On 11 March 2026, we convened the second GRLI Council Pulse—this time in an APAC‑friendly slot. This reflection is therefore selectively sanitised: we focus on the learning that can travel, and we avoid attributing sensitive or contentious points to any individual.
Pulse exists to complement GRLI’s “scattered together” way of working. Much of the time we meet the field where it already gathers—inside EFMD, AACSB, PRME, and many other nodes in the ecosystem. Pulse is the monthly rhythm that helps us connect the dots across those dispersed conversations—turning what’s emerging into shared meaning, mutual support, and (where possible) coordinated experimentation.
1) A shifting climate: from momentum to “defensive conversations”
A strong theme in Pulse #02 was a growing sense that responsible leadership and sustainability work is moving into a more defensive posture in many institutions.
Wayne Visser put it plainly:
“It’s kind of weird to be in the space where it all seems to be like a defensive conversation now… everybody’s backtracking on this, there’s no longer budgets for this.”
That observation resonated as a pattern rather than an isolated case: a perception of tighter budgets, organisational caution, and competing priorities reshaping what is possible in the near term.
The underlying question we held was not “how do we market sustainability better?” but something more strategic: how do we adapt our language and pathways without losing the integrity of the work? As Wayne framed it, that may require “change the language, change the approach, change the focus”—including leading from adjacent frames like innovation, technology, and futures thinking, rather than asking institutions to start with ESG as the headline.
2) Change management is now the work (everywhere)
If Pulse #01 surfaced institutional volatility as a lived condition, Pulse #02 sharpened the point: change management isn’t a side project—it’s the operating environment.
Andreas Kaplan, President of Kühne Logistics University (KLU), shared what this looks like inside a fast-evolving institution spanning multiple geographies. His description carried both ambition and the emotional complexity that comes with redistribution of attention, resources, and identity.
The learning on this suggests that purpose is not enough; you also need an internal story that helps people metabolise change. Without that, the same initiative can be experienced as opportunity by some, and as threat by others.
3) “Double down” — but on rewiring the rules, not winning the race
John’s reflection responded to the sense of setback by naming a deeper necessity: if the current moment feels more difficult, that may be exactly why we need to get more serious about shifting the underlying logic of business education.
“Yes, things are actually worse right now than it’s ever been… and because of that, it is doubly important… to actually experiment with new ways of doing things that rewires the systems in which we operate.”
Rather than scaling “excellence in silos,” the invitation was to work on the rules of the game—how success is defined, rewarded, and reproduced.
One concrete example surfaced from current GRLI work: in Impact Innovation Circles, there is an emerging willingness to pursue experiments that benefit participants while also carrying an explicit expectation that learning should travel—so improvement is not hoarded, but shared.
This connects to a wider structural question raised in the call: at what point do ecosystem mechanisms (such as standards, accreditations, and recognitions of excellence) require that learning be made useful to the whole system?
4) Hope as a discipline (not a mood)
In a time of heightened uncertainty, hope came through as an essential leadership practice—without drifting into naïveté. This framing matters because it normalises “backlash” as part of change, not as proof of failure. It also invites us to read the current moment through a longer arc: progress rarely arrives as a straight line.
The group also touched on a useful systems lens: resistance can intensify when an incumbent system senses it is losing ground. Whether that proves true in our current context remains to be seen—but it reinforces why Pulse exists: to stay oriented without becoming reactive.
5) The emerging generation: hope, risk, and the need for relationship
A further nuance surfaced around younger generations:
“Those who know they need to survive for another 80 are completely ‘in’ on sustainability.”
At the same time, those on the call acknowledged (in non-attributed terms) that political polarisation appears to be intensifying in many contexts, including among younger demographics—raising the stakes for how institutions cultivate critical thinking, civic maturity, and shared reality.
The response was that it is less about “winning arguments” and more about rebuilding the conditions for collaboration:
“How do we cut across a growing polarisation by holding space for co‑enquiry and experimentation… unless we hold that space, we don’t have the legitimacy…”
This leaned into a theme that feels increasingly central: the need for relational intelligence—the capacity to relate across difference, and to work with complexity without defaulting to tribalism.
6) What collaboration can look like now: distributed campuses and distributed MBAs
One of the most generative parts of Pulse #02 was a practical exchange on cross‑regional collaboration.
Andreas described KLU’s global strategy as a deliberate shift away from a Hamburg-centric model toward genuine partnership with local institutions—and he was candid that this has required a mindset change.
Early on, he noted, it’s easy for expansion to be framed in a familiar way: we have resources, so we invest. Over time, KLU’s approach has evolved into something more precise (and more honest about what’s really needed): we can carry risk—and use that capacity to support local institutions and enable what they are already trying to build.
Crucially, this is not a satellite model. Andreas emphasised that KLU’s work in new contexts is always structured as collaboration with local partners—for example, through the emerging partnership with the University of Johannesburg. And the long-term aspiration goes further: he hopes that Ho Chi Minh City, Bogotá, and Johannesburg will increasingly work with one another, rather than always “reporting back” to Hamburg. In his words, the ideal is to break the old hierarchical dynamic—because “Hamburg or Germany… [is] always going to block in a certain way.”
Implicit in this vision is a powerful inversion: these contexts are not peripheral outposts. They become equal sources of innovation and learning, shaping the network from multiple directions—so that the flow of ideas is lateral, not just top-down.
A closing reflection: small rooms can surface big patterns
Pulse #02 was small, and therefore especially useful. It surfaced a pattern we expect many in the GRLI ecosystem will recognise: a tighter climate, more defensive institutional dynamics, a growing polarisation risk—and simultaneously, a need to keep experimenting with designs that rewire how business education learns, shares, and collaborates.
If you are a GRLI Partner or Associate and want to plug into Pulse, consider joining a future session and bringing three things: what you’re sensing, what’s keeping you awake, and one experiment worth sharing.
Pulse is not a reporting call. It’s where we build coherence—together.
