Executive decisions

EXECUTIVEDECISIONS

Executive education is rapidly evolving to offershorter, closer, and more focused programs

that deliver real solutions to today's companies.BYTRICIABISOUX

Executive education programs have long been the vehicle of choice forcorporations that want to train their most promising talent. Dedi-cated, short-term courses are designed to help executives developtheir individual skill sets and better understand the realities of their

industries. But now that companies are operating in the shadow of a reces-sion, they want their investment in executive training to translate into tan-gible value for their organizations.

Christine Poon, dean of The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Busi-ness in Columbus, has seen that transition firsthand. She came to the dean'soffice in 2009 at the height of the recession, after 30 years in the healthcareindustry, including a post as worldwide chairwoman at Johnson &c Johnson.During her time at Johnson & Johnson, she says, the company used exec edto help broaden and diversify the skills of high-potential executives. "But if Iwere back in corporate America today," she adds, "I would also want themto be trained to deal with topics relevant to my company. That would be anadded value."

Business educators are hearing that sentiment from an increasing numberof corporate leaders. With budgets tight and expectations high, employerswant today's executive education programs to be faster, more customized,more local, and more accessible to their employees around the world. Andthey want more than better trained employees—they want their people tocome back to work with solutions that have immediate and measurable ROIfor their companies.

18 July/August 2012 BizEd

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Fast and FocusedAccording to Mike Stan-ford, executive director ofthe Partnership Programat IMD in Lausanne, Swit-zerland, corporate clientswant executive educationprograms to achieve twoimportant objectives: effi-ciency and impact.

"Our clients want tofocus on how our programwill help them get wherethey need to go most effi-ciently. They want experi-ences that add value to thecompany, and not those thatare simply fun or interest-ing," says Stanford.

The impact of executiveeducation has been top ofmind for employers for atleast 15 or 20 years, Stan-ford adds. But the big dif-ference today is how theydefine impact in their conversationswith IMD faculty.

"Ten or 15 years ago, when com-panies talked about impact, theyasked about return on investment.But it can be difficult to measurereturn on investment for a learningactivity," he says. "But now we askthem, 'What's your objective?' Ifyour objective is to change behavior,we have tools to measure that. Ifyour objective is to spark culturalchange, we can measure that. Ourconversations about impact are nowmore specific. They're much smarterconversations to have."

Evgenia Ovasapyan, director ofexecutive education programs atRussia's Moscow School of Man-agement Skolkovo, agrees. "We'reseeing a decline of interest in openprograms that focus on individualskill development and theoretical

"Morecompanies aresaying, 'We'dlike you to runthis program forus, but we wantyou to runit on our siteor at venuescloser to us.'"

- Bill Shedden ofCranfield University

concepts that are not applied toreal businesses," she says. "Cor-porations want to see obvious out-comes for their businesses."

Although exec ed has been mov-ing in this direction for years, thefinancial crisis has accelerated itsevolution considerably, accord-ing to researchers at the Interna-tional University Consortium forExecutive Education (UNICON). InUNICON's November 2011 report"Breaking the Mold on BlendedLearning," Marie Eiter and TobyWoll write that "the recent financialcrisis has forced companies not onlyto scrutinize the costs of executivedevelopment, but also the time thatexecutives and upper managementare away from the office."

Chief learning officers areplacing greater emphasis on theimmediate application of executive

education in the workplace,Eiter and Woll continue."Providing a stellar class-room experience is no lon-ger sufficient," they write."Companies seek learningthat is transferable to theworkplace. Executives wantto learn concepts and frame-works that can be put intopractice and contribute toreal-world solutions."

Duke Corporate Educa-tion (Duke CE), the execu-tive education arm of DukeUniversity in Durham,North Carolina, recentlyreleased its report "Learningand Development in 2011:A Focus on the Euture."Duke CE asked 142 of itscorporate clients to sharetheir biggest concerns aboutexecutive training. Improvedtechnological delivery, less

travel, reduced cost, and measur-able value all made their lists.

The report quotes CathrynKlassen, vice president of leader-ship and talent development forSun Life Financial, who notes thatcompany leadership is under morepressure to demonstrate the valueof executive development. "Thismight not mean that budgets arecut—in fact, we made additionalinvestments," she says. "It doesmean there is a spotlight focusedon real business value. ... Devel-opment must be tied to the actualorganizational capabilities yourcompany needs to build."

Closer to HomeAs part of their emphasis onimpact and value, corporationsalso want programs that are"shorter, cheaper, and with as


much payoff as possible," says BillShedden, director of the Centrefor Customized Development atCranfield University in the UnitedKingdom, and UNICON's execu-tive director. "That means theywant courses linked to whateverthey're working on right now. Theywant business schools to integratetheir biggest problems into the pro-grams, through mentoring, coach-ing, and any other career develop-ment initiatives they're pursuing."

