Custom Programs: Raising the Bar on High-Impact Education for your Organization

Companies around the globe are experiencing a faster rate of change than ever before. As your partner in providing customized executive development programs, we help your leaders gain the skills to steer your organization ahead.


What We Do

At the forefront of designing and delivering highly customized programs, we've bolstered senior management’s leadership, strategy, and decision-making skills—and helped to drive growth and innovation for companies globally.

Organizations have relied on Chicago Booth's expertise to:

  • Gain competitive advantages
  • Catalyze change
  • Develop and execute the right strategy
  • Innovatively run operations
  • Close skill and knowledge gaps
  • Create a committed and agile workforce
  • Collaborate effectively across international organizations and cultures
  • ...and more

We've helped organizations ranging from top consumer packaged goods companies to global financial services. Working with both public and private sector clients, we've created general management programs for executives spanning the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

"The faculty worked to truly understand our firm, first while designing the program and then in the classroom. Chicago Booth's combination of world-class expertise and tailored attention has engaged our executives and exceeded our expectations." —Aaron Olson, Chief Talent Officers, Aon PLC

As your partner, we explore your unique organizational goals and work together to determine the best possible format for your leaders. Clients often combine one or more of the below formats into their custom program.

Online, Distance Learning Formats

Live-Online Programs (Synchronous)

Our live-online programming is delivered in a synchronous format where participants learn from faculty and peers in an interactive, high-impact virtual environment. Participants receive Booth's rigorous content in short, digestible sessions held over days or weeks. Live online programming is often blended with offline activities, projects, and readings to deepen understanding of the materials.

Online Programs (Asynchronous)

Our asynchronous (recorded) online sessions are designed to scale and reach hundreds of executives. This format provides flexibly-timed learning for executives across time zones. Participants often divide Booth’s intense content over multiple weeks, and our programming provides for multiple knowledge checks throughout. The benefit of this format is it allows busy global executives to learn Booth's rigorous content in a convenient schedule, and allows organizations to scale learning throughout an organization.

Hybrid Programs (In-Person and Online)

Our hybrid programs blend in-person with online, or live-online, programming for a one-of-the-kind experience. This format allows busy global executives to gather insights and absorb content in a convenient online format, and then come together with their colleagues to learn from renowned Booth faculty in a face-to-face classroom.

Additional online, distance learning formats

Additional formats and program components may include:

Group projects, simulations, case studies, and message boards. These interactive projects facilitate teamwork, networking, and problem-solving in either a synchronous or asynchronous format.

Executive Coaching. We leverage our global network of elite coaches to provide personalized training and create lasting behavior change.

Self-paced assignments. Quizzes and other assignments help ensure participants’ understanding and application of the content.

Private cohorts or group enrollment to our open-enrollment programs. Tailor a program from our online open-enrollment programs catalog to fit your organization’s objectives.

Pre-Recorded Lectures. Select sessions from our video catalog of in-demand executive education topics.

Private Sessions with Faculty. In a highly-customized program, “office hours” and other private sessions may be available to allow participants additional time to receive valuable feedback from faculty.

Speakers and guest lectures.

Translation. Pre-recorded and simultaneous translations of our online sessions are available in Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Arabic, and more.

 

In-Person Program Formats & Locations

In-person classroom and experiential formats include:
  • Classroom learning
  • Executive coaching
  • Company tours and visits
  • Individual projects
  • Group projects and discussions
  • Simulations
  • Case Studies
  • Conferences
  • Expert speakers
  • Live, simultaneous translation (Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, and more)

Locations

Often, companies take advantage of Booth's three global campus locations: Chicago (downtown and Hyde Park locations), London, and Hong Kong. Each campus offers a state-of-the-art classroom experience, as well as ample opportunities for experiential learning. We can also bring a custom program to a convenient global location of your choice.

 

We teach not what to think but how  to think through complex business issues—empowering executives to solve your most intractable business challenges.

 

With our rigorous approach, we teach your executives concepts and frameworks for continually generating the best solutions and applying them effectively in your organization. Participants will emerge as better thinkers—able to not just apply concepts to the issues at hand, but also to approach and solve the unknown challenges ahead. Your executives learn the value of constructive questioning and a willingness to alter beliefs in light of new data, to recognize the importance of multiple viewpoints, to take calculated risks, and to ultimately deliver powerful performance.

Our custom programs are led by one or more Booth faculty leads who are uniquely qualified to address your business challenges. Booth's renowned faculty have not only shaped modern understanding of business, markets, and organizations, but consult with firms and governments, serve on corporate boards, and even start their own companies. Their distinctive mix of theory and application creates a lasting impact on custom program participants.

Through our interactive process, we work with you every step of the way. Chicago Booth ensures that the members of the faculty and administrative team who start a partnership remain the same from development through delivery and post-program follow-up. We work closely with clients to ensure we have the right people in place who can build a value-enhancing relationship—and ultimately deliver high-impact, results-driven learning.

Our four-step process ensures that programs are precisely tailored to your needs.
Step 1: Listen

Each partnership begins with a series of conversations designed to help us understand your needs and objectives. 

Step 2: Design

Armed with rich insights into your organization, our faculty collaborate to create dynamic learning content specifically for you. 

Step 3: Transform

Our expert faculty deliver classroom material through engaging, interactive learning experiences.

Step 4: Sustain
Finally, we continually assess your program to ensure maximum learning and impact. 

At Booth, delivering ROI is important. We often partner with clients to discover and measure the learning areas that will provide the largest impact on their organization.

In our assessment process, we discover common themes for organizational improvement through techniques such as executive interviews and personality assessments.

Post-program evaluations provide measurement to ensure that executives are applying what they've learned, and that our learning solution has provided, quantifiable, lasting impact to the organization.

"A 10 out of 10" 

- Hugh F. Johnston, ’87, PepsiCo Inc.’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

 

Together, PepsiCo and Chicago Booth created a leadership program to develop PepsiCo's top talent. In this video, PepsiCo Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston tells us about the company's experience with the program. 

The Client

PepsiCo, a leading global food and beverage company with world-renowned household brands.

The Challenge 

PepsiCo sought to bolster the leadership skills of its senior talent. As a Chicago Booth graduate himself, Hugh Johnston understood the value of the Booth curriculum and the Booth faculty: “I wanted to make sure that we gave our top talent leadership development, because leadership is something that you can learn."

The Solution 

Using The Chicago Approach™, the Chicago Booth Executive Education team set forth to develop a customized leadership program that met the unique needs of PepsiCo. The program architecture had three main components with specific learning objectives:

  • Build critical leadership skills
  • Sharpen functional expertise
  • Apply through action learning

The program included teaching responsiveness in a swift-changing business world through inquiry and pragmatic insights. Actionable tools included discovering one’s personal leadership style, multi-dimensional problem solving, and motivational methods. The course was taught through lectures, discussions, and small-group interactions allowing relationship building among peers as well.

The Outcome and Impact 

The lasting impact was powerful. “Our participants were just overwhelmingly positive about the program, and frankly, I’ve seen a difference in their performance as they’ve come back,” Johnston said.

Additional Client Case Studies

Please download a brochure to explore additional case studies about our global clients.