Bright Minds Work Together to Design the Future of Learning and Leadership Development
"This was a powerful 3-day event from beginning to end."
The brightest academic and business minds came together from February 25 -27, 2009, to discuss the future of learning and leadership development at the inaugural Global Leadership Congress held by Corporate University Xchange (CorpU) in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the three-day session, industry thought leaders and academicians heard new research on Talent Strategies, Globalization, Business Strategy, Organization Learning and Organization Change from top faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. These academic sessions were partnered with practitioner presentations by leading organizations like Mars, Inc., IBM, and Cigna who are paving new ground in leadership development.
After each pair of presentations, participants moved to breakout sessions facilitated by teams of Global Learning Advisors from GE, Shell Oil, JetBlue, Farmers Insurance, Qualcomm, and others.
Breakout teams tackled tough questions like:
- What changes must we make to help leaders assess and recognize individual and team competence in this rapidly changing global business environment?
- What innovative methods can we develop to expose leaders and key talent to other industries, other cultures, other regions of the world in order to expand their world-views and find solutions in places they don't normally look?
- How can we help leaders sense change? What tools and techniques can we teach them now so that they are prepared when change accelerates?
Participants wrestled with the tough issues that all learning and leadership professionals are facing now to prepare leaders to navigate tough economic conditions and to help their organizations emerge stronger when conditions improve.
University of Pennsylvania and Wharton professors offered the following insights to the future:
Peter Cappelli - Professor and Director, Center for Human Resources, The Wharton School
- How current economic challenges impact the talent supply chain
- How companies will need to rethink current tactics to invest in new people who often walk out the door to competitors
- What business changes are rendering many succession planning activities worthless
Joseph Ryan – Adjunct Professor of Management at the Wharton School.
How executives are thinking along 3 planning horizons:
- Horizon 1 – grow and defend the organization's core business, emphasize cash flow, focus on the current year
- Horizon 2 – develop key initiatives that will propel company growth next year, support analysis on horizon 3 opportunities
- Horizon 3 – consider ideas that represent a roll of the dice for the company, characterized by internal innovation, green field opportunities, and where the company will place big bets on the future
Stephen Kobrin – William H. Wurster Professor of Multinational Management; Editor, Wharton School Publishing, The Wharton School
- How globalization is a cyclical phenomenon in business, a political ideology and a technological and digital revolution
- How the business community needs a global marketplace to recoup today's required investments for breakthrough products and services
- The future world competition for natural resources
- The impending impact of additional deregulation and privatization in emerging markets
Stanton Wortham – Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
How learning must be situated in context to determine the appropriate approach of the following:
- Behaviorist – teaches a set of behaviors that have positive or negative consequences associated with them, (i.e. teach clerk to use cash register and reward with paycheck) - Key idea: "Do what I want and you'll get something you like."
- Cognitive – teaches people genuine reasoning behind what they need to do so that they are not just parroting behaviors; teachers create learning environments
- Sociocultural – acknowledges that people are part of a system that includes other people, tools, other systems and so on, and acknowledging the need to help the entire system improve its performance; perhaps changing communication, changing tools, changing mental frameworks
Charles Dwyer – Academic Director for the Aresty Institute's Leading and Managing People Program in the Wharton School, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Dwyer led an amusing critique of leadership practices that are failing. He offered compelling evidence for why leaders must learn to:
- Be effective listeners – (and if people aren't listening to a leader, the leader might consider that his message is not interesting or is not touching people's values)
- Practice storytelling – he said his wife had been wired by God to tell great stories
- Take responsibility – when something doesn't work, don't blame others because you didn't get them to do what you wanted them to do – look at your own communication style
- Be aware of blind spots and biases
- Understand the best actions people can take are in service of their values
Of course these brief highlights don't do justice to the powerful lessons and takeaways imparted by the faculty. More highlights on faculty and practitioner sessions will be available for CorpU Members and participants on the GLC Website. Members and participants must log in to get to these additional pages.
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