Executive Education | Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University

Demand-Driven Programming

Your personal and organizational development needs are unique. While our current program offerings are both extensive and innovative, they only represent a subset of our faculty’s expertise. Through Demand-Driven Programming we strive to meet you at the intersection of your needs and our insights.

Below are program topics we’ve offered in the past as well as some new offerings that we’re developing. Check the boxes next to the program(s) you would be interested in attending. We’ll contact you if/when there is enough interest for us to schedule an offering. Please check back often as the course list will be updated from time to time.

If your organization is interested in any of our programs, we can bring the program to you through our Custom Programs.

Programs

    • Discover strategies for managing incremental and breakthrough innovation The lifeblood of successful companies stems from a sustained stream of commercially viable innovations, both incremental and breakthrough. Customer satisfaction and loyalty result from delivery of novel solutions to new problems, and shareholders demand a constantly refreshed product portfolio promising robust market returns.
    • Activate the drivers that create and preserve a strong customer base. In a marketplace where intense competition is rapidly eroding technology and product based advantages, customer trust remains a powerful competitive advantage. Strong customer trust can lead to a loyal customer base, advantages in launching marketing strategies and innovations, and in managing corporate crises. However, building and sustaining trust requires a deep understanding of customer motivations and decision making.
    • Protect your organization's reputation and brand in the marketplace An organization's image can be built or destroyed in the media. The ability to represent oneself and one's organization positively, clearly, and honestly in the media and with the public is a key business skill. This comprehensive training seminar develops the insight, communications capability and confidence to deal effectively with the media during everyday business activities and in crisis situations.
    • An advanced finance program on creating shareholder value at the project, divisional and overall firm level Creating value is the foundation of good strategic decision-making. Learn how your management decisions impact the bottom line with a proven framework for measuring decisions under the microscope of shareholder value creation and economic value-added. Discover how to create value by analyzing and valuing your decisions' impact on revenue, earnings and cash flow. Whether your firm is public, private, or even nonprofit, the powerful principle of value creation applies.
    • A leader's workshop for enhancing customer retention skills Empathetic communication plays a critical role in customer satisfaction, service recovery and the organization's bottom line. Indeed, the degree to which leaders provide the example for recognizing and addressing customer needs has significant impact on the organization's performance. In this program, leaders will learn how to model, teach and coach empathetic communication. They will also learn a robust, evidence-based strategy for service recovery to enhance the service culture of the organization while improving employee engagement, customer loyalty and profitability.
    • Navigate healthcare hierarchy for effective collaboration and high performance In healthcare, physicians and managers work in a hierarchical and siloed environment defined by educational qualifications and experience and operating on the basis of formal positional power, authority relationships and personality. In this environment, teaching, coaching and using well proven tools of behavioral and managerial communication can produce profound organizational success. If these activities are particularly effective, even greater self-understanding, self-mastery, engagement and satisfaction are produced.
    • Sharpen your ability to identify and manage risk with a qualitative understanding of financial concepts and tools Risk is a fact of business life. Taking and managing risk is part of what companies must do to create profits and shareholder value. However, the global financial crisis and the numerous corporate meltdowns suggest that many companies neither fully understand the risks that they get exposed to nor manage them well.
    • Manage stakeholder expectations, input and vision Bringing a project home on time and within budget is expected of today’s manager. Even still, projects that meet these requirements with the seemingly desired result can somehow disappoint, fall short or frustrate stakeholders. While implementing difficult projects—just getting the work done—can be more than a full time job, ignoring the “people side” of the equation can be disastrous. Imagine rushing a new product into production according to a customer’s specifications without realizing the customer was told they were still free to change their specifications. Or worse yet, realizing after production that an actual sales contract was never signed.
    • Learn how to manage the complexities of M&A for greater growth and profitability By some estimates 70% of all mergers and acquisitions fail. Yet there are some companies that have been consistently successful with their accusations. In this program we will provide you with insights for identifying, conducting and ensuring the best opportunities for successful acquisitions.
    • An advanced finance program on identifying key business drivers for better financial planning Most managers receive a monthly financial package for their business and are involved in the annual planning process. But how systematically does the typical manager really analyze these statements? How involved is he or she in building forecasts from the bottom up after analyzing recent financial performance and industry competitive dynamics? How can historical analysis be used to identify the key value drivers within the firm in order to be more effective at planning for the future? And how does this process increase shareholder value? This program explores all of these important topics.
