John Donne had it right 500 years ago. We can’t cling to an island-like mentality. To grow, prosper and succeed, we need to reach across boundaries and connect – and that’s the goal of the British Columbia Institute of Technology School of Business’ Co-operative Corporate Field School program, where students live and learn in other countries.
Prof. Mark Giltrow, program head for BCIT’s Italian Co-operative Executive Field School, explains the importance of studying abroad: “The great minds of science, law and society have shown us the degree to which our world is interconnected, and the challenges and opportunities that we must face together. There are few issues that we encounter today that are not global and multi-faceted by nature.”
Giltrow, who’s also program head of BCIT’s Sustainable Business Leadership program, cites an axiom Donne would have approved of: Think globally, act locally. “But how can we truly think globally if we have not been exposed to the global challenges and opportunities directly? By taking cohorts overseas, participants have the opportunity to see the environmental and social challenges that others are facing and then improve their own organizations to make them more resilient.”
Prof. Mark Giltrow, program head for BCIT’s Italian Co-operative Executive Field School
Granted, the island mentality has made a comeback of sorts. But with a young workforce enlightened about the value of connecting with other cultures, Brexit-type isolationism won’t last, predicts Giltrow. “The current shift to the right in many places of the globe appears to be already going off the rails. Students today, through their education, diversity and social media connections, recognize that it will be their generation, the generation of the millennials, that will have the opportunity to correct the course our generation has steered.”
Field programs like the Italian one are opportunities for the New World to discover the Old. Working with Italian colleagues, BCIT’s executive-level participants come to understand the Italian cultures, norms, principles and value of inter-cooperative collaboration.
Vicenza’s Fondazione CUOA, for example, is “one of the most active centres in Italy for the development and promotion of managerial and entrepreneurial skills in the private and public sectors,” says Giltrow.
“By travelling and seeing other approaches to similar challenges, we can learn and integrate best practices back into our own organizations. The trips also create collaboration, bonds and friendships between the participants from the field schools; these bonds can grow and mature into future business and learning opportunities.
“While in Italy, we hope to reinforce the importance of the principles of co-operation that can provide mutual benefit for economic objectives and community development. The cohort [of executives] will see how government policies can actively promote co-operative relations among firms.”
Building effective back-office collaborations
Many co-operatives in Canada, especially credit unions, are beginning to undertake the development of massive back-office collaborations, or sharing of services. Giltrow says, “We have selected partners in Italy who have decades of experience working with a shared-services model for members that can be applied to research and development, education and training, marketing and distribution, financing, technology transfer, workplace safety, environmental regulation and a host of other services that help small and medium-sized firms be competitive.”
For Sunshine Coast Credit Union CEO Shelley McDade, the idea of bringing back what you learn is the key to the future – particularly for young people who will be supporting the aging boomer demographic. They’ll need all the collected wisdom for a successful economy they can get.
For McDade, who will be attending the field school this summer, the concept of a co-operative-centric field school first ignited with a life-changing trip to Peru.
“I’m a very big co-operative fan, but that trip lit a fire in me that took my passion to a whole new level. I got to see and work with co-operatives in coffee, panela [a form of brown sugar] and chocolate. They had a credit union that supported the farmers. When I saw and talked to the people about the difference these co-operatives were making in their lives, it just reinforced for me that the co-operative model really does have a place in our organizations, and how important that model is for community and for people.”
McDade will be among the BCIT cohort in Vicenza. She looks forward to bringing home “whole lists of tools, experiences and knowledge that we can then apply both to our own credit union’s co-operative and our co-operation amongst each other.”
Echoing Donne, McDade believes it’s vital to venture beyond your own, limited experience, as comfortable as that may be. As an employer she looks for big-picture understanding in her young hires. “Whenever you step outside the bubble, you’re exposed to different lenses, different views, different cultures, different ways of doing things, different ways of thinking. Within the individual it generates a need for adaptability, a critical skill set in today’s world.”
Ideally, McDade adds, “you can apply that adaptability and the actual technical and tactical tools back in your own environment and make the wheel of prosperity and community engagement even bigger and more impactful.”
Giltrow describes the stages of each field school visit: (1) participants leave Canada with a clearly defined project plan that they developed outlining what they plan to bring back to their organizations or the co-operative sector as a whole; (2) they will visit a multitude of sites where they will meet executives with the intent of building mutually beneficial bonds and collaborations; and (3) they will bring their own wealth of knowledge and expertise to the challenges their international colleagues are grappling with in the field school country.
Sounds like a Donne deal.
Here’s more information on the BCIT School of Business’ Field Schools – including how to apply.
