Custom Delivery

If the roughly $3 billion that companies spend each year on university-based executive programs, customized offerings now account for 40 percent of that total and are growing far faster than the open-enrollment segment. Custom programs, which infuse the curriculum with company-specific issues and concerns, offer CFOs a chance to drive home the business-partner theme in an intensive fashion.

Since 1994, Johnson & Johnson has put nearly 600 finance professionals through a program developed with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. Called "Strategic Partnering in Finance," the weeklong sessions teach through case studies how finance can contribute to business success. The cases are tailored by region, and every participant must compose an action plan. "We track the sessions loosely," says training and education director Rich Sample, "but we can tell we're headed in the right direction."

After a year's hiatus, TRW is again running its "Creating Strategic Partnerships" seminar with Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. In 1997, TRW added a second program, with an international flavor. Offered through Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, the weeklong session emphasizes cross-cultural skills in negotiations and capital-investment options, among other topics. CFO Carl Miller closes the program by asking people to identify three things they'll do differently in their job. A few months later, he checks on their progress.

The Dana Corp. used to send its finance high-potentials through open-enrollment programs at schools like Harvard and Stanford. Then CFO Jack Simpson decided it made more sense to bring the mountain — in this case, the University of Michigan Business School — to Mohammed. But what was supposed to be a custom program run every other year for 20 finance professionals is now run twice a year for 30 people from various functions. Why? The policy committee of Dana's board looked at the program content and worried that line managers wouldn't have a clue what finance was talking about.

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