You’ve heard about how ExecEd creates special, tailor-made programs for companies and other organizations to help them learn to overcome the very specific challenges they face out in the real world. (And if you haven’t, please go read all about Custom Solutions.)
Here’s something else that sets Executive Education at the Darla Moore School of Business apart from more pedestrian forms of business education: the Management Development Center.
The Management Development Center, or MDC, is a competency-based assessment process used to identify leadership strengths and areas for improvement – and to do it for specific individuals working in pivotal positions at specific companies.
The MDC swings into action once or twice a year. A group of about 24 – a number that experience has shown to work well – high-potential people from a given company come to the Moore School to be assessed, after which they engage in a set of tailored activities “that are intended to challenge and assess participants’ work-related knowledge skills and characteristics,” according to Rob Ployhart, the Carolina Distinguished Professor and Bank of America Professor of Business Administration at the Moore School.
Ployhart explains that there’s nothing new or exotic about such an assessment center. The NFL has something like it for college football players seeking to turn pro, called “the Combine.” The military has Special Forces training for outstanding personnel who have already been through basic and other initial step. MDC adapts these mechanisms to the business world.
With the MDC, the first assessment is performed by upper management of the company itself. That’s who initially identifies the 24 people it sees as having the ability and/or potential to take on a bigger role. The people chosen tend to be early or at a midpoint in their careers. They seem to have a strong future, but have “some development needs.”
The MDC interacts first with the managers of the company that is sending these up-and-comers. “We work with the organization to identify what they need.” The next step involves those the company is sending to participate. “I design a set of activities to assess where they are today,” says Ployhart, “testing and scoring them as to whether they have the right skills and characteristics for the positions they’re in, and the future positions they might hold.”
This assessment goes to levels beyond what managers have seen in observing the participants on the job. And “sometimes they have sent the wrong person,” although that’s usually not the case. What’s more likely is that the assessment will identify potential that doesn’t show in people’s current positions. Not all people are in spots where their virtues are currently visible to their bosses.
“They might just knock it out of the park in ways they never had the opportunity to do on the job,” says Ployhart. But what good does that do if the boss isn’t there to see it? Fortunately, that’s not the case with the MDC. “The execs will be in the room,” he says.
“We have executives of the company act as assessors,” and “they’re learning, too.” That makes the process “an opportunity for an organization to get a better understanding of their workers’ talent readiness than they’re likely to get elsewhere.”
That makes MDC a unique learning opportunity for everyone involved. “Everyone” includes MDC itself, which has been refined over the years, and built a significant legacy. Participants in the program have formed lasting relationships that have helped break down barriers within their organizations.
Would MDC be right for your company? Find out by contacting ExecEd. Reach out to Associate Dean Mark Cecchini.
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