Inspiring the leadership mind-shift
AUTHOR: Cameron Cooper DATE: 06.09.07 ISSUE 1, 2007
Specialist leadership skills are required to deal with the specifics of every business, including counter terrorism and global crime.
Crime and business are not a good mix – usually. However, a collaboration between leading law enforcement agencies and AGSM Executive Programs is playing a part in the fight against international terrorism.
Through an initiative known as LinCT, or Leadership in Counter Terrorism, AGSM Executive Programs has for two years been delivering strategic leadership training through its customised programs to senior members of the Australian Institute of Police Management (AIPM), the Australian Federal Police, the FBI and British and Canadian authorities.
| Participants in AGSM Executive Programs "hear it from an internationally recognised academic who wrote the textbook," says Therese Levi, senior manager of AGSM Executive Programs. |
The four-week program, which builds leadership and negotiation skills for police with counter-terrorism responsibilities, involves completing two modules of the program in Sydney and two modules in the US. Participants have used the course to address real terror threats such as last year’s London case involving attempts to carry liquid explosives on to US-bound commercial jets.
Dr Jim Hann, executive director of the AIPM, says the aim of the LinCT program is to deliver the skills and perspective required to provide leadership to organisations and communities, “to minimise the fear and threat, and to deal with the chaos, confusion and destruction resulting from terrorism and global crime.
“AGSM Executive Programs was approached to deliver key sessions in the LinCT program to bring about a mind-shift in the perception of leadership,” Dr Hann says. “We need leaders who are highly adaptive to address the unpredictability and complexity of global terrorism.”
Custom-made skills
The LinCT program is a prime example of the growing demand within organisations for customised business training and development programs.
Therese Levi, senior manager of AGSM Executive Programs at the Australian School of Business, says low national unemployment and the resultant skills shortage across most workplace sectors has led CEOs to seek to improve and enhance strategic management capabilities across a company “so that they lead and manage the business in almost a unified manner”. Businesses want executives to develop skills focusing on specific challenges such as merger and acquisition management, growth strategies or a change in external environmental factors.
“Custom programs focus on the development of competencies in quite a defined manner and context,” Ms Levi says. The commitment to training also acts as a talent retention strategy.
Ms Levi identifies key trends in the market for executive programs:
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Ms Levi says most customised AGSM programs incorporate a project around a real or hypothetical issue that reflects a critical challenge confronting the business. The program provides participants with the tools and the environment to practice the skills and strategies needed to respond effectively to the critical challenge in their workplace.
Discovery process
AGSM Executive Programs has a well-deserved reputation as one of the leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
Ms Levi says AGSM customised programs are designed to assist companies before, during and after they enter the learning environment through a process known as “discovery, design, delivery and evaluation”.
A steering committee comprising senior AGSM Executive Program staff and company executives participate in the pre-program discovery and design phase to develop appropriate course structures for different companies. A top-down view of organisational strategy is taken involving all the key stakeholder groups.
“We generally form a project committee … to ensure that we understand the client’s business as well as we can,” says Ms Levi.
During the program, the delivery phase focuses on the provision of relevant learning that reflects day-to-day issues and challenges facing the target audience group. We encourage senior executives within a participating company to co-facilitate sessions with faculty lecturers. This strengthens the program’s rigour and helps smooth out the transition from academic learning to workplace application of skills. Ms Levi says the co-facilitation sessions ensure management becomes an “internal advocate” for the executive development program.
“That’s the key to a successful program,” she says. “In some way it’s not what only happens in the program, it is more to do with what happens afterward and how the new skills and learnings are applied in the actual working environment that makes the difference.
“In a customised program a collective group of people come to a program, and need to be supported to do things differently … after they go back into the business. So the return on the investment in the program can be realised.”
The program’s final phase centres on post-program follow-up with a company – an evaluation process that sees organisations receive ongoing assistance and which allows tangible assessment of the program that is linked to individual and organisational objectives.
“It’s a learning journey,” Ms Levi says. “You don’t come in and get a whole bunch of skills, go away and stumble your way through how you are going to apply it.”
Growing client list
AGSM Executive Programs has client partnerships with some of the most respected companies in Australia and the world.
AAMI, a trusted insurer in the national market, takes part in a customised program under the moniker of AAMI University, or AAMIU. The four-week program focuses on the development of senior managers across the business to develop strategic management capabilities.
Endorsing the AAMIU initiative, CEO Michael Kay says: “We have been particularly pleased to have developed a long-term partnership with AGSM Executive Programs for the joint development of the AAMI University. The research focus of the School ensures the AAMIU program will be constantly updated to include latest research and thinking to challenge the participants, whilst the integration of program sessions co-facilitated between AGSM academics and AAMI general managers and executives ensures the learning is presented within a context of application to AAMI’s current business.
“I attended a significant learning program at Harvard and wanted to emulate a similar experience for the AAMI managers – I believe the partnership with AGSM Executive Programs has been able to provide a similar learning experience – whilst also delivering a significant return to the business through the collective application of the learning.”
Express delivery giant DHL is involved in a two-week Asia-Pacific Business Leadership Program (APBLP) that broadens the strategic management capabilities of the company’s senior business leaders and executives so they can manage the business in an ever-changing global environment. The program is made up of two one-week modules, with a critical component being the completion of a team project that tackles a current DHL challenge.
DHL wants to build the technical skills and motivation levels of its senior managers through a program that promotes intellectual, management and behavioural skills.
Some of the content for AGSM Executive Programs is drawn from the AGSM MBA Program, and there is scope in some cases to gain credits towards an MBA or a graduate diploma.
“What we are trying to do is inspire the senior leaders to adopt a learning mindset that prompts them to keep their learning up to date,” Ms Levi says.
As Ms Levi explains: “When you participate in an AGSM Executive Program you hear it from an internationally recognised academic who wrote the textbook – not from someone who is teaching from the book that another academic wrote.”