The Long and the Short of Executive Development
Bill Shedden, Director, Centre for Customised Executive Development,
Cranfield School of Management
Published in Finance Today, June 2005
The last two decades have seen major changes in the attitudes of employers,
business schools and other providers to executive education. Business Schools
in particular came late to seeing executive education as a major and important
vehicle for transforming business leaders and organisations.
Indeed, the
establishment by large corporations of at least two of the UK’s present business
schools (Ashridge and Henley) can be traced to a strong feeling by business that
the needs of experienced managers were ill-catered for by the university
system. When business schools did take an interest in executive development,
it tended to be moulded around the traditional methods of university education.
Managers came on courses: they were students and they were taught: they
entered classrooms, lecture theatres and they sat at the feet of the expert who
transferred knowledge to them, either by the way of lectures or other traditional
methods.
The
“courses”
were
generic,
transferring
either
functional
or
general
management skills to individuals. They were quite long – in today’s terms, very
long – and residential, many business schools running programmes of between 4
and 13 weeks.
For instance, in the early 80s, Ashridge’s core general
management programme ran 8 or 9 times per year, was of 4 weeks’ duration
and attracted between 30 and 40 delegates.
Henley’s equivalent programme
was of 6 weeks’ duration and ran twice a year for around 40 delegates. These
programmes tended to be well-supported by large organisations and successful
completion of the programme by the individual was often regarded as a rite of
passage prior to promotion.
There is no doubt that at the time, these
programmes were successful, were well-received and supported and highly
regarded both by individuals and employers.
Two major pressures have led to significant changes in our approach to
executive education.
Individual managers began to see and be told that they
could not expect a single managerial career with one company. Therefore, they
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needed to equip themselves, at an individual level, both for change and to give
themselves a competitive advantage in the market place.
At the same time
employers began to ask questions of the approach, cost benefits and outcomes
of the traditional programmes run by business schools.
Individuals began to enrol on (MBA) programmes and their rapid growth
significantly accelerated the changes that took place in our executive education
system.
In 1985 there were 20 business schools in the UK offering an MBA.
Now there are 120 offering MBAs and they can be completed full-time, parttime, modular, evening, by distance learning, in consortiums and, in some
cases, for single companies.
The question for budding managers now is not
have you got an MBA but where did you get it from?
The rapid growth of
university education has been replicated in the MBA world.
However, although employers still mainly support MBAs in their recruitment
processes, they are less willing to support students financially and at the same
time have become much more proactive in what they expect of their own
organisation’s approach to executive development. The long of it, and the single
club approach to executive development has now gone.
“The short of it” is that executive development now has a different vocabulary to
the one of twenty years ago.
Individual development is still clearly important
but there now has to be an organisation pay off, either through the development
of new strategic capital for the organisation or through the implementation of a
significant organisation change. Whilst teaching skills might still be important,
of even greater value is ensuring that the participants learn, develop and
implement.
Organisations
now
expect
providers
to
deliver
more
than
programmes - they expect sustainable results. To that end, they may want a
programme but they also want it to be customised to the needs of the individual
and the organisation.
Public programmes have to show they meet specific
individual needs. The days of the long, generic programme are essentially past.
The successful Cranfield portfolio of general management programmes has
survived and grown because of their ability to focus on individual needs at key
career moments and issues of strategic significance for business.
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There is a growing requirement in many organisations for a customised
intervention to meet a range of needs and delivered in a way and in venues to
meet the requirements of the organisation and delivered possibly in partnership
with other business schools and other providers.
At Cranfield there are two core principles to any intervention process we take
part in. Both of these principles are critical to providing programmes that are
suited to the particular culture and needs of our clients.
We seek, in our
approach to network learning, to exploit the opportunities afforded by both
education and social networks to develop individuals and organisations.
We
therefore insist on providing the most relevant and up-to-date research and
practical experiences for our clients.
This involves creating programmes and
other interventions that use not just Cranfield’s faculty and consultancy skills,
but a range of associates and institutions from all over the world.
The second principle is that Cranfield is committed to blended learning, that is,
utilising and pioneering a range of learning techniques to provide different
delivery methods that not only suite an array of individual learning needs, but
are able to adapt to any form of organisational constraint.
Clearly, this also
involves the use of an on-line facility.
Today’s provider of executive development has to be able to meet an
organisation’s need for a range of HR development interventions and a range of
delivery mechanisms. In addition, it has to provide a service that traditionally
was provided by other consultancies. Organisations are no longer prepared to
simply allow providers of executive development to run programmes and justify
their existence on the success of a programme. Our clients at Cranfield make us
justify our existence on our ability to help them not only develop their individual
managers but also their organisations. They may want a relationship based on
their own corporate university where not only access to programmes becomes
important, but access to faculty, to research and consultancy interventions is
required. They may want assistance in a highly focused time frame to help them
deliver an organisational change and this time frame will usually include not just
a development programme, but also significant organisation-based consultancy
on the implementation process. Therefore, the best business schools have to be
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able to provide professional key account management, a faculty that is not only
able to deliver expertise, but also to be able to facilitate, challenge organisations
and coach individuals.
The best business schools are equipping themselves
organisationally and culturally to deal with these major challenges.
The short of it is that if providers develop new methodologies to supplement
and, as appropriate, replace the traditional programme, we can bring about
major and exciting practical results both for individuals and organisations. We
have to develop a “multi-club” approach to development, engaging with our
clients in the totality of the human resource development and organisational
development process from diagnosis to implementation. Here at Cranfield, 50%
of our customised executive development business is generated in nontraditional ways and in venues or in client organisations away from our main
site, either in the UK or overseas. Figure 1 shows the diversity of the approaches
required to be a successful executive development provider.
Blended Learning - Community
Learning
Content
i.e. knowledge
shortfalls and
updates
Faculty
Expertise
Networking
Action learning
Sets
E-Learning
Resource Databases
Virtual Discussion
Fora
Projects
Materials
& Tools
Syndicate
Discussions
Learning
Context
• Consultancy
• Webcasts
• Business
Simulations
• Coaching
• Implementation
consultancy
Blended Learning: “The application of a range of learning
content within the context of the organisation”
11 February 2005
Centre for Customised Executive Development
Page 1
Fig 1:
In short, blended learning and development is what the first division of suppliers
now offer. Therefore organisations or individuals when choosing a qualifications
programme or an executive development programme should thoroughly check
the business school’s ability to deliver the results required in the most focused,
relevant and effective way for the organisation.
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