Why Kellogg ranks among the best business schools

In Business Week’s ranking of the top business schools in the year 2000, the top three are Wharton, Kellogg and Harvard in that order. The rankings are "based on surveys of 247 corporate recruiters and 10,039 students at 82 B-schools worldwide." To the ordinary reader, perhaps Wharton and Harvard would be familiar names. But Kellogg? No, it is not affiliated in any way to the world famous cereal company, although there is some family connection. Those who are better informed, however, would know that "the Kellogg Graduate School of Management is known throughout the world for its world-class faculty and state-of-the-art technology as well as its outstanding marketing and finance curricula."

The Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois has two campuses. "One is located in downtown Chicago where there is a program for part-time people who come to do an MBA," Dipak Jain, dean of Kellogg, explains. "And then, there is a full-time program and executive MBA program in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Kellogg was ranked number one for three consecutive times – in 1988, 1990 and 1992– by Business Week, which does the ranking every two years. It was ranked number two in 1994, 1998 and 2000. The number two ranking in 2000 was very close to number one, there was almost a tie."

"Kellogg also wanted to expand globally," Dean Jain relates, "so we now have programs in different countries such as Canada, Germany, Israel, India, Thailand and Hong Kong. I am looking at Hong Kong as the base to attract the Philippine executives to come and do an executive program over a weekend. Hong Kong is only two hours away. In the US, executives come from California to Chicago, which is four hours away."

Dean Dipak Jain was a recent visitor in Manila where he met with Kellogg alumni. "Kellogg has a strong alumni base in the Philippines," Dean Jain notes. They have an active alumni club that meets monthly. Among the alumni are Philippine STAR’s Kevin Belmonte, president of philstar.com; Arthur Andersen head Cesar Purisima; UCPB president Lorenzo Tan; Ed Tordesillas, who went to Northwestern on a Fullbright-Smith Mundt scholarship, and spent nearly 20 years (1967 to 1986) as vice chairman of the Board of Investments under Cesar Virata and Roberto Ongpin; Bernie Siy, the entrepreneur behind Kenny Rogers Roasters, Seattle’s Best and Marie France; Iking and Beto Fernandez, sons of the late Central Bank Governor Jobo Fernandez; Francis Laurel, president of YKK Philippines, who got the franchise for the zipper company from his Kellogg classmate, a son of the company founder; former BIR Commissioner Dakila Fonacier, who owns Odyssey Records; Crown Equities head Gloria Tan Climaco; Asian Hospital chairman Evelyn Singson; INQ7 president Dennis Valdes and Bibsy Carballo of the Inquirer; Atherton Ventures president Trix Guerrero of the Immequire call center; UCPB vice president Teodoro Padilla; and Inland Property Brokers president and CEO Cezar Yatco.

"The purpose of my visit was to connect with the alumni. They are my resource in this country," says Dean Jain. "I want them to talk about their good experience at Kellogg. It is a great school but we don’t have high awareness. It is one of my visions to enhance the Kellogg brand worldwide. When thinking of a business school, I want people to always think of Kellogg."

Trix Guerrero is a second-generation Kellogg alumnus. His parents went to the same business school, where they were classmates of Cezar Yatco and Ed Tordesillas, even before it adopted the Kellogg name. It was in 1979 when the Northwestern University business school was given the name Kellogg Graduate School of Management after the John L. and Helen Kellogg Foundation donated $10 million to the school. Although JL Kellogg belonged to the family which owns the famous cereal company based in Michigan, he had his own business in farm equipment and machinery. Teddy Padilla, for his part, did not know Kellogg until the time he was working and was thinking of pursuing an MBA. Jess Estanislao, his former boss at DBP, advised him to consider the top five business schools and that was when he learned about Kellogg. During his time, Cezar Yatco learned about the business school from his uncle, Carlos Fernandez of Compania Maritima who was a Northwestern University graduate in 1932, the year Cezar was born. Many authors of accounting books came from there, he recalls. Dean Jain thinks book publishing is another good vehicle for branding. He is currently writing a book with Philip Kotler, marketing guru and faculty member at Kellogg. They are also producing video tapes. "So we can send this to countries where we cannot go," Dean Jain explains. "We expect the alumni to sit together and watch this so through the tapes, my lectures can be disseminated all over the world."

