发展中国家成Y世代商业新丁练兵场

    加德纳表示：“咨询业务中会花很多时间对企业高层领导进行面对面的指导。而在这里，我们可以直接观察到这些人的工作方式，以及他们的沟通技巧。”

    发展中国家的经历蕴含着丰富的管理知识，它们同样适用于成熟经济体。因此，来自发达国家的人们通常热衷于奔赴发展中国家，磨练他们在美国机构中就能学到的技能。

    大学毕业后，奈达•纳瓦布在麦肯锡公司担任管理咨询师。两年后，她休假去了一家卢旺达的非营利机构，在那里工作了半年。她与当地企业家们一起工作，帮助他们起草商业计划和市场实战战略。

    她说：“并不是说这段经历为我打开了一扇通向世界的窗口，但它拓宽了我的眼界，重塑了我对世界的认知。直到我去卢旺达，我才知道自己对于世界的理解是多么的不足。”

    投资银行和咨询公司都极力宣扬自己的多样性。纳瓦布也承认，她在麦肯锡能够与来自不同种族和信仰的人共事，但所有人都拥有类似的一点，那就是优异的教育背景。然而在卢旺达，情况并非如此。

    纳瓦布正着手开创一项针对女性的商业培训项目，但仅靠宣传免费课程是不够的。她还需要研究在这个93%的人口用不上电的国家，女性都需要哪些技能。随后，她开始招生，学生们大多来自农业合作社。纳瓦布努力说服她们，希望让她们认识到，基本的商业技能可以帮助她们提高商业运作能力。

    她说：“我们需要向她们解释，为何她们要牺牲时间来参加课程学习。在课堂上所学的东西能够用于课堂之外，她们之前并没有意识到这一点。”

    纳瓦布和她的团队获得了成功。他们已经帮助200多名妇女参与了项目，并提高了营销、谈判和会计技能。

    她说：“让我感到惊喜的是她们对学习的极度渴望以及她们为了学习愿意做出的牺牲。”她说，这也正是吸引纳瓦布和其他同龄人远赴卢旺达这些地方的一部分原因。

    "In consulting, you are doing a lot of face time advising senior leaders," Gardner says. "Here, we got to see directly how these people operate, what their communications skills are."

    While experiences in developing nations are ripe with management lessons that can be applied to situations in established economies, the people of these countries are often looking to hone the kind of skills that are taught at U.S. institutions.

    After graduating from college, Neda Navab spent two years as a management consultant at McKinsey and Co. before taking six months off to work for a non-profit in Rwanda. There, she worked with entrepreneurs, helping them develop business plans and go-to-market strategies.

    "It didn't open my eyes to the world," she says. "It expanded and redefined what I know about the world. I didn't know how little I understood about the world until I went to Rwanda."

    Whereas investment banks and consulting firms tout their diversity, Navab found that she was working with people of different races and religions at McKinsey, but all of them had similarly privileged educational experiences.

    In Rwanda, that was not the case.

    Navab set out to create a business training program for women, but just advertising free classes was not nearly enough. She needed to identify the skills women would need in a country where 93% of the people lack access to electricity. Then she had to recruit students and convince them that basic business skills would help them improve how they run their businesses, which were mostly farming cooperatives.

    "We needed to explain to them why they should make these sacrifices," she says. "They didn't realize that what they learned can be used outside the classroom."

    Navab and her team were successful, helping more than 200 women develop their marketing, negotiation, and accounting skills.

    "It amazed me how badly they wanted to learn, the sacrifices they were willing to make for their education," she says.

    And that is part of what is luring Navab and others of her generation to places like Rwanda, she says.