HIs friends call him the "Happy Lawyer"

May 20, 2012 is the official date of commencement activities for conferring the MBA degrees at Darden. On that date, we will have been students at Darden for 646 days. When asked in one of our final classes what “commencement” means, one of my cohort joking responded, “it means – commencing to get your life back again!” Our shared laughter showed how much we recognized the truth in that statement.

I was honored by my classmates who elected me to give a short speech at Darden’s graduation. There will be two graduation student speakers, and the other speaker is a traditional MBA student. At the graduation we will speak to the entire 300+ graduates, comprising both the executive MBA students and the traditional MBA students. As I was preparing that speech, by reflecting on my scholarship over the last two years, I started to realize that my experiences were going to be somewhat different from those of the traditional MBA students.

In retrospect, the idea of commencement has a slightly different meaning for executive MBA students. Commencement happened for me and my cohort 1 year and 9 months ago. Following our first week of immersion in The Process and the classrooms of Darden, we returned to our offices to begin – to commence – using the skills taught to us at Darden. Oh sure, it was a “soft launch” for most of us. Yet, the world had already changed for us. We had commenced seeing things with our new enterprise perspective; the world suddenly looked very different from how it had seemed just one week before.

This experience as an MBA for executives student let me put a new twist on an old joke. “Why did the MBA for Executives student cross the road?” “To get to her day job.” How true it was! As each On Grounds ended and we “crossed the road” to drive home to our day jobs, we initiated more and more business activities and experiences as our repertoire of business skills grew. As we rolled into Term 1 then into Term 2, we launched each new skill into our workplace as we learned them. I’ll never forget the thrill of being able to take a financial model for a deal I was working on, cloning it, and tinkering with the assumptions to do my own analysis of the deal.

We brought some of the freshest learning from the classrooms into the workplace. I remember holding just-released cases in my hands, which reflected current events in the business world. We applied leadership, communications, ethics and operations in the days after we read the cases. For every case we did in our learning teams and the classroom, we replicated that learning many times over in the workplace. After studying Accounting, suddenly the footnotes to a company’s financial statements made gripping reading, which was helpful in a discussion at work of the credit capacity for a deal. After learning that skill in Decision Analysis, I would routinely sketch a decision tree to help me evaluate possible future outcomes when I was at a decision point in life.

Our experiences at Darden also commenced more positive momentum on our careers. During the program, nearly a full half of my class used their Darden skills to take on new job responsibilities. A dozen were promoted, a decade used their business skills to take new jobs and we had a hat trick of entrepreneurs starting new companies. Personally, with three terms of leadership under my belt, I was given new responsibilities to manage a team of people responsible for company-wide contracts workflow. As we rolled into our second year of classes, filled with confidence from the Darden curriculum, I was ready to commence any project. Brimming with confidence, I saw the potential for a cultural change initiative at work, and successfully pitched my CEO to lead it.

The experience of Darden also made me realize a truth that I had forgotten for a while. Every day I am getting a grade from someone. This was obvious at Darden, where class participation counted, projects were regularly due and exams were spaced 8-10 weeks apart. Yet, being immersed in this constantly-graded environment also made me appreciate that others were grading me every day too. My clients, my boss and even my family were evaluating and rating my performance in technical skills, in my execution ability and in the skill with which I enhanced the performance of other human beings. This constant evaluation environment gave me the self-awareness to raise my grades in class, and in life.

As I walk across the stage on May 20 to get my diploma, I will be wearing something “borrowed”, but definitely not blue, under my robes. My son will lend me his Tae Kwon Do belt. 646 days ago, we commenced our practical application of business studies, practicing our skills as we crossed the road from Darden to the workplace and back. As principled leaders ready for the world of practical affairs, I believe my cohort and I have earned the right to consider our Darden degree as a black belt in business. Classmates, you are now giants, walk gently in the world.

Congratulations to all 2012 graduates!

“Small business leaders are tasked with operational and financial decisions that have serious implications for a company’s future success,” said David B. Yoffie, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of Executive Education, in a statement. “From selling your company to managing growth and expansion, Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle explores a wide range of strategies focused on financial management at all stages of a company’s growth.”

The program will guide participants through tools and best practices to align fiscal strategy with company goals while managing the high-pressure conditions of a small business. Small business leaders will leave the program with expanded skills to develop growth strategies, craft sustainable business models, manage personal guarantees and better understand the scope of their strategic business options.

“Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle attracts leaders from a range of industries, countries and developmental stages,” said Richard S. Ruback, Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance and faculty chair of Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle. “The program provides a unique opportunity for small business leaders to interact with peers facing similar opportunities and challenges.”

The curriculum of Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle is based in the latest research on financing a business, managing growth under capital constraints as well as buying and selling small firms. The program is designed for business owners or other financial decision makers in smaller private companies, not funded by venture capital or public investment, with annual sales of up to $5 million. This comprehensive program will guide participants through carefully chosen case studies, classroom presentations and discussions with faculty and an elite group of peer leaders.

