Delivering immediate organizational performance and individual behavior change is the most important element of the value proposition for executive education providers; unlocking that impact requires new ways of thinking, and new ways of working.

In the highly competitive executive education industry, Executive development clients continue to become more and more discerning in their selection of service providers. Institutional brand, world-class faculty and accolades used to be among the most important “purchase” criteria. Today, the ability to create and deliver tailored, unique learning experiences, and the ability to show measurable organizational and behavioral impact through executive development has become the critical differentiator. This presentation will showcase two recent experiences where the client, key faculty and executive education design teams collaborated to create unique content within customized learning journeys that delivered significant organizational value.

1. Will review a framework of how to measure organizational and individual impact of innovative learning practices
2. Will explore the mindset changes and collaboration model that delivered the high impact interventions described
3. Will understand the level of co-creation and design that went into making these interventions so impactful
4. Get a critical analysis (positive and negative) review of where interventions could have been better executed to have more impact
5. Will be introduced to the enabling technology and support needed to deliver the interventions.

Learn to streamline both your front and back-end customer experience.

This presentation will explain the value behind an integrated system while simultaneously providing a road map on how to actually implement it, specifically utilizing Salesforce and Pardot. It is not an easy process and each organization is different and therefore this will be an interactive session that allows for group work to explore questions you should be asking in your organization as you get ready to build out an integrated system of CRM, Payment Solution and Marketing Automation. The presentation will also showcase the significant value of having an integrated system as it relates to real-time reporting and the ability to optimize marketing spend and campaigns faster.

Attendees will gain:
- A deeper understanding of the value that an integrated system can have to an organization
- Why customers appreciate an integrated system and the value it provides to your customers
- A road map for how to either build or integrate CRM, Marketing and Payment systems at various stages

Moving from a central university unit to the College of Business—what we learned about leadership and resilience and how you can leverage it.

In July 2019, our small professional development/executive education unit moved from an independent central university unit to the College of Business. We brought the know-how and great clients and instructors. The college provided enhanced credibility and amazing opportunities. We’ll share our story from multiple perspectives and invite you to share yours as we distill our learning about leadership, resilience, strategic change, stakeholder management, and a big dose of having fun along the way. The story has a happy ending (or beginning!): custom learning engagements are up, instructor quality is up, and blending the old with the new is yielding great new products and services.

Participants in this session can expect to gain:
• A road map for managing organizational transitions
• Tools for planning and managing change
• A formula for fun and focus, even during uncertain times

Explore the use of arts based activities in leadership education

The use of the arts in management education is a growing practice. This session will review the literature and outline a case for the benefits of including the arts in leadership education. We will explore ways in which arts-driven activities can add a positive experiential dimension to executive programs, and discuss potential challenges and pitfalls. In addition, we will share best practices based on experiences working with different executive audiences. The presenters will also share their own experience in designing and delivering a custom arts-based exercise.

• Learn evidence based benefits of arts-inclusive executive education
• Become familiar with ways to include arts activities in session design
• Avoid potential pitfalls
• Integrate best practices

The education of frontline managers not only can provide a great “volume” business but serve as leverage into leadership training all the way into the c-suite. This is the story of a successful frontline management development franchise.

The phrase “executive education” often suggests a portfolio flag needs to be planted at the VP level or director level of our organizational customers. That’s where executives live. But there is a volume business to be had at the base of the leadership pyramid where frontline managers typically outnumber those VPs and directors 2 to 1 [or more]. And for a whole host of reasons, if the education of frontline managers goes well, a pathway is opened to training all levels of leadership. This session will tell the story of how good frontline management training became a $1M franchise.

1. A glimpse into frontline management course content that won favor in the marketplace.
2. Identifying and marketing to the target purchasers of management training.
3. How to shape and reshape the offering to meet various audience needs.
4. Using simple management development as an upselling device to wider leadership development opportunities.

Open discussion of my research on past models used in developing leaders, and look on how these are both supporting and limiting today's development models.

I'm writing a book on how leaders are being developed today, and what we might expect in the future. During the session I'd like to explore with participants how our past approaches might be helping and hurting how we develop leaders in the future. The basis for this is my own experience over 25 years and research from other writers and interviews with experts.

Insights and stories (hopefully from the audience as well) on effective leader development processes, how these might be changing in today's organizations, and what we can do to support future models.

A demonstration of how a university and a major health system created an award-winning leadership program that blended the fun of "game-ified" online learning with the power of classroom action learning.

