Three new webinars for future enterprise leaders to boost their cultural management capabilities relevant to the real-world are being offered free by QUT Business School in collaboration with MIT Sloan School of Management.
The importance of, and how to build, organisational cultures of purpose, trust, and inclusion are the focus of the moderated conversations between talented QUT and MIT staff.
The three-part webinar series, the first starting on May 5, brings together world-renowned experts in business, leadership, transformation, and entrepreneurship to examine current attributes, challenges and opportunities that are shaping future enterprises.
The first webinar, The Purposeful Enterprise, aims to harness the skills needed to design and build an organisation that aligns with its stakeholders’ values.
MIT Sloan’s senior lecturer, Donald Sull, is listed by Fortune as among the ten new management ‘gurus’, has published six books and provides global expertise on strategy in turbulent markets.
Joining Sull, QUT’s Professor Lisa Scharoun is a multi-award-winning leader and researcher who provides expertise on the purpose of ‘design’ for organisations and how it’s “the original idea in everything”.
The second webinar, The Trusted Enterprise, will focus on interactions that foster confidence within organisations as well as external audiences to build an organisation’s value.
QUT’s Professor Amisha Mehta, who specialises in risk and crisis communication, will discuss the evolution of trust and the rise of distrust.
Alongside Professor Mehta, MIT Sloan’s Associate Professor Hazhir Rahmandad will draw on his research on good jobs to illuminate concepts of trust.
The final webinar, The Inclusive Enterprise, will explore how cultural diversity and inclusive practices can be embedded in organisations for impact.
MIT Sloan’s Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Ray Reagans, will examine how demographic characteristics such as race, age and gender affect network relations.
QUT’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy) Angela Barney-Leitch will talk through ways QUT ensures Indigenous voices are included and heard, and Indigenous cultures seen across the organisation.
The webinars will be moderated by QUT’s Pro Vice-Chancellor (Entrepreneurship) Professor Rowena Barrett and MIT Sloan’s senior director of global programs Stuart Krusell.
Professor Barrett said the webinars build on QUT’s already strong partnership with MIT Sloan to benefit both organisations’ students, staff and alumni.
“The exchange of cutting-edge ideas and sharing of knowledge developed in different contexts through these webinars creates new ways for the audience to learn and engage,” she said.
“Our shared missions to ensure future innovators and entrepreneurs reach their potential is at the heart of our collaboration.
“These webinars provide a new way for leaders to think about their organisation’s purpose and culture to embrace, create and execute positive and impactful change.”
Mr Krusell said the two schools share common goals, noting that “both QUT and MIT Sloan focus on action and impact as part of our approach to education. We are committed to ideas made to matter, ideas that people can use in their organisations right now.”
The webinars are part of MIT Sloan and QUT Business School’s multi-year strategic collaboration that started in 2019 to focus on academic exchange, innovation immersion for QUT MBA and Executive MBA students, and expansion of QUT’s entrepreneurship program through access to MIT’s global entrepreneurial networks.
The collaboration is directed by MIT Sloan Global Programs.