Program Details:

Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle will run from June 24–27, 2012 and will take place at Harvard Business School. Please visit http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/lysb/ for complete curriculum details and to apply.

Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle (June 24–27, 2012, Harvard Business School)

Faculty:

Richard S. Ruback, Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance, member of the Finance Unit and faculty chair of Leading Your Small Business Through Its Lifecycle.

Royce Yudkoff, Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School and co-founder and managing partner at ABRY Partners, LLC, a private equity firm investing in middle market companies.

As a result of the partnership between the two schools, two graduate-level, yearlong certificate programs in the emerging field of business analytics and global strategy will be available to about 100 students. One program will be for students enrolled at IIM-Lucknow and another will be open to working professionals in India.

Ultimately, Kelley and IIM-Lucknow plan to partner to deliver a graduate degree program on business analytics, similar to what is already offered at IU.

“Our collaborative goal is to fundamentally advance the quality of decision-making by business leaders by improving their ability to draw meaningful insights from the massive amounts of data available to them today,” said Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School, in a statement.

“Information systems and business analytics is a very strong area at Kelley,” said Devi Singh, director of IIM-Lucknow. “Their experience in developing programs successfully, particularly working closely with American and multinational companies — which have operations around the world, including in India — is impressive.

“As organizations become more global and complex, and as data volumes grow, they will need tools to make decisions that will have great impact in the future,” Singh added. “What we bring to the table is a well-trained faculty and an understanding and access to large Indian data and Indian corporations. I think it will be a good combination of our two schools and talents.”

Kelley’s student and faculty ties to India already were extensive. Of the more than 850 Indian students enrolled at IU, about 400 are enrolled in Kelley’s graduate and undergraduate programs. In recent years, students and faculty have frequently traveled to India for classes and social entrepreneurship activities. The school has 14 faculty of Indian descent.

Its Kelley Direct online MBA program paved the way for the new offerings with IIM-Lucknow through courses for employees at U.S. companies with major operations in India, including Cummins and General Motors. The students have traveled to IIM-Lucknow for an intensive week on campus featuring faculty from both schools.

Situated at the outskirts of the historic and culturally rich city about 400 kilometers southeast of Delhi, IIM-Lucknow was established in 1984, by the government of India, as a national-level school of excellence in management science. Today, it has about 1,350 graduate-level students enrolled full time in its in-residence programs, 90 full-time professors and five research centers. It also has a campus at Noida, which is in the suburbs of Delhi.

Kelley faculty have taught courses at IIM-Lucknow, and they will conduct collaborative case studies on business issues in both the United States and India as a result of the agreement. The two institutions also may establish joint faculty workshops.

Munirpallam A. Venkataramanan, associate dean for academic programs at Kelley and a native of Chennai, India, is gratified by the progressive development of his school’s activities in the South Asian country.

“In the changed world that we live in, the global universities not only will be here, but also be able to go to any part of the world — not just through your students but through programs,” Venkataramanan said. “It is pretty exciting. We’ve had a significant number of students coming in from India. … In India, this strategy works in part because of our great alumni there who have demonstrated the value of a Kelley education.”

Earlier this year, the Kelley School welcomed its new Institute for Business Analytics, which works with companies in how to best use data about their practices and consumers — using techniques such as predictive analytics, optimization and simulation — to make fact-based decisions that improve productivity, increase profits and create competitive advantages.

Three Kelley faculty of Indian descent helped to create the new Institute for Business Analytics: co-director Vijay Khatri, associate professor of information systems; Ash Soni, associate dean of information technology, professor of operations and decision technologies and the ArcelorMittal Faculty Fellow; and Venkataramanan.

Paris de L'Etraz, an entrepreneurship professor at IE Business School in Madrid, will serve as executive director of the new leadership program for engineers

The $12,500 program has been a big success, drawing 45 participants last year and 48 this year. “This is a hidden gem of a program,” says Ikhlaq Sidhu, the curriculum designer and academic director of the program. “The first year they liked it. This year they love it. The goal is to help engineers and scientists lead and innovate.”

And now two prominent business schools—IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology–are partnering with Berkeley to bring a version of the program global. The schools plan to launch the new program, which will combine three weeks of in-person sessions with six months of online learning, in March of next year.

“Today, so many technical decisions are also business decisions,” adds Sidhu. “Our curriculum offers both real life technology leadership perspectives and proven academic frameworks.”

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION PROGRAM OFFERS CREDIT TOWARD AN MBA DEGREE

One of the unique aspects of the $22,000 global program is that graduates of the program will earn six months of credit toward an IE Business MBA degree. If they chose, they can enroll in IE’s blended in-person and online MBA program and get an MBA with another ten months of study. They’ll have up to two years to exercise that option.

