ICL Conclusion

Crystal Ball exercise in corporate learning :

Metalearning for metamanagers, client and providers evolutions.

No doubt, that corporations will continue to strengthen and try to reinforce the applied side of learning to make sure that the investments in learning are is effective and but also efficient. This implies a will reduction ofe save the time and eefforts to design sophisticated and costly ROI instruments to measure the return on learning.

Corporations will continue to use CU CCL for better sharing knowledge and faster developing innovations internally. “ If we knew what we know” is an important issue in large corporations that have been struggling with knowledge management, capitalisation and sharing. And As research indeed shows, knowledge is a wild living animal and there is no zoo for it.

Lately some large corporate universitiesCU have been reorganised. Isvor-Fiat a transformed a large share of its 150 strong full time faculty (150) to consultants to help support projects inside the company. The same has happened in to Shell which now has around 110 internal consultants, a large number opfof them amount being part of the headquarters’ learning center. Similar Aas for other provisions, these consultants compete with external providers for tenders.

Siemens Business Services has launched an important programme to train internal coaches to help first line managers.

For the corporation, TtThe outcome and objective for the corporation is for corporations to speed up and improve cascading and implementing strategy worldwide.

Some large traditional corporate universitiesCU have more or less disappeared or have been heavily transformed:, for instance ABB, Ericsson, Lufthansa. Increasingly, More and more corporations try to get rid of their physical facilities: because too costly or, too pompous infor theseis tough times. of cost cutting exercises,Or the location is too hard to reach for the CEO when lecturing for a couple of hours, this for lecturing CEO, ocombined with nly full half of the time due to difficulties to get people for long seminars which makes the facility is only full half of the time. . Zurich Financial Services, Cap Ggemini, Alcatel or , Casino are for instance facing these dilemmas decisions. Some providers (Chateau’form) offer the opportunity of having more than 10 nice and fully equipped rooms locations and facilities open for seminars which avoidsspare the logistics of managing a physical CU.

De-contenting whilst contextualising

Cost cutting, time cutting, resource cutting haves been a frequent exercises for the people in charge of Ccorporate learning. Both for budget reasons but also because of immense pressures on managers have less and less time to do all what they have to do (see the Foreword) and combined with calendar issues this gives only a few appropriate “learning”open periods occur during the year.

What used to be a 4 day seminar is now down to two. 2. Content must be shared given through other means, : pre-requisite readings, or e-learning plus tutoring. But managers have so little time no time either to do the prep -requisite work, and there is a limitation to delocalise . De-contenting programme, but contextualising more tTo make learning more efficient, the current trend is to de-contenting programmes, but contextualising more. Whilst the CU- CCL is are now one of the main communication channels for canals of the board towards managers, and many CEO use it when needed.

Thisit is also the place, as Jack Welch mentioned many times, for CEO’s to spot talents.

As a matter of fact, functional learning has widely taken place through management initial education or management literature, at least for those who can read English or can find adequate and up to date translations - which is not the case in all disciplines.

In this particular respect, regard MManagement dDevelopment and Human rResources Management have been under translated and 15 year old English best seller books have not yet been adapted in French, Spanish, Italian or German.

On the agenda of a corporate university/corporate learning center CU CCL oneone can find nowadays:

1.Alignment of the CU- CCL organisation, resources, contents, processes, evaluation and reward with the strategy; whilst , strengthening of the connection with the board and CEO 2.Qualification of both internal clients and providers 3.Blending and making consistent: contents, methodology, learning approaches, processes( coaching, assessment, internal consulting), action learning, project based learning, e-learning, virtual forums, and career development , mobility and succession planning. 4.HR and MD becoming a process function as most other corporate functions with a bullet-proof logistics (IS for HR, intra and extranet, e-learning platforms, seminar invitation and organisation, documents and relevant literature..) 5.Strategic tTalent pool management under same head to avoid traditional turf fights within HR 6.Partnering with the proper internal or external experts for better sourcing expertise 7.Network management for better knowledge sharing, innovation and learning development 8.Think tank for new initiatives and for problem solving stakes through action learning 9.Good marketing of the CU -CCL to attract the relevant participants, the stimulating facilitators and the adequate issues.

In parallel its turn, the above these trends will have an impact on the provision side, especially from mostly Bbusiness Sschools.

Up to now most schools of them have had a classic academic discipline approach. Content wise this may look adequate to foster convergent knowledge. But as we know innovations are often at the interface of disciplines and corporate problems are multifaceted.

