Creating capable business leaders: getting the most out of postgraduate education.

When you send one of your top employees to an executive education program at any of the many fine postgraduate business schools in Mexico, what do you expect in return?

If you're typical, you expect at the very least a more capable and up-to-date executive who'll put new knowledge and leadership skills to work for the benefit of the company. That's what you're paying for, after all.

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But are you also expecting a more well-rounded human being who has undergone a radical personal transformation and come out with new attitudes about family relationships, co-worker interaction and his or her own role in the company?

You should be, says Heriberto Rodriguez, director general of a relatively small (about 550 students) but influential graduate business school in Puebla. Rodriguez is a vocal advocate for emphasizing personal development as a key component in executive education.

While this concept is hardly unknown in prestigious executive education programs across the country, it's intimately woven into the fabric of the curriculum at IESDE (Instituto de Estudios Superiores en Direccion de Empresas de Mexico), the school Rodriguez runs. And he expects to see more programs follow IESDE's lead in the future.

"Value creation is an important reason a business exists, and generating wealth is business' principal role in society," Rodriguez says. "But businesses have other roles as well. And, especially in Latin America, they involve a community of people who want to be happy."

By no means does this mean that pure business skills need to be sacrificed in executive training programs to make room for personal development.

Quite the contrary. Rodriguez's point is that the whole panoply of factors that go into training better executives--the practical, the personal, the interpersonal and the societal--need to be integrated for the benefit of everybody concerned, including the company's bottom line.

To take an obvious and simple example, treating subordinates with respect is known to help them do a better job. But being the kind of person who treats subordinates with respect also helps you to do a better job.

But there's even more. Fostering a business environment of personal respect for one and all helps the nation as a whole do a better job. That's not trivial or secondary, Rodriguez insists.

In fact, IESDE's stated mission might serve as a good introduction to the big picture for anyone considering executive business education for employees or themselves: "To train business and organization managers integrally, deeply and systematically to procure their managerial improvement and entrepreneurial development, and in this way to influence the economic and social development of the region."

Rewarding Experience

Executive MBA programs may fill the glamour spot for experienced professionals seeking advanced business education, but the large selection of shorter and more specific courses may offer the most direct benefits to companies, as well as the executives themselves.

And anyone who may wonder if combining the personal with the professional tends toward the touchy-feely need only hear Rodriguez's down-to-earth reasons for choosing non-MBA programs to assuage their fears.

"A masters program deals with a lot of theoretical knowledge," he says. "The more specific programs that we and others offer reward experienced people who have previous knowledge with more capability to put their knowledge to work."

This is not to say that MBAs aren't the best option for many executives who climbed the ladder without one and would benefit from getting one at a certain stage of their careers. For many, an MBA is a statement about their overall preparation, their range of knowledge and their understanding of business as an area of human endeavor.

With a globalizing economy and a shifting business environment, that statement, and the knowledge that goes with it, can make as much sense for an executive at age 55 as it does for an up-and-comer at age 30.

But for many others, availing themselves of the more narrowly focused, shorter duration (less than a year, usually a matter of months) courses and diplomados offered by the better business schools offers the immediate benefits they're looking for.

"The business world is a practical world," Rodriguez points out. "The entire emphasis is on the practical, on getting things done. That's not to say that knowledge, per se, is of minor importance. But it does mean that the abilities and practical know-how these programs offer count for more than abstract science."

For instance, Monterrey Tech's business school (EGADE-ITESM) offers several prestigious MBA programs, but also attracts executive students with its shorter programs in "World Class Marketing Skills," "Macroeconomy for Decision-Making," "Strategic Management and Leadership," and many others.

Mexico, in fact, is blessed with a wealth of well-regarded schools offering such programs, including the Panamerican University (UP), the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (UAG), and the Ibero-Americana University, to name just a few.

The programs can be quite creative in their focus. For example, IPADE, perhaps the best-known postgraduate business education school with facilities in several major Mexican cities, offers a special program called ADIT focusing on innovation and technology.

It's aimed at businesspeople and executives who have found themselves suddenly facing a brave new world of competing markets, short product lifestyles, and ever changing business models--all resulting from the dizzying pace of technological advancement.

