INSEAD: How have you enjoyed your first year at INSEAD? Frank Brown: It has been a tremendous year full of very positive surprises - one of the most important being the quality and dedication of our staff and faculty. As I previously mentioned at the alumni reunion held last May, people are the most important asset for any organisation as they are the driving force to achieve set goals. I have also been extremely impressed with our campuses and how they are run. INSEAD: What have been your favourite events/times of the year and why? FB: There have been so many! I am very pleased to have brought some of

Dean Frank Brown

I can't possibly mention all of the many events held this year, but I'll just highlight a few. The meeting of the National Alumni Association Presidents in Greece was excellent and as most people are aware that I am very focused on building our brand and expanding our footsteps towards North America, the US alumni meeting and the first ever Transcultural Leadership Award Dinner, which took place in New York in April, were also important and very successful events.

INSEAD: How have you found working in France in such a diverse multicultural environment?

FB: Having already worked in multicultural environments, I need to separate this question. Firstly, coming to France to work, I received a very warm welcome and have thoroughly enjoyed this first year. My colleagues and acquaintances kindly accepted my bad French, but I must say that I am now at level three and improving every day!

The multicultural environment is very refreshing although not new to me as I was a part of an extremely international organisation for a long time and most of my activities, even outside of the office, tended to be within multicultural groups. Therefore, I would say that INSEAD is certainly the most multicultural environment that I have worked in, but not a complete culture shock and one that I am thoroughly enjoying. 

INSEAD: What has been the greatest challenge for you this year?

FB: My greatest challenge was the initial communication of some important cultural changes for the organisation, such as creating a much more meritocratic structure, evaluation and compensation system for staff and faculty members. I know there was a lot of angst around this and maybe there still is, which is quite normal as change is always hard to bring to any organisation, but it is necessary. In my opinion, change is the lifeblood of an organisation.

One other quality that I strongly believe in is people connecting with each other. It's hard to create an environment where it is second nature for people to connect with one another and think constantly about who else ought to be involved in their activities, whether decision-making, events, communications, etc. Although we've gone through some tough processes, the school has been more accepting than I imagined. My view as an eternal optimist is that we've made a lot of progress but there is always room for more!

INSEAD: You have increased communications with our alumni community by sending a regular email to highlight the school's news, activities and intentions. How helpful have alumni replies been to you in understanding and reacting to their needs and wishes?

FB: Very helpful. Feedback from alumni is extremely important. I have received many overwhelming messages from alumni who fully support our activities. One example is our centre in Abu Dhabi, I must have at least 50 emails from alumni in the region who want to help with hiring processes, provide new ideas, organise events, etc. I also receive many constructive comments about how we can improve certain activities. I'm a firm believer in two-way communication, from INSEAD to alumni and vice versa. I would like to let alumni know that  they must never think that they are taking up my time or bothering me as I value all replies to the communications that we send.

INSEAD: Considering feedback received from alumni do you feel INSEAD has made a lot of progress this year?

FB: We have made a lot of progress in alumni relations in general, which has been one of our main focal points this year. Being new to INSEAD and having built a new team, I wanted to spend a lot of energy building our relationship with alumni globally. Something that really stands out for me is the willingness of alumni to be actively involved with INSEAD activities on and off campus and in different parts of the world. There has always been a strong alumni involvement with the school and this is what we want to embrace and build on.

The relationship between INSEAD, the INSEAD Alumni Association (IAA) and the National Alumni Associations (NAA) is very good and I will continue to focus on this to make it even better, working closely with Daniel Labrecque MBA '81, President of the IAA.

INSEAD: INSEAD has created many new initiatives to encourage alumni to support the school. However, our endowment is still significantly lower than other top business schools. What actions will INSEAD be taking in order to increase support from our alumni and external communities?

FB: We are taking initiatives to communicate comprehensively on our fundraising needs, what the money will go towards and the potential impact that this could have on the school. We need to make it clear for example, that we want to create scholarships in emerging countries so that we will have an even broader diversity of participants in our programmes. This will help us in terms of quality, the breadth of the alumni network and the overall strength and reputation of INSEAD.

The same thing applies to our Centres of Excellence, for example the Global Leadership Centre, the Social Innovation Centre and the Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. If we are successful in raising endowment for these centres, this will also have a positive impact on INSEAD including its reputation and its programmes.