The WellStar Health System asked the Executive Education Division of the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University to help them accelerate and improve the organization’s leadership development process. Working together, they created an award-winning leadership program that blends the flexibility and fun of "game-ified" online learning with the power of classroom action learning. The WellStar Leadership Academy, now in its fourth year and with over 200 graduates, has dramatically improved the corporate culture in a way that has driven positive change at all levels of the organization. This session offers valuable tips and tools for designing and delivering game-changing custom programs.

Session attendees will walk away with:

A deeper understanding of how to build a game-changing hybrid program.
An overview of the Learn—Practice—Apply professional development process.
Program design ideas that can help us win and retain customer loyalty.
Proven methods for predicting and measuring program effectiveness.
Demonstration of how to integrate the flexibility and fun of “game-ified” online learning with the power of classroom action learning.

During this pre-conference session, discover how financial data can help you make better business decisions. You will receive numerous spreadsheets that will enable you to determine your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

During this interactive session we will explore how to build and manage your budget as well as how to build more accurate forecasting models to better analyze financial data for your Center, predict revenues, and predict costs. You will learn to calculate your income by using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). We will also review how your product and pricing model can increase your revenue and profits for your Center. Finally, we focus on how to manage up to your boss and the politics of your financial numbers and determine what you want your boss to do as a result, such as add additional resources to your unit.

• Review product mix and pricing
• Finance 101 – Basic concepts
• Explore pricing
• Utilize useful decision making tools
• Develop your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Explore the connection of how financial data relates to your business goals
• Develop and managing your budget
• The value of how to explain your business beyond the numbers
• How to manage up (your boss) and the politics of the numbers
• Determine what you want your boss to do as a result
• Develop basic financial numbers to support your story

Moving beyond a quick activity to an ah ha moment.

Studies show the power of experiential learning among adult learners. Experiential learning is the ability to take a topic, tie a hands-on learning experience to it and watch the learning become sticky and life changing. The purpose of experiential learning is not simply a game, activity, or simulation. It put’s the learner in a position to truly experience change as they seek application to their daily lives. Developing leaders through experiential learning is not the future of our programs it’s necessary to see leaders truly adapt and change in our current fast paced culture.

Attendees will:
• Learn the history of experiential learning
• Develop a set of tools they can use to access their instructors, facilitators, and professors around experiential learning
• Practice creating an experiential learning activity
• Lead a debrief of an experiential learning activity
• Network with other practitioners

Learning Analytic Tools offer data that can contribute to improving teaching and learning in the area of executive professional development programs. Learn how data analytic tools can help your institution.

This session will provide an overview of the learning analytics taxonomy and how it can be used to access Learner behavior, evaluate social learning, improve learning materials and tools, create Individualized learning, predict learner performance, and visualize learning activities.

The session will define characteristics of academic research, institutional research, and student learning assessment, and learning analytics activities and the role each play in the executive management professional development. Informal and formal learning will be explored and how that is measured with learning analytics. The session will be highly interactive with a series of scenarios of how learning analytics can be used for a preferred outcome in executive professional management.

• Identify questions you may have about learner analytics
• Identify data literacy needs for your programs
• Create a pedagogical framework for evaluating LA tools
• Develop communication techniques to engage with your institutions for needs relevant for learning analytics.
• Describe the ethical/ privacy issue with learning analytics.
• Describe the defining characteristics of learning analytics
• Understand the appropriate use of date for learning analytics
• Understand the role data analytics can play in showing ROI for your executive and professional development programs

(Working Title) Professionals are changing. Employment is changing. As educators, how can we stay agile and meet learners with exactly what they need, when they need it?

Life is hard, and getting harder. Professional development has to fit within the time we have in the margin around our jobs, our families, our shrinking budgets, and the things we do for fun. How do we, as educators, design learning experiences that are fast, efficient and affordable? How do we ensure our objectives are relevant and offer ROI for both the learner, their organization and meet our own revenue targets? It can be done, through designing agile learning systems, technology and responding to the market data.

• Recognize changing professional development market data
• Identify current and future needs of professional development consumers
• Describe technology that can be used to increase achievement of ROI/Learning Objectives for learners and program providers
• Describe strategies for professional programs to remain agile and profitable

This program will streamline the complex process of developing a Corporate and Custom training program and provide a comprehensive view of what it takes to create a sustainable and successful, revenue-generating program.

Institutions of higher education are well positioned to take advantage of the growing corporate training and development market in the U.S. With over $160 billion dollars being spent each year, there is a significant revenue opportunity to drive demand in this space. However, building a sustainable corporate training program within higher education can be difficult as the number of moving parts and stakeholders creates extended challenges.

