On that morning of the new school year 2030, Juliette is smiling. She is starting a new year and she is looking forward to meeting up with her friends. This will be different from these endless summer discussions on Virtuchat.
As 2012 unfolds, a look back on lessons learned, and where my work, and my clients's needs and challenges took me this year. Quite a journey...
Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum, opened one of the WEF's meeting last month by saying " Complexity, velocity of global issues means decision makers are always behind". From heads of state to corporate decision makers, everyone is struggling with the same challenge: too much - too fast. There is one profession however who has studied carefully decision making, and systematically trained thousands of decision makers to allow them to make decisions in minutes, often in very uncertain conditions : the airline and airplane industry. Managers and executives could learn from them.
As digital convergence, peer to peer, and global word of mouth is shaking industry from media to telecommunications or even banking, there is little evidence that Executive Management Education is evolving at the same rate. There seems to be a the discontinuity between trends going on in adjacent industries, and the way executive education is taught. As curiosity built, I had numerous discussions with renowned universities and business schools about the future of executive education, in particular around management education. Have those organizations integrated into their strategic thinking the recent developments in technology and society? Are they (we) willing to question why the majority of executive training hours still happen in a classroom? Who are likely to be the new players in this field?