Cass MBAs Bring Their Ideas For Change To Whitehall
Cass Business School MBA students played a role in re-imagining the UK civil service through a new voluntary project. Three teams of MBA volunteers took up the challenge to present recommendations for improving the Cabinet Office’s image to Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
This was the first time the Cabinet Office has invited MBA students to undertake a consultancy project in this way, and was an exclusive opportunity for Cass Business School.
The teams were free to explore the issue from any angle – one group focused on accountability whilst another looked into how civil servants could increase transparency. The third group explored Cabinet Office culture. They carried out a cultural survey on their MBA classmates that mirrored an internal Civil Service one, to compare outside perceptions with actual employees’ views.
Using the cultural change of GE under CEO Jack Welch as a case study, they created a chart of shortcomings with suggestions for how these could be resolved. After six months of preparation, the Cass EMBAs and MBAs were invited to Whitehall to deliver their report directly to Francis Maude and discuss their research findings with Cabinet Office staff.
“I was thoroughly delighted to be able to work on such an opportunity to test some of the skills I had learned on the MBA,” said Keshiv Prabhakar, course representative for the EMBA 2013 cohort and a Senior Quantity Surveyor at Faithful+Gould.
Click here to read more about the project and the students’ Whitehall visit.
