Greater integration between theory and practice is the widest and most powerful trend in executive development. Organizations are more concerned than ever that executive education will result in bottom-line improvements and tangible advantages as a result of changes in the way they do business and who they compete against. Executive education must transform the way things are done rather than just inform.
This can be seen in two ways. For starters, many client companies are increasingly directly linking executive education to change initiatives. As a result, business schools are involved in the process of corporate transformation. Global leadership development and organizational change are thought to be closely intertwined. Change can be facilitated by leadership; but, change itself necessitates leadership. The new leader is the one who commits people to action, converts followers into leaders, and can turn leaders into agents of change.
The involvement of executive education providers in change programmes also marks a change in other established relations. Consultants move into areas of change management and leadership to provide the glue around the concepts. Yet, it’s harder for them to add value in particular functional niches.
Action Learning
The expansion of action-learning programmes, which encourage debate and learning from inside a group, is the second indicator of the emphasis on practice rather than theory. Action learning has gained traction as a teaching method. These types of programmes are now plentiful and diverse, and they can be found all around the world.
Action Learning programmes are private forums where current practices are discussed and new ideas are generated. Over the course of 6-9 months, participants work with an experienced facilitator for five daily sessions. Action learning is also used in other programmes, even in MBAs. Active learning keeps clients centered on the learning they receive and it’s a perfect complement to more organized classroom sessions.
Once you’ve begun an action-learning process, it will spontaneously generate a viable program and predict future requests if it’s done correctly. It’s like if you combined training requirements analysis with training skill delivery in one package. The action-learning process performs both at the same time and continues to do so; thus, even if an organization’s needs and development requirements fluctuate as a result of major change, an action-learning process will accommodate those modifications.