In This Issue
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| Professor O'Neill shared his expertise on transformation and change with Pentagon leaders as well as UNC students. |
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1,000th Alumnus Graduates from ExxonMobil Enterprise Leadership Program
Twenty-nine future leaders from ExxonMobil completed the Enterprise Leadership Program led by UNC Kenan-Flagler at a special ceremony Nov. 18, marking the program's fifth year and 1,000th alumnus.
Open enrollment executive education programs have existed since the 1950s. UNC Kenan-Flagler helped pioneer the concept of customized programs for enterprising companies that are eager to increase their competitive advantage by grooming the next generation of leaders.
Dan McGurrin, program director for Executive Education at UNC Kenan-Flagler, explains that programs at UNC effectively address needs from the corporate world by involving faculty and others who have the specific expertise needed by the companies in question.
In the late '90s, the corporation now called ExxonMobil asked several highly regarded, nationally known business schools for proposals for a customized executive education program. Key among ExxonMobil's goals was the alignment of the thinking of future leaders with its fundamental business principles, and transferring leadership and management best practices across the company. UNC Kenan-Flagler was chosen to deliver what would become known as the Enterprise Leadership Program (ELP) for the Americas (the United States, Canada and Latin America), one of five such programs globally.
UNC offered the first program in December 1999 at the time of the merger announcement between Exxon and Mobil. Then, as now, attendance is by nomination only. A senior leader in one of the company's units identifies and recommends an employee for participation in ELP, and then that nomination must be approved by a unit's president or director. There are some 30 participants per program, and currently UNC Kenan-Flagler is delivering 10 programs annually.
"The programs," says McGurrin, "are designed to accelerate leadership development and offer action-learning opportunities that address on-the-job challenges participants are facing." Networking is another benefit of the program. Members of the energy and petrochemical giant's diverse employee population, separated by geography, culture and job focus, get to know each other in ways that wouldn't have happened without working and learning together in the UNC program.
ExxonMobil's evaluations of the program have consistently been high - in the 4.7 to 4.9 range on a 5-point scale. Jim Dean, one of the initial group of faculty members working with the enterprise leadership effort, is now associate dean for executive education. He believes such high ratings reflect not only an appreciation for the quality of the program and UNC's willingness to adapt to changing needs, but "our ability to speak the language."
"We know what ExxonMobil's key issues are, and so we're not just making generic points about leadership when we work with their leaders," Dean said.
Stefan Boettcher, a geologist working for ExxonMobil in Texas, concurs. He was part of the five-year anniversary group, and he was "thrilled to be tapped for such a select program." Graduate school was "completely technical," he says. "The focus was on the science. Here, the team and the company are the focus. I've learned concepts, tools and techniques for motivating people to achieve success, and how to better gauge myself and my goals."
That kind of response inspires Steve Jones, dean of UNC Kenan-Flagler, who at the "5 years and 1,000 leaders" celebration recognized that "when you have a legacy, you have the responsibility to keep it going and to make it even better," and he thanked those assembled for "helping to make us a better School."
For more information on UNC Kenan-Flagler's custom programs for organizations, visit http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/execdev/custom-experiences.aspx.
Back to Class: Surviving Corporate Transformation and Change is Focus of O'Neill's Course
In this third installment of our series, we take a page from some of the innovative courses and hot topics UNC Kenan-Flagler faculty are teaching.
When Hugh O'Neill taught "Corporate Transformation and Change" to students 10 years ago, one student told him she didn't want to take the course because she didn't want to learn how to fire people. O'Neill, a strategic management professor, now offers the course to managers in the Executive MBA Program who understand that corporate change is more complex than deciding whom to let go. These students know corporate change from experience - through restructuring an organization or restructuring their own careers.
Transformation happens at an organizational level and an individual level, O'Neill told the Joint Chiefs of Staff when it needed to hone the all-volunteer Army into a lean machine. His keynote address for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Distinguished Lecture Series was a point of discussion at a Pentagon Town Hall meeting covered by C-SPAN.
"A leader isolated in Washington can change all of the structures and systems," O'Neill said, "but he may not be capable of changing the way people think."
"When the economy is turbulent, transformation is more frequent," said O'Neill, who also is associate dean of the Executive MBA Program. "With the good and bad economy of the past 14 years, turbulence has been pretty high."
