The Minnesota Daily ran a story today on the impact of the economy on executive education (see the story here). I was quoted in a few places describing the Carlson School’s response to the downturn.
As I noted in the article, we are introducing a new set of short, “bite-sized” courses this spring. This is actually an idea that we started kicking around in June. Having come from industry myself, I know how hard it can be to carve out time to get out of the office. Our core offerings require a pretty significant time commitment–at least 2 to 4 days. I realize that there are probably a fair number of people who don’t come to our programs simply because they can’t get out of the office for that long. So, we started thinking about what we could offer that would still provide participants great value, yet be delivered in a more compressed timeframe.
What we decided was to pilot a set of much shorter-format courses. The spring/summer programs will range in length from 1/2-day to full day, and will be very targeted to specific skill areas of interest to business managers and executives. For example, if you are interested in identifying sources of financing for a new business opportunity, we have a course specifically on that. If you are being asked to do more with less, we have a program focused on “personal operations management.” The full catalog of 20 short courses will be available soon.
We will of course continue to offer the bulk of our educational experiences in the more traditional, 2-4 day format, but these shorter programs offer a smaller, compressed experience for those who are not able to take advantage of the more robust programs we typically offer.
In case you are interested, my perspective on learning and development in a down economy were mentioned in the article, ”Training Up in Down Times” that appears in the current issue of Minnesota Business magazine. The story is on pages 26-27 (the magazine website is here: http://www.minnesotabusiness.com the full text is unfortunately only available to subscribers) .
Third Thing: Structured activity drives out unstructured activity.
Someone once suggested that the defining feature of a totalitarian state is that anything that is not required by the state is prohibited by the state.In other words, all activity is structured, and there is no room whatsoever for individual discretion. When you talk to some people about their personal development, you might think that you were talking to citizens of a totalitarian state.“My day is so filled with a constant barrage of activity—much of which is driven by the need to respond to others—that I don’t have the discretionary time to work on my own development.”
The most powerful thing you can do to deal with the demands of an oppressive schedule is to impose a little structure on your development agenda.If you create specific goals with action plans and timelines associated with them that are written down on paper, you will be more likely to make the time to follow through and improve yourself. If you leave your development goals as vague outcomes you would like to achieve when you get the time, you will be much less likely to accomplish them.
In the interest of truth in advertising, I have to preface any conversation about competencies by acknowledging that I worked at the Hay Group some years ago. It was over ten years ago now, but my short time there had a profound influence on my views about competencies.
Are Competencies a Failed Talent Development Tool?
While working with Hay, I saw carefully crafted competency models shape organizations’entire language for leadership. Well done competency models can crystallize the core distinguishing elements of leadership for an organization and enable the learning organization to bring laser-focus to its development effort.
I believe that competency models are doomed to failure if one starts the model development effort believing that the relevant competencies are already defined, and must only be “matched” to the particulars of the organization. Sure, some leadership characteristics look similar across organizations. But those characteristics are usually not the ones that offer the potential to provide the enterprise with a meaningful competitive advantage. It is those other leadership behaviors, highly specific to the organizational context, and that have not yet been uncovered, that offer great promise to help organizations to take themselves to a higher level.
Unfortunately, it is a pretty major effort to develop competency models in a manner that measures up to a high standard. I learned the approach at Hay over ten years ago and have developed quite a few on my own since then. Model development has to be approached as part ressearch project, and part organizational intervention. It is not something that can be done in afternoon, with a few people in a room and deck of playing cards. Really impactful models require significant individual and organizational energy.
The posts in this section represents a sampling of my thoughts about some of the competencies I have developed over the years.
I was at a meeting yesterday with a group of educators in which the discussion turned to precisely this topic. The definitions ranged from “all adult learning focused on employees in the workplace” to short courses focused on the needs of business executives. Wikipedia provides the following definition:
“Executive Educationis the term used for programs at graduate-level business schools that aim to give classes for Chief Executives and other top managers or entrepreneurs. These programs do not usually end in a degree, although there is an ever-growing number of Executive MBA programs that are very similar and offer a Masters of Business Administration upon completion of the coursework.”
This definition highlights several fundamental components of executive eductaion: 1) the providers; 2) the target audience; and 3) the comprehensiveness of the educational experience (degree or non-degree). I suggest modifications to all three components of this definition:
1) Providers. The Center for Creative Leadership is a good example of a top 10 rated provider of executive education that is not part of a business school. In fact, a number of business schools have sliced off their executive education groups to allow them to run as independent corporations.
2) Target Audience. While most executive education providers do target “chief executives and other top managers or entrepreneurs,” you won’t find many CEOs sitting in class. Typical executive education classes are targeted to middle and upper management as well as top management.
3) Degree vs non-degree programs. My own personal perspective is that executive education does not include degree-bearing programs such as the Executive MBA. Why not? Executive education is clearly focused on providing practical, actionable learning experiences to working managers, directors, vice presidents, etc. The degree-granting infrastructure at any university must (for good reasons) use a different set of lenses to construct and assess the learning experience. It is the very fact of imposing this degree-based logic on the educational experience that changes the nature of the learning experience and shifts it away from the core focus on providing practical, actionable learning experience to participants. Do these experiences carry enough academic rigor to justify certain credit levels? How will we evaluate student performance? (grades must after all be granted in degrees)…I think you get the point.
