$6,000 Lecture Series : The Masters of Managing Tell All
At first glance, it looks like a Motivational-Speaker-of-the-Month Club featuring some of the hottest names on the corporate lecture circuit: “In Search of Excellence” author Tom Peters, management science founding father Peter Drucker, “Megatrends” man John Naisbitt, aerobics ringleader Dr. Kenneth R. Cooper, Yale management professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Ken Blanchard of “One Minute Manager” fame.
Among others.
Listeners pay $6,000 for the privilege of spending half a day (in a small group) to hear and question each speaker--one a month for a year. Or 14 months in the case of the inaugural group that began in Costa Mesa in November.
But according to the management consultant who created all this, “The Masters” program is far more than a series of entertaining sessions in which upwardly mobile business types get to hang out with famous authors.
Stephen R. Covey, a Provo, Utah-based consultant to IBM, Pillsbury and other Fortune 500 firms, designed The Masters programs for considerably deeper results.
Covey is not interested in what he calls “crisis management” or “the quick fix.” He has no use for what he sees as manipulative techniques that are increasingly taught in business training sessions.
Rather, Covey and his speakers stress personal and organizational values, character, skill, system development and “principle-centered leadership.” Not very glamorous stuff, but Covey claims these are the keys to long-term results.
Borrowing an often-heard metaphor, Covey sometimes tells his listeners that without paying attention to both personal and corporate values, they may climb the ladder of success only to find it’s leaning against the wrong wall. So he puts clarification of values high in his program. And he stresses stories such as Aesop’s fable of the goose and the golden egg.
As Covey sees it, many corporations are like the farmer whose magical goose regularly rewards him with golden eggs. But then, like the greedy farmer, they kill the goose (long-term prosperity), hoping to collect all the eggs (short-term profits) at once.
Earning Golden Eggs
As a reminder, Masters program participants can earn golden eggs (from all appearances, actually brass eggs) by keeping the agreements they make when they enroll. They agree to take notes so they can review material presented at each session. And--experienced at this or not--they also agree to implement and teach the material to other people--in their firms, families or circles of friends.
(A longtime professor at Brigham Young University who still teaches occasional courses there, Covey believes “the one who learns the most is the teacher; therefore, if I really want to help my students, I should have them teach what they learn.”)
In addition, participants are asked to study the speaker’s books (or other materials) before they get to the session, so they can ask informed questions and get beyond the lecturer’s basics. Covey has arranged his speakers so each builds upon the ideas taught by the others. Lecturers early in The Masters year typically address personal matters: changing habits (Covey), conditioning the body and mind (Cooper), planning for performance (Charles Garfield), managing time and talent (William Oncken Jr.).
Mid-year, participants study managerial issues: building relationships (Blanchard), communicating effectively (Covey), negotiating (Roger Fisher), and clarifying vision and values (Lawrence M. Miller).
Finally, the group tackles organizational challenges: reinventing the corporation (Naisbitt), mastering change (Kanter), searching for excellence (Peters), transforming leadership (Covey), decision-making leadership (James A. Belasco) and innovation and entrepreneurship (Drucker).
If comments at the Orange County series that began in November are any indication, The Masters program held there at the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel is off to a promising start.
One man, Steve Bryant, who heads Bryant Rubber Co. in Los Angeles, was particularly impressed by Covey’s opening session (in which Covey outlined the effectiveness of teaching what you learn, the importance of human assets in a corporation and his concept of the “emotional bank account,” among other ideas).
Within 48 hours of Covey’s presentation, Bryant flew three European colleagues to L. A. so he could teach them what he had learned.
“I’ve probably paid for the seminar already,” Bryant announced to the group at the second session.
John P. Singleton, president of Security Pacific Automation Company (a division of Security Pacific National Bank with 4,200 employees), liked the program enough to enroll about a dozen of his managers in the second Masters series begun in December. And he taught the principles he learned from Covey and Garfield to about 80 of his company’s managers.
Not everyone in the program, however, has been willing to do all the assigned homework.
Kaypro Corp. board chairman Andy Kay, for example, revealed he has not yet taught seminar principles, but he indicated he’s generally pleased with the program.
“I think a few hours with an author is worth more than the reading of all their books,” he said. “But the people attending the seminars vary a great deal in maturity and experience and so forth.
“I feel like a graduate student in a class with freshman undergraduates, but you can always learn something. It’s not too bad a thing.”
If participants share one difficulty, it seems to be a reluctance to teach principles as personal as the ones advocated by fitness expert Cooper. At the meeting after his session, some listeners indicated that they felt uncomfortable touting his recommendations to others.
Some said they didn’t want to appear to nag or criticize their unfit employees. Bryant, a fitness enthusiast, contended that proselytizing about Cooper’s ideas might do as much harm as good in his firm, “tantamount to a Jesus freak preaching about God.”
Other participants said that since they were not physically fit, they would feel ridiculous promoting Cooper’s wellness ideas.
Al Switzler, who runs the Stephen R. Covey and Associates’ office in the city of Orange, suggested that those who want to promote fitness could do more than merely set an example of health and well-being. He advised verbalizing the behavior that they model, with such phrases as: “I have a lot of energy. I exercise. I recommend it.”
Covey, who was not at the meeting, said by telephone that teaching is initially the most difficult part of the program for some.
“Some people are just scared to death of this whole idea of teaching. It’s just because they’re new at the process. However, they’ll find little by little that if they continue, they’ll get better at it.”
The 53-year-old consultant, who has taught all sessions of The Masters program in its in-house incarnations for several corporations, said one reason he wanted to bring in a variety of speakers was so that he could devote more time to writing and “some new things.”
He acknowledged that the program version with the big-name speakers is not showing a profit, given the speakers’ high fees and promotional costs. (According to Switzler, half of the program’s speakers charge between $15,000 and $20,000 per appearance.)
“We see it (The Masters program) as a long-term effort to influence the training and consulting communities. If we can get it on videotape and satellites, then it will be profitable,” Covey said. “I think it will take at least a year before it’s profitable.”
A Masters program similar to the one in Costa Mesa was to begin in Los Angeles in December, but too few individuals enrolled. Instead, the program will be rescheduled for the spring and held for the employees of a large aerospace firm, which bought the program; those who had enrolled in the L.A. program were invited to join (late) the Costa Mesa program that began in November.
A second Masters program began in Orange County in December. The group in this program, however, has about 150 members (as opposed to about 20 in the smaller group), and the price per person is reduced by about half.
But the principles being taught remain essentially the same. As Covey put it: “One of our favorite sayings is that if you teach people the correct principles, they will govern themselves.
“Our movement is more into self-management and visionary leadership rather than movement toward more management in the traditional sense.”
