Does a brand like Harvard, Stanford or MIT bring extra value in leadership training? Should you send your emerging corporate leaders there for executive training? Think hard about that: The value gained from such executive management courses is significant, but could accrue more to the executive than the company. Internal training would probably garner your company at least the same benefit, at significantly lower cost.
The Harvard brand itself (or Stanford, or any other top school) has value, as any hiring manager looking at resumes will admit: Seeing a degree from such an institution catches the eye and gives that candidate a precious extra few seconds of consideration.
As a human resource manager deciding how to groom top corporate talent for leadership roles, however, how do you measure the value to the corporation of an off-site executive leadership training product?
Is there extra value in sending your top talent to train at a university-based (or any other) offsite executive academy?
This topic came up because one of our team members here at Bovo-Tighe finished Harvard Business School, and receives a steady stream of mail from that institution inviting him to send his subordinates and peers to leadership training classes at HBS. (Please note: Our comments here are not aimed at Harvard, but at the basic idea of choosing expensive university-based offsite courses.)
The universities’ pitch is straightforward: Give your up-and-comers access to the best minds in the business world. Plug them into a powerful business network. Pick up the best of current leadership practices. The program brochure from HBS summed it up strongly:
Every corporation is on the prowl for better leadership, so that line sounds attractive. But, do these programs truly add value? Are the people going through these programs destined to be top achievers because they attended these classes, or would they achieve to a high standard anyway? Based on my own years of working with corporate leaders, I believe the latter is most likely true: Lots of people have the drive to succeed, and university offsite executive education courses are more likely to confirm them as high-achievers than make them so.
In addition, we have found off-site programs are less sustainable once the executive returns to work, because the mindset he or she learned was not directly connected to their job, and no one around them shared the experience.
Then there is the other key issue with them: The price.
Let’s try to extract what premium the university brand name commands by examining the cost and structure of typical offsite executive education courses and a typical engagement with one of my own leadership coaching clients.
Note the cost differences are understated because most of the campus-based executive courses require flights and lodging outside of the sessions as well. By holding the sessions on or near the organization’s site, in-place training reduces the travel to almost nothing.
In addition, university-based programs take your top performers away from you for weeks, creating temporary but significant productivity problems. In-place training not only keeps the executive on the job, it focuses the training on company-specific challenges, maximizing ROI.
Buying a program under a university brand will cost you an additional $36,000 to $62,000, be more disruptive to operations and have a less sustainable impact.
Do what is best for your organization
University Executive Education courses have great value. They are energizing and the connections made can be very useful for the executive, but the cost difference suggests that you should always consider the in-place solution first. It is so much more targeted and inexpensive, and your executives will be back to work implementing the ideas quickly.
The bottom line: In-place, on-the-job training costs less, and can generate more focused, useful results.
I see great value in these executive programs for the individuals that complete them. They tap into a strong network of like-minded professionals who can serve as advisors, and mentors. They gain insights and tools that could make them better managers and leaders.
Corporations, on the other hand, can replicate the beneficial impact of such training using dedicated world-class partners to develop leadership skill sets on-the-job, for less money, with less operational disruption. In addition, effective internal training programming will do a better job of keeping top talent “at home.”
David Tighe has been helping companies train leaders for twenty-three years as a principal for Bovo-Tighe, LLC. Bovo-Tighe helps organizations solve leadership, productivity, and hiring challenges using its MINDCHANGE™ and Organizational Transformation processes, which have been market- tested in hundreds of real-world business situations. Contact Dave at dave@bovo-tighe.com.
