MBA insights strike a chord with students in high school

John Polanyi Collegiate Institute, a high school in the northern reaches of Toronto, is a long way, in more ways than one, from the city’s downtown financial district.

Yet if Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management is right, the lessons in problem-solving and decision-making that John Polanyi’s students are learning could be as valuable as an MBA – perhaps even more so – in equipping the teenagers for corporate boardrooms and other leadership roles.

An assignment handed out last month to a class of 17-year-olds vividly illustrates what Prof Martin is trying to achieve in a widening “integrative thinking” partnership between Rotman and the Toronto District School Board, whose 600 schools makes it the fourth biggest such organisation in North America.

Split into four teams, the students were asked to identify problems relevant to their daily lives and then work their way to the best possible outcomes. They chose the following topics: should you listen to your heart or your mind in a broken relationship? Is it better to be in a relationship or to stay single? Should you prioritise yourself or society? Should you do your own thing or fit in with your family?

In the search for answers, the students were encouraged to pepper their teammates with questions and ideas. But there was a twist: they were allowed to use only positive arguments to bolster their point of view. For example, in choosing between heart and mind, they could list benefits, but not drawbacks, that each course of action might bring to the troubled partners and their friends.

The aim, as summed up by one student, was to “create our own solutions by combining the best of both worlds”.

Integrative thinking “might end up being the most important thing the Rotman school does”, says Prof Martin, who is so emotionally involved in the initiative that he was teary-eyed during a recent presentation by John Polanyi students who took part in the school board’s pilot project.

The concept rests on the assumption that while there may often be right and wrong answers in the classroom, the solutions to real-life problems are seldom written in black and white.

As Prof Martin sees it, the most effective leaders tend not to choose between competing options, but instead use the tension created by different ideas to generate even better solutions.

“Good decision-making” he says, “is not about ‘making the tough choices’ but rather refusing to choose when no good option presents itself.”

Prof Martin is confident that the lessons on leadership taught in Rotman’s MBA courses can be equally and perhaps even more effectively inculcated into a younger, more impressionable generation.

Rotman began its thrust into high schools three years ago with a voluntary pilot project at Branksome Hall, a girls’ private school in Toronto. A group of 14 and 15-year-old girls were asked to come up with answers to issues that might arise at a charity camp for underprivileged children.

“My first reaction was that their solutions were unquestionably of equal quality to what our MBA students come up with,” Prof Martin recalled. “What’s the difference? The MBAs are 12 to 13 years older and they’ve had six more years of formal education. What does that tell you about the six more years of education? That didn’t make them any better.”

Branksome has subsequently folded integrative thinking into teaching materials for English, civics and history classes, among others, from Grade 8 to Grade 12 (the last year of high school).

Rotman has provided training for the school’s teachers as well as its entire administrative staff. It has also put on courses for teachers at several other private schools.

The public school board signed up for a pilot project last autumn. It chose John Polanyi because the school is located in Lawrence Heights, a neighbourhood that has drawn large numbers of immigrants from a dizzying variety of countries and is bedevilled by poverty, crime and other social challenges.

“We wanted to give the students another way of making decisions with this problem-solving option,” says Manon Gardner, the board’s chief academic officer.

Jennifer Riel, associate director of Rotman’s Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking, adds that “part of the reason for going from private to public schools such as John Polanyi was that we didn’t want it to be available only to those who could afford to pay. If you want to be transformative, you have to be broad-based.”

The idea of a business school becoming involved in high school education has not always been welcomed with open arms. Ms Riel says some teachers and parents have questioned Rotman’s motives. “What’s their agenda?” has been a common reaction.

Rotman has so far heavily subsidised its work for the school board. The board has paid about C$20,000 for the pilot programme at John Polanyi as well as introductory training for school staff and senior board officials.

On the other hand, Branksome pays a fee of about C$500 per pupil for its 13-week, after-school programme. Rotman charges C$6,000 a head for its three-day executive education course.

The integrative thinking curriculum aims to help teachers and students focus less on the solution to a problem than on the process of arriving at a solution.

“It’s stepping away from the certainty with which we teach these kids,” says Ellie Avishai, a Rotman MBA graduate and former trainer who now directs the school’s I-Think initiative. “It’s helping students imagine what their job is as learners. Is their job to solve the problem or to ask what they’re missing?”

In one of Rotman’s first projects at John Polanyi, pupils addressed teachers’ concerns that many of them were habitually late for class.

Instead of devising new punishments and rewards, Ms Avishai guided the pupils towards ways of improving accountability for their actions and instilling a more caring attitude.

The exercise began with a survey on the reasons for poor punctuality. The students were surprised to discover that a clear majority of their peers said teachers were too lenient with latecomers. Close to 90 per cent of the 60 respondents admitted their parents would be upset if they knew about their poor attendance record.

The students’ recommendations for resolving the problem centred on closer parental involvement in class-attendance issues. If they were late for school, the students suggested that the teacher should phone their parents. They also proposed that the school should hold “open-house” days when parents could sit in on classes.

The transformation in attitudes from reward and punishment to accountability and caring “could have knocked us over with a feather”, Ms Riel said.

According to Ms Gardner; “Are we trying to create students who constantly contest and push back? No. Now they feel that they have the tools to use to get to better solutions.”

Participants in the integrative thinking project, she says, feel “they have an advantage over other students. They have a ticket in their pocket.”

Rotman has broadened its work at the school board to include short integrative thinking courses for senior managers, who tried it out to resolve a budget issue.

And several of the board’s 35 superintendents have now asked for their schools to be included in future integrative thinking projects.