O'Neill studied organizations in decline for his doctoral dissertation topic more than 25 years ago, even as his peers examined the growth phenomenon and the stock market spiraled to dizzying heights. But as the century turned, so did the economy, and many corporations were caught unaware.
"I think if we'd recognized earlier that change other than growth happens, we might have become more effective at managing these situations," O'Neill said. "The past is good preparation for the future only if the future repeats the past."
"Change masters" are what he calls those who are capable of acting without having all the information, recognizing early the consequences of their actions, and responding quickly if their actions turn out to be faulty.
"That's an academic way of saying that they learn to fail fast," O'Neill said.
Change masters turn a downward trajectory upward very quickly, an adaptive skill in a turbulent economy. Some people have a natural proclivity to become involved in change; others have it thrust on them unexpectedly.
All people facing change develop an explanation for the change, O'Neill said. If someone develops the wrong explanation - for example, if something bad happens to someone who is a Democrat, and he blames the Republicans - he won't respond to change effectively.
Technology and globalization have forced businesses to change or fail. Sometimes the organizational change means there is no place for the skills some people have been contributing for decades. When that happens, the individual must change, something that is tougher for those farther along in their careers.
"What we'd like is for transformations to be fair," he said. "When an environment is shifting, sometimes you're letting people go who are performing very well. The reason they're being let go has nothing to do with anything under their control. It's very difficult to shift into that mindset."
Contact O'Neill at (919) 962-3164, .
O'Neill's takeaways:
- The average length of corporate life spans is shortening (and as a corollary, education, skills and career positions have a shorter shelf life).
- The worst time to try to learn how to transform an organization is when it actually needs to transform.
Recommended reading:
"Why Smart Executives Fail" by Sydney Finkelstein (Penguin Books, N.Y., 2003.)
"Voices of Survivors: Words That Downsizing CEOs Should Hear" by Hugh O'Neill and Jeff Lenn, Academy of Management Executive, 1995, 23-34.
Master of Accounting Alum Manages $30 Million University Medical Budget
Crunching numbers has always come easily to Kim Branch (MAC '99), key finance officer for the largest department of East Carolina University's (ECU) Brody School of Medicine.
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| Kim Branch |
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As finance officer for the Department of Internal Medicine, Branch develops, monitors and evaluates a budget of more than $30 million.
The daughter of a retired math teacher, Branch says she was always drawn to the subject. After graduating from UNC in 1998 with a degree in mathematical sciences and a concentration in actuarial science, she decided to apply to UNC Kenan-Flagler's MAC Program.
"Through my course of study in actuarial science, I quickly determined I didn't want to be an actuary," Branch said. "I wanted to broaden my knowledge in accounting, and I knew that the MAC Program would get me there.
"The Program not only grounded me with a solid accounting foundation but also sparked the drive necessary to succeed."
Accounting professor C.J. Skender's cost and managerial accounting course was a favorite, she said.
"He was fabulous. He definitely added some serious excitement to the game of accounting," Branch said. "He made it very real for students."
After graduation, Branch went the public accounting route, becoming an auditor in Ernst & Young's Raleigh office. She decided she wanted to learn as much as she could as fast as she could.
"For me, the quickest avenue to do that was in public accounting. At Ernst & Young, I was responsible for an array of industries, from insurance and manufacturing companies to startups," she said. "In public accounting, you have the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of different things."
While at Ernst & Young, Branch met the man who would become her husband, and the two relocated to Greenville, N.C.
The flexibility of the MAC degree allowed her to reorient her accounting perspective and focus on a specific industry - health care. At ECU, Branch has had the opportunity to concentrate on health care, where she feels she has found a perfect fit. She says she'd like to stay with ECU, and to move eventually to a financial position of greater responsibility at the university level.
"The MAC degree continues to broaden my career perspectives and opportunities," she said. "There's a tremendous amount of growth potential in the health care field."
A love of teaching runs in her blood, too. When she's not working at ECU, Branch teaches a developmental math class at Pitt Community College.
"I love it. I got into teaching because it gives me a sense of community outreach. It's very fulfilling," she said.
Putting on her teacher's hat, what advice and counsel would she offer to current MAC students?
"I think everybody graduating from the MAC Program should try public accounting. It will teach you a lot of things before you choose to go into a specific industry. If I had not started with public accounting, I would not be at the knowledge level at which I am now."
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