A peer-learning cohort, est. 2017 — where deans and senior leaders work with peers on live challenges.
The role of a dean is increasingly multifaceted and complex. The context is shifting, the learning environment more diverse and demanding than ever, and the questions facing management education cut deeper than any single institution can answer alone.
The Deans & Directors Collective is a small, evolving group of senior leaders who have chosen to think with peers rather than work in isolation. Since 2017 the cohort has gathered — in person and online — to bring whole-person attention to the live challenges of leading a school in this moment, and to the deeper inquiry of what management education is now for.
There is no curriculum, no faculty, no deliverable. The agenda is shaped by the participants and the issues they are carrying.
Participants share what they're working on and what they're working through. The Collective offers honest dialogue, the chance to test thinking with peers who understand the role from the inside, and a longer-term relational fabric to draw on between gatherings.
What this enables:
The practice is grounded in the I → We → All of Us arc that runs through GRLI's work: starting from the leader as a whole person, working through what becomes possible together, and holding the question of what this serves at the ecosystem level.
Participants submit a short intent note — the challenge you're carrying, and what you hope to learn and share. The cohort shapes its own agenda from the collective energy and emergent issues in the room.
Sessions are hosted in turn by participants — sometimes in person, sometimes online. They are highly interactive: peer dialogue, small-group work, harvesting insights and commitments. Progress over presentations.
The most recent online series, Wise Innovation in Practice, was hosted by SPJIMR — read what the Collective learned across those two sessions.
"This wonderful professional development opportunity helped us drive strategy in our respective institutions and launch an innovative collaborative course."
Dayle M. SmithDean, LMU College of Business, USA
"Since the cohort, we have embarked on articulating a vision of what the faculty of a leading business school operating out of an emerging market should look like."
Olayinka David-WestDean, Lagos Business School, Nigeria
In-person gatherings have been hosted by participants across five continents. Each one shaped what came next. Photo albums from each gathering are linked below as they become available.
Online · hosted by SPJIMR, India
Hosted by Stellenbosch Business School
First gathering
Selected papers, reflections, and tools that have emerged from or been drawn on by the cohort. Use them, share them, build on them.
Deans and senior leaders engaged in transformative change in their institutions and in management education more broadly. Participants come from well-established schools and from fast-rising institutions across the global south. Diversity of geography, institutional type, and experience is part of how the Collective works.
Deans are encouraged to bring a learning partner where possible — an Associate Dean, Centre Director, or Advisory Board member who can carry the work back with them.
There is an indicative contribution towards in-person gatherings, with reduced rates for participants from the global south. Details are shared as part of the application conversation.
If the questions resonate and the practice fits, we'd welcome a conversation about whether the Collective is a fit for you and your institution.
Or contact John North directly at john.north@grli.org
The Deans & Directors Collective is one of several practices through which the GRLI Foundation holds and activates its inquiry. It operates in the spirit of our I → We → All of Us arc — the leader as whole person, the strength of what becomes possible together, and the responsibility to the wider field that follows.