François Ortalo-Magné - former Dean of The London Business School

How do you steer one of the world's most prestigious business schools through a global pandemic? What is a "leadership script"? And what happens when Bruce is introduced to "success squared"? François Ortalo Magné was Dean of the London Business School between 2017 and 2024. He successfully led the organisation through COVID's near catastrophic consequences. He has some very clear advice about how he makes decisions, how to tap into 'good luck', how to take the future into account ... and how to take your teams with you whatever decisions you make.

Key Takeouts

• Use a Leadership Script: Anchor decisions in your organisation's purpose and personal values. Francois drew on institutional strategy from LBS and principles developed during his tenure at the Wisconsin School of Business.
• Don’t Default to Binary Choices: The “third alternative” method echoes practices seen in systems thinking and decision design.
• Transparency Builds Trust: Rather than parroting "safety first," Francois and his team communicated a nuanced dual priority—resonating with an academically sophisticated audience.
• Empower the Collective: The LBS community embraced a shared mission that echoed ideas of collective action and organisational behaviour common in management literature.
• Simplify to Persuade: Referencing research on persuasion, Francois underscores the need to distil complex arguments into a few strong points.
• Tune Your Radar to Opportunity: Citing psychological research into luck, Francois explains how openness to possibility enables us to see and seize opportunity

• Francois’s decision framework (01:11–03:00)
• Research, multiple perspectives, mental models, and the use of a “leadership script.”
• Admissions Dilemma During COVID (03:01–04:30)
• Faced with major income loss, would LBS lower standards to admit more students?
• Defining Priorities: Safe and Open (04:31–06:20)
• Why Francois rejected the simplicity of “safety first” and instead embraced honest tension.
• Community-Driven Trade-Offs (06:21–08:00)
• How clarity in messaging inspired collective responsibility across the school.
• Fast Thinking, Structured Governance (08:01–09:50)
• Creating task forces with focused remits, and leveraging contrasting personalities for balance.
• The Power of Thinking Twice (09:51–12:00)
• Inspired by a meeting with the C-suite of a Fortune Global 500 company; reinforces the value of stepping back and asking again.
• Learning from a Personal Property Miss (12:01–14:20)
• A story about London housing and the anticipated impact of the Jubilee Line expansion—an example of economic foresight.
• Bending the Curve of the Future (14:21–16:00)
• Long-term investments in teaching spaces and faculty capabilities paid off unexpectedly when remote teaching became necessary.
• Think in 3D, Speak in 2D (16:01–18:10)
• Wisdom from an LBS Governor on visualizing institutional complexity and simplifying messaging.

References:

• Francois Ortalo-Magné: Economist and academic, former Dean of London Business School and Wisconsin School of Business.
• London Business School (LBS): One of the world’s premier institutions for business education.

 

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