Jonathan Berman is not your typical business school academic.A former investment banker turned educator,he brings hard-earned experience from global markets into the classroom at London Business School. In this edition of “Five minutes with the faculty,” Berman reflects on the changing demands placed on today’s leaders, the lessons he wishes more executives would learn sooner, and why a nuanced understanding of risk has never been more vital. From the shifting dynamics of emerging markets to the ethical pressures facing global corporations, he explores how business education must evolve to keep pace with a volatile world-and what that means for the next generation of LBS graduates.
Exploring global leadership dynamics in the classroom with Jonathan Berman
In Berman’s lectures, the MBA classroom becomes a live case study in shifting power, culture and influence.Rather than treating geopolitics as a backdrop, he places it at the center of decision-making, asking students to dissect how CEOs recalibrate strategy when a supply chain crosses sanctions regimes or when elections redraw regulatory maps overnight. Through cross-regional simulations and spirited debate, participants test how leadership styles forged in London, Lagos or Singapore play out when values clash and incentives diverge. The focus is less on heroic leaders and more on how senior executives build coalitions, absorb political risk and maintain legitimacy when the “rules of the game” are in motion.
- Live policy briefings drawn from current headlines
- Role-play negotiations between governments, investors and communities
- Boardroom scenarios where political shocks hit quarterly plans
- Peer feedback on communication and persuasion under pressure
| Classroom Lens | Leadership Question |
|---|---|
| Fragile states | Can you grow without fuelling instability? |
| State capitalism | What happens when the regulator is also your rival? |
| Emerging middle classes | How do you earn trust before you sell? |
Students leave his sessions with an expanded toolkit: not a checklist, but a set of diagnostic questions and mental models for navigating competing interests. Berman encourages them to map stakeholders, power centres and informal networks as rigorously as they would cash flows, framing every strategic move as an intervention in a complex political landscape. The ambition is clear: to produce leaders who can interpret subtle signals from Brasília to Beijing,anticipate unintended consequences and still move decisively when the world refuses to stay still.
Translating frontier research on emerging markets into actionable insights for executives
In the classroom, Berman treats cutting-edge research not as an academic endpoint but as raw material for executive decisions. Drawing on fieldwork from Lagos to Jakarta, he dissects how shifting demographics, digital infrastructure and political risk actually play out in boardrooms.Case discussions move quickly from theory to practise: How does a CEO price uncertainty? Which signals matter when institutions are weak, but markets are booming? Executives are pushed to reframe familiar tools-scenario planning, capital allocation, stakeholder mapping-through the sharper lens of frontier economies, where growth is fast, data is noisy and the cost of misreading local context is high.
- Decode volatility into structured risk frameworks
- Translate informal networks into formal partnership strategies
- Turn policy shifts into first-mover advantages
- Align ESG narratives with on-the-ground realities
| Executive Question | Research Lens | Practical Output |
|---|---|---|
| Where is the next growth corridor? | Urbanisation & consumer data | Market-entry heatmap |
| Whom can we trust locally? | Network and governance studies | Stakeholder risk matrix |
| How fast should we scale? | Capital flows & regulatory cycles | Phased investment roadmap |
Cultivating strategic resilience and decision making under uncertainty at London Business School
In the classroom, Berman invites participants to stress-test their assumptions by placing them inside fast-moving, high-stakes scenarios where facts is partial, political pressures are real and the clock is ticking. Through live case debates, simulation tools and reflective debriefs, executives learn to distinguish signal from noise, to recognize their own cognitive blind spots and to build a personal “decision playbook” that can be applied across borders and sectors.As he puts it, uncertainty is not a temporary condition to be endured, but the permanent context in which modern leaders must operate – and LBS becomes a laboratory for rehearsing those pivotal moments before they unfold in the boardroom.
Berman’s sessions blend global macro insight with practical frameworks that executives can instantly deploy with their teams. Participants are encouraged to experiment with contrasting strategic responses, such as:
- Scenario cross-checking – comparing best‑, base‑ and worst‑case paths against shifting data
- Option-based planning – investing in small, reversible moves before committing to a single bet
- Stakeholder mapping – anticipating who gains, who loses and who decides in ambiguous situations
- Resilience drills – rehearsing crisis narratives and response chains under time pressure
| Capability | Classroom Focus |
|---|---|
| Judgment under pressure | Timed simulations and rapid debriefs |
| Strategic agility | Designing plans that flex, not break |
| Global perspective | Emerging-market cases and geopolitical lenses |
Practical recommendations for business leaders navigating political risk and global complexity
Executives, Berman argues, need to treat geopolitics less as a background noise and more as a core input to strategy. That begins with building a small, cross-functional “risk spine” that connects country intelligence, supply chain, finance, and communications, and gives them a direct line to the CEO. Instead of waiting for crises to erupt, these teams monitor a handful of leading indicators-from regulatory signals to social media sentiment-and rehearse playbooks for volatility in their most exposed markets. Leaders who thrive in this environment ask uncomfortable questions: Which government decisions could quietly rewrite our economics? Where do we rely on a single port, a single vendor, or a single political promise?
- Map your exposure: know which countries, partners and policies you cannot afford to ignore.
- Scenario-test decisions: run every major investment through at least three plausible political futures.
- Localise relationships: cultivate trusted voices beyond the capital city-regional officials, business associations, civic leaders.
- Speak with clarity: define your stance on sensitive issues before events force you into the spotlight.
| Leadership Habit | Payoff |
|---|---|
| Quarterly geopolitical briefings on the board agenda | Faster, calmer crisis decisions |
| Diverse advisory circle in key markets | Early insight into policy shifts |
| Transparent values on political engagement | Stronger stakeholder trust |
in summary
As Berman returns to the classroom and his research, the themes that run through his work at London Business School are unmistakable: a belief in rigorous inquiry, a commitment to real-world relevance and a determination to equip the next generation of leaders with the tools to navigate uncertainty. Five minutes is barely enough to scratch the surface, but it is long enough to see why his perspective resonates with students and colleagues alike – and why his influence is likely to extend far beyond Regent’s Park.