“Most engineers are struggling between doing executive education or getting an MBA,” believes Paris de L’Etraz, a professor of entrepreneurship at the IE Business School and the executive director of the new program. “If they do an executive education program, they are paying a lot of money and not getting academic credit for it. If they go for an MBA, the opportunity costs of leaving their jobs is enormous and they think they will leave a technical position and do a lot of stuff that isn’t of interest to them. This program kills two birds with one stone.”

The program will help engineers influence top-level strategy as a technical leader or senior manager, lead and manage technical teams, and increase the value derived from research and development and technical operations.

PROGRAM BEGINS WITH A WEEK IN SILICON VALLEY

The new program begins with a week-long session in Silicon Valley, then morphs into online mode for three months of Internet study, followed by a week in Hong Kong and then three more months of online work. It concludes with a weeklong residential session in Madrid at IE Business School. Then, participants will be given two years in which to decide whether they want to pursue IE’s blended global MBA program.

“For the week in Silicon Valley, we actually have lined up a set of faculty from Stanford and Berkeley and industry people from the valley,” adds Sidhu. “In Hong Kong, there is a whole different set of faculty and industry people who can talk about how to do business in Asia. And in Madrid, the IE Business School professors plus people we will fly from Silicon Valley will address the leadership and culture building issues. The blended stuff in between will be done by IE professors.”

The idea for the new program was triggered by de L’Etraz who had heard about the success of the Berkeley program. “Why not do a blended version for students who can’t come to Silicon Valley?” he asked. “I had been looking at programs that take engineers and open their minds to business.”

The schools will begin to accept applications for the new program within a couple of weeks.

INSEAD's massive 14-story building for 30 Executive MBA students and executive education

INSEAD’S Executive MBA program in Abu Dhabi has drawn only 30 students while its executive education offerings have attracted about 1,000 participants this academic year–one-third the size of INSEAD’s Singapore program and one-fifth the size of exec ed students at its main campus in Fontainebleau, France.

Yet, the school boasts a massive 14-story building in Abu Dhabi that includes a restaurant, library and prayer rooms—but only four resident professors.

“Some professors are feeling discouraged about a program they see as adrift, and school administrators and government officials are reassessing the program’s future,” the Journal reported.

To establish its presence in Abu Dhabi, INSEAD received from the government “an upfront endowment contribution” of between $65.8 million and $72.4 million as well as annual payments of between $2.0 million and $2.9 million for ten years. All told, the maximum payments to INSEAD under the agreement would exceed $100 million.

For its part, INSEAD has invested a mere fraction of the government’s commitment–“a few million euros” in the campus. The Journal says that the Abu Dhabi government recently asked the school to restate its plans for the campus in the midst of what appears to be some disagreement over the terms of the agreement. Specifically, the Journal reported, “one point of contention” is whether the school agreed to start a full-time MBA program in the city. “The Abu Dhabi side appears confident that a program is in the works,” according to the Journal.

INSEAD Dean Dipak Jain told the newspaper, “I am trying to understand very clearly what were the deliverables, [and] what was promised. There is no plan for an Abu Dhabi MBA degree in the immediate future.

Retorted Jihad Mohaidat, who manages global partnerships for the Abu Dhabi Education Council: Those who express confusion over the arrangement “are confused themselves,” and maintains that an M.B.A. is “part of the vision going forward.”

Columbia Business School Vice Dean Amir Ziv

Columbia Business School is launching yet another Executive MBA program—its fifth master’s program for executives. The school announced yesterday (May 1) a new delivery format that it believes would attract executives throughout the U.S., Canada and Latin America.

Instead of meeting on either alternating Fridays and Saturdays or every Saturday, this new EMBA-Americas offering will meet for one week every month for 20 months. All of the weeklong sessions, with the exception of two, will be held at Columbia’s New York City campus. EMBA students will spend one week in Silicon Valley and another week in Latin America during the five-semester program.

The new program solidifies Columbia’s position as the largest Executive MBA player in the U.S. The school admits more than 450 executive MBA students annually and is expecting 45 to 70 admits for this new program, which begins in January. Poets&Quants ranks Columbia’s EMBA offerings fourth best in the world, behind only Wharton, Chicago Booth and Northwestern Kellogg.

Among four existing EMBA programs, Columbia already offers students in New York the option of meeting either weekly on Saturdays or every other week on both Fridays and Saturdays while completing the core curriculum in the first year. As students enter the second year of the program, they gain access to what Columbia says is one of the largest slate of electives of any EMBA program.

Access to a large menu of elective courses will also be key draw of the new program. Of the five total semesters of the program, two of them are completely devoted to elective courses. Columbia says that EMBA-Americas students will have the opportunity to join all other EMBA students in choosing from elective offerings in different formats: global elective weeks, either bi-weekly or weekly EMBA-NY electives, or those offered in the full-time MBA program.

