Life’s Business Plan:

Jesuit Business Education’s Secret Weapon

Discussion Outline

• Jesuit business education’s competitive advantages

• Corporate America’s predicament

• The Jesuit secret weapon that fits America’s predicament

Competitive advantage is fundamental to strategy

“Strategy is the deliberate search for a plan of action that will develop a

business’s competitive advantage and compound it.” (Porter, Strategy) …

Ramon’s corollary: focus on clients not competitors

Some competitive advantages don’t involve the “Jesuit thing”

• Location

• Reputation

• Quality of faculty

• Cost?

Other potential competitive advantages are distinctly Jesuit

• National network of Jesuit universities

• International network of Jesuit ministries

• The Jesuit “brand”

• Approach to intellectual and human formation

• National alumni network

• Spiritual Tradition

How well do Jesuit institutions leverage each advantage?

National network B

International network C

Brand A

Approach to formation A

Alumni network B and C?

Spiritual tradition D

Jesuit spiritual tradition, aka Spiritual Exercises

A lost opportunity for Jesuit business education…or not

leveraged because it’s irrelevant?

What are the Spiritual Exercises, core to the spiritual tradition

• Loyola’s “systematized” spiritual journey

• Four “weeks” of meditations on one’s own life, Jesus’ life, and one’s path in life

• Lots of stuff about hell

• Specifically Catholic

• Arcane language that Jesuits won’t change

• Idiosyncratic: one week has 12 days?

Some obvious problems with Exercises on modern campus:

• Lots of stuff about hell• Specifically Catholic• Arcane language that Jesuits won’t

change• Idiosyncratic: one week has 12 days?• “Soft stuff”: business teaches “hard

stuff”

Rubric of “Strategic Plan” might showcase Exercises’ relevance?

• Vision

• Mission

• Values

• = Our “enduring core”

• Strategic Decision-making

• Execution or Implementation

• = Our ability to adapt by navigating change

Corporate predicament, #1: No one believes in “enduring core”!

• “Vision is just a word, show me the growth”

• 76% of financial executives say they would sacrifice economic value to keep earnings rising smoothly

Corporate Predicament #2: Problems making strategic

choices

• Up to 40% of public mergers don’t add significant value for shareholders

• 45% of executives rely on intuition rather than on facts in running their businesses

Predicament #3: Corporations don’t implement strategies well

“Execution is a systematic process of…tenaciously following through, and ensuring accountability..[it’s] the great unaddressed issue in the

business world today.” [Charan/Bossidy, Execution]

Predicament #4: Employees don’t care about the mission

either• 67% of us now equate the good life with

“good for us”

• 80+% of college students aspire to be well-off financially; only 30+% interested in developing a “meaningful philosophy of life”

Jesuit business education’s “secret weapon”: the spiritual tradition

Strategic Plan = Spiritual Exercise

Mission = To praise, reverence,and serve…

Vision = Kingdom

Values = Love, humility, self-understanding, etc

Reframe the Exercises as a personal “strategic plan” addressing corporate

America’s challenges: good for companies, good for students, and good for your school’s competitive

advantage

Re-framing the Exercises as a personal strategic plan:

• Mission

• Vision

• Values• = Lots of reflection on

life’s “enduring core”

• = “To praise, reverence and serve”

• = the Kingdom?

• = Humility, love, self-awareness

Exercises also imbed strategic choice and execution skills

• Making sound strategic choices

• Executing accountably

• Practice of discernment

• Detachment

• Ends before means

• Daily examen

Companies win by getting better-equipped recruits who:

• Can navigate complicated decisions

• Can monitor their daily effectiveness

• Know their values

• Understand the concept of mission: goals larger than self

Students win: acquire critical, modern-world relevant skills

• The challenge• Lots of job changes

• Chaotic lifestyles• Collapse of organized

religion• Few acknowledged

community values

• The antidote• Decision-making

technology

• Daily Updating tool• Establish your mission

• Articulate your values

Jesuit Business Education wins by leveraging a unique competitive

advantage

Students draw on the Jesuit spiritual tradition to craft their personal

strategic plan as capstone of their business education

The last word, from the patron saint of Jesuit business education:

“There are in this city 6,500 beggars…and many of these have been reduced to

begging the necessities of life….Perhaps if we had a flair for business…we could

concern ourselves more with this problem.” (P. Favre)