Join us for an engaging program that program condenses the complexities of a Corporate and Custom Training Program into four concise tenets that you can start working towards immediately.

• Developing Program Model and Goals
• Establishing, Building, and Sustaining Relationships on Your Campus
• Exploring Respective Community Markets and Their Common Challenges
• Establishing, Building, and Sustaining Relationships in the Business Community

During this pre-conference session, discover how financial data can help you make better business decisions. You will receive numerous spreadsheets that will enable you to determine your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Finally, we focus on how to manage up to your boss and the politics of your financial numbers and determine what you want your boss to do as a result, such as add additional resources to your unit.

• Explore pricing
• Utilize useful decision making tools
• Develop your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Explore the connection of how financial data relates to your business goals
• Develop and managing your budget
• The value of how to explain your business beyond the numbers
• How to manage up (your boss) and the politics of the numbers
• Determine what you want your boss to do as a result

Leadership and Mindfulness – What are the benefits & what does it “look” like IN THE WORKPLACE?
- Applying mindfulness meditation to the real world – what does that look like?
- Being able to create and support the structure of meditation in your workplace (building time into the daily office hours)
- Harmony in the workplace and culture of your office is identified through Mindfulness: specifically improved clarify and focus – less “fight or flight” decisions
- Employee satisfaction and overall positive health: increase employee loyalty and overall wellness success
- Improved communication builds into clarity and focus when meditation is an important fiber in the workplace
- Increased productivity – less absenteeism due to illnesses – overall positive health and conscious reduction of stress in the work environment
- Today’s leaders that practice this type of mindful approach are extremely successful individuals, as they are able to read their world; scan their environment; listen attentively an fully; able to listen to themselves regarding their values but not thwarting off or shutting down the situation at hand
- Able to react, make decisions and recognize - resonance that is strong and grounded (e.g. yoga and Tadasana (Mountain)
- Self-awareness becomes a fundamental component of the practice

A practical and experiential approach to Mindfulness Meditation in our everyday lives. Taking the mystery that surrounds meditation and bringing it down to a practical, everyday level while finding the importance of how positivity and clear perception can help shape the type of women leaders we can continue to be. Introduction to what exactly Mindfulness Meditation is vs other types of meditation that are beginning to infiltrate not only the medical world, but the business and academic world. Use of mindfulness and resiliency tools in leadership training for next generation leaders will be explored during our session. Relevant learning regarding meditation techniques − the everyday practice and practicality. What does a practice mean? How to build a practice that is based on one’s own personal foundation and experience. Citing the impressionistic teachings of Sharon Salzburg's, “Real Happiness − The Power of Meditation,” Master teachers, Marie-Lou Kuhne Millerick (Sampriya) and Elizabeth O'Shea Sullivan. Real women teaching the power of meditation and mindful thinking and doing. Two meditation sessions will be introduced and experienced during our session. The 1st being an initial short meditation to experience what we think we know, how to sit, how to breathe, how to let refocus. The 2nd session will focus more on using the learned tools (gifts) from the hour session and incorporating information absorbed and harmoniously integrated into the students practice. Time for discussion and shared experiences/ideas.

Purpose of this session and my hope for us, collectively in this hour:
- Paint a picture of what this concurrent session is all about: Mindfulness Matters – The Practical Side of Meditation…what is all the talk, the hype, the sudden interest…
- Diffusing myths about meditation and mindfulness AND share how practical meditation is and can be utilized on a continual basis (not just crisis, for example)
- Focus on insight, practical experience in this hour, learned tools and take-away’s (how I teach yoga – using it on and off the mat is the practice, not just in the studio or classroom)
- This class is focused on the experiential experience rather than dissecting through a PPT, date or long open-ended discussion
- Question & answer period at the end of the session – (but check in periodically)

This is your opportunity to discuss in detail important benchmarking data within university-based executive, professional development and continuing education, units.

You will gain insights and new perspectives to strategic, financial, operational, and marketing challenges you may be facing regarding the program and services you currently offer.

* Meet the people who maintain and improve the survey methodology over the years
* Obtain benchmarking data specific to continuing education and executive and professional development organizations
* Get open enrollment and custom programming intelligence
* Gain financial intelligence pertaining to budgeting, revenue, costs and funding models
* Gather operational intelligence pertaining to program selection, content providers, registration and management systems
* Gain marketing and sales intelligence along with industry trends
* Provide your feedback to the survey team so they will implement changes in the next iteration
The survey team will share the Benchmarking report and the summary of their findings before the session.

