Executives choose Ivy League training

Imagine attending a senior executive training programme that spares no expense, where guest speakers include billionaire entrepreneurs, and CEOs of multinational giants are among your fellow attendees. Dynamics such as these are convincing more senior Kiwi execs to sidestep Australasian universities in favour of Ivy League global offerings.

Robyn Leeming, head of Massey University's Graduate Business School, suspects Australian senior management programmes have an edge on local counterparts. But she says senior executive programmes on either side of the Tasman simply don't cut the mustard compared with international courses of the likes of Insead, Harvard, Stanford and Colombia.

"Senior execs within multinationals are expected to have global networks these days. But you don't have to work in a global environment to benefit from rubbing shoulders with global counterparts," says Leeming, former HR director at Tasman Pulp and Paper.

Without the financial grunt needed to attract world-leading lecturers and guest speakers, Leeming doubts senior exec programmes will lure high-calibre attendees to these shores. She says paying top scholars and guest speakers fees in excess of US$20,000 ($27,225) for every day they're away, plus expenses, is too pricey for local universities.

For example, when TVNZ's head of content, Stephen Smith, attended the advanced management programme at Harvard three years ago, Dell founder Michael Dell and the chairman of Intel were guest speakers.

One of first things John Beveridge discovered, when attending Colombia University's month-long US$35,000 ($47,000) New-York-based senior executive programme last year, was that money is no object.

A 60-piece orchestra from Seattle was flown in for the night to show attendees how the actions of the conductor are interpreted through the baton.

"Other presentations included a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and role-playing with professional actors on creative presentation techniques," says Beveridge, CEO of Fletcher Easysteel.

But it's important to remember, advises Beveridge, that the calibre of attendees on these programmes is as important as the quality of the lecturers and guest speakers. One of Beveridge's fellow attendees on the Colombia programme was the captain of a US submarine while another was an executive at Boeing who had a US$5 billion ($6.8 billion) operating budget.

When they can rub shoulders with people like this, Air New Zealand's Vanessa Stoddart finds it hardly surprising that Kiwi execs don't want to sit in classrooms with locals on senior executive programmes. In a market this small, she says, they see them every day.

"They want to rub shoulders and develop high-quality networks with people doing similar jobs in other parts of the world," says Stoddart, the airline's group general manager HR and organisational change.

Stoddart studied alongside the likes of Ford's CEO when she attended Insead's six-week in-residence advance management programme at Fontainebleau, near Paris in 1997. She suspects execs could learn more from these intensive senior executive programmes than they would from doing a local two-year MBA. That's without the disruption to work or family life, and at a similar cost.

"A lot of senior execs still look to MBAs to advance their careers when all it might provide is a band aid for their current role," says Stoddart.

But it takes more than convincing the boss to front-up with an amount exceeding the average Kiwi salary to join a privileged few on these international programmes. With so many good people continually rejected, being invited on to to one of these programmes is a great confidence booster.

That's especially true, explains Stoddart because of their policy of having cross-country representation. "Course content within Australian and New Zealand senior executive programmes might be comparable. But the element they can't replicate is the experience of the global attendees."

To Smith, the value in these programmes isn't the final grade but the quality of the dialogue in and outside the classroom. Through the calibre of people attending and presenting these programmes, he says Kiwi execs are exposed to a level of thinking they'd never get locally.

"I learned at least as much from the people I went through the course with as I did from the lecturers and guest speakers," he says.

"I'm sure local senior executive programmes are really good, but what's lacking is the intellectual stimulation and new ideas that come from stepping away from your local environment.

Warren Larsen, former Dairy Board CEO doubts New Zealand-based senior executive programmes will foot-it globally until there's infinitely better cross-fertilisation between university and industry people.

To Larsen that means getting local business leaders to not only help fund senior exec programmes but also to participate in delivering them.

But the calibre of top scholars and global networking aside, he claims another real benefit of senior execs studying beyond Australasia is the "total immersion" experience.

"I don't think there's a wealth of case study information available with local senior executive programmes, but it is building," says Larsen a former fellow at Insead's advanced executive programme. "These programmes typically place a huge emphasis on the importance of culture.

"Time and again when I thought I knew what I was trying to achieve, programmes like Insead made me realise that wasn't always the case."

Larsen is convinced there's an enormous benefit in getting Kiwi executives to look back on New Zealand from the other side of the world. While surrounding yourself with people from outside your regular box is great, he says it's equally important for people back at home base to know they can survive without you.

What the cultural mix also offers, adds Beveridge, is an opportunity to benchmark yourself against global peers at a similar stage in their careers.

"The 57 people from 21 different nationalities on the Colombia programme with me meant the business examples were considerably broader than had I been rubbing shoulders alongside a bunch of Kiwis and Aussies," says Beveridge.

Because these programmes are designed to be shared experiences, he expects relationships with fellow attendees to last a lifetime.

Beyond the informal email networks, the alumni organisations of these schools help to keep former attendees in regular contact. For example, the advanced management programme Smith attended at Harvard meets every two years.

And, from a purely business perspective, the regular email contact Beveridge has with fellow attendees has already delivered a commercial payback. For example, while the Boeing executive provided him with new strategic planning tools, another attendee who works for Anglo Coal has helped with some procurement issues.

It's common practice for these senior executive programmes to brief attendees on their re-entry back into their normal working life. But Stoddart says it's equally important that their employer gives them the opportunity to apply this new knowledge.

"While you'll come away from these programmes both exhausted and invigorated, you need to be realistic and know what change your organisation is capable of digesting," says Stoddart. "So it's important to work for an organisation prepared to trust that what you've learned can be implemented back into the business."