2003-04 ANNUAL REPORT

CREATING AND DISSEMINATING LEADING-EDGE KNOWLEDGE.

EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT

BEYOND LEARNING IN “LABS”: USING CORPORATIONS
AS THE ULTIMATE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Thanks to the hands-on learning labs that the Broad School has created over the last few years, undergrads, MBAs and graduate students have opportunities to experience team dynamics and leadership, create models of complex supply chains and make financial decisions using professional data feeds. But how can Executive Development Programs move learning to the next level, helping students bring new classroom concepts to the “real” real world?

Participants in executive development programs are probably the toughest customers any faculty member will ever teach to... and yet the easiest. “On the one hand, you had better know your subject very well when you teach to a roomful of experienced managers,” says Steven A. Melnyk, professor in the Broad School’s Marketing and Supply Chain Management Department. “They want real answers that will impact their businesses immediately.”

On the other hand, says Melnyk, “Executive development program participants are extremely motivated to learn. They know what they don’t know—especially those managers who are participating in one of our customized programs. Their companies, and sometimes their own bosses, have already worked with us to define what outcomes they want. That buy-in from the top makes for an attentive, intensely engaged class.”

Results-driven assignments

The Broad School’s relationship with Masco Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers and installers of brand name home improvement and building products, offers insight into how a $10 billion company can create a continuously learning workforce through executive development programs. Over the last four years, Masco has sent 120 top- through mid-level professionals through six one-week modules of a tailor-made Broad School leadership and operations management course, culminating in the participants’ successful implementation of a “real” company project, known as a Leadership Project.

The Leadership Project is carefully integrated into the year-long learning process. Masco participants first become familiar with a method for identifying problems and opportunities, then they complete four assignments (mini projects) that lead up to the Leadership Project. Each participant is paired with a Broad School faculty advisor and a Masco Subject Matter Expert (SME) to ask critical questions and support the participant in the educational journey. Each project is required to justify its economic and strategic worth by generating a minimum of $25,000 in savings.

Gary Yezbick, director of Operational Services for Masco, explains that the goal is for the projects to not only generate verifiable savings, but to have a strategic impact on the business. “We want to encourage strategic thinking and true leadership,” he says, “not just problem solving.” The projects have included such widely ranging activities as manufacturing process redesign, quality improvement, waste reduction and improved decision making processes.

Broad School director of Executive Development Programs Dave Frayer notes that one of the biggest challenges facing the participants is to think about the impact of the Leadership Project on the various constituencies within the business. “How does this impact the business? What will senior management need to know? How about the affected employees, suppliers, customers? We use a 360-degree leadership model to help drive ‘enrollment’ of key people in the change process,” he says. “Getting the buy-in from everyone involved: That’s what leadership is about, and it can’t be learned in a classroom.”

Research drives learning

How has this three-year exercise in executive development affected Masco? The Broad School’s Melnyk, along with Associate Professor Morgan Swink and doctoral candidate and Masco Doctoral Scholar John Hanson, are using longitudinal data collected from Masco’s Leadership Projects to study what factors make them successful.

“We’re looking at various measures of success, such as goal achievement and personal growth,” says Melnyk, “as well as the factors that contribute to the success, including project clarity and perceived project importance. While our findings will help us develop a better program for Masco, they should also generate new information about how Masco can get the most benefit from the Masco Leadership Program in Operations Management (MLP-OM)—and how other corporations should approach programs like this.” Swink also believes the research can be taken back to Broad School students in other degree programs. “As a result of our work with Masco, we hope to be able to document the factors that influence the success or failure of operational change in an organization,” he says. “This is powerful knowledge to share, especially with the younger middle managers in my Weekend MBA classes, for example. We often tell them that the Weekend MBA program gives them a ‘Monday morning advantage.’ Our research with this project is just one of the ways that we can deliver that value.”

In essence, the Broad School and Masco have turned the corporation into a very sophisticated learning lab: a place where executive “students” try out new ideas and where academic researchers have the opportunity to study them doing it.

Faculty Profile What the ‘real’ lab teaches managers—and researchers
Morgan L. Swink Associate Professor Marketing and Supply Chain Management PhD: Indiana University Email: swink@bus.msu.edu Research: Innovation in the supply chain; operations strategy; supply chain systems Faculty Profile	Steven A. Melnyk Professor Marketing and Supply Chain Management PhD: University of Western Ontario Email: melnyk@bus.msu.edu Research: Environmentally responsible manufacturing, process management, performance measurement and metrics, supply chain management, and time-based competition