Executive education boondoggles
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Workforce Management has a new special report titled: "Teaching Execs to Behave Like Leaders." That title might leave you thinking that this is about teaching manners to executives, but it's really about executive education programs. Here's the teaser copy.
"Business schools are finely customizing their executive offerings to craft the behaviors required to steer global corporations through the financial crisis, reflecting a broader shift toward creating programs that confront individual companies’ immediate business challenges. "
I think that's mostly BS, so let me re-write it in my own words.
"Business schools are finding more and more lucrative ways to present executive junkets as executive education. Executives are authorizing more boondoggles for themselves while being able to claim that they're increasing the training budget."
One shining example that's cited in this piece is a program that took top executives and b-school professors on trips to India and Hong Kong. This was part of a customized program to "make the company’s executives and managers question their business assumptions."
After that, the faculty "introduced the tools that the managers needed to help them build business models and design strategies to succeed in different scenarios." The spokesperson says that by the end of the program "we had created 40 senior managers who had a very different perspective."
Does an experienced manager need a trip to Hong Kong to question assumptions? Most of the experienced managers that I've known don't. They do pretty well with books and the net and friends and magazines.
Should an experienced manager need a trip around the world to learn how to analyze strategic situations? I hope not. Supposedly you promoted them to senior positions because they could already do that.
The costs are incredible. Remember that we're talking about managers and professors flying around the globe. They're almost certainly not staying at cheap hotels and not eating boxed lunches, either.
What about the opportunity costs? What didn't the company fund so that 40 plus people could fly around the world? Was it training for frontline supervisors? Was it raises for some workers? Was it some portion of the marketing budget? What?
And note that you never hear about real, operational results when you hear about these executive education programs. Even if you've changed the assumptions of half the managers on the tour, that doesn't mean bupkis unless it translates into profit or sustainable competitive advantage.
I think the reason no business school ever trots out the results of these programs is that no one ever bothers to count the costs and compare them with real business benefits. If there were real benefits to the company, I'm sure we'd hear about them.
I would buy your argument except for the well-acknowledged ethnocentrism and ignorance of a lot of US senior executives. Perhaps if the CEOs etc of US firms had been more internatioanlly aware they might not be in such dire straits at the moment? Shutting oneself away and assuming the rest of the world either operates like the US, or wants to and will eventually transition ot a US-like environment, is highly naive and dangerous.
Sure, some Exec Ed courses might be thinly veiled junkets, but most are not.
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I'll agree that many senior execs in my country are parochial when compared with their counterparts in other countries. I don't think that makes a difference here, though.
For starters, we don't know what company paid for the program I described in the post. The business school involved was in Europe which, for me, makes it a toss-up whether the company was US-based.
As for the parochialism of US executives causing the current economic crisis, that's not on my list of causes. Greed is in there, and hubris, but that doesn't explain why savvy folks outside the US purchased the toxic securities they did.
I would agree that most Exec Ed courses are not "thinly disguised junkets" but I don't think it matters. The junkets are an egregious example of the generic problem. That problem is twofold.
The executives who get to go on the junkets are the same people who decide whether to go, authorize the expenditures, and determine whether the event was a success. That kind of decision-making with no checks and balances is dangerous.
The more important point, is that it's not at all clear that the programs companies are paying for are delivering any results. Neither the schools nor the companies make the slightest effort to define ways that the programs will affect either sustainable competitive advantage or profitability. That's bad business.
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I'm suspicious of conferences and training courses in resort towns, especially if the course description mentions the fine golfing in the area. I have always suspected that training was a secondary objective and boondoggle facilitation their core competency. A training group that intends to train will do it in a location with a good but economical training facility.
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Thanks, Kathy. I think facilities should be good for training and, if we're talking a program of more than a day, that accommodations be reasonable.
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Wally, your assessment that the promotional copy for this course was "mostly BS" is a reflection of your deeply generous spirit.
Further, I wonder what we might ask to explore the assertion that at the end of the course the providers had "created" 40 managers with "a" different perspective. All 40 had the same new perspective? What is the value of that perspective - was it the aim of the program to create a specific new perspective, allow the managers to develop their own new perspectives, or to enhance their ability to approach problems with an open mind? In the presence of such impenetrably diffuse language, it is hard to avoid your conclusion about the unstated, but likely real, purpose of the course.
I appreciate Andre's comment, but must add that the problem he cites is a rapidly decreasing one - and not just at the level of the target market for this course, but generally in the US population. I would say that chauvinistic ignorance is not significantly more pronounced in the US these days than in France, Germany, India, Japan, or elsewhere. Students of such countries learn more about the details of American political history and policy for reasons that are uncontroversially obvious to most, but that doesn't necessarily lead to more understanding of us than our education about them does to our appreciation of them.
If executive education courses are not junkets, then, as you say, the proof of that would be more widely and specifically disseminated. The truth is, that is a problem with education and training at all levels.
This is a great topic, deserving of debate such as Andre offers, and of consideration in light of the opportunity costs you highlight. Maybe that should be a subject undertaken in the coming year. Thanks!
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Thanks for that fine and rich response, Jim. Your comments on the goals of the program are really helpful.
I also appreciate your comments on the state of US managers. That has particular power since you are an American living and doing business outside the US.
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Laying “eyes on” a problem is distinctly different way of gaining insight. The broad brush that has been used to describe the ‘junket’ may do an injustice to some very valuable experiences.
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I think you're right that "eyes on" is sometimes the best way get a lesson across. I don't think that's what we're describing. Even if it is, I think a "system" where leaders decide on their training options and then the same leaders decide on whether the experience was good and no one sets any measurable criteria is a boondoggle recipe.
And I think you're right that a broadbrush approach of labeling all executive education as a boondoggle might be an injustice to some, or even many, programs. What I'm trying to point out is that if you have real objectives and independent assessment, you won't have to worry about which evens are boondoggles and which are high-value activities.
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Wally –
I agree with a lot of what you have to say about executive education programs. Yes, they are expensive, especially compared to the kind of training (or lack of) most employees get. Your timing is appropriate to raise questions about these programs, given the backlash these days over corporate jets and other exec perks.
However, I still believe the right program, for the right executive, at the right time can be a justifiable investment. Not ALL exec ed programs are boondoggles, even the ones in what we might consider to be exotic locations. In fact, if I wanted to develop a more global perspective in an executive, attending a program in India or China would be a good alternative to an expat assignment.
As for the ROI, it’s always been difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a solid ROI for any management development program. I can only go by what I’ve experienced and seen – they are hit and miss, just like any other training program. For some, they can be transformational, for others, a complete waste of time.
All in all, a great post, once again. Thanks for stirring the pot.
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Thanks for adding those thoughts, Dan. I know there are good exec education programs. And I have no problem with the idea that a trip to China might not be the best choice to accomplish a particular development objective. OTOH, I find sending forty managers around the world to two locations, then bringing them back for more development, all involving B-school professors, only have an outcome that is measured in self-reported attitude change to be the sort of program that cries out for clear objectives. My issue is not with the individual good programs. It's with the fact that no one seems to set program objectives or measure outcomes and the only measurement of effectiveness is made by the people who approve the program in the first place.
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I totally agree with you that business schools are finding more and more lucrative ways to present executive junkets.
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