Geography lessons: international business programs to prepare you for work abroad.

Roosevelt Dillard's career has taken him a long way from his hometown of Detroit. A program manager with Corning Inc., maker of specialty glass and ceramics components for high-technology systems, Dillard ran one of the company's engineering groups in Japan for more than three years, and his pasport got a few more stamps when he was tapped to attend an international executive education program that jetted him off to the Czech Republic and India. He is hoping that the program will take his career places at the company, too.

Dillard, who manages a group of 40-plus employees in developing large-size display sheets of glass for use in LCDs, screen monitors, and cell phones, attended the Global Leadership 2020 program offered by Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School of Business. Executives in the program packed their bags for three modules that took them to Prague, Czech Republic; Hyderabad, India; and Dartmouth's campus in Hanover, New Hampshire.

"It broadened my perspective and made me more appreciative and accepting of the way others do business, not just from a business sense but also from a respect for different cultures. Applying that [appreciation] in my day-to-day responsibilities has given me a whole other set of tools," Dillard says.

Dillard attended the program in 2003 with seven other managers from a variety of Coming's businesses, along with executives from companies that belong to Tuck's Global Leadership 2020 Consortium, including John Deere Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive.

The executives spent 10 days in each location over a period of nine months, during which local government officials, business leaders, and professors taught them the intricacies and customs of doing business in the region. They also ventured out to experience the local cultures and speak directly with local businesspeople. What's one lesson Dillard has incorporated into his business dealings? He now has all of his business documents translated so that his messages are correctly communicated. "I never really understood the [global] business climate until I went through that program," he says.

The program, begun in 1998, immerses executives in the local cultures of emerging markets, introduces them to the process of cross-cultural business, and exposes them to the perspective of local leaders--experiences that could take years to gain during the normal course of a career.

Members of the consortium help design the program. "They are trying to inculcate a global mind-set among their next-generation leaders, people who will go to China and India and other markets that aren't native to them and lead functions and businesses," says Clark Callahan, executive director of executive education at Tuck.

Programs like Tuck's are growing in popularity as companies compete to do business on a global scale, says John Fernandes, president and chief executive of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a global organization of business schools and B-school accrediting groups. "It's a big market right now. It's [about] how to make a global leader quickly," he says.

American executives, long focused on competing in the domestic market, are now expected to have knowledge of markets beyond U.S. borders. "This is a quick way to immerse this new global executive into how business works in other countries," Fernandes continues.

The payoff can be great for the company and for the individual. Because participants report to senior executives on their findings and what they learned in the program, "it is a high-profile experience" for them, Callahan says.

More importantly, the experience can offer insight and resolutions to key business issues, something the Coming group can attest to. Dillard and his colleagues were charged with figuring out how to maintain the company's business culture at Coming offices worldwide while at the same time capitalizing on the knowledge and skills of local executives and employees. Dillard's group landed back in the U.S. with a set of recommendations to report to Corning President and COO Peter Volanakis and other top executives. The first was to examine the demographics of Corning's high-level staff. When the report revealed that only 19 of 120 C-suite executive respondents had international experience, the group had to re-examine Corning's policy for expatriate assignments to ensure a better balance between the number of U.S. managers sent abroad versus managers brought in from outside the U.S.

In addition, the group asked the company to develop a global effectiveness and leadership curriculum as well as global diversity and "global mind-set" statements. Dillard says that Coming has implemented all the recommendations, and though it is too early to gauge their true impact on the firm's business, he believes they have been positive. He notes that the firm has established a global diversity network, comprising affinity groups from various cultures and locations, and that the top ranks of management are much more diverse as well.

Dillard, who holds a bachelor's of science in engineering from the University of Michigan, hopes to be considered for a role as a director of engineering. And he thinks the Tuck program helps his chances. "I think it has raised my profile," he says. "I have been given a fairly significant level of responsibility in our large-size program development. I would like to think that very soon I will be promoted to one of our top 200 managers."

If you're interested in exploring a global executive education program, many major business schools offer them. It's important to consider a program's quality, says John Fernandes, president and chief executive of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a global organization of business schools and B-school accrediting groups, and to find out whether the program operates in your company's primary markets. Fees can range from $3,000 to more than $30,000.

Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College: Global Leadership 2020 is an executive education program open to executive teams from members of the business school's Global 2020 consortium. Three modules take participants to the Dartmouth campus in Hanover, New Hampshire; Chennai, India; and Shanghai, China. Fees vary. Contact: 603-646-2839, [e-mail].

www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/exec

University of Notre Dame: The university offers a one-week China Immersion program for executives examining business, culture, language, history, and government. It also offers an international business seminar in Oxford, England; executive finance programs in Santiago, Chile; as well as mini programs in Latin American countries including Mexico City; Quito, Ecuador; and Bogota, Colombia. Fees vary. Contact: 574-631-5285.

www.nd.edu/~execprog/executivePrograrns

Harvard Business School: The executive education programs include Building Ventures in Latin America in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The program was created by Harvard Business School and seven of the leading business schools and institutions in Latin America. It is designed to promote an entrepreneurial mind-set and help participants learn to define and execute strategy, develop and leverage capabilities, and measure and reward performance. Harvard also offers an agribusiness seminar in Latin America. Building Ventures fee: $3,000 per person; discount for teams of four. Agribusiness fee: $3,500 per person. Contact: 617-495-6555, [e-mail].

www.exed.hbs.edu/programs

University of Chicago Graduate School of Business: In partnership with Instituto de Empresa Business School in Madrid, Spain, the University of Chicago offers the Global Senior Management Program, designed for vice presidents, managing directors, unit directors, and country managers with more than 10 years of senior management experience. Courses include Developing Strategic Vision in the Global Marketplace. Fee: 21,000 euros. Contact: 312-464-8732, [e-mail].

www.chicagoexec.net

INSEAD: Billing itself as the business school for the world, INSEAD offers a full suite of executive education and M.B.A. programs, including Building the Business: Strategies for the Asia Pacific, an intensive five-day program. It also offers Managing Young Global Enterprises, or MYGLOBE, a two-module program co-developed by 11 major international business schools in Greece, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, India, Ukraine, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkey, and South Africa. Module 1 takes place in one of the countries, Module 2 takes place in France. Fee for Building the Business: 5,500 euros per person. Fees for MYGLOBE vary. Contact: For European programs, e-mail [e-mail]. For Asian program, email [e-mail].

http://executive.education.insead.edu.