Executive Boot Camp: How I Survived and Lived to Tell
July 27, 2005
Elizabeth Johns, Managing Director Communications

When the group assembled, it was not without trepidation.... RECENT NEWS ARTICLES BY TOPIC Bank Relationship Management Corporate Finance Financial Accounting & Reporting Payment Resources for Treasury Risk Management Sarbanes-Oxley Treasury Management Career Services

Leadership development programs have been gaining popularity as companies manage significant change. Experience at one of the world’s top-rated programs shows that benefit to the finance function may be more than meets the eye.

Recently I and 24 other business leaders—ranging from seasoned professionals to well-groomed lady executives to carnivorous looking young men with pressed golf shirts and very white teeth—attended a week-long program at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) in Greensboro, NC, all of us understanding to some extent that human capital is a driver of corporate value.

The program isn’t for the faint of heart. Whether your preconception is charm school or boot camp, it’s expensive and intensely focused. It involves a lot of writing, some physical exertion, discord and no small amount of introspection. For me the choice was prompted by AFP’s visionary CEO and chairman, who had both attended the program.

“As a finance person, the benefit was tremendous, both professionally and personally. So much of our life is spent at work that inevitably we carry some of our work life home and vice versa. The course gave me uninterrupted time to step back and see myself through others' eyes; and it was quite a revelation,” said AFP chairman Sally Smedal, treasurer and controller of Basic American Foods. As a result, she says she is “more confident and at peace with who I am.”

The Vision
Since its inception 30 years ago, CCL®, a non-profit educational institution, has generated behavioral data from hundreds of thousands of managers and executives, the largest such data repository in the world. The goal is to show leaders how to apply behavioral theories to real life—but we didn’t know how this would happen.

When my group assembled, it was not without trepidation, knowing we were about to go through an experience similar to one the Air Force uses in its officers’ program. Who knew the skills we would use would be the ones we use at work, ranging from the ability to write a strategic plan to having enough flexibility to deal with a problem in a novel way?

The concept is the brainchild of H. Smith Richardson Sr., one of the builders of the Vicks Chemical Company, originators of Vicks VapoRub. Among other things, Richardson pioneered the concepts of billboard advertising and product sampling. At the turn of the last century, he observed that when executives can’t deal with changes, their businesses fail. He wanted executives who were big-picture leaders with “minds that could do cross-country thinking.”

The theory was borne out by data that began to be collected: Executives should exhibit leadership, energy, the ability to run a budget, ethics and resilience, among other things. Problems in key areas might serve as red flags.

Before arriving at the center, our group collected 360-degree feedback at the office and completed a battery of behavioral assessments. When we arrived, we received reports about how people in different corporate strata might perceive us, as well as a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI) based upon Carl Jung’s theories about personality types, a CampbellTM Leadership Index report, a whole lot of direct feedback and a psychological inventory. Then we put our knowledge to work.

In various exercises that involved problem solving, goal setting, role-playing and outdoor challenges, we were happy to have had some understanding of systemic thinking and game theory, the ability to forge connections with people who think they have nothing in common and, in my case, the ability to stand on tiptoes for 20 minutes without wobbling. Impact to a company’s finances became apparent later.

Financial Rationale
“Labor is generally your biggest cost, and in my case it can be 60% of total costs. That means that the slightest variation in the way employees acquire skills on the job can have a big impact on margins,” said Mike Schautteet of Ceco Concrete Construction, LLC in Raleigh, NC, one of my fellow participants. His position requires elements of risk management and cost-control, as well as what Ceco calls “always being open to the possibility of developing a new approach.”

For finance people thinking about leadership, often the first new approach is simply overcoming the perception that numbers people don’t have people skills.

“Some people still think the finance function only deals with numbers and control of the firm’s assets,” said Mike Kafantis, vice president of finance in the corporate offices of Fidelity Investments in Boston. “At its best, the finance function should act as a strategic business partner with the senior management team of the firm, bringing dynamic leadership and innovative thinking to drive business performance. This transformation of the finance function requires skill sets over and above the more traditional skills everyone naturally attributes to the function. We need people with strong leadership, consultative, influencing and project management skills that can be combined with excellent communication and interpersonal skills to effectively interact with, and influence, the senior management team.”

Mike and I had learned we had the same MBTI® profile, shared only by a Canadian plant manager of Unilever, David Dobbin, who had been born in Belfast and whose great-grandfather had worked in the shipyard that built the Titanic. In a recent Ontario government report on the Ontario food industry, David was quoted as saying his plant’s success is based in part on his skilled and dependable workforce. Clearly knowledge of people contributes to corporate efficiency.