COLUMBIA WILL PRICE THE PROGRAM IN THE SAME $161,280 RANGE AS ITS OTHER EMBA OPTIONS

The decision to launch the new program, which will be priced at roughly the $161,280 that Columbia charges for its other EMBA programs, was unrelated to the school’s decision last month to end its EMBA partnership program with UC-Berkeley’s Haas School. Haas plans to launch a stand-alone executive MBA next year. But ending the Berkeley joint program allowed Columbia to launch the new offering earlier than expected. “By freeing resources from Berkeley, it made it easier to move on this program,” said Amir Ziv, vice dean of Columbia Business School.

In an interview with Poets&Quants. Ziv said the once a week per month format extends the reach of the program to a much larger population of executives who find it difficult to fly to New York for either its Saturday only or alternating Friday-Saturday programs. It also fits into the school’s general strategy of removing the barriers that executives often face when considering EMBA programs.

“If you look at the difference between the MBA world and the EMBA world, the MBA program is very global by nature,” he said. “All of the schools take 30% to 35% of their students from international places—and 70% of my MBA students are moving to be in the full-time program.  EMBA programs. on the other hand, have two major issues with its delivery format. One is the time away from work and the other is location. If you are working in one place, you often can’t take a program in another place.

‘BY MEETING ONCE A MONTH, WE CAN INCREASE OUR REACH TO EVERYONE IN THE U.S.’

“Over the last couple of years, our strategy is to remove these barriers to entry,” added Ziv. “The first one we did was last year with EMBA Saturday. It is local but you can be there without missing a day of work. We get people from Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and the New York area because it’s reasonably easy to do it. But would you fly from Texas? It’s too much to ask. EMBA-Americas solves the location problem. By meeting once a month, we can increase our reach to everyone in the U.S., including the south, California and the Midwest as well as Latin America. You can take a flight once a month and it’s no big deal.”

Applications for the inaugural EMBA-Americas class, which will begin in January 2013, will open on July 1, 2012. The application deadline is set for October 31, 2012. EMBA-Americas will mirror the School’s MBA and Executive MBA programs in requiring 60 course credits embedded in the same rigorous curriculum.  Ziv said all of Columbia’s MBA programs, whether full-time or executive, offer students 720 “contact hours” in class.

Ziv said he does not expect executives to have trouble taking off a week every month to attend the program. The format is similar to Columbia’s EMBA Global and EMBA Asia programs. “EMBA Global is in its 12^th year so we know people are willing to do it and take the time off,” he said. “It speaks to the quality of the people. Corporations are wiling to sponsor them in either money or time. We have no issues with getting our students to EMBA Global so I don’t see any problem in high quality people for this program.”

NO MORE EMBA PROGRAMS IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE FOR COLUMBIA

With this fifth program, Columbia does not foresee any other programs anytime soon. “For the near future,” adds Ziv, “we are done. It could be that we realize demand from Latin America is extremely high. Then I might go and look for a partnership there. I don’t expect another one in the next year or two, though.”

The new program will also follow stringent admissions standards, including the GMAT or GRE test prerequisite. Employment and employer sponsorship of time away from work is required. Interested applicants can visit http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/emba/americas to learn more or sign up for updates.

DON’T MISS: HAAS & COLUMBIA GET AN EMBA DIVORCE or WHARTON’S IMPRESSIVE NEW WEST COAST DIGS FOR EMBAS

HIs friends call him the "Happy Lawyer"

It was almost exactly two years ago to the date that I hit the submit button.  As I rested for a moment behind my computer, I imagined my application zapping across the Internet — in scads of little 1’s and 0’s, tumbling merrily along on their journey.  My application for the MBA for Executives class of 2012 was headed to the friendly people in the Admissions Office at Darden.  Truthfully, as I paused there, I had a moment of relief – quickly followed by fear.

Relief came first, immediately.  After the application disappeared into the Ether, I glanced over to my admissions application file, and I breathed deeply.  Putting my application together had been time consuming and completion afforded me a well-deserved respite.  Pulling together the paperwork for my application had required me to step out of my comfort zone.  Evening routines were disrupted as I found registrars’ offices emails, completed transcript requests, did test prep, drafted essays and solicited letters of recommendation.  I felt worn out; but, still I was relieved.  I figured I had a few weeks to rest before the admissions committee reported the worthiness of my application.

Then — without warning — the fear hit me.  Sure, I was done.  For now.  The many piles of papers and computer files surrounding me were evidence of the hours I had invested in the process.  It began to dawn on me that what I had just gone through was merely the prelude.  If I was this busy just applying to the program, how would I ever find the time to actually attend class, do readings, complete assignments and pass exams?!?  What was I thinking?  I was asking Darden to put me into the ring, to face two years of tangling with the bone-crushing contender named the MBA program.  The flying 1’s and 0’s flashed out Danger! Trouble!  Come back, come back to me, I pleaded with them.

