When good content and good delivery are not enough ! Or Why Business Schools don’t walk their talk

Michel Marchand, EDF Corporate University Bruno Dufour, EFMD corporate services

Good Business Schools have quite an interesting provision of programmes in many different fields, and most of the time the quality of delivery is just superb.

Well knowledgeable faculty, good show, relevant teaching material, excellent inputs from research, satisfactory accommodations, everything just look perfect. Partnership contracts bring stability and trust after a few pilot tests and both sides should be happy with such arrangements.

What is going wrong then ?

Business Schools teach good courses on B to B, Customer relations, interorganisational multilevel industrial marketing, marketing management, key account management and the like. But they just do not practice it when it comes to their own activity. Maybe their executive education officers have not attended these courses, maybe they just think it is useless and irrelevant for them –shoemakers wear poor shoes- (“Cordonnier est toujours mal chaussé !” ), maybe it is more demanding and time consuming to sell internally than to the client. So the client comes afterwards.

Good faculty catch is a tough game !

It is true (see article in EBF) that for a company getting the interest of some faculty members is a difficult exercise. Recognition for a faculty member does not come from executive education, but mainly from the academic community, publications and good research. Money comes mostly from his/her own consultancy. Leading seminars for the school is a kind of mandatory activity which has not always good reputation and recognition, and distract from research, publication and consulting.

The counterparts of executive education officers in schools, the clients, within corporations, those who are in charge of executive programmes, corporate learning centers and universities claim some real difficulties.

Service as normal.

They not only need to have normal key account management and provision of:

• Minutes of meetings • Evaluation and feed back on sessions • Logistics of seminars • No last minute changes in dates or faculty • Meetings with faculty • Rigorous pricing and quality billing • Plain and sound information about the school and its expertises • Partnership development on other issues: recruitment, internship, company presentations..

Helping the client-partner, co-marketing programmes

But schools have also to understand that heads of corporate learning have to sell internally. This means that they need relevant and easy to read information and documents to market programmes at different levels. There are different targets within large corporations and marketing Corporate Universities programmes at the CEO level is not identical to marketing it to the HR departments, or to participants, line managers, employees representatives, or even to external clients.

The CU Head has not so many occasions to talk about the CU with his/her CEO. Interests of the CEO are, in the best case, focused on issues like performance, strategy implementation, alignment, not so much about personal development and programme content. As an example one can remember a large tire manufacturer CEO just interested in the fact that executives did not master the art of leading or participating in group work and wanted the internal training center to train top people just on group work skills! Individual, organisational development, corporate values and strategy was not on the agenda. Another example, in the field of distribution, the issue was more to deal about beliefs or behaviours than leadership or strategic skills. In another case, the head of management development was strictly forbidden by the HR VP to meet alone with the CEO.

It shows how political the interaction can be between CEOs and head of CUs. Specific material has to be designed for such brief, intense and sensitive exchanges. Academics are not always welcomed in Executive Committees and their presentations are far away from the items on the boss agenda, and usually considered as not enough pragmatic and always too lengthy. If something like a CU steering committee exist , and if the CEO participates, then the discussion can be more appropriate, but the material has still to be up the necessary level. The CU head presents a set of indicators on programmes, contents, commitment and presentation from company’s top executive participants, satisfaction levels, some achievements where there is action learning, cost issues, new developments, use of technology, academic partnerships and image benefits for the corporation. These steering committees need to be seriously prepared and the school can help with a quick quality slide show about such items.

With line managers heading operations, it is usually simpler as they have to deal with very pragmatic issues and performance achievements. The CU head must be ready to collect needs and deliver solutions with the help of the Business School experts.

If schools and faculty could be managed !

The need for close cooperation requires real availability of faculty members. When cherry picked they usually become closer to their client than when they are on a mandate from the school. This creates a competition between faculty members and the school itself. Schools have yet to define proper rules on such issue as there is a consultancy market for good faculty. Frequently faculty members are on a 4 days a week basis, and must engage in consultancy one day per week. The door is open then for such direct links with corporations. At a different price, usually cheaper for the company and better for the faculty. It shows the delicate pricing policy of the school. Clarification and transparency would be welcomed. But another issue is to get faculty to work together, to avoid turf fights internally and allow for better information and communication for the same corporate client. As this is not properly done this forces corporation to take care of the liaising operations from outside which is certainly not the best way to don it.

What does cooperation mean: looking in the same direction

Close cooperation on programme design is another topic, as frequently faculty ways of working do not meet the corporate requirements in terms of format, delays, presentations, prerequisite work, mastering of the company glossary and learning culture, knowledge of the organisation, strategic trends, recent history and other specificity. The knowledge of the background of a company can take up to a few days for a faculty member. If he can not do it, the executive officer of the school must provide the full back up. This is scarcely done as these persons think of themselves more as sales people more than knowledge brokers.

A strong signal of such potential tensions can be spotted within associations dealing with management development: ICEDR, Concours group, Conference Board, CUX, gathering schools or/and corporations. Seldom both sides meet to share and work on such issues. The main reason is due to the fact that they belong to different words, different cultures, with different logics and objectives. Quality, outputs, money and time do not have the same meaning, and their management is different.

Corporations are looking for pragmatic working solutions, not for brilliant academic or research contents. Seminars are designed to facilitate communication and networking between participants and top executives around corporate issues. Knowledge delivery is not an objective as many of the participants know already enough, or are not ready to learn more, at least not this way. Corporations are looking for improving team work, sharing best practices not only for improving individual performance.