“A company’s numbers can be interpreted a number of ways, just as people can be interpreted a number of ways, so perception is important. That’s why I’m here, to develop a deeper understanding of people and myself,” said Kurt Sprau, CFO of Curries & Graham Divisions of the ASSA ABLOY Door Group in Mason City, IA. Kurt’s MBTI® profile pegged him as having a preference for feeling. “Don’t worry,” Kurt said, “I may be a feeling accountant, but I’m certainly not a creative accountant.”

The sheer amount of data we acquired suggested that this program would appeal to finance people.

“In my experience, CFOs respond better to data than to anecdotal evidence,” said Gardner Courson, vice president and general counsel of Tyco Fire and Security in Boca Raton, FL. “This is important because, although FAS 105 says the legal department shall determine the risk, the financial recommendation is often made by the CFO.”

Learning Through Adversity
When we think of adult learning, we are apt to compare the benefits of print vs. online technologies, but there’s more to it. Research shows that adults learn best from their own and each others’ experience, particularly if the experience is difficult.

Author Richard Pascale says in “Conflict By Design” that the learning-through-adversity model is the best one for creating a chance for change. James A. Autry, author of the book Love and Power goes a step further, saying that anyone trying to be a good leader can only get there by making mistakes.

So in exercise after exercise, participants were invited to make mistakes, observe the impact on people and groups, and hear feedback through a technique called the Situations-Behavior-Impact method of dispassionate recording. This sparked discussions about real-life challenges overcome—or at least not repeated—and some of these were quite moving. “The French word for where this hits you is in les tripes,” said a former European M&A specialist—meaning it gets you in the guts.

A lady CFO from Boston learned from her profile that she would make a good emergency response medic.
 
Change And Stress
One morning I heard Bach played on a lobby piano by Randy Barfield, financial planning manager with SEMATECH, Inc. in Austin, TX. “Once you begin to recognize the counterpoint structure of the music,” he said, “that’s when practicing gets interesting.”

Counterpoint played out when we tested our self-knowledge in problem solving sessions under stress. A few of the exercises seemed to prove that fertilization occurs from rotational job moves. Then we received a Change Style Indicator® (CSI) score calibrating our ability to deal with change—conservers at one end of the spectrum, originators at the other, pragmatists in between.

I learned that I handle change pretty well. Those with similar responses included a German pharmaceutical discovery team leader, a brilliant Columbian international director of global sales, and the general counsel. Long before we knew our scores, we had elected to dine off campus with each other.

Take Aways
In the Western tradition, the rational mind is one that asks questions and then goes about solving them, but on the last day we were left with several loose ends. “I have drunk the Kool Aid,” said Jerry Austin of the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority, who attended with one of his colleagues in order to improve efficiency. I had a feeling his direct reports were about to experience some new ways of thinking.

Then it clicked. Leading is a very human activity, more than managing resources. Any finance person with the data we received would spot patterns that might become a competitive advantage, but the real benefit is harder to articulate. It might be as simple as looking at things in new ways.

Of valuable takeaways, the one I’ll treasure most is a 20-minute tape of observations about me collected from everyone and spoken by the “feeling” accountant from Iowa, the brilliant global sales director from Columbia, and the Canadian son of Belfast ship builders who shared my MBTI® profile. Oh my goodnes. Every woman executive should have a tape like this.

For the organization and for myself I would do it again in a heartbeat. Nuances for professional refinement present themselves in ways subtler than they did a decade ago. Having seen myself on video before, I was happy to see that some of the old behaviors had fallen away, although there are certainly others to work on. As a follow-up, my group, many of us in the financial field, will help each other stick to a few modest goals. A personal coach will provide guidance as I build something for the future.

The last hand I touched before boarding the plane was that of fellow participant Ralph Carfagno, senior director of alumni relations and programs at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, PA, a charitable educational organization founded in 1909 by the chocolate magnate and his wife who, unable to have children of their own, wanted to leave a legacy. Ralph had exhorted us to recommend children who might benefit from the full financial assistance his $7 billion endowment fund provides.

At opposite ends of the personality spectrum, Ralph and I nevertheless formed a bond through the program. While I won’t reveal the secret handshake, I know the accountants reading this will want to get right to the bottom line. When I stepped onto the airplane to go home I was thinking about the last word in our last presentation: Believe.

Elizabeth Johns, AFP's managing diector of commnications, runs the association's magazine, newsletters, books and Web site, among other content initiatives.  She writes occasionally about management issues.  Contact her at ejohns@afponline.org 

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