“I don’t think I can manage it all,” I confessed later that day to my wife, hinting that even if I was accepted, I might not enroll in the program.  I told her about all doubts and fears that I had.  She listened intently.  But she had already noticed the beginnings of change in me.  Sure, I was spending a lot of additional time on this application process.  But with her keen eye, she also noticed something different.  She saw me rise to the challenge, to find creative ways to multi-task my day job and the application process.  She felt the energy that rose up in me when I talked about getting my MBA.  She asked me a deceptively simple question.  “If you don’t get your MBA, how will you feel in two years looking back to today?”

Two years ago, my 1’s and 0’s flew through the Ethernet to the Admissions Office.  As they bounced across the World Wide Web, the fear that I had felt melted into the calmness of perspective.  Yes, she was right.  Two years will pass whether or not I start my MBA journey.  And when I started thinking about the work that would be required, another involuntary memory erupted in my mind.  It was of me as a young college graduate in the US Marine Officer Candidate School.  We were on a long forced march, a “speed walk” carrying 60 pounds of gear, hurrying to finish within time.  I looked over to one of my fellow officer candidates.  “Why are you grinning?” I asked, trying to shift my massive pack to a place on my back that did not ache.  He didn’t break stride to inform me.  “No matter how big the total is, there are only a fixed number of steps you and I have to walk between now and getting our commissions. Every step we take is one less step we will ever need to take here,” he assured me.

If you are having second thoughts about your ability to find the time to get your MBA, consider this: had I not rolled the dice, taken the chance and put in the work, I’d still be two years older, and no closer to my MBA.  Sure, the program was hard, but now I am 95% done.  Two years seems like a long time when it stretches out in the future.  But for me two years have just passed away.  Had I missed taking the opportunity to get my MBA, I probably would have spent an infinite amount of time asking myself: “What-if?”

Peter Vanderloo is an in-house lawyer at a well-known tech company in the first year of the Executive MBA program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. His previous posts at Poets&Quants for Execs:

Meet Peter: He’s a Darden Student Blogging on his EMBA Journey

The Fundamental Value Proposition of an EMBA Program: Personal Transformation

Work-Life Balance in An EMBA Program? What Balance?

A Generous Gift in an MBA Experience: A Learning Team

On the Grounds

When You’re CEO for the Day–Or Class

The Mantra at Darden: “Trust the Process”

Things I Have Learned In the Last 12 Months

Going to the GEMBA

The Road Less Traveled To Charlottesville

The Molting of an Executive MBA Class

HIs friends call him the "Happy Lawyer"

Giants are sometimes made by stretching ordinary men and women under the right circumstances with the right tools. Those who study leadership can marvel at the powers that some people summon under challenging or stressful circumstances. Instead of being downtrodden, these people emerge from the ordeals with superior, even legendary, leadership skills. Among our historical examples, we can count Cincinnatus, who, after leaving his plow in the field of his farm, mobilized the army in response to a crisis and personally led the attack to save Rome. Likewise, many other people across time have attained gargantuan leadership skills by summoning their inner strengths under pressure.

After witnessing first-hand the emerging leadership capital of my classmates over the last 20 months, I believe that the intensity of Darden has conjured the magical circumstances and tools in its curriculum and environment to create the environment where an above-average leader can be converted into a titan of leadership. My classmates and I have virtually molted from our pre-MBA selves and undeniably undergone a metamorphosis in leadership demeanor. In fact, I had a recent flash of just how much my class has developed highly-polished public speaking and presentation skills.

This change has not occurred overnight, but it is very obvious in retrospect. Less than two years ago, as we first came together as a class, we lurched through personal introductions, faltering at the choice of words, staggering through our self-descriptions. Now, nearing the end of our classwork, I had the pleasure of seeing my classmates as they expertly executed a final presentation in our leadership presence course. I was thrilled to watch them as they, in turn, commanded the podium, thundered with inspirational prose, drew down a hush on the crowd, coaxed out a tearful empathy, or otherwise transformed themselves into mesmerizing manifestations of leadership. One reserved engineer became an animated historian who described how he drew inspiration and confidence from all of interactions of the class over the program. Another already capable speaker transcended her comfort zone and added a new depth of expression to her presentation. A determined, analytical type had us in stitches with a spot-on, lampooning stand-up routine.

While this leadership presence class undeniable gave a setting for the demonstration of these skills, there were also many prior building blocks in the intense experiences in the Darden program that led to these moments. For example, over the last two years, the case method sessions have given us consistent opportunities to express ideas in a public venue. We have grown accustomed to speaking up constantly in our classes as we engaged in the oral give-and-take of the case method. Due to the nature of the multi-perspective classroom, we have unconsciously shaped our expressions into pithy and witty sound bites that explain and persuade our business views.

We have also had a thorough grounding in general management and leadership. Both of these subjects emphasize the necessity of influencing and directing people in order to create value in businesses. These disciplines allow us to transcend the detached numbers of the spreadsheet, and show us how to put words into action to draw out the contributions of individuals in the workplace. In an exquisite balance, we have also studied ourselves, spending the last two terms considering our own professional development. We have been challenged to define ourselves, our skills and our goals, and to be able to coherently pitch them to others. We have been trained not only to think about where we are and where we want to go professionally, but also how to actively enlist others to help us get there.

