Over 11 months, participants meet for long weekends (Thursday through Sunday) once a month, plus 2 1/2 intensive, residential weeks, to cover the 9 Executive MBA modules listed below. In addition to class meetings, participants can expect to spend 15-20 hours per week, on papers and assignments.

CURRICULUM

A UNIQUE PROGRAM DESIGN

Using an innovative approach, the program focuses on issues key to the participants and their organizations.

The 9 program modules are structured around Managerial Mindsets – drawing on the research and international leadership programs of Henry Mintzberg, McGill University’s bestselling author and renowned management thinker.

Managing is Integrating.
Leading is having an impact toward a sustainable future.

REFLECTIVE MINDSET

Managing Self

  • What type of leader am I?
  • What type of leader do I want to be?
  • Do I have what it takes to succeed?

7-DAY RESIDENTIAL MODULE

The program begins with the Reflective Mindset.
This module – in residence – allows participants to escape the day-to-day demands of their professional lives, giving them a chance to reflect on their own attitudes, mindsets and reactions in different managerial contexts.

The Reflective Mindset focuses on managing self.

Participants open themselves up to new ways of seeing and doing. They learn to avoid repeating patterns and mistakes. The first module introduces participants to a new, innovative approach to learning.

Participants learn how to be thoughtful, to step back from always doing, to see familiar experiences from a new perspective. This, in turn, fosters innovation and change, not repeating similar patterns and mistakes.

THEMES:

  • Nature of managerial work
  • Leadership
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Management styles
  • Ethics
  • Accountability (individual, organizational, social)

DECISION-MAKING TOOLS

  • How does the competitive environment affect business decisions?
  • What tools and information are useful for which decisions?
  • What can I learn from critically assessing financial and management results?

Managerial tools and practices are considered from a strategic viewpoint, using an interactive problem solving approach. The principal tools and current thinking in micro and macroeconomics, financial management, accounting, and operational management are investigated through the lenses of diagnosis, decision making and control.

This module lays the groundwork for the two modules on business challenges. Here, managerial tools and practices are considered from a strategic viewpoint, using an interactive problem-solving approach.

Themes include:

  • The firm’s competitive environment
  • The firm’s macro-economic environment
  • Accounting and financial tools
  • Managerial accounting and control tools
  • Financial management
  • Governance

VALUE CREATION MINDSET

  • What is my value creation objective and what business model do I need to deliver it?
  • What levers and industry factors can I use to create value, while avoiding competitive disruption?
  • How can I align our resources and measure my success at creating value?

The value creation process – for customers, employees, shareholders and even society as a whole – is based on linking the firm’s resources and its strategic positioning. This value creation model can be shaken, though, by turbulence arising from new competitive dynamics, globalization, technological innovation and other factors. Skillful managers will be able to take advantage of these events to strengthen, renew and transform their value creation model and its corresponding business models to meet the challenges facing the organization.

Technologies develop, industries converge, new markets open – businesses need to look beyond traditional competitive advantages and develop new sources of value.

THEMES:

  • Responding to value-creation challenges
  • Making the most of a turbulent environment
  • Benefiting from the emergence of new business models
  • Mobilizing the firm’s resources
  • Reinventing the business model

ANALYTIC MINDSET

  • How does strategy happen in organizations?
  • How do structure and design impact on how organizations work?
  • How do we make strategic decisions and implement strategic initiatives?

The perspective underlying the Analytic Mindset extends far beyond traditional analytical methods, which often oversimplify issues to the point that they cannot adequately capture reality. The module will provide further understanding of how organizations work (and don’t work!) with a particular emphasis on the role of analysis in managing organizations of all forms and sectors. We will draw from what is considered a central tenet of strategic management: the relationship linking structure, strategy and environment.  This reflects three key tasks of the general manager, or CEO, of an organization: establishing the strategy of the firm, scanning and monitoring the environment and creating an organizational context supporting the execution of the strategy.

The module examines the strengths and limitations of analysis in organizations.

THEMES:

  • New perspectives on analytical tools
  • Going beyond quantitative data
  • New approaches to decision-making
  • How to avoid paralysis by analysis
  • How to tackle complex issues
  • Governance structures

COLLABORATIVE MINDSET

  • How can I identify opportunities for effective collaboration?
  • What does it take to develop and maintain meaningful collaboration?
  • How can a broken collaboration be repaired?

