Subscribe Did a colleague forward this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy. News Upcoming Speeches: Convert Your Marketing Role into a Strategic Firm Leadership Position, SMPS-PSMA Build Business 2007 National Conference, Washington DC, August 23, 2007 (details) Articles and Publications: What Would a Female Superhero Do for Gender Diversity?,” American Bar Association’s Tort, Trial and Insurance Practice Section newsletter, July 2007 Suzanne Lowe contributed to: Marketing Metrics De-Mystified: Methods for Measuring ROI and Evaluating Your Marketing Effort, by Sally Handley FSMPS, President of Sally Handley, Inc.. Sally is an adjunct faculty member at Pratt Institute in Manhattan, where she teaches Marketing /Communications for design firms. Practice Management: Re-evaluate how you evaluate your marketer (PDF), by Suzanne Lowe and Sally Glick for Accounting Today, September 2006 (also published with permission on The Marcus Letter) Why You May Not be Truly Differentiated, Consulting News, September 2006 (available to CN subscribers only) Hallmarks of an Effective CMO (PDF), The Marketer, August 2006 New from the Expertise Marketplace Blog Professional services offshoring: Friend or foe? Ford Harding’s advice on growing books of business with clients How to overcome cross-selling hurdles – inside, and those that clients erect How Professional Service Firms Can Think Strategically about Selling "Cross selling: more than selling from Point A to Point B" Just Say No to limited CMO jobs See all the posts at the Expertise Marketplace blog Subscribe to the blog's RSS feed for regular updates. (Need RSS help?) Recent Issues Service Portfolio Management with Yoh's Jim Lanzalotto, July 2007 Doing Things Differently - An Example from Thornton Tomasetti, June 2007 A conversation about social networking with Bill Matassoni, May 2007 You can order Marketplace Masters from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, your favorite online bookseller, or CEO-READ.

The Marketplace Master™ is a monthly email publication on professional service marketing from Expertise Marketing, LLC.

Breaking out of Dusty Paradigms

In our 2007 "Doing Things Differently" series, we've explored many aspects of what it takes for professional service leaders to try something unfamiliar, even when the promise of competitive advantage is at hand. Each month, we've shared examples of people displaying professional courage in order to help their firms make marketplace gains in different arenas: collaborating better to get closer to clients; differentiating; measuring marketing ROI; developing social networking strategies; and growing revenues using cross-selling tactics.

But what if you have a great idea for your firm to implement, but you've never before made a serious case for your colleagues to do things differently? What if you don't naturally possess a streak of chutzpah? Professional bravery can be learned, and people can flex their leadership muscles, if they're given a chance to practice at it.

This is why executive education makes such great sense. Business managers understand its unique place in helping their leaders to stretch out of old norms, in this case toward more effective growth and marketing strategies.

For our traditional August guest-authored issue, we're grateful to Elaine Eisenman, Dean of Babson College's Executive Education program, for sharing her insights about how executive education prepares professional service leaders to break out of dusty paradigms. Many thanks, Elaine!

Suzanne Lowe
Author, Marketplace Masters: How Professional Service Firms Compete to Win
President, Expertise Marketing, LLC

How Executive Education Helps Professional Services Leaders Compete More Effectively

by Elaine Eisenman, PhD

Professional services firms continually struggle to expand their employees' ability to better meet the needs of clients. Over the past several years Babson Executive Education has seen a significant increase in professional services firms working to help their leadership more fully understand their clients' business as a way of differentiating themselves in the marketplace.

Elaine Eisenman

When we meet with these firms, the challenge is often the same: "Our partners and associates are experts in their fields, but they need help understanding the world from their client's perspective. We want to be full business partners and trusted advisors across the growing and changing needs of our client's businesses, but we don't quite understand how to make this happen."

The unspoken but implicit additional challenge in this request is often, "Our partners do not believe that anyone can understand their business better than they do. Whatever you offer has to engage their intellect, be pure value add, and, oh by the way, also be seen as unique, applied and relevant. If they become defensive or do not think they are learning something new and useful, you're dead in the water."

So what is new in the world of executive education that could possibly meet these criteria? The remainder of this piece will focus on some innovative programs from Babson Executive Education and other executive education providers.

Creating The Curious Mindset

Programs with the highest impact are those that focus on building a critical capability – this capability was best described by one of our clients, a rapidly growing advertising firm. John Connors, founder of the Boathouse Group Inc., asked us to create a program for his senior account managers that would successfully Create the Curious Mindset. By this, he meant he wanted us to take his managers out of their comfort zone and help them recognize and learn to view the world through the eyes of their clients. Connors believes that it was only through this experience that they would be able to think outside of their current knowledge base and be able to help their clients grow and prosper.

Babson Executive Education was built for exactly this kind of challenge. By providing a broader context for thinking about clients and their specific challenges, we try to stimulate a sense of curiosity and interest in client needs and goals. We work hard to provide our professional service participants with a jumping off point for helping their clients expand the boundaries of their thinking.