Full title: Bracing or embracing? Future readying your professional development center to survive and thrive in an age of self-education, AI and other digital disruptions

How trends in self-education, uses of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the advance of digital voice assistants are shaping lifelong learning.

In a society in which consumers use their voice more often than a keyboard to conduct a search, and are more frequently seeking to relate their purchase to meaning and impact rather than brand loyalty, is your professional development or coaching center ready? Do you have innovative thinkers in your think tank helping you shape your center’s transformation? What plans do you have in place to remain relevant in this era being influenced by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the availability of free information on the Internet and social media platforms where people can, not only learn, but easily connect with each other?

Digital futurist, voice platform evangelist, and host of Agile Digital Business podcast, Vickie Maris, will challenge you to see the future of professional development and coaching through the lenses of your future participants. Engage in an interesting discussion in this session that will spark ideas for how you can flex your strategy and align the program offerings of your center to meet the pain points being voiced by your customers today.

- Hear about examples of technology in use today that could make your coaching or instructional contracts look very different going forward.

- Glean ideas from each other about ways to prepare professional development offerings and coaching solutions that meet customer needs, and that can co-exist with or tap in to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the voice platform.

- Gain, or further develop, your mindset of innovation to incorporate the voice of your customer in to your plans as you create a productive, impactful and profitable center for the future.

Note: Be prepared to get frustrated, alarmed and inspired.

Providing opportunities for faculty, staff, company executive and professionals to hear national and international speakers who bring new ideas to your state.

What are the benefits of having a speaker series for your school/organization? There are many aspects that are beneficial: school recognition, sponsor opportunities, networking prospects, strengthening business ties, and many more. Bringing national and international speakers to our state, helps gain knowledge that executives and business professionals can use in making daily business decisions as well as gaining a better understanding of world affairs. We can show you how we have achieved success in the past 30+ years with our speakers series that will help you be successful too. Our goal at OSU is to enrich professional lives, give Oklahoma a chance to hear from national and international leaders and have the availability to network with other business leaders in our state. We will walk through the steps in how to create a speaker series and how it will be beneficial to your university.

• Where to start with your budget
• How to retrieve top national and international speakers
• Finding your best venue
• What will the event/format look like
• How do you continue a good relationship with sponsors

Discuss successful practices in lead nurturing thru various channels to increase lead to registrations for Open Enrollment programs. The session will cover different scenarios and system configurations. It will focus on strategies and tactics of data gathering, and communication sequence design to increase message relevance and maximize lead conversion rate.

Lead Nurturing is a fundamental part of a modern marketing lifecycle for open enrollment and custom programs alike. It enables to convert more customers faster by learning about their needs and motivation right away and tailor communications with them accordingly. It changes a conversation from “Are you ready to enroll?” or “Attend our information session…” to “What are you looking to achieve with our program? What are some roadblocks?” It shows the way your program can help people be more successful. This approach enables aligning customer-centric values with communication with the potential attendees. Learn how centers implementing advanced lead nurturing techniques are able to grow the lead-to-registration ratio by up to 50% while increasing customer satisfaction.

* Ways to optimize your communication mix
* Establish communication sequence
* Optimize conversion paths
* Design communication flow to nurture leads to create greater recruitment impact

This session focuses on observations, thoughts, and beliefs regarding ethical behavior and corruption and, more specifically, ethics in management education as a remedy for corruption.

Research: The study employed a quantitative survey design to collect data, using self-administered questionnaires from the respondents. The data were then analysed, using descriptive statistics. Reliability statistics were employed to test the reliability of each construct. An interpretivism research philosophy was adopted as the study sought to further elaborate on and investigate a social phenomenon through deconstructing the perceived views of a selected group of individuals. In addition, a qualitative approach was adopted, as this was identified as the best method to investigate and understand the efficacy of ethical behaviour and its impact on corruption, as it would rely on understanding the complex and undocumented opinions of individuals who either were involved in or had been exposed to curriculum content.

Findings: Theorists and research have found that a focus on ethics within education, would probably lead to a decrease in corruption and that ethics and ethical leadership education need to not only form part of management education but also be delivered as an integral thread that runs throughout management programmes.

Purpose: This session will explore the research conducted and findings and share innovative new thinking in how ethics and ethical leadership should be delivered in management programmes in order to develop leaders that are commercially astute yet also morally and ethically sound.

• Understanding of the limitations and core criticisms of business schools and management education in relation to propagating unethical leaders
• Understanding of the role of ethics within management education from various viewpoints and researchers
• Understanding the impact of leadership on ethics and ethical practice within organizations.
• Understanding of curriculum design and development from an ethical perspective and methodologies to enhance ethics through education
• Development of a new focused method to integrate ethical education into management education, not as a module or elective, but as an integral thread that runs throughout the program

Drive growth in your Center and create a positive impact in your business community through strategies to develop inclusive leaders and foster diversity in organizations.

