XAVIER Leadership CENTER

Senior Leadership Certificate Program

The Challenge of Executive Leadership: They say it is “lonely at the top”. Executives face pressure to deliver short-term financial performance to satisfy lenders and shareholders, and must balance this with long-term strategic needs of the organization. They are ultimately responsible to clients, the demands of Sarbanes-Oxley, and bear legal responsibility for ethical conduct throughout the organization. They make the ultimate decision on where to invest, what joint ventures to create, acquisitions to make, and which units to spin off or close. Many people will bear the consequences of such decisions, when “correct” for the business and when not. The CEO must consider the needs of the entire organization, over the needs of its individual members.

They have the responsibility for surveying a constantly changing competitive landscape, get inside the minds of customers and competitors, understand and extrapolate global forces and trends to see how they might create threats and opportunities.

The also are responsible for building the right team of people who ultimately will be instruments of strategy implementation and forces of culture creation. Guessing wrong also can be costly and painful. They must also learn to balance, with Solomon-like wisdom, the competing needs, egos, and interests of internal department heads, while keeping the entire organization aligned toward common goals.

They are the vital communicators of strategy, policy, image and results, both internally and externally. Finally, they are both the intellectual and moral leaders of the organization in times of crisis (which will come . . . sooner or later).

Who Should Attend

CEO’s, directors and vice-presidents, or those expected to have near-term potential to operate at that level

What’s Different About This Program

This is not a seminar where students sit passively as they watch the PowerPoint slides flash by. We have high expectations of them to read pre-assigned articles and cases, and actively participate in class discussions, simulations, and role-play exercises. Most importantly, they are required to identify a real problem from their own workplace for which they will be challenged to develop a solution and present it to the class and faculty advisor. (We believe learning doesn’t ‘stick’ until people actually put it into practice).

You Will Learn

• Macro economics (to understand how forces in the world are impacting your industry or organization)
• Basic Business and marketing strategy concepts (building a sustainable value proposition)
• Strategy implementation approaches, and how to achieve alignment using strategy maps and thoughtful metrics,
• What a supply chain is and how companies manage them, even on a global scale, to improve their organizational performance
• The essentials of systems theory and how it relates to organizational problem solving and the need for cross-departmental collaboration
• Fundamentals of sound process design and improvement
• Leadership and its role in building a healthy work environment, and creating motivated subordinates
• How to improve communications skills (to better sell your ideas)
• An approach for improving your own and your team performance by using more coach-like behaviors
• The role of culture and “learning organization behaviors” in driving organizational performance, and how to foster effective team and group behavior
• Using HR as a tool of strategy implementation

Project Assignment

Participants must select a course project assignment to be completed by them by the end of the program. It should cover a real issue or problem from within the supervisor’s personal work situation. It should fit into one of the following categories:

• Reviewing and refining the mission vision of the organization
• Clarifying the firm’s value proposition
• Define attributes of key leadership team members and develop an action plan for each (reassign, eliminate, develop)
• Devising strategy steps that can produce a sustainable competitive advantage
• Conduct market research, analyzing key trends and drivers for the industry
• Develop a strategy map (determining key metrics)
• Conduct an cultural assessment

Note: Students must submit a one paragraph proposed project description defining the problem and the intended objective with their course application. Our faculty will review it and provide feedback as needed to insure the appropriateness of the project.

Certificate Requirements

A Certificate will be awarded by Xavier University to students who complete assigned readings, meet attendance requirements, and successfully complete a course project assignment that addresses a problem or situation from within their respective organization. Project reports will be presented by attendees during the last session of each course, and feedback will be offered by our faculty as well as fellow students. A limited number of company guests are invited to attend the final student presentations

360° Survey Module

Prior to the start of the course, participants will be asked to provide a list of people inside their organization to whom we will send a 360° survey instrument which will be filled out in confidence and sent back directly to the Xavier Center for Executive and Corporate Learning. The results will be tabulated and the feedback about how peers, subordinates and superiors view your personal leadership style and behavior will be provided to each participant during the module on “Developing Alignment Top to Bottom and Across the Organization”.

Program Outline

Creating Interest and Gaining Commitments – Effective Verbal Presentations

• Effective Presentation Concepts
• Making Presentations Come Alive (making emotional connections with your message)

HR As A Strategic Tool

• Human capital management and development
• Choosing the right leadership team (behaviors not technical competencies)
• The performance management system dilemma
• Hiring strategies aligned with mission and values of the organization

Developing Alignment Top to Bottom and Across the Organization

• Team leadership in today’s reality
• Building a high-performance team
• Developing and practicing Coach-Like behaviors
• Enhancing problem solving and decision making in teams
• The role of leadership in influencing performance
• 360 assessment feedback
• Strategy alignment methods
• Balanced Scorecard
• Hoshin Kanri
• Open book Management

Systems Theory – Organizational Analysis Tool

• Mental models and paradigms – roadblocks or keys to better problem analysis
• Principles of systems
• System simulation experience
• Causal Loop Diagramming

Business-to-Business Marketing Strategy

• Scanning the Environment
• Developing a Value Proposition
• Understanding customer behavior
• Positioning and Pricing
• Market Segmentation

Managerial Economics Theory and Policy

• Business Economics Overview
• Macroeconomics
• The Digital Economy
• International Business and Global Economy

Supply Chain Leadership

• Foundation of Value Chain Management
• Supply Chains with Global Reach
• The Supply Chain as a System
• Decision Making

Effective Process Design and Improvement

• It’s all about the process
• Voice of the Customer
• Define: Step One of DMAIC
• Measure: Step Two of DMAIC
• Analyze: Step Three of DMAIC
• Innovate: Step Four of DMAIC
• Control: Step Five of DMAIC
• Making It Happen
• Lean Simulation exercise

Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage

• Mission, Vision, and Values
• The Strategy Process
• Economics of Competitive Advantage
• Sustainable Competitive Advantage
• Speed-based Competition
• Strategy Implementation (strategy maps, metrics, and Balanced Scorecard concepts)
• Business Policy Simulation

Strategic Financial Analysis

• Business Strategy Review
  • Understanding key financial drivers of firm performance, and their relation to strategy
• Accounting Analysis
  • Judging how consistent a firm's financial statements are with its’ business economics and strategy
• Financial Analysis
  • Making sound financial forecasts by examining the ratios and cash-flow measures of a company's operating, performance
• Prospective Analysis
  • Forecasting future performance
  • Sensitizing for risk
  • Estimating firm valuation