We also need to see alumni as investors. When a contribution is made by alumni it's actually an investment in their school. An important point which is often missed is that if someone donates to an organisation it is because they care about it. INSEAD should communicate more with people that are supporting us much more like an organisation communicates with its investors. We have a responsibility to communicate as often as possible the impact any donation makes, how it is used and how this helps the school. In the last academic year we published a full donors' report. I expect that we will continue to improve our transparency in this respect.

Similarly, other organisations or individuals (not alumni) who support INSEAD should be recognised and we are taking steps to make sure this happens. For example, we have put a process in place where we will hold a meeting or seminar once a year between our chaired faculty members and the donor of the chair to recognise them and ensure communication about their investment.

INSEAD: How closely will you be working with the National Alumni Associations (NAA) and our new INSEAD Alumni Association President, Daniel Labrecque MBA '81?

FB: As I mentioned earlier, I am committed to strengthening INSEAD's relationship with our NAAs, in close collaboration with Daniel. I meet with the IAA Executive Committee four times a year and with the NAA presidents twice a year. Over the next 12 months I will be attending more than 20 alumni events around the world.

Daniel is also taking part in various INSEAD events. For example he was guest speaker at the MBA opening in Fontainebleau for the July 2008 promotion.

INSEAD: Are you actively encouraging faculty participation in both alumni and internal events?

FB: Yes, we are asking faculty members to communicate their travel plans with the alumni relations team so that they can engage with alumni and take part in their local events. Faculty members are of course encouraged to participate in our internal events.

We are also holding events that focus on an outsider's perspective which our faculty members are helping to facilitate. A good example of this is the Leadership Summit that took place last June, where we had key business figures as guest speakers discussing the relevance of Europe.

INSEAD: What are your main priorities for the next academic year?

FB: We will focus on the plans that we have already started, these being operational excellence, development of people, development of our brand and brand strategy.

Another important area that we have heavily invested in for our alumni is IT tools such as the online directory, INSEAD Connect, which is an ongoing project and a main priority for us.

Our intention is to focus on quality and continuous improvement in every respect, which again depends very much on people.

Regarding executive education, our main focus in company specific programmes (CSP) is relationships with our top clients. In open-enrolment programmes (OEP), we will concentrate on supporting and improving relationships that are thriving and review those that are not doing so well, to replace and rejuvenate them with fresh ideas.

We held the inauguration of our Centre in Abu Dhabi on the 12th of September and the official opening of our New York office will be on the 29th of October.

INSEAD: Is there any specific part of the world that you will focus on to increase INSEAD's brand awareness?

FB: INSEAD is a global institution reaching every part of the world and this is clear in our messages. Regarding specific geographical areas, we will focus on the USA through our office in New York. We also have an initiative for Africa which is at a very early stage. We are forming a steering committee made up of alumni and other interested parties, with an objective to bring INSEAD to Africa and Africa to INSEAD. We will focus on awareness and fundraising for scholarships to create an enhanced capability for people from Africa to attend our executive education and MBA programmes. Our intention is to focus more on North African countries.

One other area that I would like to mention is our focus on Europe. We placed a lot of emphasis on Europe in the last academic year, having held many regional events where I and members of my team were present. We also sponsored the European Business Summit, which I expect we will do again, and the Leadership Summit in Fontainebleau in June focused on "Is Europe still relevant?" Europe is an area where INSEAD needs to have a stronger voice. We need to develop and communicate our opinion about Europe and become more involved in the debate about its future.

INSEAD: Your new book 'The Global Business Leader: Practical advice for success in a transcultural marketplace' will be published in early November this year. Can you tell us about it briefly? FB: Yes, the idea for the book developed during my transitional period from PricewaterhouseCoopers to INSEAD. I had started to think about my career to date, my professional experiences, what I had learnt and how I could share what had been so useful to me. There is nothing scientific about the book, it is mainly about communication, in particular how to communicate across cultures, to create opportunities for understanding and how to network and build relationships with people around the world. It also focuses on creating strong teams that know how to work together and have the right level of diversity by every definition, including thought and perspective. I had not intended to publish a book but I am very excited about the project and do hope that readers will find it useful.

INSEAD: Is there a particular message that you would like to give to our alumni community after one year as Dean of INSEAD?

FB: Yes, my message is very simple. I meet alumni who always tell me that INSEAD is an amazing place that changed their lives. They were here for one year or less, whereas I have been here a little longer than that! But I can already say that this is true. INSEAD is an incredible environment which never ceases to excite me. Even after just one year, INSEAD is part of you and your life and it stays with you. It's been a great year and I'm looking forward to the year ahead!