In totality, these courses have been a crucible though which our leadership presence has been refined. y their subjects and methods, these classes have not only increased our knowledge base, but have forced us to look for better, stronger and more effective ways to communicate our ideas. As they challenged us, they also rewarded us with immediate feedback on our ability to effectively connect with others.

As we now approach our final leadership residency, on the way to graduation, we now see ourselves more clearly in the mirror, displaying our own burgeoning leadership skills. As we look back on the last two years, it has become more obvious with the passage of time that we have been stretched by the intense program at Darden. As our class has become more adept at spreadsheets, formulas and business theories, we have likewise become skilled at the external manifestations of leadership. With our new carriage of confidence, we have developed the skills to implement this knowledge, so that we can effectively think, speak and influence others as we pursue our business goals.

Peter Vanderloo is an in-house lawyer at a well-known tech company in the first year of the Executive MBA program at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. His previous posts at Poets&Quants for Execs:

Meet Peter: He’s a Darden Student Blogging on his EMBA Journey

The Fundamental Value Proposition of an EMBA Program: Personal Transformation

Work-Life Balance in An EMBA Program? What Balance?

A Generous Gift in an MBA Experience: A Learning Team

On the Grounds

When You’re CEO for the Day–Or Class

The Mantra at Darden: “Trust the Process”

Things I Have Learned In the Last 12 Months

Going to the GEMBA

The Road Less Traveled To Charlottesville

Participants in Berkeley's Executive Leadership Program

This is the second in a series of articles in which we spend a day embedded in an executive education program and report directly from the classroom on the experience. For this article, we sent reporter Neelima Mahajan-Bansal to UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business’ week long Executive Leadership Program.

Four people from Team Nine stand huddled over a pile of multi-colored blocks, while a fifth guy hovers closely, observing them and listening to the ensuing conversation.

“Let us sort the different blocks by shape,” says the leader of the group as he starts to build the team’s strategy. The other three (the builders) hurriedly sort the blocks into different piles – the squares in one place, the rectangles in the second and the flat ones in the third – and start building a tower.

“Let’s shoot for a 10 or 12 inch tower,” says the leader holding a foot rule next to the tower measuring what they have been able to achieve thus far.

Three people building a tower that’s a couple of inches tall might sound like child’s play, but that’s where things start to get interesting. The three builders will do this with blindfolds on and will use only their non-dominant hand. The leader – the only one who doesn’t have a blindfold on – is allowed to speak, but not touch. And the regulator – the guy who was hovering around – makes sure that no one violates the rules.

This is a typical scene from a group exercise at the Berkeley Executive Leadership Program (BEXL), a one-week long program on leadership which brings together 50-odd senior executives from across the country and abroad to the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley. The goal of the course: To allow already accomplished executives a brief professional pause to reflect on what they have become as leaders today, where they want to go from here, and what they will do to get there.

These executives come from a variety of industries and some are already in the C-suite while others are ready to take on positions of greater authority and responsibility. For most participants, this is the first time they have been back in a classroom after years. Right now they are breaking their heads of innocuous-looking blocks of wood, but soon they will be dealing with real-life issues and dilemmas that confront a leader.

After some deliberation, Team 9 decides to build an 11-inch tower. The builders quickly sort out the blocks again and put their blindfolds on waiting for the game to begin. But not so soon. Jennifer Chatman’s voice booms loud and clear. “Regulators, mess up the blocks please!” says Chatman, a management professor at Haas and faculty director of the BEXL. A collective groan is heard throughout the room, where all the competing teams had — like Team 9 — smartly sorted out the blocks before putting their blindfolds on.

The game begins and the builders start groping around for the right blocks. Clearly, this is tougher than they had thought it would be. The builders of Team 9 try to determine the shape of each block and separate them. Then one by one they start building the tower in a clearing in the middle of the table. “To your right…. A little to the left… Slightly lower… Yes, that’s right. Now place it slowly and carefully,” says the leader, as each builder brings a block close to the tower. Team 9’s final product is an angular, awkward-looking tower, but at least it is standing – a lot of teams ended up with towers that came crashing down just as the five-minute building period got over.

The scoring is done – Team 9 hasn’t done bad at all, but members realize they can do better over the next two rounds. The team goes into a huddle again, discussing what worked and what didn’t and how they can do better this time. “This wasn’t all that tough, was it?” says one builder. “Maybe we can bid higher for the next round.” So they bid for 13 inches. They begin with an uneven base and after a couple of crashes, they end up with only 7.5 inches. Team 5, on the other hand, shocks everyone by building 36 inches. Some more introspection happens and Round 3 comes where there is a twist. The leaders are removed from the scene of action after the strategizing, and the team has to do everything alone. Team 5’s success has created some amount of pressure this time and Team 9 bids for 33 inches, but doesn’t end up coming too close. Most teams, however, do better – double or even triple their Round 1 performance – when the leaders are away.