"Kellogg is a school that looks at management education as a whole," Dean Jain remarks. "We teach our students what I call analytical skills, business concepts and tools that you need to use to analyze business problems. Plus, we help them to focus on team work, team culture, how to work with others. We also help our people have what I call rigor and relevance. Rigor is theory and relevance is how you apply them. So we have a nice blend of management theory and business application."

Many Kellogg graduates in the US are CEOs of large companies, among them, Betsy D. Holden of Kraft Foods Inc., Harry M.J. Kraemer Jr. of the pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc., Christopher B. Galvin of Motorola Inc., Robert E. Knowling of Covard Communications Group Inc. and Don Nelson of US Cellular.

More and more, corporations are hiring non-MBA graduates, Dean Jain observes. "They let them work for three or four years and then they send them to do an MBA, such that they are able to build loyalty. When they come back, they are not as expensive as if they hire an MBA. And these people think, my company is investing in me, so they also develop that loyalty."

Another trend that Dean Jain notes is that companies are looking for shorter-duration programs to which they can send their people. "There’s been a lot of interest in one-year MBA programs," Dean Jain remarks. "That’s a major change. The two-year program is still there but my feeling is over time, schools might start some new MBA programs or an MBA-type short duration program to train people." Kellogg for its part is well-known for its innovative curriculum. It’s said that "Kellogg is a culture that reinvents itself based on what students want and need." The Kellogg executive MBA program has also consistently been ranked No. 1 in the US.

"There’s an increased emphasis on executive education," Dean Jain points out. "There are senior executives in companies who do not have a formal training in management education, so companies want to send them back either to do an executive MBA or to do some non-degree executive program. This means that management education has become a lifelong activity. It doesn’t end with an MBA. So business schools have to prepare themselves for such changes. They need to create new majors which are new concentration areas which is what the marketplace needs today. Three, four years ago, it was information technology. Now, it is bio-technology. So we need to create such new ventures– how you do management of bio-technological products or management of bio-technology."

Another new area is media management. "There’s so much information out there," Dean Jain remarks. "How do you manage the entire media industry, because we are in this information age? How do you make sure media help you become more efficient? How can companies leverage on this information, on the power of media, to become better companies?"

"The third thing, which is my personal measure, is to invest in people," Dean Jain says. "Today, the number one thing for management to do is invest in human resource. How can I make people better managers, better human beings? How to work with others; how to work in teams? The goal of management should be not only to go up but to make people want to go up with you. Their value should also go up. This is my passion."

The qualities of a good manager include communication skills, which basically means knowing how to listen; having an eye for talent; a passion for what you’re doing; and a desire for continuous learning. "In the Asian region, the management style is very much like a family-owned business," Dean Jain observes. "The head of the family makes all the decisions. It is usually based on intuition, on gut feel. It is very different from multinational corporations where most decision-making is data-based. One thing about family-owned businesses is that they are extremely cost conscious because the money is coming out of their pockets. So they have cost efficiency. Two things make people good. One is this sense of ownership, and the other is accountability. The moment you’re given ownership, then you’re accountable. You create profit centers rather than cost centers. We need to think less in terms of hierarchy and more in terms of delegation and accountability."

In hiring people, Dean Jain says the important things to look out for would be the talent the person possesses as well as the attitude. Does this person have the inclination to do the job? Also, the person should be able to work well with others, people with different personalities. They should not think only for themselves but for the community. There is something very Asian about this approach. "There are a lot of good Asian values," says Dean Jain, "such as trust." In America, people are more individualistic. The relationship is professional. "In Asia, we hug each other," Dean Jain observes. "It’s a very collective style. I call it the inclusive style. You need to include people in the decision making."

