you’re thinking, which higher ed class has been, it closed insular systems. We talk with each other about what to do next. And then if you buy into all that, then you as a mutation, you know, as a biological mechanism, you need to be responsive to what you are learning from outside the system. So you need to be innovating and be creative, right about what you are doing. You’re responding to, you know, what you’re learning and sensing outside the organization. So value, open, innovate, and for fun. I’ll throw in a fourth one. Yes. You gotta say yes. Be willing to say yes.
Joe Gottlieb:
I say yes. I love it. It’s, um, it’s a great way to think about the universe and, uh, wow. Love the thoughts you’ve shared here. Len, thank you so much for joining me today.
Len Jessup:
I’m so glad you asked me to do, to do this, Joe. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you. And I’m gonna, we’ll have to think about this. There’s probably something we can write about here, <laugh> from these concepts.
Joe Gottlieb:
I would enjoy that very much. Let’s do that. And I wanna thank our guests for joining us as well. I hope you have a great day, and we’ll look forward to hosting you again on the next episode of Transformed.