Overwhelming research highlights that diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones and make better business decisions. And while organizations have invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade to increase diversity in their workforces and talent pipelines, we have not seen significant progress towards equal representation, especially in senior leadership roles. At current rates, it would take more than 100 years to reach gender and racial equality in the C-suite. We have to do better.

In this interactive session, we will explore strategies for Executive Education and Continuing Education Centers to develop inclusive leaders and partner with organizations to incorporate diversity into organizational strategy. Not only do these strategies have a positive impact for organizations and individuals, they can also drive Center growth and increased brand awareness.

• Discuss innovative program content focused on developing inclusive leaders and spearheading structural inclusion in organizations
• Explore strategies to engage with your business community to provide thought leadership on DEI and increase diversity of your program participants
• Share best practices on incorporating DEI initiatives as a strategic priority of your institution

Join a busy Exed Ed office using technology to increase efficiency and improve processes.

Using technology to assist in workplace productivity is a worthy and humbling goal. This session will overview several platforms designed to increase office efficiency. We will review a product management and productivity tool, documentation and workflow management software, and the integration of these products with the existing CRM platform. These tools are being introduced and used in real time, so prepare for a candid and honest discussion of an office “makeover” by non-technical practitioners.

• Overview of new technology solutions for an Exec Ed office
• Summary of current solutions in use and reactions in real time
• Insights on lessons learned and road map for future state

Defining humanity’s place in a world increasingly characterized and driven by algorithms.

Exploring the ethical implications of AI in:
Business, Politics, Society, Law, Education, Medicine, Data Privacy, Access Controls, Algorithmic Discrimination.

Josoor Institute’s Professional Diploma Programme in Sports Management – Leaving a Legacy. This presentation explores the administrative challenges and opportunities associated with developing and delivering a custom programs with multiple international partners. Josoor Institute (Doha, Qatar) and its diploma programs will be the focus of the analysis.

Josoor Institute was launched in December 2013 with the purpose of building the capabilities of the sports and events industries in Qatar and the MENA region, through education, training, professional certification, and research.

The Institute was created by the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy. It fulfils the aims of the Qatar National Vision 2030, to develop a more diversified economy through the introduction of new sustainable business sectors and to support the education and training of the Qatari people to enable them to fully develop their talents and skills in the Sports Management and Events Management fields. Above all, the goal is to leave a legacy, beyond the delivery of the 2022 FIFA World Cup™, which will support the economic and social development of Qatar, thus enriching the lives of its people.

The presentation will explore the ideation, history and objectives of Josoor Institute with particular focus on the creation of international academic and administrative partnerships. Specific topics include; international contract/legal issues, joint faculty assignments across borders and systems of higher education, academic policies & procedures in joint ventures, project ownership, international political issues and ethical considerations.

Explore the elements that can make or break your executive education team when you have an physical, organizational, or psychological divide to bridge.

In this Interactive session, we’ll use the WashU@Brookings story as a backdrop to narrate some of the factors that we’ve noticed have a huge impact on whether or not we reach our goals. For each guidepost we’ll pause to reflect and crowdsource best practices, effective tools, and ideas to align teams.

Lessons learned (so far):
1. Start with a solid foundation – we did this by having a retreat (need genuine interaction)
a. Remember the elements of trust: competence, intention, care
2. Workstyles –recognize there are different styles so make a plan to leverage and celebrate the differences –we did this using the Birkman
3. Technology – you need a solid communication mechanism – Use tech to enable communication
4. Be open to change – Take the best of the old and embrace the new
5. Gain Buy-in - From leadership, from team members

The Excite (Ex8) framework is an andragogical model that can be used to craft more impactful executive learning experiences while working in partnership with customers.

