MIT Sloan LEAD Week: Embracing Diverse Perspectives to Create Change

For a first-year MBA, the fall semester is a busy time spent adjusting to coursework, taking advantage of networking events, joining clubs, and more. As students approach the halfway point in the fall semester, MIT Sloan carves out a weeklong break in regularly scheduled programming, called LEAD week. LEAD week is a three-day program where first-year MBAs participate in workshops that cover the complexities of diversity, equity, inclusion, leadership, and ethics. 

MIT Sloan Professors and Sustainability Initiative Co-faculty Directors, John Sterman and Roberto Rigobon, led two of these engaging sessions: “Solving the Climate Crisis: The En-ROADS Interactive Climate Policy Simulator” led by Professor Sterman (with additional sessions led by Jason Jay, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer and Sustainability Initiative Director, and Bethany Patten, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer and MIT Climate Policy Center Director), and “Collective Decision-Making for Social Impact” led by Professor Rigobon.  Read on to learn more about these engaging and transformative sessions, which explored how we are better suited to combat issues like climate change when we, as a global society, value diverse perspectives.

Solving the Climate Crisis: The En-ROADS Interactive Climate Policy Simulator

“Ladies and gentleman, delegates, your attention please. Please welcome the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres!” With the pound of the gavel, in walks our very own John Sterman ready to lead a model UN Climate Climate Change Conference. In this interactive workshop, students took the roles of key stakeholders in government, business, investing, and civil society, and were tasked to negotiate an agreement to limit climate change, reaching the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, using the En-ROADS climate policy simulation model, co-developed by Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan. 

There was a buzz in the room as the delegates got out of their seats to begin negotiations with one another. Their initial policy proposals ranged from incentivizing bioenergy to taxing coal, and while they made progress they hadn’t hit the Paris Agreement target just yet. More negotiations ensued, and eventually, after some disruptive activism and testing a variety of policies in the En-ROADS simulator, the students reached the Paris Agreement goal! With their new policies in place, we saw air pollution decrease, and strong economic growth! "Congratulations, you all have built a much safer world," exclaimed Professor Sterman.

But it wasn’t easy arriving at this success. First, there were opposing interests in the room, with delegates ranging from oil and gas companies to climate activists. Students explored how to approach climate risks strategically, and to advocate for climate policies that aligned with their organization’s goals. What’s more, students learned that not all policies are created equal. While some have the potential to cut emissions relatively quickly, others are less impactful than the class expected.

One student shared that it helped to, “play around with the [En-ROADS] tool ourselves to see where we could make more impact”. For instance, the delegates tested a policy to subsidize bioenergy in the hopes that it would curb climate change, and were surprised to see it was projected to increase the global temperature (curious to learn why this was the case? Read more here). Prof. Sterman explained that, “we need to stop wasting our time, money, and political capital on actions that are ineffective, come too late, or actually make climate change worse. Instead, we need to focus on the high-leverage policies that can make a difference in time”. 

And so Prof. Sterman encouraged students to focus on what is possible: "What you see here [in the En-ROADS model], we can largely do today. We can increase the price of fossil fuels and give the money raised back to the people.  We can incentivize renewables, boost energy efficiency, and electrify transportation, buildings, and industry.… Almost everything we need can be done with technologies we have today”, and that’s important, because “it means we can do much of what needs to be done now, and cut carbon emissions before it’s too late.”

“The question is will we do it? That depends on all of you.” Sterman urged students that “there’s no one silver bullet—we have to work on many fronts.  This is good news:  whatever your skills, experience, and passion, we need you. Whether it's building a startup or transforming existing companies; whether its financing, technology, or market design; agriculture, transportation, architecture, or industry; renewable energy or energy efficiency, we need you—the world needs you."

As the session wrapped, Prof. Sterman emphasized his belief that the Sloan school gives students the skills, confidence, and risk taking ability they need to be successful in their careers, but he wasn’t talking about growing the bottom line of their future companies. For Prof. Sterman, to succeed is “to create the world you truly desire. Not just for us, but for our children.  Not just our children but for all the children. It's not going to be easy, but together we can do it.  Let’s get busy!”

Collective Decision-Making for Social Impact

Much like in Prof. Sterman’s LEAD week course, Professor Rigobon’s workshop explored how we, as a society, can come together to affect change. In his session, we zoomed out from climate change, and considered, “what is the country we want to build?” 

Prof. Rigobon tasked students with a bit of pre-work for this session: “I want you to think about the U.S., and write the ‘things’ that you feel the U.S. does not have today that you would like it to have,” such as “gender equality”, “accessible and equal education”, “incentives for renewable energy”, and so on. The students spent the session pairing up and comparing their lists with their classmates, counting how many “things” they had in common. They were then given the chance to modify their lists: they could adopt an entity from their partner’s list, or drop something from their list if the conversation left them realizing it was no longer as important to them. 

When the class re-grouped, Prof. Rigobon asked them, "How many of you changed something after your interactions?" Almost the entire class raised their hands, and privilege was a big factor. One student shared, “I realized that my initial list did not have a lot of basic gender, racial, equality items.” Another said, “in some way I'm privileged,” and after conversations with classmates, he adopted their equality-related entities into his own list. Students’ cultures also played a role in these interactions. One student shared, "I added multiparty political systems [to my list]. Having grown up [in the U.S.] it's hard to wrap my head around that, but after discussing it more, it does make sense to have better options.” By intentionally looking for commonalities through this exercise, students found they agreed on more policies than they expected. 

Prof. Rigobon urged that, “standards are going to change because you, as managers, are going to decide what is fair and what is not… What is the country you want to build? What is the organization you want to build? Write it down, and then follow those guidelines.” 

Speaking to a room full of future leaders, with the capacity to make positive change in our society, Prof. Rigobon left the students with this final piece of advice: “Don’t waste a chance as a manager to improve the life of the people reporting to you.”