Leading with Exemplary Quality

Business Issue

The U.S. division of a large global firm wanted their leaders to exemplify the highest standards of quality in their business. They faced a new regulatory environment in which their work would be highly scrutinized. In addition to regulatory changes, they needed to introduce important new improvements in their business methodology. The interesting challenge for the firm was to take a large number of very experienced professionals and to quickly convince them that there was something new to learn and something new to do in a business at which they were expert.

Approach

In response to this need, Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE) partnered with the firm to produce a program that focused on ensuring exemplary quality in the firm’s largest business unit. Over 1000 professionals went through a four and one-half day experience that introduced important changes in their business methodology and taught them to apply a set of key personal behaviors that were essential to ensuring quality across their entire business.

Learning Experience

One hundred professionals enrolled in each session. The program was built around an evolution in the firm’s methods that required a much higher level of involvement on the part of the participants and a proactive analysis of their client’s business. In order to be successful with this new approach, a set of targeted behaviors was identified that professionals must learn and eventually own in order to ensure that the work was properly done in a new regulatory environment and that relationships with the client were properly managed given a new set of challenges and constraints. Many of the targeted behaviors pertained to client communication and client confrontation. The challenge for Duke CE was to team with the firm’s internal education experts to find a way to deeply impact a group of highly experienced professionals who were already experts at their business, to open their eyes to the need for an increased emphasis on quality in their work and to help them internalize the targeted behaviors needed to accomplish this level of quality.

Execution

The approach to this learning challenge was to teach by metaphor. The 100 participants were split into groups of twenty. Each participant spent two half-days going through a visceral learning experience that was analogous to their business, but in a context very different from their own profession. The experience required some of the same methods used in their business and the targeted behaviors. The exercise was deliberately designed to build a metaphor of the business process that offered the participants a unique and engaging opportunity to learn. Some participants served as physicians examining patients, making a diagnosis, and delivering conclusions, including very difficult news to patients. Some professionals conducted an archaeological dig to determine if a site contained the wreckage of a particular plane that crashed in the 1930’s. Some inspected a home that was built in several phases ranging from the 1760’s to the 1980’s. Other professionals examined a crime scene to determine who committed a murder or investigated a set of unexplained deaths in a small town as investigative reporters. In each case, the participants used the targeted behaviors to achieve real results in a context very different from their own business.

Outcome

These learning experiences were intermingled with more traditional learning events that allowed participants to see the connections between their world and the less familiar contexts they sampled. The juxtaposition of the familiar and the analogous created a powerful and memorable learning experience that has had real impact on the professionals’ behavior across the firm. The program was so successful that Duke CE is currently working with the firm to launch a  follow-on to the program enrolling 3400 top professionals and managers across the firm.

 

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