Mark Lamberti on How Sound Business Principles and Purpose-Driven Leadership Impact Education
For Johannesburg native Mark Lamberti, who holds dual citizenship in South Africa and Italy, balancing complementary passions has been a common thread woven throughout the fabric of a remarkable 40-plus-year career in business leadership. As the CEO of three South Africa-based multinational public companies in the retail, financial services, and industrial sectors, Lamberti’s keen insights, entrepreneurial acumen, and original solutions were responsible for a string of notable corporate turnarounds.
Concurrent with his climb up the business ladder, Lamberti — always a voracious learner — continued a similar trajectory in the pursuit of higher education. A diploma in marketing management from Damelin College was followed by a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of South Africa, a Master of Business Administration from the University of the Witwatersrand, annual certification in the Harvard Business School’s Presidents in Leadership Program (2001-present), and most recently, a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of Pretoria. Along the way, Lamberti somehow found time to clock in enough hours to become a certified helicopter pilot as well.
Mark Lamberti’s Plan To Blend Business Interests With Academic Pursuits
Mark Lamberti’s long-standing interest in advancing the education of economically challenged students dovetails with his other impressive career achievements. While he continues his role as chairperson of Lamberti Holdings, in 2018, Lamberti transitioned his main focus to the family’s multifaceted portfolio of education-centric commercial and philanthropic endeavors. In 2019, the Lamberti Tertiary Education Foundation made a sizable financial donation to the University of Witwatersrand in support of promising, underprivileged female university students.
Since commerce and academics are the twin engines that have driven the arc of Lamberti’s professional life thus far, it’s not surprising that his vast mentorship and business experience will also inform the next chapter of his life as a lecturer, writer, and educator. With the ink just dry on his recently published doctoral thesis, “Exploring Postretirement Role Identity Emergence in Public Company CEOs,” Lamberti admits he hasn’t fully formulated a working blueprint for integrating his real-world business savvy with his evolving academic research and teaching roles.
Lamberti does think, however, that possessing certain “best of both worlds” skill sets will give him an advantage over those whose careers have followed a single track. “Quite frankly, I’m just at the start of this journey,” he freely admits. “[But I believe my] real-life business experience is going to enable me to have better insights than the average academic.”
The portmanteau term Lamberti has coined to embrace his combined strengths is “pracademic.” While the final job description is still evolving, Lamberti explains: “I want to be a practitioner who has an academic background and to make a change in that way. I see integrating my [work] history with my recent academic experience as a way of making that impact.”
Best Business Practices Lead to Best Teaching Practices
The techniques Mark Lamberti leverages for teaching MBA students mirror some core practices he once used to get the most from his business interests while simultaneously enriching the lives of those who worked for him. Prior to a lecture, Lamberti gathers a cross-section of the graduate students to query them about their goals and learn what they hope to come away with. “Before I even stand up in the classroom, I’ve got a little bit of a sense of what the class expectations are.”
In addition, Lamberti routinely likes to share the classroom spotlight with a subject matter academic. He says working in a back-and-forth Q&A format affords him the opportunity to illustrate academic concepts with relatable examples from his own experience. “It’s kind of bringing real life into the classroom and getting a little bit away from the theory,” he explains.
The Power of Purpose-Driven Leadership
While he concedes that results — for students, good grades; for businesses, increased value for stakeholders — are the benchmarks success is most often measured by, in the final analysis, Mark Lamberti maintains one of the most crucial lessons he teaches can’t be tallied in a win/loss column scenario. “I’m very much a supporter of the notion of purpose-driven leadership. I think when business associates are aligned behind a purpose that is greater than themselves, you start to get results,” he asserts.
“I think when people believe they’re changing the world a little bit … if they believe their own greatness can be realized and they will be a change agent, I think they will react differently … Similarly with teachers, if [they] have a good grasp of almost the sacredness of their profession, I think you get a different result than if they’re just … trying to get [high] marks out of kids.”
Mark Lamberti’s teaching philosophy is one that’s echoed by numerous educators, from early learning to the postgraduate phase. Purpose-driven leadership, whether in the boardroom or the classroom, can yield the most valuable long-term results for all concerned.
“Of course, classrooms are inherently different from companies, and students are not teachers’ employees,” noted Heather Staker, a Clayton Christensen Institute researcher studying the correlation between effective teaching methodology and leadership modalities at companies routinely ranked as the best places to work. “But in both settings, the person in charge is seeking to create a happy climate that encourages and maximizes positive results. If empowering teams, serving as good coaches, and emphasizing accountability are top principles for successful managers in ‘best places to work’ environments, then similar principles could work for teachers tasked with motivating and guiding students. Furthermore, many students will one day look for jobs in workplaces that embrace these management principles. Classrooms would do well to prepare students by resembling future workplaces more intentionally.”
As a “pracademic,” Mark Lamberti couldn’t agree more.