Built to Last: Custom Programs are the Foundation for 21st Century Growth
Designing and implementing a customized education program for a company is no small task. Read about the custom academy McCombs created for Royal Dutch Shell.
By Pam Losefsky
“Shell expected us to have deep subject knowledge, which is certainly what we came in with,” says Management Professor John Daly, who now teaches the Influencing Skills course for SPA. “But they also wanted us to have a deep understanding of all sorts of Shell topics—how Shell conducts projects, the challenges Shell project managers face, the culture of Shell, even the jargon of Shell. They insisted we understand that.” Daly recounts that three Shell managers spent literally hundreds of hours helping him to truly understand the company. “Their commitment made sure the program we devised really was customized to Shell,” he says.
For most professors, ceding control over their program delivery was unprecedented. “As faculty, we are used to being free agents in terms of how we put our content together,” remarks David Spence, McCombs School professor of business law who co-developed a course with Cranfield University Professor Roger Niven called Working with Stakeholders. “That process was really different for us, and difficult sometimes. But that interaction added a lot of value to the final product and is what has led to its success.”
Daly agrees, and adds, “Even more valuable, in my mind, was that Shell told us to spend the time needed in the course to effectively teach the material.” This is in contrast to the way many companies do it—in other words, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. “Shell said, ‘Let’s do what is right educationally,’ and that decision led to really high-quality work both before and during the learning events.”
Yet another point of departure for this custom program is the sheer number and geographic dispersion of the participants. Spence’s Working with Stakeholders course, for instance, drew 16 managers from around the world, including The Netherlands, Malaysia, the Middle East and Nigeria. Rather than making it difficult to communicate, the ethnic diversity in the class was an incredible boon. “We talk about a lot of cross-cultural issues, and the students were able to add so much value just by bringing their own perspectives,” Spence says. Spence will be traveling to London this year to teach the course a second time along with Niven to a different group of Shell managers.
Wierda and Sharples are incredibly pleased with the learning events so far and say there have even been some additional unintended positive consequences from the engagement between academia and Shell staff in terms of improving existing ways of working.
“The academic partners are now also preparing proposals for short-term research projects to improve overall competence development,” Wierda says.