Beyond all the mirth and the merriment, the objective of the game was simple: to determine what is the unique value-added of a leader? This question would be a constant thread over the next few days at the BEXL program. Chatman helps the teams dissect what really happened during the exercise, and more importantly, how they should shoot to achieve Round 3 performance from Round 1. The tower-building exercise sets the tone for Chatman’s presentation on different leadership styles and how they affect motivation. Just having been through this exercise, participants can identify with the different styles in real-life situations. Interestingly, she puts a lot of emphasis on the “visionary style” of leading because as she later explains, the pre-program survey results revealed that this particular group has very few people who exhibit that style.

Chatman uses a case study from Sears Roebuck to explain how leaders are signal generators. “The point about leadership is that people don’t have access to your mind – why you are doing what you are doing,” says Chatman. “They only have access to your behaviors.” She explains how behavior offers the data points that help people understand what the leader’s priorities are. “Leaders must engage in a mental calculus on how they can add value situation by situation,” says Chatman.

Her next presentation is on using culture as a leadership tool where participants engage in a lively discussion on the culture at Nordstrom (where several participants share their own “Nordstrom story” in which the store’s employees went out of way to please customers), Southwest Airlines and Zappos. This is followed by a peer coaching session and a professional coaching session over dinner off-campus at the Claremont Hotel.

This is the first time that the BEXL, which has been around for several years, has included a coaching component. In fact, the program has undergone major changes this year based on industry feedback. Says Kim Fisher of Galima Group, UC-Berkeley’s program partner, “We interviewed around 290 senior executives to make sure that we are offering people, who are taking time away from really important jobs, what they need to make their company more successful and make themselves more successful as leaders.” The feedback showed that the learning should be actionable, more personalized, the impact needs to be lasting, and this “shouldn’t be about navel-gazing.”

Based on such feedback, personalized coaching was introduced. “Our big picture vision for this is that it is a customised general enrolment program,” says Chatman. “We are trying to really focus on the challenges and scope of a senior executive.” Also, this is the first time the BEXL had an application process. Out of the 80-odd people who applied, only 47 got in. “You need to have a peer group that can learn from each other because so much of what they are doing is group work. We feel that it is important that they learn as much as they can from each other as they can from the people standing in front of them,” says Fisher.

Bringing it All Together

The BEXL is structured around an organizational canvas – a simple chart which shows the forces that influence leadership, structure and culture within an organization’s context, and how that, in turn, has a bearing on vision and strategy. “Our integrating mechanism is this organization canvas,” says Chatman.

Going through the canvas is a three-part process. One, the participants get their data on to the canvas – in essence, they describe the situation. This data comes from two surveys that happen even before the participants come to Berkeley – the participants as well as their teams are asked to complete two surveys. One’s an assessment of their leadership style and the second is a culture assessment survey. Two, they understand the fits and misfits among the different components of the organizational canvas – so if they are pursuing an innovation strategy and their culture is focused on risk aversion, there is a clear roadblock there. So this is really about diagnosing the gaps between the current organizational elements and their aspirational vision and strategy. Next, they devise an action plan.

Different issues related to the organizational canvas are addressed over different days. While the content sessions are conducted by such Berkeley professors as Chatman, Homi Bahrami and Morten Hansen, practitioners such as Inder Sidhu, senior vice-president of worldwide sales strategy and planning at Cisco Systems, and author of the bestseller Doing Both, help integrate them with real-world experience. Day 1, with its tower-building exercise, presentations by Chatman and the coaching component, is an introduction to leadership and culture. Day 2 is about structure including design issues, decision-making and incentive systems. Day 3 is about culture and features recruiting expert Susan Hailey, who talks of how they changed culture at Harrah’s Entertainment through its recruiting strategy.

Day 4 is an integration session where Cisco’s Sidhu talks of structure and culture in pursuit of a balanced strategy. Using the example of the Golden Gate Bridge, which combined both structural engineering and flexibility with aesthetics and beauty, Sidhu explains how growth and profitability need not be an either-or. “There is a multiplier effect between both these seemingly diverse choices,” he says, as the participants listen on with rapt attention. To make his point clear, he divides the class into three groups and gives them three Cisco case studies to read and analyze. Each case study presents a choice which can be seen as an “either-or” or about “doing both” successfully — disruptive innovation and sustaining innovation; relevance and excellence in customer intimacy; and optimization and reinvention in operational excellence.

Sidhu’s session is understandably one of the most popular sessions in the five-day program. Says one participant, “Inder’s talk has been the highlight of the week for me so far. Very relevant and very inspirational.” The second half of Day 4 and the last day is about cascading the vision and strategy down the ranks. There is an added layer of behavioural training based on a video-taped session which most participants find uncomfortable.