But as their budgets shrink andtheir expectations rise, companieshave made the items on their execu-tive education wish lists even moredefined and highly targeted, Shed-den adds. For instance, to keepcosts down and minimize theiremployees' time away from theoffice, more companies are askingfor shorter programs offered muchcloser to home—sometimes on com-pany premises. "More companiesare saying, 'We'd like you to runthis program for us, but we wantyou to run it on our site or at ven-ues closer to us,'" says Shedden.

They're also asking for morecontent to be delivered online.Business schools are offering morecontent via course managementsystems, video conferencing, onlineformats such as Webinars and sim-ulations, mobile devices, and tabletcomputers, says Shedden. "It'snot necessarily 'e-learning,'" saysShedden. "At Cranfield, we call it'networked learning.'" That couldmean that course introductions andstatic content that repeats fromone run of the course to the nextare offered in online formats thatemployees can access from theirdesks. Employers also appreciatewhen their employees can attendWebinars and do some of their cre-

ative work online—or even accesscontent designed for the company'sown technologies and systems.

The iPad has become an espe-cially useful learning tool, saysStanford. IMD began piloting theuse of the iPad in its longtimefive-day exec ed offering, "Orches-trating Winning Performance," inJune 2010. Since then, the schoolhas developed several iPad appsto encourage executive studentsto converse and learn even whenthey're not face-to-face.

"The iPad takes away the feel-ing that they're learning only whenthey're in the classroom," he says."Even when our students are on thestreet or at the coffee shop, they'realways in a learning mode, shar-ing what they're seeing via blogs orsocial media. Their everyday experi-ence becomes their classroom."

Not Quite CustomizedWith customization quickly becom-ing the norm in executive educa-tion, more business schools arefacing a dilemma: Should they tryto serve all companies? Or targetthose in a specific area or industry?

Schools may no longer have tomake that choice, says Stanfordof IMD. He notes that what wasonce thought of as customizationhas transformed into what really isdefined as good customer service.That is, business schools can assessa corporate client's needs and pack-age or adjust their existing offer-ings accordingly.

"When a client comes to us witha development issue, our solutionmight include individual coachingand mentoring. It might include cus-tomized modules. It might includestrategic use of our open enrollmentprograms, in which we customize

parts of those programs for thatcompany," he says. "We're no lon-ger making the distinction that anopen enrollment program is off theshelf, and therefore 'bad,' or a cus-tom program is just for that com-pany, and therefore 'good.' We'refinding that everything we have canbe put together in ways that aremeaningful to the organization."

He points to changes that haveoccurred in the "OrchestratingWinning Performance" program,which is designed to allow individu-als and teams to work on an issuethey're currently facing on the job.Most recently, the school has seenan increase in the number of largegroups of executives being sentthrough the program. Companiesnow see a program like this as anopportunity to build individualskills sets and effect large-scalebehavioral change in their organiza-tions, says Stanford. "That gives awhole new energy to what an openenrollment program can achieve."

For some schools, packagingtheir offerings effectively meanstargeting clients whose objectivesbest align with the strengths of theirfaculty. For example, the Universityof Miami School of Business directsmost of its exec ed offerings to theneeds of multinational Latin Ameri-can companies headquartered in itshome state of Florida. That decisionemerged after close discussions withthe school's exec ed clients, saysAmelia McGuire, the school's associ-ate dean of external affairs and headof its executive education program.

"We had to look at content—what professors did we have,what could we realistically deploy,and how could we build it?" saysMcGuire. "Then we looked atthe existing market here in south

BizEd July/August 2012 21

Florida. We realized that the sweetspot for us was the Fortune 1000companies here that were based ordoing business in Latin America."

UM customizes almost all of itsexecutive education courses to eachcorporate client. Once a companyapproaches UM to design a trainingprogram, faculty visit with companyrepresentatives to leam their objec-tives, then they design a tailored five-day course. The courses are taughtjointly by faculty and companyexecutives and are based solely onprojects pulled from the workplace.

At the beginning of each course,the company's CEO or countrymanager comes in to speak to thegroup and outline expectations.Over the next five days, studentsdiscuss topics and work on projectsto meet those expectations. On thelast day, the school holds a recep-tion where students mingle withcorporate leadership and presentwhat they've learned.

