Over the last four years of the MBE, we've had 140 incredible leaders around the world on a journey towards the Next Economy with us, and there is no doubt we need hopeful, empathy-led leadership more than ever. We're often asked how the MBE came to be— and as with all things Small Giants Academy, the MBE started with a brave conversation.
It was around 10 years ago, in the early days of Small Giants’ partnership with The School of Life (TSOL), bringing its magic to Australia. Roman Krznaric, one of the creators and contributors to TSOL, was in Australia on a speaking tour about his new book ‘Empathy’. After one of his incredible public talks, Roman, together with a small group of us, went out to dinner.
During dinner, we were sharing stories of our work and in the conversation about how we could make business better, Roman suggested that what we need is more empathy in business. In fact, he said we must teach business differently. We must stop teaching business the traditional way via things like an MBA, and create an MBE—a mastery in business and empathy—doing business with the head and the heart.
It was one of those absolute lightbulb moments when we just knew what we had to do. Small Giants was at the nexus between purpose-led business, impact investing, and education and this was our calling. With Roman’s blessing, we started to work on designing the course. We researched dozens of traditional MBAs and gathered the most common elements across all of them; Finance, Strategic Decision Making, Marketing, Leadership, Economics. Then we started to adapt them to what we believe is the essence of a business education that brings the head and the heart together. We used the same framework, the same topics, but with empathy and connection at the centre.
Holding business to a higher purpose than just making money, we developed a business course that explores your inner world as well as your business, and where it all connects to the broader world and the challenges and opportunities we face in these exceptional times. To make it practical, we also brought in the hands, the action, to finally create a course that: Together we lead with head, heart, and hands to…
Incredibly, Roman is married to another superstar in the world of regenerative economics and systems change, the legendary Kate Raworth. Kate created the concept of doughnut economics, which is the core economic model we use in our MBE to understand how to do business that regenerates the environment while nourishing our human society. As well as bringing Roman’s work in Empathy and Kate’s work in Doughnut Economics, we have incorporated the work of dozens of the world’s leading regenerative thinkers in the fields of business, economics, leadership, marketing, finance, governance, people, culture, and operations, held together through the lens of the good life and the good society. People like Helena Norberg Hodge and her thinking around localism, Damon Gameau and his storytelling genius, Lorna Davis and Gayle Hardie on leadership, and Andrew Thorburn on Governance. All of these remarkable people are on our faculty, as well as many more such as Dan Ariely on human behaviour, Catherine Ingram on our inner dimension, Jay Coen Gilbert on the purpose of business, and Satish Kumar on how to live a good life. His message – live like an artist.
A mountain guide does not walk for you, they walk with you, providing tips and tricks for the journey, keeping you on the right path. That is why we created the MBE and gathered all these wonderful guides and teachers, to walk together along the beautiful, challenging, and purposeful path of business as a force for good.