Talking of the objectives of the BEXL, Chatman says, “The biggest message here is to help leaders at this level understand that their real added value is at the vision and strategy level, and not the formulation piece but the actual execution piece. Since it is not optimal for them to do that work themselves, we help them figure out how to inspire the organization to accomplish their strategic objectives and their visionary aspirations, and help them clarify the vision and strategy so that they are really replicating themselves throughout the organization.”

WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T

Organizational Canvas: The BEXL imparts a way of thinking which many find useful. “The work we did around the organizational canvas ensures that you are more likely to take back something about you rather than just concepts and theories,” says participant Heather McKay, Vice-President (HR), ACL Services.

The Group: The BEXL attracts people from diverse industries giving participants the opportunity to learn from each other. Participant Daniel Rex, CEO, Toastmasters International, says, “When the seemingly disparate information flows, knowledge and methodologies clash and bump into each other, the result is often better than either of them has.” However, in terms of nationalities, there was little diversity this year as most of the participants came from the US (though some of them were born elsewhere).

Peer Coaching: Participants were carefully matched with each other based on their backgrounds and the kind of industries they came from. Says one participant who comes from a non-profit organization, “It wouldn’t have worked for me to talk to somebody from a venture capital firm. Fortunately, there was somebody from a similar enough organization that we understood each other’s challenges but they are dissimilar enough in mission and in products that we were able to take an outsider’s view and help each other.”

Professional coaching: Mixed response. While some found this useful, others didn’t. Says one, “While the peer coaching helped us synthesize ideas and thoughts, the professional coaching wasn’t very impactful.”

THE BASICS:

Berkeley Executive Leadership Program (BEXL)
Faculty director: Jennifer Chatman, the Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Management at Haas School of Business
Program dates: 2-6 April 2012, 1-5 October 2012
Cost: $8,995 (if you register by 15 May 2012 for the October program. The fee will be $9,900 after that.)
Location: Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, California

DON’T MISS: IN THE CLASSROOM: LEADING CHANGE & ORGANIZATIONAL RENEWAL

Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Columbia Business School said that their Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program will come to closure in February 2013 when the current class graduates.

Deans Rich Lyons of the Haas School and Glenn Hubbard of Columbia vaguely said the joint decision was reached “in recognition of each school’s goals and future direction.”

When Berkeley first agreed to offer an executive program in the early 2000s, the school decided on a partnership with Columbia because it was in the midst of a number of initiatives and administrators were concerned about stretching the school’s resources. Columbia-Berkeley enrolled its first class in May 2002, nearly a year after Wharton arrived in Berkeley’s backyard with leased space in a San Francisco office building.

Since then, Wharton has established itself as the premier EMBA program on the West Coast, despite its roots in Philadelphia. Since Wharton enrolled its inaugural class in 2001, Wharton’s West Coast campus has graduated some 800 EMBAs, significantly above the output of Columbia and Berkeley’s joint program which will have graduated some 600 EMBAs by the time it concludes its program next year.

The Haas School said it now plans to launch a stand-alone MBA for Executives program in 2013, in addition to its full-time MBA and evening & weekend MBA programs. That decision to go it alone most probably led to today’s announcement to break up the partnership. Dean Lyons told Poets&Quants that the partnership “served both sides very well and was still attracting top students. But like all partnerships, (it) wasn’t evolving as quickly as either side of the partnership was evolving.”

The joint program between Columbia and Berkeley took a steep fall in The Financial Times’ ranking of EMBA programs last year, plummeting to a rank of 22nd from 13th in both 2010 and 2009. Haas has done much better on its own, gaining a rank of second for its evening and weekend part-time MBA program in the most recent U.S. News & World Report ranking. Haas full-time MBA program was ranked ninth in the U.S. in the Poets&Quants’ 2011 list.

The program had been truly unique. It brought together two leading faculties from two top-ranked business schools in two of the world’s great business centers—New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area—to create a single unique program. The only EMBA partnership between two top-ranked U.S. business schools, classes for this program met 18 times in California and seven times in New York, with the option to spend a term in New York. At $150,000 a pop, it has also been among the most expensive MBA in the market. Outside of Wharton’s San Francisco and Philadelphia EMBAs, and Kellogg’s program at Northwestern University, this had been the fourth most expensive MBA in the world.

The schools said that current students in the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program will continue taking classes at both schools’ campuses. As with prior graduates of the joint program, the Class of 2013 will be awarded MBA degrees from both Columbia and Berkeley and will become part of the alumni networks of both schools.

Prospective students who have been admitted to enter the Berkeley-Columbia Program in May 2012 will be offered three options: 1) enter any of Columbia Business School’s EMBA programs, 2) enter the Berkeley Evening & Weekend MBA Program at the Haas School, or 3) enter the new Berkeley MBA Program for Executives when it begins in 2013.

The Berkeley-Columbia EMBA Program is taught equally by Berkeley-Haas and Columbia Business School faculty in classes held on both the Berkeley and Columbia campuses. The Berkeley-Columbia EMBA program spans 19 months with classes starting in May and ending in December of the following year. Commencement takes place in February.