This is one of my favorite competencies. Some of the most effective leaders that I have seen are incredible at seeing patterns in complex situations that others don’t pick up on. The videos below are from an e-learning program I put together for a client some years ago.
We are constantly bombarded with information. At any given moment there are literally hundreds of things you could be paying attention to—the sound of my voice, the computer you are viewing this blog on, the voice of a coworker, a smell that reminds you of a favorite food. To deal with the complexity of the world around us, we naturally adopt certain shortcuts. One of the most fundamental shortcuts that we adopt is we look for patterns in the world around us. If we didn’t look for regularities in the world around us, there would simply be too much information for us to process. To deal with the potential information overload, we look for patterns.
Patterns can be thought of as constellations of events, information or symbols that are useful because they provide an organizing framework for information that may otherwise be difficult to understand or organize. Patterns are the basic building blocks for our personal “mental maps”.
Think for a moment of the stellar constellations—if you take an interest in star gazing, they provide a useful shortcut for organizing a large number of stars into a smaller number of manageable and memorable star clusters. In this case, patterns are useful because they reduce the complexity of the environment. By knowing the location of a single star, you can rapidly locate other stars in a common constellation. The configurations of stars that comprise a given constellation are clearly defined, and documented. If you want to learn them, there are clear sources to consult.
But in most areas of organizational life, the important constellations or patterns in the environment are not so clear. They must be charted by perceptive leaders, who scan the environment, looking for signs and patterns relevant to the organization and its direction.
Pattern recognition for a leader is the ability to identify connections between situations that are not obviously related. With the ability to recognize patterns, you can reflect on a situation and use experience to help understand the problem. As a result, you do not treat each new situation as a new, unique problem. Instead, you draw on your experience, make connections between past situations and the current situation, and see what is important.
Since we all use patterns to make sense of the world, the real question is not, “are you doing pattern recognition,” but, “are you doing it well?”
Experience is one of the most powerful tools for honing your pattern recognition abilities. Psychologists have studied the way that people play chess—the ultimate game of strategy—to try and figure out what is it that separates chess masters from the rest of us. What they found is that, through experience, the best chess players are able to see more patterns than others. They have played so many games of chess that when they look at the board, they don’t just see pieces, they see patterns—rather than looking at a field of stars in the sky, they are seeing constellations. What that means is that they can anticipate the consequences of various actions, and predict longer chains of moves—if I move here, you’ll move there, and I’ll move here, etc…
Adept leaders are able to do the same thing in the business environment. Looking at patterns of events, they can see patterns of events that have important implications for the organization.
If you don’t know where you’re going you won’t know when you get there
If you don’t know where you’re going you won’t know when you get there. It is important to take some time to put your development activities into a larger perspective. What are you trying to develop, what approaches will you take, and how will you know when you have succeeded? To do this, you need to approach your personal development with a certain degree of thoughtfulness and planning.
Basic development planning is very straightforward—you select a development need, identify some development activity to address it, and arrange to complete the activity. Perhaps someone tells you that you need to be a better team player, or, you have a time management problem. So you sign up for a course. At the conclusion of the course you may feel that you learned some valuable things, but did the course help you meet your long-term development goals? Was that development activity the best way to learn what you needed to learn? If you let your development progress in an ad hoc manner, you won’t be on the most accelerated path to achieving your goals.
On the other hand, if you have a personal development plan—a specific set of needs that you are working on over an extended period—it enables you to make better choices about your development and stay on an accelerated course.
Think for a moment about what your life would be like if you were completely satisfied with yourself: you were always at your ideal weight; you were in your dream job; you were able to speak freely and comfortably before large crowds; and, you experienced a sense of contentment and inner peace every day. A quick look around (including in the mirror) probably drives home the point that taking yourself from where you are today to where you would like to be on any significant dimension—appearance, skills, attitudes, accomplishments, etc—is quite difficult. It must be, or we would have already done it.
Before launching into any activity with the intention of improving yourself it is useful to understand a few basic principles of self-development. Stepping back to reflect on your personal needs and the process of developing yourself can be very helpful in highlighting ways for you to jumpstart your learning and make real lasting changes in your life. The following five principles of self-development may be helpful to keep in mind as you begin creating a development plan for yourself.
FIRST THING
Self-Awareness is the first step toward Self-Improvement.
ONE: Self-Awareness is the first step toward Self Improvement. Personal development is difficult because most people resist self-awareness. They reach a point where they are pretty comfortable with themselves, and they become resistant to change. A common attitude I have encountered when helping others through personal change is, “It’s worked for me in the past, so why fix it if it isn’t broken?” In order to grow beyond who you are today you must first acknowledge that there is room for improvement.
If you don’t have a lot of self-confidence to begin with, focusing on areas for improvement can be pretty threatening. If you have a high level of self-confidence, it is easy to dismiss significant critical feedback. It is one of the major reasons why people don’t change easily. It’s very hard to admit that you need to work on a significant personal change goal. In fact, not only will most people ignore their development needs, many will deny them vehemently when they are pointed out. Recognizing that there is a need for change then is the fundamental pre-requisite for making any important change in your life.
So, before beginning a journey of self-development, you need to recognize that you may not like or agree with everything that you encounter along the way. You may find that you are not as good at some things as you thought. If, after understanding your development needs, you decide not to attempt some personal change, then it is at least a conscious choice.
