Has the traditional degree in executive education become obsolete and are they fit for the purpose?
Many CEOs today have shifted from investing in traditional executive development degrees to concentrating on executive short courses to add value to their top teams. This type of leadership development programme is designed to have an imediate impact into fast changing organsations.
This does not mean that MBA degrees from a well-known institution has lost its value. It simply just means that employers are looking for more relevant and measurable impact into their businesses at a time when the environment is increasingly challenging. Employees come away from these experiences with greater knowledge but applying this knowledge to the business does not happen instantly. Today, it is essential to focus on the entrenched management structure as well as the demands of the global business environment to apply knowledge effectively.
Organizations are now taking a fresh look at their approach to leadership development programmes. Often led by CEOs who are the firm believers in the value of the ongoing education and development for leaders. These types of organizations sponsor various leadership development programmes which are customized for the business based on its needs or goals. Where traditional executive education programmes are planned to fill the skill gap, the new approach to leadership development is designed to create tangible outcomes. Developing engaged employees can help the businesses to improve productivity, minimize staff turnover, gain a reputation as employee-centric business as well as offer opportunities to discover the new business concepts that are mainly inspired by new ideas of the employees.
There are a number of innovative approaches that can support the business organizations to inspire employees, fill the skill gap as well as find out the new viewpoints on regular basis:
Peer networks
The executives are able to develop relationships as well as share the benchmarks. The best practices and advice enable to meet in person a number of times each year. (The chief executive offers both chief executive network and senior executive network. The members are positioned in the industry-specific whereas the non-competing teams enabled by the skilled experts to share the innovative ideas, uncover the best practices and solve problems.)
Leadership training seminars
The top experts go to the town to host various seminars that can help to get out the people of their seats to act the mock business circumstances, like when any competitor reveals any new product/services.
Cross-mentorship programmes
These cross-mentorship programmes connect older employees’ learnings who guide the young ones, with deal of getting the necessary technology can refresh in return.
Temporary assignment abroad
Employees engage distinctions of unique culture, regulations, business practices and law of geographic market by spending their time at an organization or in the foreign country.
Cross-discipline job opportunities
By getting the diverse position through a business organization for short time, employees learn a number of things as well as supporting them to be the future leaders.
Open-door gatherings
People from different levels of a business organization come together equally to share their ideas, thoughts and experiences. The fast-changing innovations are not kept to the senior leadership ranks. The goal is to motivate the employees to bring their excellent reflection to the work.
A well-known CEO within the insurance sector recently stated that they have the philosophy of putting employees at center and ahead of the customers as well as shareholders. He also stated that they put their efforts into several internal programmes that are mainly focused on the leadership.
Cross-Generational Collaboration
Joe Gustafson, a recent short course participant and CEO of a fledging fintech startup is the great believer in value of cross-mentorship whereas both of the old and young employees advise each other on their expertise areas. Nowadays, there is the plenty for Millennials and Generation Z to explain.
Gustafson also said that the young people are skillful in using of technology as well as multi-tasking. They can listen to other people. On the other hand, the older employees have patience as well as arrangement capabilities which can arrive after their so many good and bad experience. There is the great value in the cross-mentorship programmes in that the unique capabilities come together.
Susan Wright, head of her own international fashion business values the employee education programmes that focused on different ways that inspire effective collaborations but opposed to fill the skill gaps on employee-by-employee basis. She also said that he is the big believer in seminars whereas everyone contributes as a team member.
This organization sponsors two-and-one-half-day leadership seminar each year that mainly focused on the personal development. Wheelwright said that he remembered a new hire who feared to go to seminar.
Wright leads a seminar each year that involves a gamification approach as well as the collaborative exercises strained from Robert Kiyosaki, founder of Rich Dad Co. (Private financial education organization). Kiyosaki is also author of Rich Dad Poor Dad series of personal finance book that have sold over 27 million copies globally. He acquired Erhard Seminars Training in 1985 and rebranded controversial organization as business education company that focused on leadership.
The seminars of Robert’s are not normal ‘rah rah’ Tony Robbins stuff said by Wright. She also said that his seminars are transformational more rather than instructional. They use the role-playing methods to get the employees to express their business ideas freely. Research specifies that the people who participate in this type of exercises that hold up to 90% of experience after two weeks. This associates to 50% while involving with any discussions and 20% in instructional, lecture-type class.
On the other hand, he also encourages his employees to follow the professional education opportunities and accomplishment of an MBA, not all academic institutions provide valuable programmes. In addition, he noted that they are in wealth education and accounting business, they employ the CPAs who need 80 hours of current education class each two years. However, nobody likes to enjoy sitting in room for taking plentiful notes on cryptic subject from a ‘talking-head’ instructor with 50-slide PowerPoint presentation of bullet points in background.
Finding the Right Executive Short Courses
Brett Lineker, an Australian executive is a real supporter of seminar type training. The become successful today you have to update your skills on a regular basis. This is not only Important at CEO level but really all senior management within the organisations need to keep the sharp end of what is happening within the world. Too often today younger employees are more familiar with the market technology and approaches that customers use when engaging with brands. It’s crucial for organisations that senior management within the business is familiar what is happening within the market so that better decisions can be made an innovation across the organisation can continue.
Both of Wall Street Journal and Financial Times rated leadership seminars as number one in case of teaching quality as well as this impact among other leadership development programmes that are university based. Not only do seminars help Lineker to keep up to date with he’s market But it also ensures that he’s continuously working on being a better leader .
Lineker preferred the seminars that take the employees out of their comfort zones instead of to increase their technical capabilities. He also explained that he had nothing against the executive MBA programmes but they reside on business-as-usual instruction, in case of innovative technologies, new business structures and processes. He also said that his philosophy of executive development helped him to hire the technically capable people and get them to think about change management. He’s a passionate believer in ensuring that both himself and other executives within the organisation become the base leaders that they can and ensuring that people at all levels of the business believe in innovation and creativity to constantly review what the organisation is doing. Taking an approach of constantly reviewing the organisational culture and asking the question whether it’s still serving the main purpose of the organisation has helped his business to succeed.
To spread the institutional knowledge as well as inspire development of innovative ideas, Lineker hosts morning coffee sessions each month with the random selection of the employees who are from across the organsiation. Everyone from senior executives to administrative assistants. Lineker always asked the same question at each of the meetings. What can we do to make the company better? This is an important part of ensuring that the culture of the organisation remains fresh and relevant too many organisations which have failed in the past have relied on their current competitive advantage and not constantly have questioned how they can become better if we look at the healthy entrepreneurial landscape across the world today it’s clear that within every sector is likely to be a disruptive new startup coming along and taking away your business if our company is going to be there in the long run both myself and my employees we need to ensure that we are willing to change and ask the right questions on an ongoing basis.
In addition, Lineker also stated that he would like to say that half of the things they had implemented literally came from ideas sugested at the morning sessions.
Interesting enough this approach is something that I learned on an executive short course within a brainstorming session we considered ideas of what to make our organisations better I later discussed this with a coach that was assigned to me and decided to implement it implemented four months later since then we’ve never looked back and the idea of the coffee mornings have generated so many ideas that perhaps today the business wouldn’t be there without it . This approach of constant learning can be a powerful tool in the arsenal of the CEO. It’s important in the business world that we exist in today that modern day leaders are willing to reinvent their business I’m on a regular basis.
