Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/63428
ous "regrettable losses" of high potential leaders and wanted to reverse the trend. A new in-house leadership development process was a win-win situation for both individual and corporation. In corporate training programs, achieving a higher delivered to more than 500 managers in the compa- ny. In the program, employees learned the leader- ship skills they needed to advance their careers, but related those skills to their own corporate environment. Their skills and knowledge base improved, but their talent stayed put. It was employee retention rate is as important to the corporation as offering their employees educational opportunities. To create training programs that work for corporations, not just for individuals, we must create a common framework and lan- guage for accelerating the transition of employees into new senior management positions. Within a customized framework, a corporation has the opportunity to educate general managers beyond what is expected of them in areas such as finance, innovation, and business ethics. More important, a corporation also can edu- cate them on what is important to its environment, mission, and success. 34 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 executive education pro- grams. It's no surprise that com- panies value training that gives their employees the skills to rise through the ranks within their own organiza- tions, rather than encourages them to test the job market. Case in point: In the late 1990s, I worked with a Fortune 100 com- pany that wanted to design a leader- ship transition process for its vice pres- ident-level executives. Top management was very concerned, as were many successful "old economy" companies, about losing "the war for talent." The company had suffered numer- with another company. Therein lies a dilemma for many open enrollment is so successful that he or she is able to move to a higher-level position— apparent, more corporations are establishing them to help train and keep their leaders. Some of the key trends emerg- ing in leadership development for corporations underscore significant challenges for executive education. As the advantages of in-house training become more Attending to the Trends Four notable trends already are changing the face of corpo- rate training in a wide range of leading companies. Business schools must continuously monitor these and other emerg- ing issues and revamp their executive education programs to ensure relevant training to corporations. 1. Programmatic approaches are being replaced by integrated pro - cesses. Lead ing companies are increasingly moving away from set-piece programs toward integrated development processes. Such a process often consists of relatively short "niblets" of content: a one-week course for mid-level managers, two- to three-day courses for senior managers, or one-day seminars for executives. This content is delivered in group settings, interspersed with critical developmental training, coaching support, and active, hands-on learning assignments. The challenge to business school executive programs is obvious. Leaders and decision makers must recognize that their programmatic views of the business world don't always match up with the more free-flowing framework of current learning experiences. Without new approaches, leading companies may be more likely to contract with workplace learning organizations such as Executive Development Association and the Forum Group than with business schools. 2. Transformational experiences are being replaced by JIT perform- ance support. A related trend is the move away from longer, "transformational" developmental programs to providing just-in-time support for key "passages" in the careers of managers. This trend has generated substantial momentum from the work of Ram Charan and his colleagues in their book, The Leadership Pipeline. More and more companies are explicitly focusing development efforts on the transi- tions from technical contributor to first-time manager, from manager to manager of managers, from functional leader to general manager, and from general manager to enterprise manager. Unfortunately, few existing executive programs are explic- itly tailored to provide JIT performance support for key man- agerial passages such as these. The challenge for business schools is to tailor programs so that they acknowledge these transition points and provide exactly the knowledge base these managers need, when they need it most.