As dean of one of the world’s best B-schools at a time of crisis, Dipak Jain drew on a quality every manager should have: the ability to anticipate.
For a man who has risen so high as a business educator, Dipak Jain says with a trace of wonder that he sometimes reflects on how his circumstances could have been so vastly different. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint
New Delhi: Dipak C. Jain’s first big responsibility as dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University was to welcome the incoming batch of 2001. He was 15 minutes into his presentation to an audience of 600 students when an aide interrupted him and whispered something in his ear.
“I was told that there has been a terrorist attack on US soil and I would need to shut up before the cellphones start ringing,” Jain, 58, recalled in a recent interview on the sidelines of the Coimbatore-based Isha Foundation’s annual Insight: The DNA of Success programme for entrepreneurs.
The first plane had just hit the World Trade Center on a day that has come to be known simply as 9/11. It was certainly not a propitious beginning for the newly appointed dean of a business school consistently ranked among the world’s best.
Jain realized quickly that he had a crisis on his hands. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would have a fallout on the US economy, jobs would be at risk and placements for Kellogg’s Class of 2002 wouldn’t be easy, he reckoned. He drew on a quality he says every business manager has to possess: the ability to anticipate.