While the success of any executive learning intervention rests on the quality of the diagnostic study and alignment to organisational and learner objectives, the learning framework utilised in the programme plays an equally important role in the learning experience.
This is where the Ex8 framework comes in. I conceptualised the Excite framework a few years back using my background as an Instructional Designer and applying the principles of design thinking to the process of customised executive education programme design and delivery.
The framework aims to motivate and elicit an optimum executive learning experience through its eight key components - Explain, Expert, Expose, Exhibit, Exchange, Experiment, Examine, and Execute. Each of the eight “E”s can be hypothesised to improve the learning effectiveness exponentially, which is why the superscript of “8” has been used. I have used this framework for designing bespoke learning interventions and seen it to add significant impact to learner motivation and experience.
The image below depicts this in more details:
- ExPlain linkes between programme concepts and organisation context
- ExPert from within organisation (real time-contextualisation, demonstrate sponsorship)
- ExPose - external exposure (Guest speaker)
- ExHibit potential benefits (past programme participant, leadership journey)
- ExChange experiences and ideas (group work, action learning sets)
- ExPeriment in safe environment (role plays, business simulations, serious games, etc.)
- ExAmine through self reflection
- Execute in-company projects or Third sector support projects
- Explain links between programme concepts and organisation context

Through the course of the session, attendees can expect to gain insights on:
- A simple framework that can be used to elicit better learner engagement
- New ways to engage the partner organisation in the teaching process
- How to design impactful executive education programmes

Learn how The American Women’s College at Bay Path University uses an evidence-based framework for promoting non-traditional paths, continuing learners’ engagement and success that can be expanded to serve non-matriculating professional development adult learners and corporate clients. SOUL is a data-driven approach to make the learners’ experience more personal and supportive.

The American Women’s College developed Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL) as a unified model of related services in direct response to the needs of adult and continuing learners, particularly those who study at a distance. Developed through a First in the World grant from the US Department of Education (one of only 24 US institutions to receive this prestigious grant), the model has been radically successful in retaining and graduating students nearly 20% above national averages when considering other institutions that serve primarily non-traditional, online learners.

This session will be broken into three components to frame the story of SOUL’s genesis, explain its framework and outcomes, and consider the potential methods and benefits of extending such a model into professional development practice for non-matriculating learners. We will start by exploring the characteristics and support needs of non-traditional and life-long learners at your institutions. Next, an overview of the core components of the SOUL model will be provided and related to research findings. Finally, we will consider how a model like SOUL has wider applicability for promoting engagement and success for management, executive, professional development, and continuing education. Part of this discussion will include a review of how integrated technologies and services also can strengthen business-university partnerships through improved reporting on program efficacy.

- Identify evidence-based practices for supporting adult learners, particularly those learning at a distance through online and blended/hybrid models
- Summarize the components and overall goal of the Social Online Universal Learning (SOUL) model
- List the outcomes and gauge the efficacy of the SOUL model
- Consider how a similar model would be applicable in management, executive, professional development, and continuing education contexts

Have you been emotionally triggered and not know why? Well, this session has the answer. Learn how to deal with your emotions in the workplace or otherwise.

Harness the Power of a Positive Attitude
How to Change Your Life by Changing the Way You Think

Your attitude is the single most important factor in determining your success, your relationships, and happiness—nearly everything about your life!

The good news is that you get to choose your own attitude! Regardless of your current circumstances or your past failures, you can choose to have a positive outlook, and that will impact your present and future.

Here are some practical first steps toward moving yourself from the negative column to a positive outlook.

Recognize Negative Thinking
This can be difficult to do because negative thinking can become the “hardwiring” in your brain. Without realizing it, you may filter everything you see and hear through this grid of negativity. To help you recognize that, find someone you trust—and who will tell you the truth—to assess your attitude. You may need to give this person permission to be completely candid with you, because they may fear offending or upsetting you.

Resolve to Take Action
Negative thinking can feel like a warm blanket—safe and familiar. It is somehow comforting to believe that your life isn’t changing because “it can’t” or because “that’s just the way it is.” Those negative thoughts can be all the excuse needed to remain passive.

That’s why making the resolve to change is a necessary first step toward improving your outlook. Do you want to have a positive attitude? Resolve to do whatever it takes to make that change.

Attendees will:

Learn how to identify the information underlying the basic 7 emotions
Learn how to acknowledge and validate emotions
Learn how to move someone from emotional destructiveness to emotional constructiveness (REM)

Expand your organization's ability to innovate and capture new opportunities through the lens of women’s leadership programs in executive education. Share and compare multiple program structures, experiences, and best practices.

The purchasing power of women in the U.S. ranges from $5 trillion to $15 trillion annually. Women are running 40 percent of firms of all sizes. While today's companies are making a concerted effort to grow leaders from within, many are missing a crucial opportunity by not fully utilizing the talents of executive women. Are you serving this market? Whether you’re already offering a program, or want to build a new one, join us to explore women’s leadership programs. This part panel-part dialogue presentation will take a deep dive look into different program structures, experiences, lessons learned, and other effective procedures employed by your CMED peers when developing women’s leadership programming in executive education and/or continuing education centers. Some of your most requested topics we will address in this facilitated discussion include but are not limited to: program creation, marketing, structure, budgeting, format, team roles/responsibilities, involving potential internal/external customers, whether or not to bring in consultants and facilitators, how the new program will align with other programs in the organization, determining what inputs are needed from other managers and other programs, KPIs, credentials earned, technology support, revenue and enrollment.

