Posted by Zara Brunner
What if a Master of Performance Excellence (MPE) Degree Program existed? Would you enroll? And what could you learn from it?
Confident that they have identified an idea whose time has come, Loyola University New Orleans College of Business will offer a MPE Degree Program with the Fall 2012 semester. The MPE brochure identifies the focus as equipping students in the "systems-centered design and management of high performance organizations." The MPE program promises more than a remodeled MBA.
There is nothing "old school" about this innovative degree program. The MPE student doesn't apply individually, but in partnership with his/her employer--referred to as the Sponsoring Organization (S0). The SO commits to support their student(s), typically junior-level executives identified for career advancement, in becoming positive change agents within the organization. The MPE program, designed to allow the student to apply acquired competencies to the workplace in real time, delivers products of value for the SO. To ensure success, the SO's CEO and senior leadership agree to support the student by naming a "strategic team" that meets on a regular basis to provide input to the MPE student and address any barriers the student may face in completing an organizational performance assessment, analysis, and project-related change efforts. The SO assigns a senior executive to help break down those barriers so that the organizational improvement project can provide a positive return on investment to the SO. The SO is expected to further support the student by assigning a certain percentage of the MPE student's work time to class study, project completion, and preparation.
The SO covers the cost of the MPE program because the return on investment directly benefits the SO's operations and results and encourages the employee's long-term engagement with the organization.
The MPE curriculum is based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and focuses on:
I checked in with the visionary behind this new program to learn more about what Loyola expects to accomplish with the new MPE. Ron Schulingkamp is the Senior Strategic Consultant of DM Petroleum Operations Company (Managing and Operating Contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy Strategic Petroleum Reserve). Ron led and continues to lead the company's improvement efforts. Ron's effort led to DM receiving the Baldrige Award in 2005 and the Robert W. Campbell International Award for Environment Safety and Health in 2006. He leads an alumni group of Baldrige Award Recipients who encourages adoption of the Baldrige Criteria within organizations and champions evidence-based practices in performance improvement in the journey to excellence.
Q: So Ron, tell us a little bit about what motivated you to start the program, benefits to participants, and some of your visions and goals for it?
A: Continuous improvement is my passion, much like everyone reading this. As children, we learned that we could not have everything we wanted and in basic economics, we learned we live in a world of scarce resources. In the U.S., we must become more efficient and effective in everything we do--especially our strategy and execution. Large or small, companies must be better and the leadership smarter than the competition to maintain the U.S. standard of living for future generations. My goal is simple: drastically improve the performance of organizations throughout the U.S. to ensure the future is better not worse. Achieving this goal is an incredible challenge. Education is key to achieving it, but the leadership of U.S. educational institutions have to learn and improve--especially business schools.
Q: Why a new program like the MPE?
A: Simply put, we need a new "mental model" for the future. The MPE is an important start. We live in a world of complexity, but we approach problems with the simple cause and effect concepts we learned as young adults in undergraduate school. Our decisions over time have stressed global systems that we have taken for granted which now have created monumental challenges for humanity. The thinking that led to today's challenges cannot solve today's challenges or improve tomorrow.
The MPE is designed to teach executives how to see, think, and understand complexity and interrelationships. Generally, MBA programs teach within the context of silos and linear cause and effect relationships. This is how traditional businesses, institutions of higher learning included, function. This type of silo linear thinking yields typical problems, such as sub-optimization, that we see time and time again.
Systems thinking is central to the MPE curriculum. The Baldrige Criteria are incorporated in the MPE as a model for understanding complex systems, their related processes, and organizational relationships. There is an intense focus on developing leadership's ability to understand systems, variation, knowledge of theories that help predict outcomes, and the student's analytical capabilities to ultimately improve. The goal is to make organizational decisions based n the systematic analysis of current processes, gaps in performance, and identified opportunities for improvement.
So let me wrap this all up by asking: do you know of any other novel concepts or curricula? Please share them with our readers.
What if a Master of Performance Excellence (MPE) Degree Program existed? Would you enroll? And what could you learn from it?
