The Four Key Components to Investment-Worthy Executive Education

Recently, many corporations have found development programs for their senior-most people easy targets for cutting costs. This is a mistake. In fact, the reverse is true: the time is ripe for investing in executive education. The answer is not in canceling programs, but in investing in the right ones. Providing a forum for executives to address compelling business issues, guided by an experienced business educator with broad perspective and insight, is an irreplaceable company investment. The benefits are clear: executives build knowledge and skills – which they can continue to use in the future – to address current business challenges; they form and strengthen internal networks across the company; and the company identifies new profit-making and market-building opportunities.

Making executive education an easy target is an honest mistake. For many years, University-based executive education has been as much about faculty sharing new research as it has been about advancing a business. And it’s been common to assume seasoned executives learn what they need to know through the “School of Hard Knocks” and thus don’t need much additional education. Yet think of how business and economic circumstances in our world have changed since most executives went to school and climbed their corporate ladders.

In short, the honest mistake, especially during tough times, is to assume executive education is a nice-to-do instead of a must-do. A skipper once told me, “Sailing races are won in the calm,” and the same might be said for business. Invest in your people now, when business is flat. When the economy is ready, your people, and your business, will be ready too.

If the program itself is designed to deliver results, the investment decision is an easy one: “We did in three days what it would have taken us 6-8 difficult months to do on our own … and our solutions would not have been nearly as strong. This program paid for itself multiple times over,” a Northeastern participant told us. In tough times, how could you afford not to provide such an experience to your executive team?

At Northeastern, we believe there are four critical components to investment-worthy educational experiences, especially in difficult economic times like these. We present them here, for business leaders to consider as they embark on executive education initiatives:
Content Selection: Instead of seeking a university to expose executives to faculty research or their latest book, companies should look for a university with program content that can be tightly linked to the circumstances they are going through now, and expect to face in the future. In design meetings, faculty and line executives – not just HR staff - need to examine the business’s goals, understand the strengths and weaknesses of their leadership team, and prioritize accordingly. Faculty can help identify these priorities, which may not always be what executives initially ask for. For example, we created one of our most successful programs when our faculty realized that a sales initiative for a major software company shouldn’t just be about developing selling skills (the presenting need), but also about helping sales professionals understand how their customers’ customers were thinking about their businesses. Armed with this understanding, sales people could talk to their C-suite clients more cogently and collaboratively, developing new business in those conversations.

Program Design: Combining the expertise of a professor with the collective knowledge of an executive team creates powerful learning, where ideas are explored collectively. For example, writing a veiled case describing the team’s unique situation and then engaging in a lively discussion, where the professor encourages divergent opinions to be aired, can bring latent and important issues to light. The professor can introduce conceptual models to frame the issues. Small-group discussions and report-outs can follow, with the professor asking probing questions as appropriate.

Having executives bring in their own work to use during their time together makes the learning immediately relevant, and ensures high levels of classroom engagement and energy. It can also produce new revenue streams and productivity gains. In one of our workshops, after reviewing mini-cases and innovation concepts and frameworks, a new ventures team planned a product that now generates millions in new revenue annually.

Executives are also used to working under pressure, so it’s often useful to bring in an element of competition, and even a bit of stress, into the learning environment. Requiring a final report-out to an executive panel can provide this additional stimulation; setting up competitive situations is another way to make the sessions spirited and memorable.

Delivery Resources: Determining who leads the executive session can be “make or break.” Business leaders resonate well with approachable faculty who have backgrounds in industry. These professors appreciate the pressures their students face, and enjoy rolling up their sleeves with them. We loved hearing from a client participant who told us: “You know, your faculty are accessible. They don’t talk down to us from the Ivory Tower… they share, listen and work with us.”

Sometimes pairing faculty with a client executive helps management make the leap from theory to practice. A successful finance program resulted from our client’s CFO sitting down with us as a full participant in design and development meetings, and then co-facilitating the series of seminars.

University-Client Interaction: Only recently have University executive education providers understood how positive client relations can be such a critical success factor to the quality of an educational experience. The easy client interaction and comfort create better design and delivery. A partner needs to be responsive and flexible if it’s going to create experiences that
meet the client’s articulated and unarticulated business needs. This customer-driven approach (vs. a “this is how we do things” approach) ensures programs meet or exceed client expectations.

The world is a rapidly changing place, dazzling even the most brilliant minds and experienced executives. Educating executives now, by partnering with a university that collaborates to identify the right topics, design, and delivery approach, will prepare these leaders for the challenges facing them today and in the future.