The following examples provide a context for how executive education helps create the curious mindset. These examples are not only from the work of Babson Executive Education, but also from our executive education peers in the broader marketplace.

Example One: Involving participants directly in the educational process, either through direct interactions in class or through simulation exercises.

In this experience, our client was interested in creating a feedback-rich environment in a low-risk setting as a foundation for helping the business development team increase the impact of their pitch presentations. To achieve this goal, two processes were created, one forming the springboard for the other. For the foundational experience, we identified prospects of our client and had teams research the companies and create a pitch presentation, based on all the information that they were able to collect. Our faculty then served as clients in a simulated business development meeting. They participated in the presentation and subsequent discussion, ending with both a critique and suggestions for improvement. After this foundational experience, the stakes increased with actual clients invited in to serve as the evaluation panel. The advantage in this kind of program is that pure unfiltered feedback is immediately available in a low-risk setting.

Example Two: Taking participants out of their comfort zone by asking them to work on "analogous" challenges.

Here, the process begins with an analysis of the basic skills and knowledge required for success in meeting a specific challenge. Once these elements are fully understood, it is possible to create an intense and engaging experience in an analogous role. For example, new audit partners in a global consulting firm participated in a multi-day experiential process in which they were "reborn" as physicians in a busy emergency room who were required to diagnosis patients being brought in for acute problems. In this situation, diagnosis is only possible through a careful assessment of the facts and an equally careful assessment of the assumptions. Through this analogous simulation, the new partners were able to hone their analytic skills. The analogy here is that audit partners are usually charged with diagnosing the particular issues in their client companies; yet often the symptoms used as the basis for diagnosis, like the symptoms of live patients, can be hidden or misleading. The challenge is how one diagnoses the critical issues under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Example Three: Scenario Planning and Competitor Analysis

Here, we work with our clients to increase understanding of the 3-5 major events that are likely to influence their industry in the next 3-5 years, and to consider how they can prepare for them. In the best outcomes, we help them understand that companies that are not on their current "radar screens" can easily become their most difficult competitors for new markets and access. A great example is a situation where members of a technology consulting firm recognized the "threat" of Google for one of their clients in the technology storage industry. After learning about scenario planning and competitor analysis techniques, these technology professionals were suddenly able to see beyond their potential competitors enough to focus on the content of their client's product, as opposed to the actual technology.

Example Four: The "Unconference"

The "unconference" is basically a conference around a specific theme where the agenda is created in real-time, and participants vote with their feet about which sessions they want to attend. This is an extremely popular model in the Web 2.0 world, where there might be an unconference called "Social Networking Business Models." At the beginning of the event, there is a plenary session where people present their session ideas. Each session leader is then given a room (or interactive digital space) and participants are free to attend whatever they choose. Often, additional sessions are created on the fly, and technology can be used to enhance the event through blogs and wikis. The potential learning outcome of such an "unconference" is greatly enhanced and offers the opportunity for unconventional insights about developmental areas that may significantly impact the professional services firm's client work.

Example Five: Creating Innovation Leaders

Creation of innovation leaders can readily occur through action learning projects and custom cases. In a custom case, a case writer works closely with the client to identify and describe the critical challenges facing the company. For our professional services firm clients, we have not only used their own firm as the source for the case, but have also used their clients as the source. Custom cases of client needs are used as the basis for discussion and learning. In some programs, we have created custom cases as the basis for discussion, and asked the company founder to anonymously sit in the back of the room during the discussion of the case. At the end of the discussion, the founder is asked to remark on the comments of the participants. By actualizing the founder's reality, all participants can engage in deeply meaningful discussion and learning.

A secondary part of the case process can occur through the identification of personal challenges in meeting a professional services firm's client needs. We often create peer mentoring teams to serve as consultants on our participants' identified challenges. In these sessions, participants are asked to bring a write-up of their most difficult current challenges. Peers and faculty serve as consultants who help provide context and problem-solving ideas for "back home" application. Also, through the use of custom cases for both participants' companies and companies of the participants' clients, we help identify critical challenges and the skills necessary to analyze and implement successful interventions in those client companies.

Many Pathways Can Lead to The Curious Mindset

Through these examples, it should be clear that there are many different ways to create The Curious Mindset. The basic criteria? Take participants out of their comfort zone into an area and challenge that force them to think about personal and professional issues in ways that they have not pursued earlier in their career, and then bring those insights immediately back to the real-world issues their clients are facing today. The key to success is working with an executive education provider that fully understands the business and the professional challenges that face the professional services firm leader. It is only by understanding and implementing a program that builds in both sides of this critical coin that true change and self awareness can occur.

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Elaine Eisenman is Dean of Babson Executive Education at Babson College. Dr. Eisenman's career includes experience as a business leader and general manager, HR executive, private and public Board member, and organizational consultant. Dr. Eisenman is co-author of I Didn't See It Coming: The Only Book You'll Ever Need to Avoid Being Blindsided in Business, published by John Wiley and Sons.

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