Fisher College takes a slightly dif-ferent approach to executive educa-tion—it has focused not on a region,but on a segment of the market. The

school has partnered with GE Capi-tal to create exec ed programs thatspecifically serve the needs of middlemarket companies—^those compa-nies with annual revenues betweenUS$10 million and $1 billion. Muchof this training is offered throughthe school's National Center for theMiddle Market. (See "Eye on theMiddle Market" on p. 27.)

"We'll be offering executive edu-cation that emphasizes the themesthat are highly relevant to this seg-ment: innovation, customer focus,and human capital," says Poon of

A Look Inside Deloitte University

Most companies meet their indi-

vidual training needs by turning to

business schools for both open

enroliment and customized exec ed

programs. But when a company's

strategy becomes so complex-its

problems so unique to its corporate

environment-it may decide to take

control of its own executive training.

That may mean building its own

corporate university, with a curricu-

lum infused with its most integrated

and ongoing strategic needs.

Deloitte Consulting, headquartered in

New York City, recently became one of

the newest entrants in the community of

companies with their own corporate uni-

versities. Last October, the company offi-

cially opened Deloitte University (DU), its

US$300 million, 700,000-square-foot lead-

ership development center. DU is built on

a 107-acre plot of land in the small town of

Westlake, Texas, just outside of Dallas. The

company is currently pursuing LEED Gold

certification for the facility, which uses sus-

tainable design principles and incorporates

renewable and recycled materials.

The DeloitteUniversity campus.

DU features 800 guest rooms and 35

classrooms, as well as a fitness center,

running trails, amphitheater, and ballroom.

Deloitte expects the university to deliver up

to 3 million hours of instruction to 35,000

employees each year.

The company's leaders made the large

investment because they felt the company

needed to develop courses that reflected

its specialized focus on client services,

explains Diana O'Brien, a managing prin-

cipal of Deloitte University. "We rely heav-

ily on telling stories—our own stories-of

success and failure," she says. "We also

talk about the power of listening.

Learning to step back and listen

to a group can be very powerful in

effecting transformational change."

The curriculum was designed

with the input of Deloitte's senior

leadership, academics, and clients.

Courses range from "Welcome to

Deloitte," which offers new hires

an overview of the company, to

the "New Manager Program," a

weeklong program for the recently

promoted. "The Art of Empathy"

teaches students to set aside their per-

sonal agendas to see issues from their

clients' points of view, while "The Art of

Inquiry" helps them think about how to

ask the right questions. "Mastering the

C-Suite" helps upper-level leaders further

develop the listening and communication

skills they need to sustain client relation-

ships. "Anatomy of a Train Wreck" walks

students through real examples from the

company where client sen/ice went terribly

wrong and explores how things might have

been done differently.

Tom Hodson has been involved in


Fisher. Courses will be taught byfaculty from Fisher and subject mat-ter experts from GE. After studentsare armed with classroom theory,they identify issues in their com-panies in one of these areas. Then,they return to their companies towork on those issues, with the helpof faculty mentors. In four months,they come back to Fisher to presenttheir project outcomes and receiveadditional coaching.

By focusing on the middle mar-ket. Fisher College can offer pro-grams that are "semi-customized,"

says Poon. On the one hand, allstudents experience a set curriculum,which makes the program easilyscalable. But by targeting a specificmarket and importing real-worldprojects, the curriculum offers thetraining these students find mostrelevant. "We're still experiment-ing. We're trying to find the balancebetween creating a program that'sneither completely customized, norcompletely 'off-the-shelf,'" saysPoon. "By working with GE Capital,we can keep the topics we're intro-ducing in the classroom relevant to

the industry. And by having studentsapply their training to real projects,we can keep the program relevant totheir companies."

Exec Ed á la CarteCollaboration is a big and grow-ing part of the executive educationexperience. In a recent survey byAACSB International, 230 insti-tutions representing 50 differentcountries were named as part-ners in collaborative agreementsinvolving non-degree/executiveeducation. In addition, 34 schools

executive training at the company since he

was made a principal in 2005. This year,

he has been teaching in the New Manager

program. "It's really a milestone for our

people," Hodson says. "During the week,

they attend plenary sessions on leadership,

one of which I deliver, and they go through

business simulations that involve how they

can better manage things iike client meet-

ings and staff problems."

Hodson and O'Brien are quick to

emphasize the value of academic business

training, but note that DU is designed to

pick up where their employees' past edu-

cations leave off. "Business schools don't

have access to our culture. They don't

know the specific leadership behaviors that

differentiate us. They don't have access

to how we implement strategy or deal

with the intricacies of the tax code," says

Hodson. "Those aren't topics available in a

broad-based MBA program."

It also would be difficult for a busi-

ness school to replicate the sense of

community that Deloitte sought to create

at DU, he adds.