Learning to ride with technology's pace instead of struggling to keep up with it is as useful a reason for executive education as anything.

Focus On Growth

Like many others, IESDE's most important programs are aimed at veterans with at least five years of top executive experience. The principal goal is the development of managerial skills for growth in the business field.

But unlike many others, IESDE gives equal billing to "growth as a human being."

The reason for this is not altruistic, but practical. Just as better gasoline won't make much of a difference in a poorly tuned car, better skills alone aren't always enough to achieve leadership improvement. A better person will put the new skills to better use.

There's nothing new-age about the kind of growth Rodriguez means. In fact, one of the major applications of the personal improvement he advocates is in the concept of leadership as it relates to the individual. The word he coined for it is duenez, which you might translate as owner-ness.

It's not exactly ownership, since an executive usually doesn't own in any literal sense what he or she is in charge of. Rather, it's applying the consciousness of an owner to your responsibilities--"owning up" to them, as it were, rather than simply carrying them out.

"Doing your job," even if you do it well, is not what it's all about.

"Today's companies put a lot of emphasis on managing," Rodriguez says. "But managing, per se, is not enough. What companies need are more 'owners.'"

Duenez is achieved, Rodriguez says, when executives function more as politicians than managers. The notion of "politicians" in the business place certainly sounds undesirable at first, to say the least. But we're not talking here about manipulators or power-seekers. Rather, the true masters of duenez know how to set policy as well as carry it out.

As IESDE emphasizes, it's a different matter for an executive to act like an owner than it is for a manager. The latter might perform well, but the former identifies opportunities, takes risks and, most importantly, unites wills to reach common objectives.

This duenez is as much a personality change to be made as a skill to be learned, according to Rodriguez.

"The most important thing we teach is essentially political," he says. "It consists of the knowledge and ability to lead an organization to a better place."

Making Sound Decisions

The means IESDE uses to impart duenez and other traits and skills are based on the Case Study method.

Again, this is used across the country, but Rodriguez--always a visionary when it comes to business education--thinks it's underused nationally. One reason may be the need for professors skilled at using it.

"The emphasis has to be on the kinds of teachers who know how to put it to its best use for everybody," Rodriguez says. "With the case method, a teacher is as much a facilitator and monitor as an instructor."

The case method is basically what it sounds like--using real situations as a portal to learning.

The idea is that learning comes from discovering, not from listening. What it's all about is not being told the "right" way to do things, but getting a feel for how to decide between different possible solutions.

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In a sense, Rodriguez maintains, the case method creates the conditions for the executive student to discover what he or she already knows.

Helping Mexico Win

Perhaps where advanced business education can help the most is in the family business area.

This is a huge sector in Mexico. It's also a sector that Rodriguez feels is mostly lacking in the skills and knowledge that these programs impart.

"Very few family businesses make it to the third generation," Rodriguez says. "And it's for the same reason. They've never learned to be good owners."

Some of the lessons learned will be hard ones. Most family businesses, Rodriguez thinks, need to either shed some baggage, ally themselves with other businesses, or sell off and start over.

They also need to face the harsh reality that problems in their family relationships translate into problems in the business. The solution isn't, as many think, to learn to separate the two. The solution is to deal with them both as equally important.

But whether it's a small family business or a major international corporation, what's imparted in executive education programs has implications for the country as well as the individual company.

"Most companies in Mexico are looking for ways to be more competitive," Rodriguez says. "To do it, they're going to have to lose some old habits. I think a lot are reviewing their missions and rediscovering themselves."

Executive education programs can encourage that to happen on the individual level.

"The ideals of entrepreneurship aren't very well developed in Mexico," Rodriguez says. "A lot of advanced training takes place because executives want a bigger desk and a bigger salary, not to pursue any ideals. But the two goals are not mutually exclusive."

The biggest beneficiary of executive education in the long run will be the country itself, Rodriguez thinks. "Mexico's problems with competitiveness are not the fault of the government, or the unions, or the workers," he says.

"It's the business sector. We've been blowing with the wind. The real goal of executive education is to create leaders capable of choosing a better future and taking us there."

Kelly Arthur Garrett ([e-mail]) is a freelance journalist based in Mexico City.