Companies are not looking for knowledge content as such; they are looking for better solutions whatever the knowledge. True innovations imply also organisational and social changes which are that often more difficult to implement than the pure technical ones. side. This is where business schools BS can offer some added value to support help implementations of academic innovations. The Balanced Score Card system for instance is of no use, unless if it is not adapted, implemented, evaluated, reinforced and diffused.

Teaching the traditional academic way is becoming less relevant as content is becoming less important compared to than context for relevant implementation. Supporting learning and , having the the learner in charge way, requires is a different talents that not all faculty have. During their dissertation, Ph.D. students dto not learn how to Mmastering the blending process of learning with all the different supports and methodologies. is something Ph D students do not learn during their dissertation.

Faculty will have to move from “ I know” to “we (meaning all of us in the class room) know”.

The traditional way was for faculty was “Let participants share part of what I know”, to “Let us share what we know together, let us team up and start the trip”.

This, of course reinforces Henry Mintzberg’s last criticism on about MBAs in his last book: “Developing Managers not MBAs” where it becomes obvious that the MBA curriculum is not appropriate for managers in practice.

Faculty ought to be is more like “high mountaineering guides” and less a like a geography professor who that has hardly not travelled.

In the meantime, Nevertheless even forfor initial degrees in management certain some disciplines should be reinforced , such as:

•Social sciences: sociology, anthropology, organisation behaviour, organisation development, political sciences, ethics and social responsibility, diversity and social skills, personal effectiveness. •Rigorous observation through field work instead of pure content based learning •Collective work, and collective problem solving Project and process management •Technology, its uses and impacts, sustainability

Most functional areas (marketing, finance, management control..) can be tcovered aught easily with profusion of examples, books and techniques. Many of those are provided through on e-learning as a commodity. This is not where the difference is made differentiationswhen it comes to are made in terms of educating a future managers. Social skill are often becoming quickly more important to succeed and get promoted.

Becoming a comprehensive provider, means that business schools BS will have to deliver all kinds of expertises: content, learning methodology, facilitation, coaching, tutoring, mentoring, consulting, research and diffusion of knowledge and innovation, but also logistics.

Corporations will want try to outsource the lot all at to the same providerthe same place to lower opportunity and transaction costs. If business schools BS can take care of the logistics of all seminars, including, invitation of participants on specified listcation, accommodations, ticketing etc., this will be appreciated by clients as there is no real added value, but a lot of risks behind poor operations.

Not tooso many Sschools can move quickly towards such services. Already some are and delivering such services. Tto give just two examples both Cranfield and , Ashridge in the UK are showing the way with their consulting activities aside their MBA programmes. are showing the way.

The more Ttraditional schools including the Equis schools have a hard time to develop such skills within their faculty. Professors have their own academic agenda, made of publications and research for refereed journals and colleagues.

Moreover, But schools are facing more and more financial constraints with and public subsidies under scrutiny. are snow in the sun. Schools will have to increase tuition fees, whilst but also ddeveloping revenues through other profitable recurrent activities. Consulting activities do not is not only generate for revenue, sake but it can also brings also qualification opportunities qualification for faculty. through practical and up to date examples. Academia is a conservative land, and faculty can resist change quite for long when they are tenured. Business Sschool Ddeans will need champions, and good executive education deans to implement change. Medical schools are often hospitals, and this can show the way as medical education was one of the examples given for upgrading Business Education by the 1959 Gordon Howell report financed by the Ford foundation.

Schools have to go back to observe what is happening within large corporations.

Constraints within companies have been the trigger for innovations in managerial learning and practises, . Mmore so than within Bbusiness schools in the recent years. Maybe this has also to do with the governance of Sschools and where business people are lacking influence.

Tthe agenda for a business schools could be:

1.Redesign the governance of the school, more open to business and international issues, less on pure academic research 2.Redefine the portfolio of activities (see P.Lorange) 3.Reinforce links with corporate partners, and qualify this network 4.Recruit or Qqualify the faculty for consulting work and applied research, reward adequately 5.Modify the learning methodology and content of programmes: differentiate between initial education and post-experienced programmes 6.Develop comprehensive services for corporations working on corporate needs and preoccupations more than academic fields 7.Work out a long term project for the sSchool built on differentiated expertises that can bring a specific identity for the institution which will help in communicating. 8.Participate actively in networks like efmd to share and set up initiatives.

It is efmd’s unique mission to bridge both sides of the executive education river.

We sincerely hope that through this document we have contributed in doing so. All comments and further contribution will be appreciated.

Bruno Dufour Senior advisor for the efmd Corporate Services