"Deloitte has a workforce of 50,000

people. You'd be surprised

how diverse our community

is, even though we all work

under the same umbrella.

Deloitte University helps

our people foster relation-

ships with others they

normally wouldn't run into

and learn about services

we provide that they may

not otherwise know about,"

says Hodson.

Perhaps most impor-

tant, the leadership center

will serve as a living labora-

tory, where the company

can identify and measure

the training approaches

that are most effective. Deloitte will sur-

vey selected groups of employees after

they've attended classes at DU to see

whether they changed behaviors as a

result of what they learned.

The information these surveys pro-

vide will be more valuable than what the

company could acquire from twice-yearly

employee reviews, says Hodson. "We

An interactive touchscreen media wall at the centerof DU's lobby displays information about activitiesat the university, as weii as curated content fromsocial media channels.

want to gather robust data on a regular

basis to track the correlation between

the learning in the classroom and the

quality of our services. DU gives us the

ability to measure whether our training

drives business results."

A video tour of Deloitte University

is available at www.youtube.com/

watoh ?v=3hSUIamRLDI.

BizEd July/August 2012 25

representing ten different countriesindicated that they desired to initi-ate more collaborative partner-ships. They're particularly inter-ested in looking for partners inthe Asia-Pacific region, accordingto 36.7 percent of respondents.Smaller but significant numbersof respondents would like to col-laborate with schools in Europe(18.3 percent) and the Americas(15 percent).

Shedden of UNICON notesthat these collaborations are oftendriven by the companies themselves.Rather than choosing a single busi-ness school to meet all of their execed needs, many employers are invit-ing different schools to work withthem based on different criteria.

"Many of us mistakenly viewall business schools as a homoge-neous unit because we're all in thesame market," says Shedden. "Butcompanies often combine executiveeducation programs from differ-ent schools based on their researchskills and reputations."

He points to a program for execu-tives for software company Oraclethat Cranfield offers jointly withIESE in Barcelona, Spain. In thatcase, says Shedden, Oracle wantedto combine Cranfield's strength inprogram customization with IESE'sstrength in strategy. "Today's corpo-rations are sophisticated purchasers.They know the strengths of the vari-ous business schools. They mightturn to different schools because theywant a different disciplinary focus,or they might want to expose theirexecutives to different cultural expe-riences," says Shedden. "Businessschools have to recognize that theydon't necessarily know everything."

Stanford of IMD agrees that the"old boundaries" that separate one

business school's exec ed programfrom another's are fading, in favor ofmore collaborative delivery models.

"So much of executive educationtoday is driven by business needs,"he says. "The days when execu-tives go to Harvard to receive whatonly Harvard faculty can deliver,or to INSEAD for only INSEADfaculty, or to IMD for only IMDfaculty, could soon be ovei;" he says."Today, we partner with consultants,behavior coaches, and other businessschools so that we can deliver what'sright for the client."

Virtuous PartnershipsThat recognition—that no businessschool has all the answers—is lead-ing business and business schoolsalike to forge deeper partnerships toinject exec ed programs with bothacademic and industry perspectives.Companies are becoming moreinvolved in the design of executiveeducation courses, as advisors, men-tors, and even instructors. (See "Cor-porations on Campus" on p. 28.)

That level of involvement mayproduce programs that respondto the needs of the market todayand better anticipate its needs fiveor even ten years from now, saysPoon of Eisher College. "Whenyou partner with the business com-munity, your faculty can immersethemselves in the issues companiesare struggling with. This createsa virtuous relationship where ourfaculty rethink the curriculum based

on employers' needs, and employersadvance the skills of their workforcebased on our scholarship."

Poon and other educatorsemphasize that many companiesstill view executive education as away to reward talent and cultivateloyalty. But after the recession, itspurpose has expanded significantly.Eor employers, it's also a tool thatwill help them improve their opera-tions and do more with less, saysMcGuire of UM.

"Companies can no longergive big raises or extraordinarybonuses, even as they're add-ing more to job descriptions andstretching their people across moreresponsibilities. Even so, they stillwant to retain their talent," shesays. Investment in executive edu-cation is a way for companies toshow their best people how muchthey are valued, she adds. But bytying executive education directlyto their objectives, companies alsoreceive tangible dividends for thatinvestment, in the form of employ-ees equipped with the bolder inno-vations and smarter solutions theirorganizations need to thrive. @

UNICON's report on blendedlearning is at uniconexed.org/2011/research/Blended_Learning_Report-Eiter-Woll-Nov-2011.pdf. DukeCE's report on learning and develop-ment can be found at www.dukece.com/papers-reports/documents/FocusFuture.pdf.


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