At the completion of this panel/dialogue session, participants will:
• Be able to identify at least one new program idea for their center or community
• Connect with industry professionals who have experience with women’s leadership programs and be able to reach out after the conference to continue their learning and program building
• Share and compare multiple program structures from several individuals and/or institutions
• Identify how/if a new women’s leadership program will align with their current programming
• Leave with new ideas, confidence and fresh perspectives to reinvigorate their organization
• Walk away feeling empowered and having a sense of a new community of professionals

From facilitators, to content; budgeting, to structure; have some of the most frequently asked questions addressed by CMED Center Leaders with a proven track record of growth and success.

According to John Maxwell, “Everything rises and falls on leadership.” If that is true, then ensuring that we are leading our centers well is vital to our organizations, our Universities, and our careers. However, the complexity, bureaucracy and intricacies related to centers can blur the definition and execution of effective center leadership. David Lawrence and Daniel Rundhaug will lead a panel on areas of center leadership that are vital to you and discuss best-practices for your consideration and implementation.
This can function as a panel discussion with IPEx and 3-4 other leading Centers within CMED. After distributing, collecting and analyzing survey results from an online pre-conference survey, the session will be crafted around the top-10 +/- center issues as it relates to Center leadership and management. From the panel approach, attendees will be able to hear different perspectives of what works at various locations and identify helpful models that might translate to their specific context.

* Discover best practice ways to lead your center strategically and increase your center’s real and perceived value to the University.
* Become exposed to methods to increase consistency in forecasting custom programs and expanding your center’s influence to businesses around the University.
* Identify ways to lead facilitators as opposed to being led by them.

Learn how an experimental MBA course, Learning to Thrive, has gained altitude to include multiple MBA sections, an open enrollment version, custom program delivery and a new multi-media initiative.

Learning to Thrive started as an experiment at the Owen Graduate School because MBA students needed more insight into how to live more complete and balanced lives. Apparently answering the simple question, What do you want to do with your life? resonates not only MBA students but executives, professionals and the broader public. Learn how we have created a development platform from that core idea and customized it to serve multiple audiences and are delivering it in new, innovative ways. In the session, we’ll take you on our journey, share it’s origins, it’s challenges, it’s successes and where we are going next. We’re hoping to fly to new heights!

Attendees to “Learning to Fly with Learning to Thrive” will gain insight into:
- The overall process of new program development
- A new category of executive education programs
- How to leverage a platform to create derivative offerings
- Designing content for use in social media to build awareness and audience

Participants will experience in action the executive escape game we developed at ESMT Berlin to teach virtual collaboration to executives.

The Executive Escape game we developed at ESMT Berlin to teach executives about virtual collaboration through action learning featured in the Financial Times on December 2nd, 2019. We use a tablet-based, time-pressured setup where groups are requested to work together in order to solve a number of tasks. The gamification approach keeps participants engaged. We then debrief the game experience using research results on virtual collaboration and linking back to the participants own experiences on working with teams in a virtual setup.

- fun and engaging experience
- getting to know an out-of-the-box learning tool for the executive classroom
- inspiration for experiential learning approaches

Effective coaching and mentoring will enhance Executive Education Faculty Performance and many Executive Education Centers are in turn being asked to provide developmental coaching to clients.

Coaching and mentoring can motivate and energize others while transforming your center activities. Be more intentional about the coaching and mentoring support provided to those who teach in your executive education programs and to your clients who are looking for just-in-time developmental support for employees. Dr. Laura Lunsford draws on her practical experience as a director of an executive education center and her scholarly expertise to provide examples of how to build a coaching and mentoring culture for faculty that yields results. Qualified coaches are in demand by clients and this session will highlight approaches to adding coaching to your center offerings.

During this session you will gain:
A framework to develop mentoring support that works.
Ideas on how to get started in mentoring and coaching.
Knowledge of coaching approaches to use with clients.

The Future Is Here - How are you preparing yourself, your team and others?

At CCL, we tracked 1000, surveyed 5000, and interviewed 100 amazing leaders across the globe. Learn what we found.

Find out what they need and what they need from us.

Future Trends
Readiness,
engaging others

Learn to gather better quantitative and qualitative data from current and past customers as well as prospective customers that will drive the design of your program.