Confident that they have identified an idea whose time has come, Loyola University New Orleans College of Business will offer a MPE Degree Program with the Fall 2012 semester. The MPE brochure identifies the focus as equipping students in the "systems-centered design and management of high performance organizations." The MPE program promises more than a remodeled MBA.
There is nothing "old school" about this innovative degree program. The MPE student doesn't apply individually, but in partnership with his/her employer--referred to as the Sponsoring Organization (S0). The SO commits to support their student(s), typically junior-level executives identified for career advancement, in becoming positive change agents within the organization. The MPE program, designed to allow the student to apply acquired competencies to the workplace in real time, delivers products of value for the SO. To ensure success, the SO's CEO and senior leadership agree to support the student by naming a "strategic team" that meets on a regular basis to provide input to the MPE student and address any barriers the student may face in completing an organizational performance assessment, analysis, and project-related change efforts. The SO assigns a senior executive to help break down those barriers so that the organizational improvement project can provide a positive return on investment to the SO. The SO is expected to further support the student by assigning a certain percentage of the MPE student's work time to class study, project completion, and preparation.
The SO covers the cost of the MPE program because the return on investment directly benefits the SO's operations and results and encourages the employee's long-term engagement with the organization.
The MPE curriculum is based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and focuses on:
- visionary leadership
- customer-driven excellence
- organizational and personal learning
- valuing workforce members and partners
- agility
- focus on the future
- managing for innovation
- management by fact
- social responsibility
- focus on results and creating value
- systems perspective
I checked in with the visionary behind this new program to learn more about what Loyola expects to accomplish with the new MPE. Ron Schulingkamp is the Senior Strategic Consultant of DM Petroleum Operations Company (Managing and Operating Contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy Strategic Petroleum Reserve). Ron led and continues to lead the company's improvement efforts. Ron's effort led to DM receiving the Baldrige Award in 2005 and the Robert W. Campbell International Award for Environment Safety and Health in 2006. He leads an alumni group of Baldrige Award Recipients who encourages adoption of the Baldrige Criteria within organizations and champions evidence-based practices in performance improvement in the journey to excellence.
Q: So Ron, tell us a little bit about what motivated you to start the program, benefits to participants, and some of your visions and goals for it?
A: Continuous improvement is my passion, much like everyone reading this. As children, we learned that we could not have everything we wanted and in basic economics, we learned we live in a world of scarce resources. In the U.S., we must become more efficient and effective in everything we do--especially our strategy and execution. Large or small, companies must be better and the leadership smarter than the competition to maintain the U.S. standard of living for future generations. My goal is simple: drastically improve the performance of organizations throughout the U.S. to ensure the future is better not worse. Achieving this goal is an incredible challenge. Education is key to achieving it, but the leadership of U.S. educational institutions have to learn and improve--especially business schools.
Q: Why a new program like the MPE?
A: Simply put, we need a new "mental model" for the future. The MPE is an important start. We live in a world of complexity, but we approach problems with the simple cause and effect concepts we learned as young adults in undergraduate school. Our decisions over time have stressed global systems that we have taken for granted which now have created monumental challenges for humanity. The thinking that led to today's challenges cannot solve today's challenges or improve tomorrow.
The MPE is designed to teach executives how to see, think, and understand complexity and interrelationships. Generally, MBA programs teach within the context of silos and linear cause and effect relationships. This is how traditional businesses, institutions of higher learning included, function. This type of silo linear thinking yields typical problems, such as sub-optimization, that we see time and time again.
Systems thinking is central to the MPE curriculum. The Baldrige Criteria are incorporated in the MPE as a model for understanding complex systems, their related processes, and organizational relationships. There is an intense focus on developing leadership's ability to understand systems, variation, knowledge of theories that help predict outcomes, and the student's analytical capabilities to ultimately improve. The goal is to make organizational decisions based n the systematic analysis of current processes, gaps in performance, and identified opportunities for improvement.
So let me wrap this all up by asking: do you know of any other novel concepts or curricula? Please share them with our readers.
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