The Collaborative Mindset focuses on managing relationships at the intra-firm, inter-firm and societal levels. The ability to foster collaboration and teamwork is not a matter of top-down management, but comes from within. Managing others is not so much about directing individuals, but rather about managing the relationships among them. As teams are increasingly based in different countries or are even virtual, these relationships become more complex, and their management more challenging.

THEMES

  • Strategic alliances
  • Knowledge management and organizational networks
  • Managing and motivating teams
  • Conflict management
  • Virtual teams and organizations
  • Collaboration with external stakeholders

SUSTAINABILITY MINDSET

  • Why is sustainability important?
  • How can sustainability enhance competitive advantage?
  • What concrete steps can you take as a manager to improve – in strategic ways – your organization’s social and environmental performance?

Participants will develop a solid understanding of the concept of sustainable development and the challenge it poses as a societal imperative and organizational goal, become more knowledgeable about key sustainability issues relevant to their organizations, and learn how to engage with the sustainability challenge as an opportunity for enhancing competitive advantage.

THEMES:

  • Equity, diversity and inclusiom
  • The state of the planet and its peoples and why it matters to managers
  • Environmental and social investments that yield competitive advantage
  • Enhancing shared value creation
  • Avoiding value destruction
  • Strategic corporate social responsibility
  • Social innovation & entrepreneurship
  • Measuring social and environmental performance

THE FUTURE-READY MINDSET

  • What levers can I use to optimize a company’s processes?
  • How can I identify disruptive innovations & mega-trends in tech, socio and geo-political fields and understand their implications for my organization?
  • How can I trigger and support effective transformation?

The Future-ready Organization module presents an overview of the main technologies and geo-politico-sociological trends that are affecting and changing organizations today and in the future. In particular, the class looks at the digital transformation of organizations, they reflect on how to think about the future, and they look at trends in demographics, geopolitics, migration and other issues, and tie all of this together with an investigation into how organizations and their leaders will need to adjust.

THEMES:

  • Digitalization
  • AI
  • Industry 4.0
  • Mega-trend
  • Geopolitical and economic impacts
  • Leadership agility

WORLDLY MINDSET

MANAGING CONTEXT

10 day residential module

  • How can I learn about context?
  • How can I manage in environments that are different from competitive, cultural and institutional points of view?
  • Why, where and how to internationalize?

The Worldly Mindset is about being able to shift to a different context and to see the world from other perspectives. Effective, “worldly” managers develop the cultural and social insights essential to operating in diverse regions, serving varied customer segments and partnering with other organizations. This adaptability is essential to managing in contexts that differ significantly from one’s own. This module takes place abroad, in cooperation with local faculty and businesspeople.

Managers need to develop the cultural and social insights essential to operating in diverse regions, serving varied customer segments, partnering with other organizations.

THEMES:

  • Looking outward, to see inward
  • Values, habits, and cultures
  • Managing context
  • Organizational and social culture
  • Openness on the world
  • Globalization of the economy
  • Economic & financial systems

CATALYTIC MINDSET

MANAGING CHANGE

  • How can I foster and manage creativity and innovation?
  • How can I manage and successfully implement strategic change?
  • How can I enhance people’s and organization’s ability to change?

This module’s objective is to improve the capacity of participants to manage creativity, innovation and change at all levels of the organization.  It investigates the challenges associated with managing change and with creating an environment which supports and encourages creativity and innovation. On one hand, innovation, a major source of change, has become a more strategic lever. It is at the core of our approaches to dealing with social, competitive, climatic and technological challenges. On the other hand, managing change is fundamental. Someone skilled in managing change will be better able to implement strategy and lead the organization to meeting its goals. In this module, participants will present the results of the change projects they have been working on throughout the program.

Participants will develop a richer understanding of what is change, what is not change, what is continuity and what determines effective action.

TOPICS INCLUDE:

  • Market-oriented innovation and diffusion of innovation
  • Sustainable creativity
  • Managing the Innovation Value Chain
  • Change and continuity management
  • Implementing successful organizational change
  • Dealing with resistance

Program Overview