Dean Jain believes in bringing in his Asian culture in everything that he does, in his dealings with people. "I am, after all, what I am. I should not change. I always believe that you should be yourself, and you should let others be themselves." Dean Jain is Asian, Indian, and, he underscores, "Always a human being first."

On July 1, 2001, Dipak Jain was appointed dean of Kellogg, the first Asian to hold such a top administrative position in one of the top business schools in the west. It was major cause for celebration not only among his students as well as colleagues who admire him, but also back home where news of the appointment was received with much pride.

"My father said that I have brought a great honor to our family," Deal Jain relates. His hometown, Tezpura (Assam), is located in the northeast part of India near Calcutta. He is a product of Indian schools, starting from the village school where attended class sitting on the floor. He earned his degrees in BS Mathematics and Statistics in 1976 and MS Mathematical Statistics in 1978 from Guwahati University in India. "From 1979 to 1983, I taught in Guwahati University," he relates. "In 1983, I left for Dallas, Texas. I completed my PhD in Marketing in December 1986 at the University of Texas in Dallas. On January 5, 1987, I taught my first class at Kellogg." His was a fast track. For less than half a decade, he was associate dean for academic affairs from 1996 until 2001. After a brief 14 years since he started, less time than most others would take to become full professor, he became dean of the Kellogg School of Management. His new appointment is so recent, his calling card still bears his old title of associate dean. But, he says, it’s good to know where one is coming from before one arrived at the outcome. "The outcome is the sight," he says. "The process to reach the outcome is the insight. That’s where the reality is."

There is quality in the person. He is known to be very fair. "Everyone who interacts with me knows I have no ego," he says. "I take things very lightly, not in the sense that I don’t consider them serious, but I don’t consider them stressful. I consider myself not a materialistic person." In all his years living in the States, he still doesn’t own a car. He walks to school. "I don’t wear a wristwatch," he says. The only piece of jewelry that he wears is his wedding band, "only because my wife tells me to wear it," he adds with a smile. He shows a picture of his family – his eldest, a girl, eight years old; a son, five years old; and his youngest, another girl, two years old. His wife, Sushant, is beautiful. It was an arranged marriage. She was a school teacher. "In 1989, some of my relatives told my father that this was a very nice girl he should consider for me," he relates. "My father, Jagdish C. Jain, went and met her and he really liked her. So he wrote a letter to me sometime in April 1989. I was teaching at Northwestern and he said, if you have some time, can you come to see her and decide whether we should proceed further. So in June 1989, I went. I still remember the thing that made me go. When my father said that he liked her, I thought that was very important, because my father is totally blind. So it must be a big thing. I told him there was really no need for me to see for myself. We met for 20 minutes." In January, 1997, his mother, Sumitra Jain, had a stroke and died. "It was also a big stroke for the family (he is the second in a family of four boys and one girl) because she was my father’s eyes. He now lives with my younger sister."

Dean Jain is 44 years old. He has not lost his high regard for his elders. "We should listen to our parents and grandparents because they have so much wisdom," he says. "What parent would not want what’s good for their children? When you disregard them, that is not acceptable. We have to have respect for gray hair." Dean Jain believes in emphasizing core values, even in graduate school. "I’ve always believed that teaching a kid and teaching an executive are the same thing," he says. "The kid does not know anything, he is always curious and you can impart your values on them. As you grow up, you think you know everything. But as you experience the business world, you realize that there are no right answers. And you cannot do anything on your own. You need people to work with you. So you go back. It’s regeneration. I call it the concept of human renewal. I also believe that you always have to do your best in life. You should have the right intentions or the right clarity of intentions. If your motives are clear and you give it your best, it will bear fruit. That is my basic philosophy in life."