This year, the Key Executive MBA program at the UCU Business School has been enriched with a course by Yaroslav Hrytsak titled «Great Books for Great Business: Texts That Shaped Our Civilization.» This course is modeled after the Great Books/West Civ courses taught at leading universities in the United States. Over the semester, participants read and discuss 12 books written across various epochs, from Ancient Greece to the present day.
The core idea of the course is as follows: if you have a problem but can’t find a solution, try to broaden the context. To broaden the context, read the great books.
We asked Mr. Hrytsak how lessons from past centuries of literature can influence decision-making in modern business.
«The more humanity changes, the more we see that certain things remain the same. Circumstances change, but important questions do not disappear. All the books we read were written during times of great crises. It seemed as though civilization was coming to an end. Now, we are experiencing similar fears,» he replied.
Great books don’t provide ready-made answers, but they offer clues.
Among the books Yaroslav Hrytsak recommends managers to read are:
- «Sapiens» by Yuval Noah Harari
- «The Republic» by Plato
- «Confessions» by St. Augustine
- «Two Treatises of Government» by John Locke
The complete list of 12 books that Yaroslav Hrytsak recommends for managers is available to participants of the Key Executive MBA.
Mr. Hrytsak shares his thoughts on this course with Key Executive MBA participants: «At the end of the course, we discussed what worked and what didn’t, and whether the course had any value. One student mentioned that when his friends, also successful businesspeople, asked, ‘What did you take away from the MBA?’ he told them about Plato’s cave. You couldn’t ask for a better compliment to the course,» Yaroslav Hrytsak notes.
Upon completing the course, participants of the Key Executive MBA shared their impressions of the experience:
«Mr. Hrytsak managed to lift us beyond a helicopter view and let us embrace the responsibility each of us carries in business, in the country, in the family, and wherever we are. This course profoundly and philosophically showed us that we need to dig deeper and look deeper into everything,» shared Taras Yanchuk, Regional Manager and Shareholder of Bureau of Wines.
«I’m very glad that the Ukrainian MBA has such a powerful course, which is closely tied to philosophy. To succeed in life, we need to understand a certain set of meanings and come to certain ideas. The great books we read allowed us to gather a wealth of ideas and meanings, which were shaped not by the Soviet Union, not by Ukraine, and not even by Europe, but by the entire world civilization—that is the main meaning of this course for me,» says Dmytro Berdnik, CTO at B-next.
«Thanks to this course, the ‘hodgepodge’ and flow of information in my head turned into a deep focus on personal meanings, as well as on the meanings of systems, communities, and states. By reading great books, we gain the ability to focus attention, which allows us to implement large projects,» summarizes Vasyl Sluzhala, CEO of Bliscore.
This course within the Key Executive MBA program helps broaden the context and find clues for solving the most complex challenges. Collective reflection on the most renowned works, thoughts from colleagues with different backgrounds, and managerial experience — this course is valuable for Key Executive MBA participants.
The course lecturer, Yaroslav Hrytsak, is a Ukrainian historian and publicist, a professor at UCU, a member of the editorial board of the Harvard Ukrainian Studies journal, and the founder of the scholarly annual publication Ukraine Moderna.
The Key Executive MBA is a master’s program for owners and top managers (C-level) of Ukrainian companies who want to scale their business in Ukraine and international markets, for those who have the mandate to make strategic decisions in business that has been operating for more than five years, and for those who aim to strategize for 10 years, not just 10 months. Asymmetric solutions, unconventional strategies, global projects — all this is possible through studying in this program.
Find detailed information on admission at lvbs.com.ua and don’t miss your last chance to become part of the UCU Business School community this year.
