October 15, 2024
Nido Qubein, President, High Point University
Rebooting Education Businesses Yourself With Passion, Nido Qubein – President High Point University
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Education is the cornerstone of every great nation, and it is through great education that world-class innovators and leaders arise to make changes where change is needed. Easier said than done but when done correctly, through a team of forward-thinking individuals who believe “there are no such things as unrealistic dreams” you can deliver a level of education that will shape generations.
That is exactly what today’s guest on The Reboot Chronicles is passionate about—believing in the impact of the next generation and building a platform that prepares them to do it. President at High Point University, Nido Qubein is a visionary maverick who has spent two decades turning around a school from near closure. After bringing High Point back from the brink of irrelevance, obscurity and decline, Nido has rebooted it into a thriving world-class university that other institutions and organizations are learning from.
This episode is chalk full of leadership and reboot stories that people need now. Listen in as we discover Nido’s journey, and unpack lessons learned from leading and governing diverse corporations, and how High Point is preparing our future leaders.
Preparing Students For An Agile Future
One of the challenges of running a university, or any school, is that your goal is to prepare the current generation of students, to work in a future marketplace. As Nido says “We don’t know exactly what the world is going to be like, most of the jobs that we prepare students for today will be gone”, so the goal is to not churn out people who are only good at what is popular now but to teach people the skills to adapt to the future. A great example of this is Nido himself, who before running a university “was a business guy” and an entrepreneur but he was able to adapt to his new environments.
A Simple Formula For Risk Management
There is bound to be a moment in your life when you are presented with a decision that could change your life depending on the outcome. It is almost guaranteed that these decisions will come about, and when they do Nido has given us a formula to follow to try and estimate whether it is worth the risk. First ask yourself these three questions: “What’s the best thing to happen?”, “What is the most likely thing to happen?”, and “What is the worst thing to happen?” If you ask yourself these three things, and the most likely thing to happen gets you closer to your goals and you are willing to deal with the worst thing that can happen, then go for it. Then you are making a decision that has a high chance of working out, if the worst happens you can deal with it, and if the best happens it’ll be a lovely surprise.
Building The Resilience To Adapt
When faced with challenges it can be easy to get overwhelmed and not be able to think through the risk management formula mentioned above. We wanted to see what challenges Nido has faced and the lessons he has learned to adapt to get to where he is today. One of his biggest challenges was when he was seventeen, his mother sent him on a one-way ticket to America alone, with little cash on hand. Nido had to reinvent himself to adapt to America, and he did that by “focusing on the internal.” and how he could “bring power and strength to the process” from within himself. Focusing on the changes that you can make, and making those changes to get to the thing that is most likely to happen while getting you closer to your goal.
