Carolina Dams is an accountant, completed her studies at the London Business School in the UK and holds a PhD in Business Administration from the IAE Business School. She founded and directed startup accelerator and consultancy firms, specializing in venture capital, and is now the dean of the IAE Business School. Last week you received a delegation of executives studying at the London School. They wanted to know how inflation is handled.
-What he said? Clarin asked.
-50 Executive MBAs from the London Business School came to learn with us how business decisions are made and how to operate in such turbulent economies, with a view to creating value. I told them that running a business school is also difficult. Because if you think that the year started with an inflation projection of 55% and ends at almost 100%, all decisions have been contested. Planning processes, everything is different in a context with a lot of uncertainty.
– Is value created in this context?
– It is not necessary to think only of maximizing profit, minimizing costs and the tax burden. In Argentina, the challenge is that many companies are actually fighting for survival. There is a permanent challenge to find solutions to specific problems beyond the economic function of minimizing profits or losses. Value creation comes from working with ecosystems, with value chains, with suppliers, customers, with government. You have to sit at a table bigger than the corporate one, to find solutions.
-War and inflation in the world, how do they affect business?
-There are structural changes in many sectors. Social uncertainty and geopolitical tension have increased. We were with Harvard professors and you feel that geopolitical tension with what is happening in Europe with the war and with the impact within the company, with its supply chain and distribution networks. All that is technological has generated enormous challenges with the acceleration brought by digitization. There are black swans the size of cybercrime, which is already as big as drug trafficking. To that we add inflation.
-What do you recommend to your students who are senior leaders?
-Resilience is a characteristic of the entrepreneurial world. The companies and the Argentine businessman are resilient and therefore successful in the world. And that resilience is financial; Companies must be able to support themselves in times of crisis, operationally, have the flexibility to minimize impacts, technologically, thinking about stronger and safer infrastructures. From an organizational point of view, with this huge challenge we have to attract talent. And in reputation. In the United States we say “walk the talk”, that is, not only expressing what we want to be, but doing it.
-What do your students ask?
-They seek to strengthen leadership skills. The IAE has expertise in adaptive leadership, a leadership style for such contexts. Today the leader is a coach. He must have the ability to attract talent, to motivate a team. We are all from the national team and football, that role of Scaloni, the motivating leader, is clearly seen there. This is what is needed to address these problems, which are challenges of adaptation to complex problems.
What characteristics do these types of situations have?
-That there is no single solution to a problem, it is built together and requires a leader open to that inclusive dialogue, which sometimes faces tension. The tension of disagreeing because the way forward is not clear and they have to convince their teams to create innovative and original solutions. That leader must have the ability to attract talent who bring diversity to the conversation.
Source: Clarin