    • Make sense out of financial information for better decision-making and organizational improvement Healthcare organizations are under financial pressure as never before. Financial success is critical to achieving basic mission goals and reaching levels of quality and productivity demanded by health reform. This program is designed to provide a conceptual and practical overview of accounting statements, budgeting, and finance.
    • Bring the generations together for a more effective workplace. Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials often bring drastic differences in work attitudes, ethics, values, and behaviors. These differences can often lead to misunderstandings and potential conflict. Come to this interactive seminar to develop insight, approaches, and tools that draw out the best in each employee, recruit and retain top talent, and create an environment that fosters understanding.
    • Boost your personal impact and empowerment As organizations reduce middle management positions and foster team environments, individuals have more pressure to self-manage time and projects and increase their contributions to productivity. This workshop will focus on the many facets of empowerment and accountability that lead to positive results. Learn to develop and/or reinforce proven skills to manage your job, including work planning, prioritizing, managing time, and building support among influencers within the organization. Foster leadership qualities that increase personal power to achieve goals and contribute, and leave with an individualized action plan to increase your effectiveness within the organization.
    • Transform performance management into a positive process that puts learning at the heart of the organization A fast-paced global economy makes new and intensified demands on how leaders and managers perform and contribute to organizational performance. Leaders and managers must understand and know how to maximize their own capabilities and those of the people they supervise, to get the most from teams and to create systems that position the whole organization to thrive. The key is for individual leaders and managers first to learn how to be both an optimal individual contributor and a collaborative partner and then teach others how to maximize their contributions and collaborate.
    • How to embed sustainability into your organization for real payoff Are you a manager pursuing competitive advantage in a challenging market with rising environmental and social pressures? In this program, you will learn how any organization can embed sustainability for value and profit. Many of the best-run organizations face new environmental and social demands, yet fail to capitalize on the opportunities they create because sustainability is seen as a distraction from core business objectives.
    • Set an example of accountability that inspires others Accountability is a popular buzzword right now, typically used in the context of holding others accountable. While this is a very important leadership skill, this session will explore the principle of personal accountability, a concept rooted in ownership and commitment. When leaders fully embrace accountability, they demonstrate creditability and strength and inspire those around them to be accountable. During this session, participants will learn the components of personal accountability, apply the components to real-world situations and learn tangible techniques to exhibit personal accountability.
    • Overcome the cost of broken relationships Every leader knows that trust is essential for high workplace performance. Nevertheless, trust can be broken...often unintentionally. When this happens, leaders often do the opposite of what they should do.
    • A new vision for maximizing value for customers and shareholders Peter Drucker, the legendary management thinker and author of business classics such as The Effective Executive, once said, “Every single social and global issue of our day is a business opportunity in disguise.” It’s a powerful idea at the core of this program, along with the notion that we need to ’better care for our inner lives to be more effective in the outer world. Before managers can manage anything else, they must first manage themselves.
    • Effectively deal with difficult situations and anticipate the unintended effects/consequences of decisions. Managers need a comprehensive perspective to effectively deal with many complex situations. The conventional approach to solving complex problems is to break them into smaller problems, which are then solved one-by-one, but this process quickly becomes both cumbersome and ineffective. Systems thinking, a method that will help you learn to effectively address complex situations, focuses on the interrelationships and dynamics of a situation. Through discussions and hands-on exercises, this workshop helps you learn simple systems-oriented perspectives, tools and techniques that you can apply immediately in your organization.
    • A mind-body approach to developing EI Resilience and vitality of the mind and body are critical resources for reaching peak effectiveness, both at work and in personal relationships. Vitality arises from the complex interplay between emotional, intellectual, and physical health. It contributes to the ability to exercise emotional intelligence. Vitality is sustained by resilience, the positive capacity to cope with stress and adversity. Increasing your vitality and resilience builds and restores personal energy that can enhance both the quality of your day and your contribution to your organization.
    • Increase the impact of all your business writing, with special emphasis on e-mail communication. Business writing has evolved dramatically in our fast-paced, technologically-savvy culture. Gone are impersonal documents full of arcane expressions, redundancies, and convoluted syntax. The focus today is on facilitating the reader’s task through 1) a plain, elegant, and coherent style, 2) clear organization, and 3) good-looking design.

Contact Information

Required Fields
Optional Fields
Leave this field empty