In order to stay relevant, current, credible and memorable, a program must meet the true needs of the customer for both open enrollment and custom programs. Identify powerful questions and sharpen your interviewing skills to gather critical data and validate your findings so that they will influence what programs to offer in open enrollment and how to design the best custom program. Learn to identify key capabilities that will have the greatest impact on performance and help meet business objectives. See how human-centered design can help the needs assessment process. Designing a program is an iterative process requiring ongoing input and feedback: you won’t get it right the first time but you will get it right over time. Know when to bring faculty into the process and help them shape their curriculum appropriately.

• Add rigor to your assessment of customer needs
• Identify powerful questions to ask your stakeholders
• Improve your interviewing skills and data analysis to gather unbiased information
• Learn to interpret and match customer needs with powerful learning outcomes
• Influence faculty to tailor their content to the assessed need

How to structure an intentional quest that will lead to new opportunities for meaning, passion, growth, and service in a new phase of life.

Center leaders find that their work makes a real difference to executives, managers, and working professionals. But we do not typically attain these positions through well-thought-out career development plans or established career progressions. Life transitions are not career transitions and should not be based on uncertainty or chance. My personal experience transitioning from employment as a center leader in a university to a retiree provides a useful process and tools to guide others in making life transitions and finding new sources of meaning, passion, growth, and service. Grounded in current thinking and best practices, this interactive lecture/discussion is relevant if you are:
• Contemplating or entering retirement
• Looking to help relatives and friends who are considering retirement
• Experiencing other life transitions: becoming an empty-nester, emerging from a period of care for aging parents or relatives, for example
• Coaches, outplacement professionals or HR staff whose clients are experiencing similar life transitions
Please join me and hear the story of my transition journey.

• Learn a process for making life transitions that supports the search for meaning, passion, growth, and service in new phases of life—especially the transition from employee to retiree.
• Learn how to structure the process using a set of questions about what’s important to you.
• Learn how to navigate the three phases of life transitions: endings, neutrality, and new beginnings.
• Learn how to adapt to changes in your perspective on time, your personal administrative responsibilities, and routines with your spouse or significant other.

One university's experience & lessons learned from designing, developing & delivering open-enrollment Professional Development Online Data Science programs.

This could be either a "Deep Dive" or a "Concurrent" Session - depending on the depth of content desired... To be discussed at the Advisory Board meeting in February.

We all know that it is not simple to replicate in-class experience in an online environment. And it is even more challenging when it comes to highly technical content. During this session, we will share our experience with converting a successful in-class professional development program in Data Science into online format: from instructional design to delivery challenges, successes and lessons learned.

We will share with you what it took us to re-design a classroom program into an online format:

- Planning & process
- Human & financial resources
- Instructional design approach
- Assessment design
- Instructor training
- Tools & templates
- Lessons learned and Q & A

You won’t want to miss this fast-paced, idea-packed information sharing session. Come prepared with ideas and suggestions for just about anything you can think of that made a positive impact for your Center or your clients.

New program ideas – marketing tips – participant gifts – streamlined processes – revenue selections – online delivery tools – creative partnering opportunities.
No idea is a bad idea, if it works. The more ideas you have to share the more you have to take back with you and quickly implement. What a great way to have an immediate impact in your department.

* Take back many great ideas to quickly implement
* Streamline your processes for greater efficiency
* Impress your clients and coworkers with new and fresh ideas
* See what others are doing to get that extra edge.

Explore working with executive search firm as a way to find and retain top talent to move your center forward.

Your program’s success relies on many things – the program faculty, program topics, corporate networking – to name a few. Program leadership is one of the most important components. Identifying and recruiting talented individuals can be daunting. Working with an executive search firm can be an effective strategy for acquiring the most capable individual. Take advantage of this session and learn the ins and outs of working with an executive search partner as an employer and candidate. Session participants will gain insights through an interactive dialogue on how to select, retain, and optimize this valuable relationship.

Participants of this session will:
• Gain insights on the services offered by an executive search firm
• Identify key considerations when partnering with a firm
• Develop a strategy for optimizing the executive search firm engagement

In this session you will be exposed to an effective method for planning and implementing strategic items on your to-do list generated during the conference.

It starts from a methodology to evaluate strategy and work from desired revenue and profitability objectives to actionable tactical and program plans – how to quantify and support planned efforts. In a self-guided exercise, you will take a quick look back at the past 4 days, evaluate ideas and identify the key things that they may be able to implement within the next 90 days. You will then begin to look at the tactics to employ to achieve rapid results, developing a plan that can be used to manage internally and providing benchmarks for the first week, first month and first quarter following CMED.